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How Light Pollution Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there, and I
0:17
Speaker 1: just want to say this is stuff you should know,
0:19
Speaker 1: the Chuck's Birthday edition. Birthday Chuck, Thank you, thank you. Okay,
0:27
Speaker 1: So back to it. Yeah, we got a I got
0:32
Speaker 1: approval from Josh to do a special front loaded listener mail.
0:38
Speaker 1: I'm a little tense about this. I'm not I'm not
0:40
Speaker 1: gonna lie. Really, you were like, it's his birthday, I
0:43
Speaker 1: gotta do it. Yeah, I had to give in. Uh
0:46
Speaker 1: for those of who don't know the end of the podcast,
0:48
Speaker 1: some people just switch it off when you start your
0:51
Speaker 1: little uh dobbledygook at the end. But we read mail
0:55
Speaker 1: from listeners which can be informative and instructive and fun
0:58
Speaker 1: and heartwarming and say ad and they're really good. So
1:02
Speaker 1: you've been missing out if you don't listen through to those.
1:04
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna do want to hear at the front
1:07
Speaker 1: because this just came in as sheer coincidence that it
1:11
Speaker 1: happened to dovetail with today's topic. So while Alex lash
1:16
Speaker 1: Here of New Zealand did not suggest this uh topics
1:21
Speaker 1: such that we took the suggestion we are already doing it.
1:26
Speaker 1: You sounded like a mobster trying to stuff So here
1:30
Speaker 1: we go from Alex. Hey, guys, following up on the
1:32
Speaker 1: National Park app, I like to suggest you complete the
1:35
Speaker 1: trifecta and do dark sky reserves and marine reserves. I'm
1:40
Speaker 1: from New Zealand. My dad played a part in the
1:42
Speaker 1: formation of our own dark Sky reserve in the McKenzie Basin.
1:46
Speaker 1: There's a joint effort between the local uh Maori eui.
1:52
Speaker 1: I'm probably just mispronouncing everything. Uh Takapo tourism, which is
1:56
Speaker 1: the town in the University of Canterbury who ran the
1:59
Speaker 1: Mount John of Erbitory in the area. My dad was
2:02
Speaker 1: head of physics and astronomy at the university at the time.
2:04
Speaker 1: It is a truly life altering experience to look up
2:07
Speaker 1: and see a skylit brilliant by the Milky Way with
2:10
Speaker 1: no light pollution and into Capo you can do a
2:13
Speaker 1: tour uh to look through some of the telescopes for
2:15
Speaker 1: a better view. And this from Alex lash And he's
2:19
Speaker 1: attached a picture of a of a photo that his
2:22
Speaker 1: friend took of the night sky with the observatory in
2:25
Speaker 1: the foreground, and he was like, there is no special cameras,
2:28
Speaker 1: just mounted on a tripod to lead that exposure open
2:32
Speaker 1: for a long time. And brother, it is. You should
2:36
Speaker 1: check out this email from Alex. It is unbelievably gorgeous
2:40
Speaker 1: and we forget what is up there in the sky
2:43
Speaker 1: when you live in in most places in the world. Yeah,
2:47
Speaker 1: I mean they say that in the US and Europe,
2:50
Speaker 1: nine percent of us live in light polluted skies that
2:56
Speaker 1: are so light polluted that we can't see like the
2:59
Speaker 1: Milky Way, you just can't see it. It's there, we
3:03
Speaker 1: just can't see it because of all the light that
3:05
Speaker 1: we put out. And so yeah, so that is an
3:07
Speaker 1: amazing photo. So to see something like that in person,
3:11
Speaker 1: it really kind of and to realize that it's out there,
3:13
Speaker 1: it makes you kind of sad. But at the same time,
3:16
Speaker 1: it makes me very determined to go somewhere and see. Unfortunately,
3:20
Speaker 1: I've been looking around. There's not a lot of places
3:22
Speaker 1: that I want to go anyway, So it's gonna have
3:24
Speaker 1: to be a special trip, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
3:27
Speaker 1: And it is. You know, occasionally when I have gotten
3:29
Speaker 1: out to the desert or out in the middle of
3:33
Speaker 1: the ocean on the one cruise ship I went on,
3:36
Speaker 1: and you see those stars, it is a reminders like
3:39
Speaker 1: those things are always up there, and so we get
3:42
Speaker 1: to see so little of that in the city. Uh.
3:45
Speaker 1: I mean, you're lucky if you get a smattering of
3:47
Speaker 1: stars if you live near a city on any given night. Yeah. No,
3:51
Speaker 1: it's definitely true. And like skyglow in and of itself.
3:53
Speaker 1: If you don't stop and think about what it is,
3:56
Speaker 1: it can be kind of beautiful in a weird way.
3:58
Speaker 1: It makes you feel like you're alive and connected to
4:01
Speaker 1: everybody who's alive in that city, right then, weirdly, or
4:04
Speaker 1: does for me, I should say. But but when you
4:09
Speaker 1: but when you do stop and think about what it is,
4:11
Speaker 1: it can make you pretty sad. And then when you
4:12
Speaker 1: do see something like you get like it's just a
4:14
Speaker 1: taste of what the night sky is supposed to look like,
4:17
Speaker 1: like chuck in a truly like dark night, like a
4:21
Speaker 1: night sky that isn't polluted with light, Like Venus and
4:27
Speaker 1: Jupiter are so bright they can make you cast a shadow,
4:31
Speaker 1: that's how bright they get. The Milky Way does too,
4:33
Speaker 1: like you can cast a shadow from Venus and Jupiter.
4:37
Speaker 1: It's just mind boggling to think of you can't even
4:39
Speaker 1: see Jupiter. Maybe you see Venus, like if you're lucky
4:43
Speaker 1: around a city, But like you said, smattering of stars
4:46
Speaker 1: and some skyglow is basically what you get. So I
4:49
Speaker 1: think the thing that really kind of makes me feel like, man,
4:51
Speaker 1: we were so close. It was up until even like
4:55
Speaker 1: sixties seventy hundred years ago, like you didn't have to
5:00
Speaker 1: very far from a place like Atlanta or New York
5:03
Speaker 1: or Boston or you know, wherever any city to to
5:07
Speaker 1: go find something like this, like maybe just drive out
5:10
Speaker 1: beyond the city limits are here or there. Um. But
5:12
Speaker 1: today we've been increasing our artificial lighting even faster than
5:17
Speaker 1: our pollute. Our population has been growing, and so it's
5:20
Speaker 1: gotten to this point now where we've lost a lot.
5:23
Speaker 1: And there's some people saying, hey, not only are we
5:25
Speaker 1: losing stuff, we're actually gaining all sorts of negativity too
5:29
Speaker 1: that we need to start addressing. And that is the
5:32
Speaker 1: upshod of light pollution. It really does stand as a
5:35
Speaker 1: type of pollution when you dig into it. Yeah, and
5:38
Speaker 1: this is one where we're gonna you know, arm you
5:40
Speaker 1: with some information, maybe gently remind you about some best
5:44
Speaker 1: practices without trying to be to preachy about what you
5:50
Speaker 1: do at your own home. But you know, it's not
5:54
Speaker 1: just skyscrapers and and big city stuff. It's the individual
5:59
Speaker 1: humans home that as far too much light pointing up
6:03
Speaker 1: at the sky these days, and it all adds up,
6:05
Speaker 1: it does, and um, a significant portion of it is wasted.
