The Resistance of a Cow

Summary

Radiolab – "The Resistance of a Cow"
April 17, 2026
Hosts: Latif Nasser, Simon Adler, Matt Kilty

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Episode Overview

This episode of Radiolab dives into a bizarre and captivating mystery that began on a Danish dairy farm, where cows unexpectedly refused to drink water, instead turning to drinking each other's urine. What seemed like an isolated incident soon unraveled into a widespread phenomenon connecting farms in Denmark and the United States. The story weaves together investigative journalism around cow behavior, stray voltage, electricity’s history, and the ongoing debate around how modern electrical infrastructure may—or may not—be affecting livestock.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Mystery Begins: Cows Refusing Water

• Danish journalist Clara Grunel discovered an article about cows on Danish farms refusing to drink water, which piqued her curiosity ([02:24]).
• On visiting Gregers Christensen’s farm, Clara and her colleague witnessed cows refusing water but eagerly drinking urine straight from other cows ([04:50]).
  • Gregers (farmer): “I don’t know what to do. I’m about to sell all of my cows. This is my life’s work.” ([03:53])
• Tests showed the water was clean, but the cows continued avoiding it unless it came from another source ([06:01]).

2. A Search for Answers: From Folk Explanations to Electricity

• Gregers consulted Gitte Gyde, a local “cow expert," who used rituals involving copper wires and a gold pendulum, and claimed a nearby power station (Viking Link) was emitting damaging energy ([07:51]).
  • Gitte: “You’ll have to mail me my stuff because I’m never going back to that place ever again.” ([07:22])
• The theory: Electricity from the Viking Link station is somehow getting into the water and affecting the cows’ behavior ([08:37]).

3. Beyond Denmark: Cases in the U.S.

• Clara’s subsequent research revealed other farmers, both in Denmark and the U.S. (notably Jill Nelson in Minnesota), experienced similar phenomena: cows refused water and drank urine ([09:54]).
• Jill’s family farm, operating since 1884, noticed issues as early as 2008 ([10:01]).
  • Jill Nelson: “They would walk over to a puddle of urine and drink that dry. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” ([10:39])

4. Stray Voltage: An Invisible Menace or Red Herring?

• The term “stray voltage”—unintended electricity leaking from power lines into farms via concrete, rebar, and water—becomes central ([11:00]).
  • Many U.S. dairy farmers recount stray voltage cases, with some reporting devastating losses ([11:26], [12:50]):
    • Larry Neubauer (electrician): “I would have to say probably close to over 4,000 to 5,000.” ([11:45])
    • Jill Nelson: “My son’s favorite cow... she literally died right in front of me. When that happened, that was it. I couldn’t do it anymore.” ([12:58])
• Yet, some experts and officials begin to question whether stray voltage is truly responsible ([13:32]).

5. Context: The Electrification of America & Rural Resistance

• The episode investigates the history of electricity’s expansion, illuminating rural skepticism as power lines stretched across farmland ([16:38]).
  • Insights from historians Richard Hirsch and David Nye frame the growth of electrification and resultant farmer unrest, especially during the 1970s power-line protests in Minnesota ([21:53]).

6. The Science: What Does Electricity Do to Cows?

• Efforts to scientifically test how much electricity it takes for a cow to feel or be harmed by stray voltage are recounted with input from Professor Doug Reinemann ([25:05]).
  • Animal behavior and controlled studies at UW Madison found cows react to stray voltage at levels akin to the sensation of a 9-volt battery on a human tongue ([27:15]).
    • Doug Reinemann: “Put a 9-volt battery on your tongue. That’s the sort of experience.” ([28:16])
• Regulatory thresholds were set based on these studies, but few farms ever reach those levels ([29:26]).

7. Alternate Explanations: Diet, Behavior, and Social Dynamics

• Veterinary experts like Dr. Don Sanders and Nigel Cook explain that mineral deficiencies (e.g., potassium) or social/dietary stress can drive cows to drink urine ([31:19], [32:42]).
  • Dr. Don Sanders: “Cows being milked are more like high-performance athletes... If their diet is not perfectly dialed in, things go bad.” ([31:52])
  • Cows are sensitive to barn design, social hierarchy, and overcrowding, all possibly resulting from the shift to larger, industrial-scale dairies ([34:14], [35:35]).

8. The Crux: What is the True Resistance of a Cow?

• The episode dissects the basis for “acceptable” levels of stray voltage, which hinges on knowing the electrical resistance of a cow ([39:38]).
  • Standard: 500 ohms. But recent field measurements suggest it could be closer to 200 ohms in modern, wet, group barns—making cows potentially more vulnerable ([46:48]):
    • Larry Neubauer: “It's nowhere near 500 ohms.” ([43:17])
    • If resistance is lower, cows could be exposed to twice the threshold current even when following regulations ([47:14]).
  • Data supporting a 200-ohm resistance exists but remains unpublished/lost; accepted standards remain at 500 ohms ([48:59]).

9. The Human Toll and Unresolved Debate

• The battle between farmers’ lived experiences and experts’ interpretations continues, with policy implications for animal welfare and infrastructure design:
  • Some farmers (like Jill) found relief only after electrical repairs were made, though cause and effect remain hotly debated ([50:32]).
    • Jill Nelson: “Eventually they came out, made a bunch of changes... Things went back to normal.” ([50:37])
  • Others, like Gregers, gave up dairy farming altogether ([49:57]):
    • Clara Grunel: “He sold the cows... Now a potato farmer... cows are thriving on another farm.” ([49:57], [50:03])

10. Looking Ahead: Electrification and Future Risks

• With ever-increasing electrification (AI data centers, public transit), the episode notes stray voltage—and the debate around it—may become more pressing ([51:42]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On first witnessing the cows:

  • “The cows start drinking each other's piss. Like, the moment a cow starts peeing, all these other cows will immediately run over and turn their head to sort of like catch the piss in the air.”
    — Latif Nasser ([05:01])

• On being desperate for answers:

  • “You'll have to mail me my stuff because I'm never going back to that place ever again.”
    — Gitte Gyde ([07:22])

• On the emotional toll:

  • “My son's favorite cow... she literally died right in front of me. When that happened, that was it. I knew that I couldn't do it anymore.”
    — Jill Nelson ([12:58])

• On scientific standards:

  • “So they come up with this number. 500. This is known in the world. The 500 ohm cow.”
    — Matt Kilty ([43:02])

• On how new farming methods complicate things:

  • “Somebody comes and says, maybe you're not feeding the cows properly... that's a bitter pill to swallow. Whereas somebody could say, hey, you got stray voltage... it's somebody else's problem.”
    — Nigel Cook ([35:35])

• On the future of the problem:

  • “If I was a betting man, I'd wager we're only going to see more cases of stray voltage in the years to come.”
    — Matt Kilty ([51:33])

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Important Timestamps

• Opening & Mystique Introduced: 01:30 – 04:30
• Urine Drinking Behavior: 04:50 – 06:07
• Folk Explanation (Gitte Gyde): 07:05 – 08:52
• Expansion to U.S. Farmers: 09:44 – 10:51
• Stray Voltage Evidence and Farmer Testimony: 11:26 – 12:58
• Electrification Historical Review: 16:42 – 23:38
• Scientific Study—How Much Volts Does it Take?: 27:15 – 29:48
• Animal Health Alternatives (Mineral Deficiency): 31:01 – 32:18
• Social Effects of Modern Barns: 34:01 – 36:32
• Physics 101—Understanding Resistance: 39:38 – 44:25
• Resistance Debate—500 vs. 200 Ohms: 46:48 – 48:59
• Epilogue: What Happened to the Farmers: 49:57 – 51:11
• Looking Forward—Societal Implications: 51:42 – 52:18

---

Conclusion

• Despite decades of research and regulation, the mystery persists. The debate over stray voltage and its impact on cows straddles folk wisdom, structural changes in farming, and scientific uncertainty about “the resistance of a cow.”
• The podcast leaves listeners with unresolved questions—about science, responsibility, and the pressures facing modern farmers—while chronicling both heartbreak and hope amidst rural electrification’s unintended consequences.