6:09
Speaker 1: If you start looking at um light pollution. Uh. I
6:14
Speaker 1: guess warning people, right, yeah. Uh, you know, if you
6:18
Speaker 1: start hanging out with that crowd, you'll find that they
6:21
Speaker 1: also very frequently say, hey, you can save a lot
6:23
Speaker 1: of fossil fuel emissions and a lot of money on
6:26
Speaker 1: electricity if you just use sensible lighting that doesn't pollute. Yeah.
6:31
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the history of it a little bit, because,
6:33
Speaker 1: like I was saying, it's not a very old problem
6:36
Speaker 1: that we faced, but it's really kind of grown by
6:38
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds in recent years. Yeah, and big thanks
6:41
Speaker 1: to Olivia for help with this one. I think this
6:44
Speaker 1: is kind of right up her alley. Uh. She points
6:48
Speaker 1: out that, you know, astronomers obviously were some of the
6:50
Speaker 1: very first people to say, hey, we've got a problem
6:53
Speaker 1: going on, and this was in the late nineteenth century.
6:57
Speaker 1: There was an astronomer name Givon, Yeah, who talked about
7:03
Speaker 1: cold smoke a problem and of itself and quote the
7:07
Speaker 1: abuse of electric lights end quote, that we're basically wrecking
7:13
Speaker 1: uh Giovanni's view from uh the observatory in Italy there
7:17
Speaker 1: at Brera. I guess in Brera, but the Brera Astronomical
7:21
Speaker 1: Observatory it's in Milan actually so. But the problem was
7:24
Speaker 1: that Sappiarelli was too cool to take his sunglasses off,
7:29
Speaker 1: so he was not exactly like um, a reporter you
7:32
Speaker 1: could rely on unreliable narrator in Gucci sunglasses. Yeah, I've noticed,
7:38
Speaker 1: like I've I've gotten to this weird point in my life, chuck,
7:40
Speaker 1: where rather than use the word I'm looking for, I
7:43
Speaker 1: use five different words that are clumsily strung together that
7:46
Speaker 1: kind of get across what I'm trying to say. You've
7:49
Speaker 1: gotten to this point, Okay, I feel like it's stepped up,
7:53
Speaker 1: all right. Yeah, I need a little more perspective on
7:57
Speaker 1: myself to be thinking about how I be. No, don't.
8:01
Speaker 1: You don't need to think about that anymore than you
8:03
Speaker 1: already do. Okay, So, uh astronomers were among the first.
8:09
Speaker 1: They were also authors Olivia points out there was a
8:13
Speaker 1: naturalist and author named Henry Beston who was a great quote,
8:17
Speaker 1: it's kind of sad. Uh, there's a night mind you
8:21
Speaker 1: with lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness
8:24
Speaker 1: of night back to the forest in the sea. Today's
8:27
Speaker 1: civilization is full of people who have not the slightest
8:30
Speaker 1: notion of the character or the poetry of night, who
8:34
Speaker 1: have never even seen night. Yeah, we take those people
8:40
Speaker 1: out and in the night think what was there? Who's that?
8:42
Speaker 1: Who's there? Where's my flashlight? So things really kind of
8:47
Speaker 1: got going like like people people were aware, like there's
8:50
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of light pollution going on. Um, all
8:54
Speaker 1: you have to do is try to get some sleep
8:56
Speaker 1: in a in a city where there's tons of lights
8:58
Speaker 1: on to under stand light pollution and have it affect you.
9:02
Speaker 1: So it's not like people didn't realize there were issues
9:04
Speaker 1: with overuse of artificial lights along the way, but it
9:08
Speaker 1: wasn't until the fifties that anybody actually started to do
9:11
Speaker 1: something about it, which, if you stop and think about it,
9:14
Speaker 1: if if really we started to run into this problem
9:17
Speaker 1: around the beginning of the twentieth century. Less than half
9:20
Speaker 1: a century later, UM, people were already moving to address it.
9:24
Speaker 1: And the whole thing started in Arizona thanks to a
9:27
Speaker 1: richie rich astronomer Personval Lowell, who had built um an observatory,
9:31
Speaker 1: great Lowell Observatory out there, um near was it flag Staff,
9:36
Speaker 1: I believe, and the Grand Canyon. Yeah, and um it
9:39
Speaker 1: was a great space at the time when he built
9:42
Speaker 1: it in four But by the time I think that
9:45
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties rolled around, when they were looking to expand
9:49
Speaker 1: their like, already, Flagstaff is just too bright for our telescope.
9:54
Speaker 1: What are we going to do well? And they said,
9:57
Speaker 1: and this is what all observatories. Basically he had to
10:00
Speaker 1: do was move out even further. So they moved out
10:03
Speaker 1: about twelve miles southeast of the city. But then even
10:08
Speaker 1: then they were like, you know, at some point this
10:10
Speaker 1: is gonna be a problem as well because of the
10:13
Speaker 1: way that humans just expand their footprint with suburbs and
10:16
Speaker 1: ex serbs, and so let's actually do something about it.
10:21
Speaker 1: And so the Flagstaff City Council is a sort of
10:24
Speaker 1: one of the first measures in the United States on
10:26
Speaker 1: light pollution banned the searchlights. When you grew up in
10:32
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties, you remember this you don't see
10:35
Speaker 1: you don't see him anymore, which I guess this is
10:37
Speaker 1: why I've seen it as recently in the last like
10:39
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen years. Oh really, I have seen one
10:43
Speaker 1: in and I didn't even remember them until this article.
10:46
Speaker 1: But uh, when a big business would open up, or
10:48
Speaker 1: just any business that could afford dire spotlights, they would
10:53
Speaker 1: have these searchlights, spotlights like these bat signals, just kind
10:56
Speaker 1: of flowing back and forth in the night sky, and
10:59
Speaker 1: I get you know. The idea was you would just say,
11:01
Speaker 1: what's that light? Yeah, drive, I need to drive toward it.
11:04
Speaker 1: I got nothing else to do. I need to find
11:06
Speaker 1: out if there's a new Aaron rent exactly exactly. And
11:13
Speaker 1: people do that, I guess because they used them. I mean,
11:16
Speaker 1: those search lights weren't cheap to rent, I would imagine,
11:19
Speaker 1: so they must have been effective if people use them
11:21
Speaker 1: for that long. I remember those all the time when
11:23
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and Flagstaff City Council said, at
11:27
Speaker 1: the very least, no more of those dumb things. They're like, yeah,
11:30
Speaker 1: it's exciting, true, but it's it's wrecking Percival Lull's telescope.
11:34
Speaker 1: So they actually, yeah, they were the first city in
11:37
Speaker 1: the country and maybe even in the world to pass
11:40
Speaker 1: something that protected dark skies, and that kind of set
11:44
Speaker 1: like the tone for the Flagstaff and Tucsign area, which
11:48
Speaker 1: I can't remember if they're even remotely close to one another. Um,
11:52
Speaker 1: super close. Now, our good friend Blair Bunting actually uh,
11:56
Speaker 1: I think they live in Flagstaff now, so he's probably
11:59
Speaker 1: gonna send us an e disabusing me of any notion
12:02
Speaker 1: that flag Staff and Tucson are anywhere near each other.