---

For full details, expert opinions, and the emotional journeys of the farmers, tune in to the complete episode.

Transcript

[Latif Nasser]

Nemo, Emo and Doug.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Clara Grunel]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird.

[Latif Nasser]

What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

[Matt Kilty]

I wrote a little song to remind you.

[Latif Nasser]

Choice hotels get you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar. Have a bar. Bring a date, your squad or even your mom. Book [e-mail].

[Simon Adler]

wait, you're listening?

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

All right.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

All right.

[Matt Kilty]

You're listening to Radiolab Radio Lab from wnyc.

[Simon Adler]

Yep. Simon.

[Matt Kilty]

Back again, back again.

[Latif Nasser]

Who it is?

[Simon Adler]

Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab.

[Latif Nasser]

Prodigal's son has returned from the top.

[Matt Kilty]

Matt.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, today we got senior producer Matt Kilty, former senior producer emeritus, correspondent, Correspondent emeritus. Simon.

[Matt Kilty]

I got my hyphenated title in there.

[Latif Nasser]

Back from the Grave.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah. Hope you're having fun.

[Latif Nasser]

Having a great time. I'm having a great. So today Simon and I, we have. We have a weird. A weird story.

[Simon Adler]

Okay.

[Clara Grunel]

I'm. I'm very excited that that was your reaction. I feel like this mystery does that to people. Like, people are like, what? What are you talking about?

[Matt Kilty]

All right, so the story first came to us from.

[Clara Grunel]

My name is Clara Grunel.

[Matt Kilty]

Clara Grunel.

[Clara Grunel]

I'm a Danish journalist. Should I say more?

[Doug Reinemann]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Like, how are you?

[Clara Grunel]

I'm very happy, very ecstatic and excited.

[Latif Nasser]

I can tell the enthusiasm in your voice.

[Matt Kilty]

That's just the Danish way, right?

[Clara Grunel]

No, no.

[Latif Nasser]

So Clara lives and works in Copenhagen.

[Clara Grunel]

It's been a long day, but honestly, this is definitely the highlight, so I am excited.

[Latif Nasser]

She works for this audio journalism company called Zetlend.

[Clara Grunel]

We produce audio stories, features and news.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah, well, first question is, like, how the heck did you come upon this?

[Clara Grunel]

Yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. I think the first thing that really happened was that we have this internal work. We use slack. Do you use slack?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Clara Grunel]

In one of our channels, this guy, one of our colleagues, posted an article with the headline, let me see, actually, if I can find it. Okay, so it says,

[Matt Kilty]

Translation, a mystery

[Clara Grunel]

about the water on Danish farms the cows refuse to drink.

[Simon Adler]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

Cows refuse to drink water. Yeah, little strange.

[Matt Kilty]

But as she keeps reading this article,

[Clara Grunel]

I was just like, this seems like something's very off.

[Latif Nasser]

So Clara grabs a colleague and the two of them drive out of Copenhagen. See some windmills out into the countryside.

[Clara Grunel]

You'll see those everywhere, especially out there.

[Latif Nasser]

It's mostly just flat farmland of just

[Clara Grunel]

grass and nothing else.

[Matt Kilty]

And after a couple hours, they pull off the road onto this little gravel driveway, where sitting there waiting for them is Gregers.

[Latif Nasser]

Gregers.

[Clara Grunel]

Gregers Christensen.

[Latif Nasser]

Hi.

[Matt Kilty]

Gregas, the man whose cows won't drink. Hi, Freddy. Gregers.

[Latif Nasser]

Hi, how are you? He's about in his early 40s with

[Clara Grunel]

a sweatshirt with a lot of, like, painting stains on it.

[Latif Nasser]

Steel toed boots.

[Clara Grunel]

And we're like, hi.

[Latif Nasser]

And Clara says almost like immediate.

[Clara Grunel]

He was just like, I don't know what to do. I'm about to sell all of my cows. This is my life's work.

[Latif Nasser]

Carsed. He almost seemed a little bewildered that

[Clara Grunel]

there was something wrong here.

[Matt Kilty]

So the three of them walk down this path through this grassy field to the barn.

[Clara Grunel]

Big red barn with a hidden roof. He starts rolling up the door and we're like, not really sure what to expect.

[Matt Kilty]

And then Gregor opens the door. We go in and there's about 200 reddish cows sort of just standing around in this barn.

[Clara Grunel]

And you know, immediately it's not super clear to us that they're not well. But he's like, come with me over to the water trough. And the cows come over and you sort of see them sniffing the water, but they never touch it.

[Latif Nasser]

And then something weird happens.

[Clara Grunel]

All of the cows, they start pissing,

[Latif Nasser]

they start urinating, and then they start drinking.

[Doug Reinemann]

What?

[Latif Nasser]

The cows start drinking each other's piss. Like, the moment a cow starts peeing, all these other cows will immediately run

[Clara Grunel]

over and turn their head to sort of like catch the piss in the air.

[Latif Nasser]

Like it like shoots out. I've never seen a cow pee. It's like a waterfall.

[Matt Kilty]

Like a bubbler or a water fountain.

[Clara Grunel]

A water fountain, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[Latif Nasser]

All these cows drinking from each other. And Clara said if a cow wasn't peeing, another cow would come over and start licking its behind.

[Clara Grunel]

Then Greigas is like, oh, they do that to get them to pee because they're so thirsty.

[Latif Nasser]

And Clara turned to Gregas and she's

[Clara Grunel]

like, is this normal in any way? Like, is this normal cow behavior? And he's like, no, it's not normal.

[Latif Nasser]

He's farmed his whole life, his father before him.

[Clara Grunel]

I've never seen cows do this before,

[Simon Adler]

but how long has this been happening?

[Latif Nasser]

So apparently, like, months.

[Simon Adler]

Months?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, months.

[Simon Adler]

But how are they. How are they even?

[Latif Nasser]

How are they surviving? Yeah, well, Greg has said he could get the cows to drink water that he brought from off site.

[Matt Kilty]

But cows drink an insane amount of water in a day. It's something like £150 worth of goes into a cow a day.

[Clara Grunel]

He was like, I can't bring the mortar all the time.

[Latif Nasser]

So he ran tests on the barn

[Matt Kilty]

water and clean water.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, nothing wrong with it. Totally clean.

[Simon Adler]

Weird.

[Clara Grunel]

He was super desperate.

[Matt Kilty]

He told Clara he felt like he was running out of options and so he started asking other farmers, like, what should he do?

[Clara Grunel]

And some people are like, yeah, maybe you should contact Gitte Gyde.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah, she's like the cow whisperer.

[Matt Kilty]

Not quite.

[Clara Grunel]

Gide is the person farmers in Denmark call when they have no one else to turn, too.

[Matt Kilty]

So Gregers calls Gyda and she comes out. She's about in her 60s, great short hair. And apparently she has brought with her a copper wire, a long copper wire,

[Latif Nasser]

and also this gold chain, like a

[Clara Grunel]

little pendulum, which is swinging. And she starts going around the farm,

[Latif Nasser]

dangling this little gold pendulum around the water trough, around the cows, and then

[Clara Grunel]

suddenly she just freezes, looks up and turns away, walks very fast over to

[Matt Kilty]

her car and drives away, like, I'm out of here.

[Clara Grunel]

I need to get out of here.

[Latif Nasser]

This farm's possessed.

[Clara Grunel]

I mean. So she drives away and Greigas is like, what the fuck? Like, what is this? And she call Gregers, calls Gide, I think the next day or something, and is like, hey, so there's still some of your stuff here. What's going on? And she's just like, you'll have to mail me my stuff because I'm never going back to that place ever again.

[Simon Adler]

What did she say more than that?