12:05
Speaker 1: But the I guess Tucson copied Flagstaff maybe and started
12:10
Speaker 1: to say, hey, we should protect our dark skies too. Yeah.
12:13
Speaker 1: I think it was just sort of in the air
12:15
Speaker 1: in Arizona. And in the early nineteen seventies Tucson pass
12:20
Speaker 1: some laws that said, hey, all these lights that are
12:23
Speaker 1: pointing upward, let's just point those down at least. Uh.
12:28
Speaker 1: And then over the next few decades they moved like
12:31
Speaker 1: two different kinds of lights that were a little softer
12:35
Speaker 1: on the visual spectrum, not as bright. One of the
12:38
Speaker 1: big problems we'll talk about later is all the blue
12:40
Speaker 1: light these days from led s and electronics and things
12:43
Speaker 1: like that. But um, do you have the blue light?
12:46
Speaker 1: Oh my god, are you? Are you trying to get
12:49
Speaker 1: better sleep, and like not looking at your phone before bed.
12:52
Speaker 1: I've got that um that night shift thing on where
12:56
Speaker 1: like from sunrise to sunset it's um or suns set
13:00
Speaker 1: to sunrise, it's like a yellow it's like yellow stuff
13:04
Speaker 1: automatically it does that. Yeah, and I don't. I try
13:07
Speaker 1: to read books more at night too. I think it's
13:10
Speaker 1: but it's more just like the light bulbs, those light fixtures,
13:13
Speaker 1: I don't care what time of day it is. They
13:15
Speaker 1: just look like you've made the decision to to do
13:18
Speaker 1: everything you can to drive yourself insane. So you're you're
13:21
Speaker 1: going with the blue light led eds. Well you should
13:27
Speaker 1: avoid those, right, I think so, Yeah, I don't have
13:31
Speaker 1: them in my house. Good for you, Chuck. I mean,
13:34
Speaker 1: that's one of those things like l E d s
13:35
Speaker 1: are great because they last a long long time, but
13:39
Speaker 1: they make different kinds of l D s now, so
13:41
Speaker 1: you don't have to have those blue light ones. So
13:43
Speaker 1: there's this group called the International Dark Sky Association. They
13:46
Speaker 1: were founded in night by somebody who was part of
13:49
Speaker 1: that push and I think Tucson and start protecting the
13:52
Speaker 1: dark skies. They are big time into saying like hey guys,
13:56
Speaker 1: we need to figure out some something else. But aside
13:59
Speaker 1: from these blue A blenk l Eds that are really
14:02
Speaker 1: not good, we'll really just stop all over blue light
14:05
Speaker 1: l e d S whenever we get a chance later
14:07
Speaker 1: in the episode. But the point is is the International
14:10
Speaker 1: Dark Sky Association has been introduced now and they are
14:14
Speaker 1: responsible for Alex Lash's favorite thing, certifying dark sky places
14:20
Speaker 1: around the world. Actually I think there's a hundred and
14:22
Speaker 1: seventy of them. Yeah, like dark sky sanctuaries. Basically, UH,
14:27
Speaker 1: if you do the right thing. If if this is
14:31
Speaker 1: your goal and you do the right thing, some people
14:34
Speaker 1: might say it's the wrong thing. Um, you can get
14:36
Speaker 1: certified places in I believe, um, Minnesota. I think there's
14:42
Speaker 1: a park in Maine the UH caught it in Woods
14:46
Speaker 1: and Waters National Monument and Maine. UH Cosmic Campground in
14:50
Speaker 1: New Mexico one that is I don't think on the list.
14:53
Speaker 1: But I had a dark sky experience at Sapolo Island,
14:57
Speaker 1: Georgia a few years ago. Uh. This is when I
15:00
Speaker 1: was at the very misguided notion that I was going
15:03
Speaker 1: to try and direct a little independent movie. And we
15:06
Speaker 1: a couple of friends of mine and I went down
15:08
Speaker 1: there to scout Sapollo Island, which is one of the
15:11
Speaker 1: Barrier islands of Georgia that is virtually uninhabited that there's
15:15
Speaker 1: still some of the original gichi Uh people that lived there,
15:20
Speaker 1: but it's like there's no electricity. So the guy that
15:23
Speaker 1: showed us to our place was like, take your flashlights
15:26
Speaker 1: at night because there are no street lights. There are
15:29
Speaker 1: very few people and it is dark. And we got
15:32
Speaker 1: this little golf cart to ride out to the lighthouse
15:34
Speaker 1: and original golf cart it was pretty original. Um, but
15:39
Speaker 1: we got out on the little road, the dirt road
15:41
Speaker 1: and turn the lights off, and man, it was unsettlingly dark.
15:46
Speaker 1: You could you literally could not see your hand in
15:48
Speaker 1: front of your face. Oh really, I was gonna ask
15:50
Speaker 1: you if your eyes acclimated to the dark so that
15:53
Speaker 1: you could see better than you thought you could eventually,
15:56
Speaker 1: but this is like when we first switched them off,
15:58
Speaker 1: and you just forget about just street lights and just
16:01
Speaker 1: people and all the light that comes in. So it
16:04
Speaker 1: was saw the best guy there I've seen in a
16:06
Speaker 1: long time. And um, it's just weird when you're in
16:10
Speaker 1: a place that's super dark. Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine
16:13
Speaker 1: because you're not used to it. You're a city slicker.
16:16
Speaker 1: I'm a city slicker. So um, that's pretty much brings
16:20
Speaker 1: us up to where we are now in history. As
16:22
Speaker 1: far as light pollution goes, it's a big old problem.
16:25
Speaker 1: There's some people at the fringes of this starting to
16:28
Speaker 1: try to get everybody else on board, and we're gonna
16:31
Speaker 1: kind of dive into what actually makes light pollution. After
16:34
Speaker 1: a break, let's do it a birthday break. Oh okay,
17:02
Speaker 1: and we're back and it's still Chuck's birthday. Happy birthday again,
17:06
Speaker 1: Chuck fifty one. It's a weird number. Yeah, but if
17:11
Speaker 1: you add them together at equals six and six is
17:13
Speaker 1: perfectly fine. All right. So my daughter's age comes full circle.
17:20
Speaker 1: By the way, I took her to her first pro
17:22
Speaker 1: sporting event last night. Went to a Hawks game. Oh wow,
17:24
Speaker 1: what do you think? It was interesting? I mean, I
17:27
Speaker 1: knew we would have to leave it like halftime just
17:29
Speaker 1: because of bedtime. But she made it through the half,
17:32
Speaker 1: got a little squirmy. But you know NBA games, there's
17:34
Speaker 1: a lot of extra fun stuff going on. Fire cannons. Yeah,
17:40
Speaker 1: they had dogs catching frisbees and T shirt cannons and
17:44
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah. On the court, it was great. Uh So, anyway,
17:50
Speaker 1: light pollution, I guess we should talk about the four
17:53
Speaker 1: main kinds, right, and I have bigger problems with some
17:56
Speaker 1: of these than others. Yeah, So the idea, the International
18:01
Speaker 1: Dark Skies Association UM has basically identified four types. The
18:06
Speaker 1: first one is glare, and that is basically like, if
18:09
Speaker 1: you look up at a street light, yeum, the that
18:14
Speaker 1: light is going to basically hurt your eyes. You're looking,
18:16
Speaker 1: You're you're being hit with glare from the street light.