[Latif Nasser]

Well, what she said is that when she was near the barn, she detected this energy, this horrible energy that was coursing through Gregas Farm that she believed was coming from this, like, huge

[Clara Grunel]

building

[Matt Kilty]

picture, almost like a Walmart, but black

[Clara Grunel]

with these big, like, Viking runes, Viking symbols on it. Yeah, Viking Link.

[Matt Kilty]

It's a power station called Viking Link

[Clara Grunel]

that receives all of the energy that comes from the UK to Denmark and

[Matt Kilty]

then sends that energy across Denmark and

[Latif Nasser]

it sits right next to Gregis farm.

[Clara Grunel]

And so what Gitte is convinced of is that the big black box next to the barn is sending out so

[Latif Nasser]

much electricity that somehow that electricity is getting into the water on Gregas Farm and shocking the cows.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

What?

[Simon Adler]

This is Like a Twin Peaks episode. This is crazy. What are you talking about?

[Matt Kilty]

This is Geeta's theory legend.

[Simon Adler]

This sounds like nonsense.

[Latif Nasser]

I know, I know.

[Simon Adler]

Is any of this physically possible?

[Latif Nasser]

Well, this is where things get even weirder.

[Clara Grunel]

So I think we got a mystery on our hands.

[Matt Kilty]

Clara and her colleague.

[Simon Adler]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

Go back to their office, and we start Googling, like, is this a unique thing to this guy?

[Clara Grunel]

If this is something that other people have experienced?

[Matt Kilty]

And she starts Googling and finds out that this is not only happening at Gregory's farm.

[Clara Grunel]

No.

[Latif Nasser]

She finds another farmer in Denmark. His cows won't drink water.

[Matt Kilty]

They're drinking each other's pee.

[Latif Nasser]

Then another farmer in Denmark, same thing.

[Clara Grunel]

We quickly found that it was the same story again and again.

[Matt Kilty]

Farmers whose cows stopped drinking water and

[Latif Nasser]

started drinking their pee that either lived next to power lines or a power station.

[Matt Kilty]

And as Clara kept looking into this, she realized that this wasn't something that was just happening in Denmark.

[Latif Nasser]

You know, lit. I forgot about that party.

[Matt Kilty]

It was also happening in the United States.

[Jill Nelson]

Come on in.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jill Nelson]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

So she hears about this farmer named Jill Nelson.

[Clara Grunel]

I think she's from Minnesota.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

Well, like, okay, you. Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

A dairy farmer in southwest Minnesota.

[Matt Kilty]

You got a family that's been on this farm for how long?

[Jill Nelson]

Yeah, so my family's been on the farm here since 1884, and I'm the fifth generation.

[Matt Kilty]

And she said she started noticing problems with her cows long before Gregory's way back in 2008.

[Jill Nelson]

And I started noticing that cows were becoming more reluctant to come into the parlor.

[Matt Kilty]

Her cows didn't want to come into the milking parlor, where they all get milked.

[Latif Nasser]

Like, they would get really fidgety around the entrance to the parlor and kind

[Jill Nelson]

of jump into the parlor, which was odd. Yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

And then she started noticing the kind of telltale sign.

[Jill Nelson]

They started lapping at the water. Not, you know, cows like to stick their nose in and they drink.

[Matt Kilty]

Her cows suddenly didn't want to drink,

[Jill Nelson]

and they would walk over to a puddle of urine and drink that dry. It was really. I've never seen anything like it before.

[Latif Nasser]

And it was right around here.

[Jill Nelson]

I just thought, this isn't normal. This isn't right. Something's wrong here.

[Latif Nasser]

Jill said she remembered this thing she had heard of called stray voltage. Stray voltage? What had you heard about stray voltage?

[Jill Nelson]

I just had some customers in Wisconsin that had gone through it where they

[Latif Nasser]

had told Jill that they had electricity that had gotten into their cows.

[Matt Kilty]

One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. And I was actually Back in Wisconsin this past summer. All right, here we are at the Barron County Fairgrounds at a county fair. 4h fair is underway. And I just went around asking dairy farmers, have you ever dealt with stray voltage on your farm? And almost every single one of them was like, yes.

[Nigel Cook]

Oh, yeah, I dealt with stray voltage way back when.

[Latif Nasser]

They didn't know what stray voltage was.

[Matt Kilty]

Every one of them had been either affected by it or knew someone who'd been affected by it. Give me a number here. 200, 300?

[Larry Neubauer]

Well, I used to do one a day.

[Matt Kilty]

And actually, Matt and I talked to this dairy electrician.

[David Nye]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

A guy named Larry Neubauer, who told

[Matt Kilty]

us the number of stray voltage cases he's worked on.

[Larry Neubauer]

I would have to say probably close to over 4,000 to 5,000.

[Latif Nasser]

What?

[Larry Neubauer]

Yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

We found cases of stray voltage reported in New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Idaho.

[Latif Nasser]

Basically, it farms all over the country where what is happening, these farmers say, is that electricity is getting out of the cables, the cables that are in the ground near their farm somehow and finding the path of least resistance to their farms, where they have concrete with rebar, they have metal, they have water, and this electricity is getting up into that stuff and into their cows.

[Matt Kilty]

Stray voltage is horrible. It will destroy you. And some of these farmers that we talked to told us about how it starts with them not drinking water.

[Latif Nasser]

And when they don't drink water, they don't eat.

[Jill Nelson]

And if they stop eating, that's it. There's nothing you can do. You can't force feed a cow.

[Matt Kilty]

They kind of starve themselves to death. We heard of cows getting so weak they couldn't stand back up.

[Latif Nasser]

Feel like giving up.

[Rick Norell]

You know, you have a good cow,

[Dr. Don Sanders]

just die before your eyes.

[Matt Kilty]

Cows that were born with birth defects,

[Nigel Cook]

you just didn't want to go to

[Latif Nasser]

the barn after a while.

[Jill Nelson]

So I didn't know at any morning or any moment what I would find when I went out to the barn.

[Matt Kilty]

We're talking cows that had died overnight or what? And that happened a couple of times.

[Jill Nelson]

I wish. My son's favorite cow, and she was my favorite cow, she literally died right in front of me. When that happened, that was it. I knew that I couldn't. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't. I couldn't do it.

[Matt Kilty]

We heard stories about dairy farmers going bankrupt after their cows started dying, stopped producing milk.

[Latif Nasser]

But then we also heard how none of this is really happening.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

That's after the break, Sam.

[Sponsor or Announcer]

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[Latif Nasser]

and Doug,

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Clara Grunel]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird.

[Jill Nelson]

What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

Anyways, only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty.

[Matt Kilty]

Liberty.

[Latif Nasser]

Liberty.

[Matt Kilty]

Liberty.

[Jill Nelson]

Hungary's newly elected prime minister praised the independent media outlet that launched his political rise.

[Latif Nasser]

He called it a channel that filled

[Sponsor or Announcer]

a gap for public media when public media was propaganda.

[Jill Nelson]

Peter Magyar vows to free up the media and will likely succeed because the bar's so low.

[Latif Nasser]

You're being compared to Viktor Orban.

[Simon Adler]

You can only be great for the press.

[Jill Nelson]

On the next on the Media from wnyc. Find on the media wherever you get your podcasts.

[Simon Adler]

Okay. Welcome back. This is Radiolab. I am joined here with the one and Only's Matt Kielty and Simon Adler.

[Matt Kilty]

I like it. I'd take that.

[Latif Nasser]

Yes. So, yeah, so we left off with basically you have thousands of farmers who have claimed to have experienced this thing called stray voltage.

[Simon Adler]

Right.

[Latif Nasser]

Who end up being told like, no, that's actually not what's happening. And this next part of the story, yes.

[Jill Nelson]

Is

[Latif Nasser]

kind of a little bit of a history lesson of electricity.