18:19
Speaker 1: That's right, that's a kind of light pollution. It makes sense. Um.
18:23
Speaker 1: The the reason that that's light pollution is ideally, you
18:27
Speaker 1: should have to be standing directly under that the light
18:31
Speaker 1: fixture of the street light and look up for the
18:34
Speaker 1: for that glare to happen. That's just not the case.
18:36
Speaker 1: You can be half a mile away and look at
18:40
Speaker 1: a street light from the side and you're still going
18:43
Speaker 1: to get hit with that same glare. That's why it's
18:45
Speaker 1: a problem. That's what makes it light pollution. Right. The
18:49
Speaker 1: second one is want to have a big problem with
18:52
Speaker 1: is a light trespass. And this is when you have
18:56
Speaker 1: a neighbor or somebody that has a floodlight like pointed
19:01
Speaker 1: in your bedroom window and sometimes they just keep it on.
19:05
Speaker 1: Um that's not the case with my current neighbor. Just
19:08
Speaker 1: to be clear, I don't think he listens, but he's
19:12
Speaker 1: he's pretty good. He like I do, have the motion
19:15
Speaker 1: sensor floodlights that only pop on when something is moving.
19:19
Speaker 1: But be aware of the light that you cast from
19:23
Speaker 1: your home. Is is all I'm that's is preachees I'm
19:25
Speaker 1: gonna get. I just realized two days ago that the
19:30
Speaker 1: old front security light replaced all the rest of them
19:33
Speaker 1: with those motion detector ones. But the one I've left
19:35
Speaker 1: so far, um, the it's it's very old, like the
19:39
Speaker 1: the on offs which is actually like rusted in place.
19:43
Speaker 1: It's been on all day and all night like, and
19:46
Speaker 1: it has been shining at my neighbor's house luckily, Luckily,
19:51
Speaker 1: I think their bedroom is on the other side and
19:53
Speaker 1: they're also there. They're very friendly. Um, they would say
19:56
Speaker 1: something if there was an issue. Um in very friendly.
20:00
Speaker 1: Man are very friendly people. But I just realized it.
20:04
Speaker 1: So now I ordered like a replacement light and had
20:06
Speaker 1: to turn all my lights off because that one is
20:08
Speaker 1: just sitting there, sitting on It's crazy. And also when
20:11
Speaker 1: I think about the electricity, it's wasting during the day.
20:14
Speaker 1: It's like, come on, don't be so stupid, you stupid light. Uh.
20:21
Speaker 1: There's called clutter, which is um. I mean, it's described
20:26
Speaker 1: by Olivia as bright, confusing, or excessive groups of lights. Yeah.
20:30
Speaker 1: I looked into that. What does confusing mean confusing is that, UM,
20:35
Speaker 1: we have something called contrast illumination that we use for
20:39
Speaker 1: night vision. So a light that looks um less bright
20:43
Speaker 1: than another light is going to be further away. With
20:46
Speaker 1: artificial light, that's not necessarily the case. You could have
20:49
Speaker 1: like a porch light that's even brighter than a street
20:53
Speaker 1: light that's further away, and it's going to confuse our
20:55
Speaker 1: eyes and mess up our night vision. And then also
20:58
Speaker 1: I have the impression that just having a big smattering
21:00
Speaker 1: of individual lights across the landscape at night is is
21:04
Speaker 1: clutter as well. But I think the problem is it
21:06
Speaker 1: really messes with your night vision. Yeah, we do have
21:09
Speaker 1: a porch light. To be clear, I'm not advocating for
21:13
Speaker 1: like total darkness of your home, but we leave the
21:15
Speaker 1: porch light on at night. Uh, like Tombodette says to do.
21:20
Speaker 1: And that's it. You got a Motel six now at
21:23
Speaker 1: your house. I live in the management office. It's quite
21:27
Speaker 1: nice and comfortable. It's affordable. Yeah, it's your side hustle.
21:33
Speaker 1: Then you've got skyglow, which is I think everyone kind
21:36
Speaker 1: of knows what this is. This these are just the
21:37
Speaker 1: culmination of city lights. And if you've ever driven into
21:41
Speaker 1: Las Vegas from the desert, you see that skyglow from
21:45
Speaker 1: a long ways away. It's just sort of a big
21:47
Speaker 1: glowing dome in the distance. And that one seems to
21:50
Speaker 1: be a problem that's not just from light pollution, but
21:53
Speaker 1: also air pollution too, because you can you can see
21:56
Speaker 1: skyglow just fine on a cloudless night and it's reflecting
22:00
Speaker 1: actually off of all the particles in the atmosphere. And
22:03
Speaker 1: then if there are clouds, you can see the clouds
22:05
Speaker 1: usually quite clearly. You're not supposed to be able to
22:08
Speaker 1: see clouds, but that's part of skyglow as well. And
22:11
Speaker 1: as we'll see the villain of this episode, um blue
22:15
Speaker 1: wavelength led lights are particularly problematic with skyglow because those
22:20
Speaker 1: blue wavelength that blue wavelength light actually travels very far
22:24
Speaker 1: and can create skyglow hundreds of miles away from the city.
22:28
Speaker 1: When you're when you're way far away from the city,
22:31
Speaker 1: you'll still be able to see it just fine. Yeah,
22:33
Speaker 1: And Lyddy included this fun you know we're kind of
22:35
Speaker 1: talking about he kind of just forget in the city
22:37
Speaker 1: and you get used to stuff. She included a fun
22:39
Speaker 1: little story from when Los Angeles had a big power
22:45
Speaker 1: outage across the city and people are calling in very
22:48
Speaker 1: concerned and reporting what ended up being the Milky Way
22:51
Speaker 1: galaxy in the sky, right like if they thought it
22:54
Speaker 1: was a gas cloud or something. I'm not sure, just
22:57
Speaker 1: something concerning. I think, like, hey, there's a weird looking
23:01
Speaker 1: glow in the sky, and uh, they went, it's fine,
23:05
Speaker 1: it's the Milky Way. So UM, I was saying earlier
23:08
Speaker 1: that our our light UM emissions have been increasing faster
23:13
Speaker 1: than the human population. I think it's about it increased
23:16
Speaker 1: about six percent a year between two thousand. Uh that's
23:21
Speaker 1: a lot um and so it's tough to keep up
23:25
Speaker 1: with and it's also tough to get people to kind
23:28
Speaker 1: of give those up. As we'll see. But one of
23:30
Speaker 1: the things that UM that has has kind of become
23:34
Speaker 1: a newer problem, like artificial lights like porch lights that
23:37
Speaker 1: get left on all night, UM, that kind of thing.
23:41
Speaker 1: Those have been a problem for a real long time
23:44
Speaker 1: but one of the newer problems, Chuck his satellites. Yeah,
23:48
Speaker 1: we talked about how many satellites are up there flying around,
23:52
Speaker 1: and that's a problem. I think we talked a lot
23:54
Speaker 1: about that in the Space Junk episode. It's a problem
23:58
Speaker 1: for that reason. But it's a problem because they're interfering
24:01
Speaker 1: with astronomy and uh in our night sky, aren't they? Yeah?
24:05
Speaker 1: In particular, so there's satellite streaks. Um. They used to
24:08
Speaker 1: show up in about point five cent of satellite images
24:13
Speaker 1: or of astronomy images that were taking at twilight, which
24:17
Speaker 1: is when you can see satellites most clearly. That's also
24:20
Speaker 1: the time you can see things like comets and meteors
24:22
Speaker 1: most clearly. So in addition to being an annoyance, UM,
24:26
Speaker 1: it also potentially poses a hazard because it makes it
24:29
Speaker 1: more difficult to track uh nearer objects that we want
24:33
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on that maybe coming toward us.
24:36
Speaker 1: Although if you see don't look up. It wouldn't matter
24:38
Speaker 1: anyway if we identified something like that in time. Did
24:41
Speaker 1: you see that? Yeah? Was it good? Oh? Yeah, you
24:44
Speaker 1: haven't seen it yet. No. The reviews were so bad
24:48
Speaker 1: that I avoided it, really like abysmally bad. I don't
24:52
Speaker 1: get that at all. Uh. That I was just like,
24:55
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna waste my time. Uh. And then I
24:57
Speaker 1: got nominated for Best Picture, and I was like, well,
25:00
Speaker 1: how if it's so bad? Like, I genuinely don't understand
25:03
Speaker 1: what the bad reviews were. Not only was it, like,
25:06
Speaker 1: you know, engrossing and like well done. And I thought
25:10
Speaker 1: Vice was terrible. I thought it was a terrible movie.
25:13
Speaker 1: So I'm not like some just Adam McKay fan. I
25:16
Speaker 1: also thought The Other Guys is one of the worst
25:17
Speaker 1: movies ever made. I think you and I walked out
25:19
Speaker 1: of the theater on that one. Okay, So I've established
25:22
Speaker 1: my bona fides. I'm not some lackey for Adam McKay.
25:25
Speaker 1: But it was a really well done movie and it
25:27
Speaker 1: was really entertaining too. Just looks up real quick. He's
25:31
Speaker 1: got a fit for what it's worth on Rotten Tomatoes
25:34
Speaker 1: and on Metacritic. I don't get it. It is definitely
25:38
Speaker 1: nowhere near that bad. All right, it was actually pretty good.
25:41
Speaker 1: I think you'd like it. I'd always go to the
25:43
Speaker 1: Roger Ebert dot com because I still trust the reviews
25:46
Speaker 1: there and give it one point five stars. Man, So seriously, Chuck,
25:51
Speaker 1: I would like you to watch this pretty soon. We'll
25:54
Speaker 1: come back on another episode and tell everybody. Don't tell
25:58
Speaker 1: me first. I really wanted to be raw, and I
26:00
Speaker 1: wanted to hurt. If it's gonna hurt, you know what
26:02
Speaker 1: I mean, And just tell me what you think. I'm
26:04
Speaker 1: watching his Lakers show, which is fun. Oh is it good? Yeah,
26:08
Speaker 1: it's fun. I would recommend it. Okay, Well, i'll take
26:13
Speaker 1: your recommendation, you take mine. Yeah, I definitely want to
26:16
Speaker 1: see what all the stink is about. Uh, but you
26:19
Speaker 1: gotta finish your stat though, because he only gave us
26:21
Speaker 1: the front half. So yeah, so I think they showed
26:23
Speaker 1: up in half of a percent of images before. Now
26:26
Speaker 1: they're up to something like um of images taking at
26:30
Speaker 1: twilight and it's just gonna two years. Yeah, and it's
26:33
Speaker 1: just gonna keep getting worse and worse because um, we're
26:36
Speaker 1: adding more and more satellites. And by way, I mean
26:38
Speaker 1: Elon Musk with starlink um. Apparently I think he's got
26:44
Speaker 1: or applied for permission for fort satellites for Starlink Internet
26:50
Speaker 1: Um service satellites. It's gotten weird um challenge put into
26:57
Speaker 1: a fight. I know, I know, Yes, that is demonstrably weird,
27:03
Speaker 1: not just to a fight, a fight for like all
27:06
Speaker 1: the marbles over Ukraine, Like if he beat up Vladimer Putin,
27:10
Speaker 1: weird Putin was going to have to leave Ukraine, I
27:12
Speaker 1: guess was the thing. It is very weird. I agree.
27:14
Speaker 1: Maybe he thinks we're living in a cartoon simulation of
27:17
Speaker 1: real world. I'm pretty sure he does. But there are
27:20
Speaker 1: So there's gonna be something like a hundred thousand satellites
27:23
Speaker 1: in the next few years, they think, because people like
27:26
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and others are just launching launching launching, and
27:28
Speaker 1: it's going to be more and more problematic, which is
27:32
Speaker 1: a problem, like you said, for tracking the Earth objects.
27:34
Speaker 1: So that's the kind of thing that people should pay
27:38
Speaker 1: attention to. Well. Plus also they pose a problem for
27:41
Speaker 1: astronomy and that they use radio signals to transmit, and
27:45
Speaker 1: we use radio telescopes to pick up radio transmissions, and
27:48
Speaker 1: apparently the satellite people and the telescope people are not
27:52
Speaker 1: necessarily coordinating, so they're not making the satellites of invisible
27:56
Speaker 1: to the radio telescopes by using specific wavelengths that the
28:00
Speaker 1: radio telescopes could then tune out. So I think that's
28:02
Speaker 1: a problem in that sense as well. Yeah, here's one
28:05
Speaker 1: stat uh, without telescopes, just with your regular vision looking
28:10
Speaker 1: up in the sky, satellites will very soon make up
28:13
Speaker 1: one intent visible lights in the sky. That's a lot.