[Simon Adler]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

It's kind of a story about our relationship with electricity. And I think to understand that, to

[Simon Adler]

understand that, we have to go back. Matt.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, Latif, we do.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

What Is electricity, and where does it come from?

[Simon Adler]

To understand that, we have to invoke a cliche.

[Latif Nasser]

Yes. So does the birth of electricity in America really start with Ben Franklin and a kite?

[Richard Hirsch]

No.

[Latif Nasser]

So to take us back, we talked to.

[Richard Hirsch]

Hi, I'm Richard Hirsch. I am a professor of history of science and technology, Richard Hirsch from Virginia Tech.

[Latif Nasser]

And also David Nye.

[David Nye]

I'm a professor in Denmark.

[Matt Kilty]

David Nye.

[Latif Nasser]

He's written a bunch of books on energy and electricity, which, of course, is

[David Nye]

why I'm being interviewed, I guess, for this program.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Turns out electricity in America, it's a little bit after Ben Franklin.

[Richard Hirsch]

Oh, yeah, yeah. It didn't really get going until about

[Latif Nasser]

1800, when scientists first started figuring out how to make batteries, how to make generators, so that we could actually create our own electricity and do things with

[Matt Kilty]

it, like send it down a wire

[Latif Nasser]

and then turn that electricity on and

[David Nye]

off to create a code, which is the Morse code.

[Matt Kilty]

And suddenly you could send a message from California to New York like that, nearly at the speed of light.

[David Nye]

So they suddenly realized electricity has got this sort of almost magical power.

[Latif Nasser]

The first message ever sent by telegraph. What hath God wrought?

[Matt Kilty]

So 1830, you get the telegraph.

[Latif Nasser]

1876, Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone,

[Richard Hirsch]

which seems to work nicely.

[Matt Kilty]

And Also in the 1870s, you get

[Latif Nasser]

light, most importantly, Edison's light bulb.

[Richard Hirsch]

And it was pretty wild stuff, because

[David Nye]

up to that time, all of human history, light and fire were the same thing. You couldn't have fire without light or light without fire. If you saw a light, it automatically meant something was burning. And when the electric light came along,

[Matt Kilty]

David says light bulb makers would have these public demonstrations where, for example, they

[David Nye]

pick up the light bulb in their

[Matt Kilty]

hand and hold it, something you could just never do with fire.

[David Nye]

And then they take the light bulb and turn it upside down with fire.

[Matt Kilty]

The flame always wants to go up. But now you could point it the light.

[David Nye]

This guy. Oh, that's amazing.

[Latif Nasser]

And at the end of the demo, the demonstrator would take the light bulb and smash it in the light.

[David Nye]

Immediately, it goes out.

[Richard Hirsch]

Now, you don't have to worry about your house burning down. If you knock over a kerosene lamp,

[Latif Nasser]

for example, now you have safe, controllable electric light.

[David Nye]

Yeah. I mean, capitalists can see that this is going to make money.

[Latif Nasser]

And in fact, Pearl and Fulton on

[Richard Hirsch]

Pearl street in New York City, down

[Latif Nasser]

in the financial district.

[Simon Adler]

Oh.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, it's right here.

[Richard Hirsch]

I have a picture of myself and my wife next to a plaque.

[Latif Nasser]

Should we take a selfie together?

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah, it's a big metal plaque.

[Latif Nasser]

Cute.

[Matt Kilty]

1882, like 3ft tall, 2ft wide.

[Latif Nasser]

Above the text, we have an etching of five or six generators. Men standing about.

[Matt Kilty]

Turbines got electrical wires seemingly running out of the turbines. A plaque to commemorate the first large

[Richard Hirsch]

scale power plant, the birthplace of power in the world.

[Latif Nasser]

This is the place.

[Matt Kilty]

And so down there in lower Manhattan,

[Latif Nasser]

this is where it began.

[Matt Kilty]

You had

[Liberty Mutual Spokesperson]

electric light.

[David Nye]

The stock exchange had department store, railway stations, factories that could run at night, had it.

[Latif Nasser]

The wealthy, it's a prestige thing. They had it.

[Richard Hirsch]

So it starts there, but then the

[Producer or Technical Staff]

country's still in the dark.

[Latif Nasser]

It starts spreading lights up.

[Matt Kilty]

It spreads from New York to Boston,

[Latif Nasser]

from Detroit to Chicago.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Lights up north, south, east, west, out

[Latif Nasser]

to farms, rural schools, homes, new lines

[Producer or Technical Staff]

going up almost everywhere at the rate

[Latif Nasser]

of 500 miles a day, the whole country lighting up.

[Richard Hirsch]

And then Edison and others came up

[Gabby Santos]

with so smart to own an automatic

[Richard Hirsch]

dishwasher, appliances, electric stoves, refrigerators, fans, a

[Matt Kilty]

complete electric laundry and motors, electric razors, radios.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

You're not running out of hot water, are you?

[Latif Nasser]

Vacuum cleaners, water heater.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Miracles of electricity.

[Matt Kilty]

So by the time you get to

[Producer or Technical Staff]

the 1960s, we've become dependent on electrical power.

[Matt Kilty]

The whole country is humming and buzzing with electricity.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

We like it because it's clean, it's inexpensive, and it will do almost any work you can think of.

[Latif Nasser]

And this becomes a problem because as more and more people move to the cities, the cities begin demanding more and more electricity.

[Matt Kilty]

And so power companies, to meet this demand, start to build more and more

[Latif Nasser]

oil and gas could be here in quantity.

[Matt Kilty]

Oil plants, gas plants, coal plants.

[Simon Adler]

A nuclear power program.

[Matt Kilty]

Nuclear power plants. To generate more electricity and to get

[Latif Nasser]

that electricity to the cities, power companies began building these huge towers that you see out in the countryside that had power lines that were carrying more electricity than we'd ever seen before.

[Matt Kilty]

Power lines that had to cut through.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

They now look out in the pasture and see power lines growing.

[Latif Nasser]

And for a lot of farmers across

[Producer or Technical Staff]

America, farmers angry about a power line being built through their field.

[Latif Nasser]

They hated them.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Farmers still don't want a high powered electric line across their land. Farmers are fighting construction of the power line on their land.

[Latif Nasser]

And one of the most famous examples of this is called the power line protests, which was in the 70s in western Minnesota.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Western Minnesota farmers have resisted the high voltage power line with harsh words, lawsuits, and sporadic clashes with sheriff's deputies. Trying to protect survey and construction, farmers

[Latif Nasser]

shot out components of thousands of power lines. They managed to topple towers by chopping out the legs of them, they end up toppling like 15 of these towers.

[Matt Kilty]

And a lot of it had to do with a concern about electricity.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Farmers like John Tripp want to know why Minnesota said it was okay for the power line to pass over his fields and cows, but not over state wildlife preserves or school bus stops. They are tipping us off that this line is dangerous to us, to our families and to our farm animals.

[Simon Adler]

Were they dangerous? Like, had there been safety testing for this technology before it was deployed?

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, yeah, yeah. There'd been testing done to make sure like, that the lines were safe and insulated and, you know, things like that.

[Simon Adler]

Right.

[Matt Kilty]

But the idea here is that there was just this ambient concern that there was something wrong about these power lines.

[Richard Hirsch]

If you want to do some research, I remember seeing photographs of people holding up fluorescent light bulbs underneath high voltage transmission lines. And the lights would light up.

[Latif Nasser]

Really?

[Richard Hirsch]

Oh, yeah, yeah. The electric fields were so intense underneath the power lines that the bulb illuminated.

[Latif Nasser]

That's wild.

[Richard Hirsch]

My mother in law lived near some power lines and I always thought, well, I don't want to live there.

[Latif Nasser]

And so what happened was after these power lines started going up and there were these protests in the 70s in Minnesota, one state over in Wisconsin, farmers started complaining that all of a sudden their cows are getting sick, their cows aren't drinking water. And they actually start filing lawsuits against the power companies, saying this is because of you, because electricity is getting out into the ground, into our farms and into our cows.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

And they start to win those lawsuits.