28:17
Speaker 1: So those aren't stars you're seeing up there, No, it's
28:20
Speaker 1: about those will be satellites. Which that's also a problem
28:24
Speaker 1: in that sense too. Um, we might as well talk
28:27
Speaker 1: about it now. Um. One of the things that that
28:30
Speaker 1: I find very satisfying because it keeps coming up whenever
28:34
Speaker 1: you look into light pollution and people um advocating about
28:38
Speaker 1: doing something about it, is that there are a lot
28:41
Speaker 1: of indigenous cultures around the world who, um, whose heritage
28:47
Speaker 1: is predicated at least in part on the night sky,
28:51
Speaker 1: on celestial stuff and not just like really bright stars
28:54
Speaker 1: like you could see it a city, but like really
28:57
Speaker 1: subtle stuff too. And it's extensive and has it's like
29:01
Speaker 1: a deep catalog of the cosmos that they use as
29:05
Speaker 1: part of like their worldview and some of their religious
29:08
Speaker 1: and spiritual views. Um. And that is being um infringed
29:13
Speaker 1: upon just by satellites and light pollution too. Yeah. I think,
29:17
Speaker 1: uh this one, Uh it wouldn't a direct quote, but
29:21
Speaker 1: O Livia says that there are some scholars out there
29:24
Speaker 1: that are saying this is basically like a cultural genocide
29:27
Speaker 1: that we're seeing happening to some of these cultures that
29:30
Speaker 1: rely so much on the night sky for you know,
29:33
Speaker 1: not just navigation but rituals. And uh, this is happening
29:37
Speaker 1: in Australia, and I think Indigenous Hawaiians are kind of
29:40
Speaker 1: big on trying to preserve that starlight for their culture
29:42
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, and it's it's being prevented from being
29:46
Speaker 1: passed on from generation to generation because the same things
29:49
Speaker 1: that were there and could be for like talked about
29:54
Speaker 1: and passed on hundred years ago, you just can't see
29:56
Speaker 1: anymore in a lot of places. I thought that was
30:00
Speaker 1: really interesting. It comes up a lot, and you know,
30:02
Speaker 1: some some people, um try to co opt it to
30:05
Speaker 1: basically say, like c C. We need to we need
30:07
Speaker 1: to get rid of light pollution. But um, it does
30:10
Speaker 1: seem to be like genuinely included at the table now. Yeah,
30:15
Speaker 1: for people like the International Dark Skies Associations, like they're
30:19
Speaker 1: like and this is a legitimate issue too that we
30:21
Speaker 1: need to be taking into account. Should we talk about animals? Yeah,
30:27
Speaker 1: so it's an annoyance to humans and We're gonna also
30:30
Speaker 1: talk about real like health effects on humans in a bit,
30:33
Speaker 1: but it's obviously going to interfere with animals. Um And
30:37
Speaker 1: there are many many examples, everything from uh, you know,
30:41
Speaker 1: city birds thinking it's morning and you know, five and
30:44
Speaker 1: six hours before they're supposed to be awake with their
30:47
Speaker 1: little friends in the countryside, they're up and chirping and
30:50
Speaker 1: singing their bird song. Uh. Two animals that navigate at
30:54
Speaker 1: night like literally depend on the night sky for their migrations,
30:59
Speaker 1: and it confus using or completely throwing off base their
31:03
Speaker 1: migration patterns to where you know, they lose their way,
31:06
Speaker 1: to get lost, they could possibly even die. Yeah, and
31:10
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I guess just cities having a lot
31:14
Speaker 1: of light tends to attract migrating birds in particular, so
31:18
Speaker 1: that you see bird strikes um, which usually results in
31:22
Speaker 1: the death of a bird, really increase a couple of
31:25
Speaker 1: times a year when they're migrating one way and then
31:28
Speaker 1: when they're migrating back the other way at a different
31:30
Speaker 1: part of the year. Um. And I came up with
31:33
Speaker 1: a website, Chuck that I thought was really interesting. It's
31:36
Speaker 1: called bird cast dot info. You came up with it,
31:39
Speaker 1: meaning you designed it yourself just this very morning. It's
31:43
Speaker 1: pretty good considering I don't know what I'm doing and
31:47
Speaker 1: I did it in a couple of hours. Hey, thanks
31:49
Speaker 1: to squarespace, right, I really shouldn't take credit for somebody
31:53
Speaker 1: else's work. No, it's not my website. But they have
31:56
Speaker 1: migration forecasts like maps, and you can type in your
31:59
Speaker 1: town and it will it will show you like the
32:01
Speaker 1: next few days of what what the expected bird migrations
32:05
Speaker 1: are going to be like, um, like numbers wise basically,
32:09
Speaker 1: and you can actually adjust your outdoor lighting at night
32:13
Speaker 1: to help those birds because they are attracted to light.
32:17
Speaker 1: They're normally diurnal, meaning that they're active in the daytime.
32:20
Speaker 1: Those birds that are migrating, but they choose to migrate
32:23
Speaker 1: at night, which means they're not pros at navigating at
32:26
Speaker 1: night necessarily. Um So they can be easily thrown off,
32:30
Speaker 1: of course, by being attracted to like a city with
32:32
Speaker 1: a bunch of bright lights. And then even worse than that,
32:35
Speaker 1: they frequently will dive bomb into windows with a lot
32:38
Speaker 1: of light for reasons I'm not entirely clear on. Yeah,
32:42
Speaker 1: to the tune of you know, and everyone's like, sure
32:45
Speaker 1: that happens, right, now and then. There are about a
32:47
Speaker 1: billion birds a year that die from running into glass
32:51
Speaker 1: in the US alone. Yeah, and we have lost um
32:57
Speaker 1: thirty almost thirty we've lost of our birds since the
33:01
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, like a net loss overall, not just from
33:06
Speaker 1: from running into buildings. But that's the big chunk of it,
33:09
Speaker 1: is bird strikes into buildings. Yeah, so a lot of
33:13
Speaker 1: cities are I think Chicago started back in the late nineties,
33:17
Speaker 1: started with these lights out programs where you know, they
33:20
Speaker 1: basically say, hey, if you live in a or you know,
33:23
Speaker 1: have a high rise office building, you turn that stuff
33:27
Speaker 1: off at night, or you close the blinds, or do both,
33:29
Speaker 1: or move to only task lighting, or at the very
33:33
Speaker 1: least turn off decorative lighting at night. And a lot
33:36
Speaker 1: of companies and buildings have gotten on board with this
33:39
Speaker 1: kind of thing, thankfully. Yeah, the guys who walk around
33:41
Speaker 1: with the huge ring of keys getting on board with
33:45
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I thought they like it dark.
33:48
Speaker 1: Some Something I didn't realize, chuck, but that I find
33:50
Speaker 1: kind of awesome is that there are a lot of
33:52
Speaker 1: insects species that that pollinate and visit flowering plants at
33:57
Speaker 1: night when you're asleep, Like there you in their thing
34:00
Speaker 1: did not realize that same. But it turns out that
34:05
Speaker 1: those insects can be greatly impacted by artificial light UM
34:11
Speaker 1: and so that apparently in turn has a deep impact
34:16
Speaker 1: on the um neuroth object callback has a deep impact
34:21
Speaker 1: on the pollination of flowering plants. And they did a
34:25
Speaker 1: study in the Bernese prealps beautiful name um and it's
34:30
Speaker 1: typically dark there. So what they did was they they
34:33
Speaker 1: they surveyed how many insects UM arrived under normal conditions, right, yeah.
34:40
Speaker 1: I think they worked with about three hundred species of
34:43
Speaker 1: insects that do their business at night, uh and I
34:48
Speaker 1: think sixty plants. And they found that when they turned
34:51
Speaker 1: on these uh led street lights that near these meadows,
34:56
Speaker 1: that the pollinator visits drop sixty two percent. And that
35:00
Speaker 1: was a thirteen and people like, oh, you know, but
35:02
Speaker 1: what's the big deal, you can just do it during
35:04
Speaker 1: the day. It led to an overall thirteen percent drop
35:06
Speaker 1: in fruit production. So you know, the trickle down effect
35:10
Speaker 1: that this has. We talked about this kind of thing
35:12
Speaker 1: all the time in ecosystems. It's no different for nighttime pollinators.
35:17
Speaker 1: Like if you like to eat your fruit and have abundant,
35:20
Speaker 1: you know, fruits and vegetables. This is one thing that's
35:23
Speaker 1: disrupting that. And it can also impact the plants directly
35:27
Speaker 1: to like light can trick them into thinking that the
35:31
Speaker 1: days are not getting shorter even though they are. So
35:34
Speaker 1: they're getting um artificial feedback UM and they're keeping their
35:38
Speaker 1: leaves longer. There's some types of cacti and palms I
35:41
Speaker 1: think that have been shown to um not flour at
35:44
Speaker 1: all when they're exposed to artificial light at night, which
35:47
Speaker 1: I don't think we said that that's the that's kind
35:50
Speaker 1: of like the the the in group term for light
35:54
Speaker 1: pollution artificial light at night or allan, allan or allan. Yeah, sorry,
35:59
Speaker 1: all the ones listening. We're not picking on you from
36:01
Speaker 1: this point. And Karen's sure it stinks someone's name has
36:06
Speaker 1: been co opted. Yeah, for now, I think that's fading.