[Matt Kilty]

Like I think you said, Matt, that one of them. It was like $1 million payout for a farm. They argued that the losses were in the milk productivity of their cattle due to this stray voltage.

[Simon Adler]

Those were like jury trials probably.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Simon Adler]

And. And who. What was the sort of caliber of the scientific experts? I don't know. I just am like wondering whether it was like a really strong emotional appeal that won those lawsuits or was it like. No, there's like very clear, connect the dots here. Boo ba da boopa da boop.

[Latif Nasser]

I mean, they have electricians come out and conduct tests that show there's electricity in the farm. But this is part of the problem is there aren't.

[Simon Adler]

I see.

[Latif Nasser]

There aren't really experts on this and there aren't really standards at this point. And so the state of Wisconsin, because of these lawsuits is like, oh, God, we got to figure this out. We got to figure out what's going on. What's acceptable for even electricity to be like, in the ground or on the Farm. And so the Department of Agriculture in the state of Wisconsin creates in 1986 a stray voltage task force, which ends up getting in touch with this guy,

[Doug Reinemann]

Doug Reinemann, professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

[Matt Kilty]

Doug works on milking machines in the

[Doug Reinemann]

modern context, robotic milking machines. But back in the 1990s, I was asked to investigate concerns about stray voltage.

[Matt Kilty]

Now, had you heard of stray voltage before?

[Doug Reinemann]

No. No, not really.

[Matt Kilty]

And so what was your first reaction to the idea?

[Doug Reinemann]

Well, my first reaction is to find out more about it.

[Latif Nasser]

So Doug goes and reads whatever he

[Matt Kilty]

can find, and what he finds is that stray voltage did not begin in Wisconsin.

[Latif Nasser]

No, actually, the earliest reports date back

[Doug Reinemann]

to the early 1960s on the other

[Latif Nasser]

side of the world in New Zealand.

[Matt Kilty]

And what were the reports?

[Doug Reinemann]

So it's a really interesting story. In New Zealand at that time, it was sort of the tradition for dairy farmers to go barefoot.

[Latif Nasser]

So these farmers would be milking their

[Doug Reinemann]

cows not wearing any shoes or boots.

[Latif Nasser]

And when they touched something like the metal pail or the metal water trough,

[Doug Reinemann]

they felt the tingle.

[Matt Kilty]

Electricity somewhere on that farm getting up into them.

[Latif Nasser]

First documented case, people out on farms. But then Doug sees the reports we mentioned in North America, New York, Pennsylvania,

[Matt Kilty]

all of them involving cows.

[Latif Nasser]

Cows behaving strangely, cows not producing milk.

[Matt Kilty]

So what Doug starts to do is

[Doug Reinemann]

design a study to investigate a specific

[Matt Kilty]

question, which is basically, how much electricity does it take for a cow to feel it?

[Simon Adler]

Hmm. Like, wait, wait, wait. Can I stop you for a second?

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Simon Adler]

Why are we talking about cows? Why not any other animals?

[Matt Kilty]

Like, why not a goat or a chicken?

[Simon Adler]

Yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

Well, so Doug explained to us that cows, there's a couple things.

[Doug Reinemann]

They're often in wet environments, so cows

[Matt Kilty]

spend a ton of time on wet concrete and also are drinking, as we said, just a ton of water, which are both highly, highly conductive.

[Doug Reinemann]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

And then the other reason is actually

[Doug Reinemann]

because cows are bigger.

[Latif Nasser]

Simplest way to think about this is cows are bigger. So they're like a bigger wire, so it's easier for electricity to pass through them.

[Simon Adler]

Oh, no.

[Latif Nasser]

But anyway, UW Madison, they've got a

[Doug Reinemann]

lot of cows, something like 500 cows.

[Latif Nasser]

And one by one, Doug and his team would take a cow into a

[Doug Reinemann]

barn stall, the specially designed stall.

[Latif Nasser]

The cow would stand on this fancy

[Doug Reinemann]

scale so we could measure when the cow shifted their body weight, when they would flinch.

[Matt Kilty]

And then they would take an electrode, clip it to the snout of the cow, and then clip four more electrodes, one to each hoof, turn on A tiny little generator and send a small little pulse of electricity through the cow, like 10 pulses. And then watch from there. They'd increase the electricity a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more.

[Doug Reinemann]

And then we would see the cow basically move. And they might move a hoof, they might move their head, they might move an ear. Generally is a fairly subtle response.

[Latif Nasser]

The tiniest little indication that the cow feels something that it might not like.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

And they keep doing this until they get to the point where most of the cows are doing something like a little head twitch or a little leg kick, something that shows they're reacting.

[Simon Adler]

And so at what point is that?

[Doug Reinemann]

So if you want to imagine what the cow experiences, put a 9 volt battery on your tongue. That's the sort of experience which I

[Simon Adler]

did for this story.

[Latif Nasser]

For this story.

[Matt Kilty]

You're telling me this is safe?

[Latif Nasser]

He is now going to place the battery on his tongue.

[Matt Kilty]

I'm sort of nervous.

[Latif Nasser]

I know I am. I'm actually scared too.

[Doug Reinemann]

Yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

Oh, yeah. That's no fun.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, what'd you feel?

[Matt Kilty]

Oh, it's like. It's almost like something really cold touching your tongue for a second.

[Doug Reinemann]

Yes.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, that's not bad. Hey, Matt, don't tell me.

[Matt Kilty]

What do you mean?

[Latif Nasser]

What are you crying about?

[Doug Reinemann]

It's often experienced as a thermal sensation.

[Latif Nasser]

I'd say he reacted a little stronger than Warren did.

[Simon Adler]

But you haven't even done it, so how could you say that you haven't even done it.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, I'm too scared to.

[Simon Adler]

Sorry. But the 9 volt analogy works. The coldness. Except the coldness has to be so bad that P is better than that.

[Latif Nasser]

Right. And they're not even saying that. They're just saying at 9 volts, this is when you start to see behavioral changes, adverse behavioral changes.

[Simon Adler]

Right.

[Latif Nasser]

And so what the state of Wisconsin does is they set the threshold for what is an acceptable level of stray voltage of electricity on the farm. Below that.

[Simon Adler]

Okay. Which makes sense now. A lot below that or a little below that. Or like how below?

[Latif Nasser]

Doug says well below that.

[Simon Adler]

Well below that. Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

So now Doug also says if you take that threshold and you take that out into the real world, into farms, which in the state of Wisconsin, since 1990, there have been over 9,000 stray voltage investigations conducted by the state. You find that less than 3% of farms ever hit this threshold.

[Simon Adler]

Oh, weird.

[Matt Kilty]

And again, that threshold, that's just for behavior.

[Doug Reinemann]

You know, one of the reasons we spend a lot of time looking at behavior, because it is the most Sensitive indicator.

[Matt Kilty]

Like if electricity is harming a cow, hurting a cow, the first thing you're going to notice is some change in the cow's behavior.

[Doug Reinemann]

But of course, we looked at milk production, we looked at water intake, we looked at things like feed consumption and things on, you know, blood chemistry. We did, like, all kinds of things.

[Latif Nasser]

And what they found is that the amount of electricity it takes to get a cow to stop drinking water or to mess up its immune system or have all these infections is so much electricity that out on a farm, like, you're just not going to find this unless it's a real serious problem.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah, wires.

[Doug Reinemann]

Wires will always break, you know, hopefully not often, but there's always the possibility that the electrical system can be damaged.

[Latif Nasser]

But, you know, Doug says in the rare case that does happen, you get a lot of stray voltage, find it and fix it.

[Doug Reinemann]

It's not hard to find and it's not hard to fix.

[Simon Adler]

But then if it's not electricity, what is happening with the cows? Like why, why are they not drinking water and yes, drinking pee?

[Dr. Don Sanders]

Well, there can be a thousand different issues of what's going on, and you just simply got to look through those.