36:10
Speaker 1: You know, it'll pass it. It's already out, I think. Okay, Like,
36:13
Speaker 1: if you're still saying that now, it's you maybe a Karen,
36:20
Speaker 1: what about those poor little sea turtles. Yeah, so one
36:23
Speaker 1: of the things that sea turtles used to get to
36:26
Speaker 1: um the safety of the ocean after they hatch on
36:31
Speaker 1: the beach is light like, they go towards the brightest
36:35
Speaker 1: light that they see, and normally, under normal circumstances that's
36:38
Speaker 1: the sun or not the sun, but the moon reflecting
36:42
Speaker 1: off of the water kind of guides them. They can
36:44
Speaker 1: be very, very bright. And I found out recently it
36:48
Speaker 1: had been a while since I guess it's seen the
36:49
Speaker 1: moonlight like a full moon over the ocean. Uh. And
36:52
Speaker 1: when we went to Amelia Island after Disney World, I
36:54
Speaker 1: had a night like that on the beach where it
36:57
Speaker 1: was like daylight out there. Yeah. Remember that amazing that
37:00
Speaker 1: great shot had to have been Yeah, of course it
37:03
Speaker 1: was just made up, but it was a great looking shot.
37:05
Speaker 1: And Joe versus a volcano and he's out there in
37:08
Speaker 1: the middle of the ocean on that steamer trunk and
37:10
Speaker 1: that moon just rises over him. I forgot how big
37:13
Speaker 1: it was. What a great movie that was. Yeah, we
37:16
Speaker 1: haven't talked about that one in a while. One of
37:19
Speaker 1: the best. Um. So, what do they have to do
37:23
Speaker 1: with the sea turtles? Yeah, that's why they tell you
37:26
Speaker 1: to not use your flashlights on the beach during sea
37:28
Speaker 1: turtle season because that light confuses them. Yes, And if
37:32
Speaker 1: you have a beach house, typically you're asked to keep
37:35
Speaker 1: your outside lights turned off and even inside lights turned
37:38
Speaker 1: off so that you don't accidentally attract the hatchlings because
37:41
Speaker 1: when they move away from the water where they're relatively safer, um,
37:45
Speaker 1: they sometimes walk right into the jaws of wily coyote. Right,
37:50
Speaker 1: And I imagine beach house people, uh comply because I
37:54
Speaker 1: think they probably love their sea turtles and they try
37:57
Speaker 1: to be generally good stewards of their their area. If
38:00
Speaker 1: there's anything people who own beach houses are known for
38:03
Speaker 1: its compliance. Should we take a break? All right, we'll
38:10
Speaker 1: be right back. Okay, So now we've reached the point
38:38
Speaker 1: where a lot of the humanists can start to get
38:41
Speaker 1: on board to this, because artificial light at night a
38:44
Speaker 1: K light pollution has terrible effects on human beings as well. Yeah. So,
38:49
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously some of the stuff is just getting
38:53
Speaker 1: worse sleep and what that does to your body as
38:57
Speaker 1: far as anxiety and stress and you know, headaches and
39:01
Speaker 1: migraines and things like that. But I know you dug
39:03
Speaker 1: up some interesting stuff on cancer even, right, Yes, so
39:08
Speaker 1: it's that blue wavelength LED light has been linked to
39:12
Speaker 1: something called global DNA methylation and methylation. Do you remember
39:17
Speaker 1: way back in our episode on can your Grandfather's Diet? Like, yeah,
39:23
Speaker 1: something well, and it was it was about epigenetics. Well,
39:30
Speaker 1: DNA methylation is how epigenetics happens. It's where a methyl
39:35
Speaker 1: group is put onto a gene to turn it on
39:37
Speaker 1: or off. And what they found is that this is
39:40
Speaker 1: a huge trigger for things like diabetes, type two diabetes,
39:45
Speaker 1: I should say cancer, specifically breast cancer as far as
39:48
Speaker 1: light's concerned, and that this DNA methylation can be triggered
39:53
Speaker 1: in turn by exposure to artificial blue wavelength light at night.
39:58
Speaker 1: It messes with our circadian rhythm and that's one of
40:00
Speaker 1: the ways our bodies respond to it. So it is
40:04
Speaker 1: not an exaggeration to say that being exposed to blue
40:08
Speaker 1: wavelength light at night can can trigger cancer in your body,
40:13
Speaker 1: or potentially type two diabetes or a whole host of
40:16
Speaker 1: chronic conditions. Yeah. I mean it's such a problem that
40:19
Speaker 1: the A m A. I think in six officially like
40:25
Speaker 1: issued guidance on limiting the impact of Elie door led
40:29
Speaker 1: outdoor lighting systems. Uh. And you know when the A
40:32
Speaker 1: m A is like officially weighing in on something, that
40:34
Speaker 1: means it's got sufficient evidence to do so. It's not.
40:38
Speaker 1: It's not saying this is sort of annoyance to your neighbors.
40:42
Speaker 1: It's saying this is legitimately impacting the health of people. Yeah,
40:45
Speaker 1: and it's definitely been linked to breast cancer at least.
40:49
Speaker 1: But um, from what I was reading, the fact that
40:53
Speaker 1: it's been now shown to trigger DNA methylation um suggests
40:57
Speaker 1: that there's a whole bunch of other horrible things that
41:00
Speaker 1: could happen as a result. So steer Claire, seriously. If
41:03
Speaker 1: you have an iPhone, just go into your settings. I
41:05
Speaker 1: think it's um, oh, what's it called, chuck, It's like
41:09
Speaker 1: nighttime or something like that. Um, sweet sweepy time. It's
41:13
Speaker 1: in your display settings or some where you'll find like
41:16
Speaker 1: brightness and all that. And um it's like night night
41:20
Speaker 1: shift I think, or something like that, and just turn
41:23
Speaker 1: that on. Just do sunset to sunrise and you will
41:26
Speaker 1: night shift night shift, thank you, um, and you will,
41:29
Speaker 1: you will. You will be much the better for it.
41:31
Speaker 1: And I think there's apps also you can add onto
41:33
Speaker 1: your Android phone too. You don't have to have an iPhone,
41:36
Speaker 1: and you can probably do the same thing to your
41:38
Speaker 1: computer as well. Yeah, night shift I head mine on.