[Matt Kilty]

So we talked to a veterinarian, Dr.

[Dr. Don Sanders]

Don Sanders, doctor of veterinary medicine.

[Latif Nasser]

How many years did you practice as a vet? 50.

[Simon Adler]

Wow.

[Matt Kilty]

And Don told us from his 50 years what he'd mostly seen is cows

[Dr. Don Sanders]

drinking urine is when they lack potassium in their diet.

[Matt Kilty]

Cows will turn to drinking pee if they don't have enough minerals like potassium,

[Dr. Don Sanders]

sodium or whatever like that. That generally is the major reason for drinking urine.

[Matt Kilty]

I guess I'm also a little surprised.

[Doug Reinemann]

Like the.

[Matt Kilty]

I don't know. I'm sure I'm deficient. I know I'm deficient in vitamin D. I don't know. I'm sure there are a dozen things that I don't have enough of and yet I'm not going around drinking urine. But why, why is it that these cows are so sensitive?

[Dr. Don Sanders]

Let me, let me throw something out to stir the pot a little.

[Matt Kilty]

Basically, Don explained that these cows being milked are not just average animals. They have been bred to be more like high performance athletes. And so if their diet is not perfectly dialed in, things will go bad

[Dr. Don Sanders]

and it won't be all at once. It'll be when it's been that way for several months or maybe even longer.

[Matt Kilty]

And then you start to get immune problems, udder infections or even pee drinking.

[Dr. Don Sanders]

Exactly.

[Simon Adler]

Okay, I get that. But that doesn't explain the not drinking water part.

[Latif Nasser]

Right. So remember Our farmer in Minnesota, Jill Nelson, how she said, and then they

[Jill Nelson]

started lapping at the water.

[Latif Nasser]

Her cows started lapping at the water, not drinking it normally.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah.

[Jill Nelson]

You know, cows like to stick their nose in and they drink.

[Nigel Cook]

They slurp it up.

[Latif Nasser]

So we ended up talking to this guy, Nigel Cook.

[Matt Kilty]

He's another professor at UW Madison in

[Nigel Cook]

the school of veterinary medicine.

[Matt Kilty]

So he said, okay, so take a cow lapping water.

[Nigel Cook]

Oh, my God, we've got stray voltage. Because the cows are lapping the water as normal. You could go to 100% of farms and find cows that lick and lap and play with water.

[Latif Nasser]

And he also said, a dairy cow, when she's not eating or being milked, she's sort of just like standing around

[Nigel Cook]

in a barn, and she's looking for other things to do.

[Latif Nasser]

As Nigel put it, they like hobbies. Cows like doing stuff.

[Nigel Cook]

And one of those things is hanging around water troughs and playing with water.

[Matt Kilty]

And he also told us that cows are just like very social animals. They have social dynamics, hierarchies.

[Nigel Cook]

Cows will sometimes stand in the water trough, and they'll kind of be dominant around it, kind of shoo other cows

[Latif Nasser]

away, or they can be really sensitive to overcrowding.

[Nigel Cook]

We've certainly been to barns where instead of 3 to 4 inches of TR perimeter space per cal, which is our design recommendation, now we have two. That makes a difference to water access.

[Latif Nasser]

I guess what I'm learning, though, is if you look at the cases of straight voltage, like, some of them start in North America in the late 70s into the 80s, and then, like, really pick up in the 90s. And so what I'm wondering is, like, clearly something happened or was happening with cows.

[Nigel Cook]

Well, work out what was going on in the 90s. Yeah. So let's take Wisconsin. When I arrived in 1999, we had 25,000 dairy herds, and most of them were tie stalls.

[Latif Nasser]

What's a tie stall?

[Nigel Cook]

If you've driven around the upper Midwest, there are little red barns. Those are tie stalls.

[Latif Nasser]

And Nigel explained, in a tie stall, what you have is each individual cow confined in a single stall tied to that stall.

[Nigel Cook]

So she lived in that stall. She fed in front of the stall. She had a little water cup in front of every stall.

[Latif Nasser]

And so the job of a dairy

[Nigel Cook]

farmer was deliver food, feed, scoop the poop out in the morning, and milk the cow twice a day. So relatively simple cow management, where you could see if a cow wasn't eating enough or wasn't drinking enough, you could pick up a sick cow, but in

[Latif Nasser]

the 90s, as costs were rising, margins tightening, dairy farmers started modernizing. They started to build milking parlors.

[Nigel Cook]

Now you're not milking them in the

[Latif Nasser]

stall, you're bringing them over the, the parlor where you're milking them together with more elaborate milking machines.

[Matt Kilty]

And now, because you can milk more cows more efficiently, you don't need that old red tie stall barn. Instead, you need a new, bigger barn,

[Nigel Cook]

what's called a free stall. So they're free to move around.

[Matt Kilty]

Now you can house more cows.

[Nigel Cook]

They're not chained in a stall anymore,

[Matt Kilty]

which means now instead of feeding a

[Nigel Cook]

cow individually, you feed a group of cows.

[Latif Nasser]

You make the cows all drink from the same water trough as a group,

[Matt Kilty]

which cuts costs, it cuts labor. And so now, now you can have

[Nigel Cook]

150 cows, 250 cows, 500 cows, a thousand cows. Now we're building 20,000 cow dairies.

[Latif Nasser]

Nigel says in that transition to bigger dairy farms, some of these farmers just couldn't make it.

[Nigel Cook]

And life became very difficult for them. And somebody comes along and says, well, this problem's because you built the wrong barn and you're not a very good manager. You're not feeding the cows properly. It's not necessarily what a farmer wants to hear, that I'm not very good at managing my cows. And they probably were very good at managing their cows in a tie stool where they grew up, where their fathers and grandfathers managed cows. So that's a bitter pill to swallow. Whereas somebody could go on your farm and say, hey, I think you got stray voltage. It's somebody else's problem, it's the utility's problem. Now you have somebody to blame. You've got a boogeyman, and it's not your fault, it's somebody else's fault.

[Jill Nelson]

And I would say, you come and milk my cows and tell me that, because I know, I know my cows, I know that this is affecting them. And I really love my cows. And I feel, I mean, I'm their caretaker. So when you're not able to take care of them, it's really hard. And it was really hard on my husband because when the cows would get to the point where they were just suffering, we'd have to put them down. And he was the one that had to do that. So, yeah, when you stop crying because you're putting a cow down, you know, it's been, it's been a lot.

[Latif Nasser]

So Jill sued her power company. And I've been reading through those court documents, and in them, the power company is making a lot of same arguments that we just heard that the electricity found on Jill's farm didn't meet the threshold. How a lot of the problems on Jill's farm started after she built this big milking parlor. She had increased her herd size. They made arguments about how her feed composition wasn't right, how the milking machines were causing infections. But also there's this other argument taking place in these documents about something that's very tricky but very fundamental to this whole story, which is what is the resistance of a cow? What which we will get to is the resistance of a cow. It's what we're going to get to when we come back from breaking.

[Sponsor or Announcer]

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[David Nye]

this week on the New Yorker Radio

[Doug Reinemann]

Hour, why so many Americans now have

[David Nye]

an unfavorable view of Israel.

[Latif Nasser]

Zionism is not reformable. The state of Israel is. But the state of Israel has to be reinvented and it cannot be reinvented according to this kind of ethno nationalist principle that has taken hold of it.

[David Nye]

Historian Omer Bartov on his book Israel what Went Wrong? That's on the New Yorker Radio Hour from wnyc. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts,

[Latif Nasser]

Bada bang, bada boom. Here we are.

[Simon Adler]

I'm back with the Dime a dozen. Matt Kilty and Simon Adler.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. So we left off with the question, what is the resistance of a cow?

[Simon Adler]

Feels. Feels epic somehow.

[Latif Nasser]

It kind of is.

[Simon Adler]

Okay, explain.

[Matt Kilty]

Well, okay, sort of Physics 101 here. Electricity 101.

[Simon Adler]

Love it.

[Matt Kilty]

So when it comes to electricity, you're dealing with basically three things. Voltage, current and resistance. And these three things are always kind of in relation to one another.

[Latif Nasser]

And it's sort of. Try to help you make sense of that. We're going to do a little analogy which is imagine it's springtime.

[Simon Adler]

It is actually springtime. I don't really need to imagine.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, it's springtime.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah. Right.

[Latif Nasser]

You're outside and what do you do in the spring? You tend to your Garden.

[Matt Kilty]

You tend to your garden. Exactly.

[Latif Nasser]

And in your garden, in your hand, you have a hose.

[Simon Adler]

Okay. Yeah. Here I am.

[Matt Kilty]

We're painting this picture for you because the hose is, in fact, quite a nice way to understand how electricity works. So what do you have at one end of the hose at the house? You have the spigot, right? The spigot that can turn the water up or turn the water down.

[Simon Adler]

Sure.

[Latif Nasser]

So the spigot is basically the voltage. So open this bigger way up, you got a lot of volts open a little bit. Tiny little bit of volts.

[Simon Adler]

Like, it's like how much push is coming out from the beginning.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

From that, you've got the water that is then actually moving, right?

[Simon Adler]

Water is moving. Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

That is your current, the flow of electricity.

[Simon Adler]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

So it stands to reason, more volts, more flow, more current. Fewer volts, less flow, less current.

[Simon Adler]

Totally makes sense.

[Matt Kilty]

However, there is one final piece.

[Latif Nasser]

This is the important part.

[Simon Adler]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

The resistance.

[Simon Adler]

The resistance, yes.

[Matt Kilty]

So think of it almost like the hose itself. It has a set diameter, a sort of amount of space that the water can flow through.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. So it's like if you think if you have, like a huge, wide fire hose or something, and you crank that spigot, you're gonna get.

[Simon Adler]

But if you had, like, you get sleep apnea.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. If you have a hose that's like the diameter of like, a little tiny straw, like a little cocktail straw, it doesn't matter how open that spigot is, how volts you're trying to shove through there, you're still just gonna get a tiny little bit of flow of current, Right?

[Simon Adler]

Correct.

[Latif Nasser]

That's why resistance is so important, because it affects the flow, the current, how much electricity is actually passing through something.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

So in the real world of electricity, something like rubber and this stuff gets measured in ohms. We're not gonna get into it, but that's what it's measured in.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Rubber has the resistance of something like 10 to the 13th power ohms.

[Simon Adler]

So rubber is like the brickiest of brick walls.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. Or the tiniest of straws. Of straws.

[Simon Adler]

Tiniest of straws. Of straws.

[Latif Nasser]

So it's very resistant. So it means you don't get a lot of current, a lot of electricity passing through.

[Simon Adler]

Sure, yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

And then to keep this going, dry human skin can be about as low as 10,000 ohms.

[Simon Adler]

Feeble resistance. We have very little to no resistance.

[Matt Kilty]

And then wet human skin can be about 1000 ohms.

[Simon Adler]

Oh, even less. So, like, nothing.

[Matt Kilty]

Not very much.

[Simon Adler]

We're one of those, like, boba straws.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, Human boba.

[Matt Kilty]

Now, a cow, this is the question.

[Latif Nasser]

What is its resistance? So back in the 80s and 90s, when researchers were doing all this work on cows, they came up with a number. They settled on a number, 500 ohms. So less than wet humans.

[Simon Adler]

So it's like we're. Yeah. Okay. So we have to take even better care of them.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. Cause they've always been trying to be cautious and consistent, conservative for the sake of the cow. So, yeah, they come up with this number.

[Simon Adler]

Okay. As they should be, I think. As they should be.

[Latif Nasser]

Right, yeah, of course. And so they come up with this number. 500. This is known in the world.

[Matt Kilty]

The 500 ohm cow.

[Latif Nasser]

The 500 ohm cow.

[Matt Kilty]

But the thing is, and in my

[Larry Neubauer]

world, that just does not exist. Okay.

[Matt Kilty]

There are people like Larry Neubauer, that electrician that we heard from earlier in the story, who's just like, no way. Don't believe it.

[Larry Neubauer]

It's nowhere near 500 ohms.

[Simon Adler]

Huh? Why does he think that?

[Latif Nasser]

Well, yeah, so Larry told us.

[Larry Neubauer]

Well, how is that 500 ohms determined?

[Latif Nasser]

How that was determined makes a big difference.

[Larry Neubauer]

Well, the 500 ohms was determined in a stanchion barn. The old milk tie stanchion barn. Have you guys all seen an old stanchion bar?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, the old school red barn.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Right.

[Latif Nasser]

On one cow in a stall.

[Larry Neubauer]

Right. Well, today they never get tied up in a tie stall barn.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

They're all in free freestyle. It's all there roam around now.

[Simon Adler]

But why should that matter where the cow is?

[Latif Nasser]

Well, because. So Larry explained, in a freestyle barn or in a big milking parlor, you have all these cows grouped together where they are often coming into contact with this slurry. A slurry of manure, cow urine, and, like, water or milk.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

And Larry explained that slurry is highly conductive. Is very conductive. And as we already know, when something gets wet, its resistance drops.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah. It's like a straw that when it gets wet, the straw opens up.

[Latif Nasser]

Right. It's the same thing here with the cows, Right?

[Simon Adler]

Yes. They are becoming bigger electricity straws.

[Latif Nasser]

Right. That's Larry's theory.

[Larry Neubauer]

The cows are nothing more than like goldfish in a pond. If I gave you an extension cord, I plugged in the drill, and I said, go walk across the grass here and go drill into that post. Okay. You wouldn't think twice about it. You go over there, drill the hole in the post, come back.

[Latif Nasser]

Right?

[Larry Neubauer]

Yeah. If I gave you that Same drill and told you to jump in the pool and go drill out the iron post in the pool.

[Simon Adler]

Right.

[Larry Neubauer]

You'd have a second thought about that now wouldn't you?

[Latif Nasser]

So what happened was in 2016, these Idaho dairymen contacted Larry and they're like, hey, we think we have stray voltage on our farm. Larry went out there, said, yeah, you do. And the reason no one will tell you you do is because of this whole resistance thing. And so the Idaho dairyman told Larry, well, how about we do a study trying to determine the resistance of a cow in these freestall barns.

[Larry Neubauer]

So we called Richard Norell out of the state of Idaho and they invited

[Rick Norell]

me out to do some resistance measurements on cows.

[Matt Kilty]

So this is Rick.

[Rick Norell]

I have a PhD in dairy science.

[Latif Nasser]

And the reason they reached out to rick.

[Rick Norell]

Well, my PhD, I collected information on

[Latif Nasser]

resistance to cows is Rick had actually done cow resistance studies back in the

[Matt Kilty]

80s and he's like, sure, I can run this study.

[Rick Norell]

And then we had a meeting with the dairy industry, with Idaho Power to

[Matt Kilty]

be like, can you guys help out? Can you fund any of this?

[Latif Nasser]

And Idaho Power brought in Doug Reineman, our Wisconsin guy.

[Rick Norell]

Yeah, he was representing Idaho Power as their expert.

[Simon Adler]

Interesting.

[Latif Nasser]

But it's also like Doug is the national expert, like the go to person on this.

[Rick Norell]

So if he says thumbs down, well then you have quite a hill to climb if you're going to beat his thumbs down. So he did write a report at the end that he thought some things were good, some maybe not so good.

[Latif Nasser]

Did Idaho Powers sign off on the research?

[Rick Norell]

Not really. I mean, they sent us a letter and said that they didn't believe we were going to find anything and they were not going to support it anyway.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, that sounds like a pretty definitive note.

[Rick Norell]

Right.