41:41
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize it. Good for you, Jack, uh so,
41:47
Speaker 1: And I love how Livia put this. Uh, the good
41:50
Speaker 1: news about fighting light pollution, she says, is there's a
41:53
Speaker 1: lot of low hanging fruit. It really is kind of
41:55
Speaker 1: that easy. Um, there are so many things that individuals
42:00
Speaker 1: can do in their on their own properties. Uh. The
42:03
Speaker 1: I d A estimates that thirty of outdoor lighting in
42:07
Speaker 1: the US is wasted. So you know, a lot of
42:11
Speaker 1: this lighting that people have isn't even doing the thing
42:13
Speaker 1: that is supposed to be doing if it is wasted. Uh,
42:17
Speaker 1: And it's a financial loss to about three point three
42:19
Speaker 1: billion dollars annually and twenty one million tons of CEO
42:24
Speaker 1: two emissions. And this is just from wasted light, not
42:27
Speaker 1: from just having lights right exactly. So, like I was
42:30
Speaker 1: saying before, like it it goes hand in hand talking
42:32
Speaker 1: about light pollution and mitigating it goes hand in hand
42:35
Speaker 1: with keeping people from wasting electricity too, and some of
42:39
Speaker 1: that low hanging fruit, like this is stuff you can
42:42
Speaker 1: do on an individual basis. And then if you really
42:45
Speaker 1: get into this and you really want to make a difference, Um,
42:48
Speaker 1: you can like teach yourself and arm yourself through um,
42:52
Speaker 1: through kind of outreach that the i DA has to
42:54
Speaker 1: go educate your city and get your city to put
42:57
Speaker 1: in different kinds of street lights that UM shield from
43:01
Speaker 1: light pollution so that you do have to like go
43:03
Speaker 1: stand underneath it to to to get that glare UM
43:06
Speaker 1: and so there isn't light trespass and and there's less
43:09
Speaker 1: sky glow. UM. There's a lot of things that you
43:11
Speaker 1: can do, So a lot of things you can do
43:13
Speaker 1: on the local level. UM, but one of the big
43:15
Speaker 1: ones is just like stop and think like do I
43:17
Speaker 1: really need light in this area? Like does there need
43:21
Speaker 1: to be some some blaring like blue led street light
43:27
Speaker 1: on my shed that I don't even have anything in
43:31
Speaker 1: Is it really like needed? And that raises a big question, Chuck,
43:35
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people are saying, like, well, what
43:38
Speaker 1: about crime. That's why we light the night is is
43:40
Speaker 1: to to prevent crime. And there's plenty of studies that say, yeah,
43:45
Speaker 1: if you add some artificial light, it will reduce crime.
43:48
Speaker 1: But there's apparently an equal amount of studies that say, actually,
43:52
Speaker 1: not only does that not have an impact on lowering crime,
43:55
Speaker 1: in some cases that actually increases some kinds of crime.
43:58
Speaker 1: Like if you want to make sure that you're the
44:01
Speaker 1: side of your school building is um really well lit
44:04
Speaker 1: for graffiti artists at night, you should make sure that
44:07
Speaker 1: you have all sorts of artificial lighting. Um. You can
44:11
Speaker 1: use some studies make the case that, uh, you are
44:14
Speaker 1: more it's easier to size up a person for whether
44:18
Speaker 1: they're a target um by a criminal when in a
44:21
Speaker 1: really well lit place and vice versa. UM in the dark,
44:25
Speaker 1: your eyes are more acclimated to seeing things in the dark,
44:28
Speaker 1: like a criminal who might be waiting up ahead for you. Yeah,
44:32
Speaker 1: Like I mean you think about it. If you're on
44:34
Speaker 1: a really well lit pathway, Uh, the the nearby shadows
44:40
Speaker 1: are really really dark, and that's where these people could be.
44:43
Speaker 1: You know, not to be too you know, fearmongering. But
44:47
Speaker 1: but that's where they're laying in wait for you. Right,
44:49
Speaker 1: But that's true, Like big light creates big shadow and
44:52
Speaker 1: darkness nearby. And you know, when they do studies, they
44:56
Speaker 1: do show that is reduction in crime. But when you
44:59
Speaker 1: look at like the overall number, like it reduces crime
45:03
Speaker 1: at night, but the overall number of crimes is a
45:06
Speaker 1: much less percentage. I think reduction at night in a
45:10
Speaker 1: place like New York, whereas if you take a whole
45:12
Speaker 1: day it's about four percent overall, which means most of
45:16
Speaker 1: the crimes are committed during the day. You think of
45:18
Speaker 1: nighttime as being more scary, but more crime is committed
45:21
Speaker 1: during the day. Right. And also when you're considering whether
45:24
Speaker 1: you need a light or not one that I saw,
45:27
Speaker 1: Chuck was um uh, like, do you need to leave
45:30
Speaker 1: your back porch light on? And normally when you leave
45:34
Speaker 1: a light on, it's to do two things. Is to
45:36
Speaker 1: deter somebody, but in that case you might actually be
45:39
Speaker 1: making it easier for the criminal to see their way
45:43
Speaker 1: into breaking into your house, right, um. And then secondly,
45:47
Speaker 1: the other reason you would do it is to is
45:49
Speaker 1: to expose those people to provide witness as well. Who's
45:52
Speaker 1: watching the back of your house at night, Probably no one.
45:55
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you don't have that light there,
45:57
Speaker 1: you may force the criminal to use a flashlight, which
46:00
Speaker 1: is going to be even more suspicious than somebody standing
46:03
Speaker 1: at your back door. Or you might use a motion
46:06
Speaker 1: detection light, which is from what I've seen, the optimal
46:09
Speaker 1: thing to do if you're worried about security but also
46:12
Speaker 1: concerned about light pollution. Yeah, because then they walk back
46:16
Speaker 1: there in the dark and then boom hit him. With
46:18
Speaker 1: the spotlight and if you you know, if you have
46:22
Speaker 1: the security cameras at your house, those things worked really
46:25
Speaker 1: well in the dark these days. Uh So if security
46:29
Speaker 1: is your issue, there are ways to get around that
46:31
Speaker 1: that that's not like lighting up your house like a
46:34
Speaker 1: prison yard. That's it. I got nothing else. I don't
46:42
Speaker 1: think I do either, actually, So that's it for artificial
46:46
Speaker 1: light at night, Alan a k A. Light pollution. Hopefully
46:49
Speaker 1: this has opened your eyes a little bit to it,
46:51
Speaker 1: but not so much that you're blinded by the glare,
46:53
Speaker 1: you know, right. Uh And since we front loaded listener mail,
46:57
Speaker 1: we'll just use this and to say, read the word
47:00
Speaker 1: about stuff you should know here in your uh fourteen Yeah, yeah,
47:06
Speaker 1: basically yes, that just basically yes, like next month will
47:12
Speaker 1: be in your fourteen And uh. We don't talk a
47:15
Speaker 1: lot about trying to grow the show, which we should
47:17
Speaker 1: probably do. More so tell a friend, tell a neighbor,
47:20
Speaker 1: tell a colleague about stuff you should know, and introduce
47:22
Speaker 1: him to the podcast. And it really helps us continue
47:25
Speaker 1: to do what we do. Yeah, and not just a podcast, Chuck,
47:28
Speaker 1: we have a book, a New York Times bestseller. We do.
47:31
Speaker 1: In fact, we have a trivial pursuit game. That's right,
47:34
Speaker 1: that will hopefully be on store shelves again soon. Uh yeah,
47:38
Speaker 1: And what else? We sell tufts of our hair. Sure,
47:42
Speaker 1: I got a lot of hair right now, I can.
47:43
Speaker 1: I can send out tough so we can make some money.
47:45
Speaker 1: But that you gotta cut me in, Okay, all right, Well,
47:49
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us and
47:50
Speaker 1: try to purchase some of Chuck's hair, you can email
47:53
Speaker 1: me at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
48:01
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
48:03
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
48:06
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
48:09
Speaker 1: favorite shows. H