[Matt Kilty]

But anyhow, Rick goes out with the dairyman, with Larry, looked at six different Idaho dairies, modern commercial dairy farms where

[Rick Norell]

the cows, they're walking in manure, they're

[Latif Nasser]

all together, they're wet.

[Matt Kilty]

They set up all these tasks where they hook up up different electrodes to different parts of the cows, castrate voltage

[Rick Norell]

can go from front feet to rear

[Latif Nasser]

feet, it can go from mouth to all four feet, it can touch the

[Rick Norell]

belly of the cow and that goes out through all four feet.

[Latif Nasser]

And so they ran all these different tests like over 170 cows and ultimately come up with a number.

[Simon Adler]

What is it?

[Latif Nasser]

200.

[Simon Adler]

200.

[Latif Nasser]

From 500 to 200.

[Simon Adler]

So what does that actually mean?

[Larry Neubauer]

Well, if you take a 500 ohm cow and you put 1 volt across it that would be 2 milliamperes, 2

[Latif Nasser]

milliamps of current, which is the current threshold.

[Larry Neubauer]

Well, yeah, according to them, at 500.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah.

[Larry Neubauer]

If you take a 250 ohm cow and you had 1 volt under the perfect conditions, you'd have 4 milliamps through her.

[Latif Nasser]

So it'd be double. It'd be double what's allowed under regulatory threshold.

[Larry Neubauer]

And if you had a 200 ohm cow. Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

Even higher.

[Larry Neubauer]

It'd be even higher.

[Matt Kilty]

And so the idea here is that if the homage is wrong by a factor of two for most modern day cows, then that means that cows are actually modern day cows are receptive to a much lower level of electricity than the current standards would suggest.

[Larry Neubauer]

In a wet environment like that. Yes.

[Matt Kilty]

Based on your studies, if public policy was strictly directed by the scientific evidence, should that 500 ohm cow be reduced to something closer to a 200 ohm resistance?

[Rick Norell]

I believe it should. But I also believe that, you know, my data needs to be published and it needs to be critically evaluated. And I'm sure there'll be some people poking some holes on it, but I think it's pretty good.

[Latif Nasser]

Do you have a timetable for when you might publish?

[Rick Norell]

I don't.

[Latif Nasser]

The weight of the dairy world is on your shoulders, Rick.

[Rick Norell]

I know, I know, and I'm embarrassed to say this, but when I retired, I packed everything up out of my office that I needed to take along and brought it home. And I had one binder that had lots of important information that I needed to look at. And for the life of me, I could not find it. I know I put it in my vehicle to bring it home, but it's just gone now.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, here is everything that we can definitively say at the end of this. So that 200 number is lost somewhere, anywhere in the state of Idaho. And when I talk to people like Doug Reinemann, they're like, look, there's other data out there, current data looking at freestall cows that continue to suggest that 500 ohms is actually the correct number. Like that's what the data supports.

[Simon Adler]

That fight is still strong. That fight is still. Nobody has changed their minds.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. So you have farmers who still believe that the resistance should be lower, but all the data, peer reviewed, published, still points to 500.

[Simon Adler]

So the farmers are all like, low resistance, look like it's getting into our cows. And then the experts are like, no, it's high resistance. Like you guys, it's not. Electricity is not your problem. Whatever your problem is.

[Latif Nasser]

Right. Other things we can definitively say so where we started this whole story with that guy Craigis. What happened with Craigus?

[Clara Grunel]

He sold the cows.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, he did?

[Clara Grunel]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

And he started growing potatoes.

[Matt Kilty]

No.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Matt Kilty]

Really?

[Latif Nasser]

He's now a potato farmer.

[Simon Adler]

He gave up.

[Matt Kilty]

Yeah. And apparently his cows, which are on a different farm in a different part of Denmark now, from what I hear,

[Clara Grunel]

they are thriving and drinking water.

[Latif Nasser]

Here are the cows. Cows.

[Matt Kilty]

And then there's Jill.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, my God, there's so many cows.

[Matt Kilty]

Who after years of being told she did not have stray voltage on her farm, got in touch with our guy Larry.

[Larry Neubauer]

I said I'll take a look at it and whatever I find, I'll tell you.

[Matt Kilty]

Told her. You're not imagining things. There is stray voltage here.

[Latif Nasser]

He got in touch with the power company.

[Jill Nelson]

You know, he knew how to talk the talk and talk the language with them.

[Latif Nasser]

Eventually they came out, made a bunch of changes to Jill's electrical system. And so how many cows out here?

[Jill Nelson]

There's 130 in this barn.

[Latif Nasser]

Things went back to normal. Wild. They're so big and pretty.

[Jill Nelson]

Thank you. I kind of think so too.

[Simon Adler]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

No, they're gorgeous. What is it again? Star Dazzle. Star Dazzle. Oh, it's a baby. Oh, your tongue is so big.

[Jill Nelson]

We're gonna be at the Minnesota State Fair.

[Latif Nasser]

Because you're so pretty. Cause you're so pretty. You get to go to the fair to Bella the ball. That's right.

[Simon Adler]

Well, that's. Cause that's hard to argue with. That is really. The proof is in the pudding kind of thing.

[Latif Nasser]

Well. Oh, baby calves. Oh, my God, Jill. It's a really compelling story, but it is like, it's one story. Star Dazzle's baby. Do you also love petting?

[Jill Nelson]

She does.

[Latif Nasser]

Come on. Come on, sweetie. I don't think it definitively proves anything,

[Matt Kilty]

but if I was a betting man, I'd wager we're only going to see more cases of stray voltage in the years to come.

[Sponsor or Announcer]

But the growing demand for power to

[Latif Nasser]

fuel AI data centers, record demand for electricity today. Energy hungry tech. Because again, much of the state is about to go through another very hot

[Doug Reinemann]

day with an eye towards the future.

[Latif Nasser]

A 70 mile transmission line capable of carrying 500,000 volts. These towers that carry the power mess up our farms. We know across the country we need

[Producer or Technical Staff]

to generate more power.

[Latif Nasser]

It's a big day for caltrain, the

[Sponsor or Announcer]

agency rolling out its new fully electric fleet.

[Producer or Technical Staff]

Meet the state's mandate to transition bus fleets to completely electric.

[Simon Adler]

What they basically want to do is come from over the hill there and come straight across everything coming across the cropland across the pond. This episode was reported by Matt Kilty and Simon Adler. The episode is produced by Matt Kilty with help from Maria Paz Gutierrez reporting help from Clara Grunet and Rebecca Rand. Original music and sound design contributed by Jeremy Bloom and Matt Kilty. The episode was mixed by Jeremy Bloom, Fact checking by Angeli Mercado and Sophie Sami. It was edited by Pat Walters and a special thanks to Liz Brock and Julie Cohn. If you miss Simon like I do, just be comforted knowing that he is now going to be heading back to the greener pastures of his music, sound and performance art project Windstar Enterprises. If you're curious to know more, go to windstarsolutions.com no cows were harmed in the making of this episode so far as I know. Catch you next week. Bye bye bye.

[Gabby Santos]

Hi, I'm Gabby. I'm from the Bay Area, California and here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soren Wheeler is our Executive Editor. Sarah Sandbach is our Executive Director. Our Managing Editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Jeremy Blum, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nainasambandan, Matt Kielty, Mona Margauker, Annie McKeown, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Natalia Ramirez, Rebecca Rand, Anisa Vitze, Arian Wack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young with help from Gabby Santos. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Angeli Mercado, and Sophie Semay. Hi, I'm Maddie and I'm from Frederick, Maryland. Leadership support for Radiolab Science programming is provided by the Simons foundation and the John Templeton Found.

[Latif Nasser]

Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by

[Gabby Santos]

the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

[Latif Nasser]

Sometimes you just need a fresh start

[Sponsor or Announcer]

and nothing feels fresher than four new tires right now. Buy three select tires and get one for a dollar during the Buick Certified Service Fresh Start Tire event.

[State Farm Spokesperson]

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