Alaska Earthquake of 1964

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know – Alaska Earthquake of 1964

Date: July 2, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts - Stuff You Should Know

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Overview

In this episode, Josh and Chuck delve into the devastating 1964 Alaska earthquake, known as the "Good Friday earthquake." They explore not only the catastrophic impact of the quake and subsequent tsunamis on Alaskan towns, but also how the event dramatically advanced scientific understanding of seismology, plate tectonics, and disaster response. The episode also touches on quirky details, like forests slipping into the ocean and an invasive tropical fungus, keeping the tone accessible and conversational.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Personal Anecdotes

• Josh jokes about his own earthquake experience, humorously tied to researching this very episode.
• The hosts set the stage with some light banter, drawing listeners in with personal stories.

"I was reading this article about the Alaska earthquake of 1964. And I was at home." — Josh Clark (02:51)

2. Alaska’s Tectonic Vulnerability & The Megaquake

• Alaska is revealed to be highly earthquake-prone, sitting atop the Alaska-Aleutian Subduction Zone where the North American and Pacific plates meet.
• The 1964 earthquake was a “megathrust” quake, clocking in at magnitude 9.2, the second largest ever recorded (after Chile, 1960 - 9.5).

"10 out of 10 of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded have been megathrust." — Chuck Bryant (05:25)

How Megathrusts Work

• These occur when two tectonic plates lock and then suddenly slip, causing the upper plate to lurch forward sometimes as much as 50-60 feet.
• The event confirmed the then-controversial plate tectonics theory.

"All sorts of different places where evidence kind of came along that said, okay, explain this...turns out that plate tectonics essentially was the only theory that fit." — Josh Clark (24:45)

3. The Earthquake: Physical Impact

• The shaking lasted around 4 minutes; the land shifted for a stretch approximately 500 miles by 125 miles.
• Anchorage, Valdez, Seward, and other towns were drastically altered — some areas rose up to 40ft; others dropped as much as 8ft.
• The changed landscape forced redrawing of shipping lanes and even relocation of entire towns.

"Anchorage, Valdez, Seward, and a bunch of other towns are like, on that chunk of land that suddenly lurched forward." — Josh Clark (08:54)

• Unique phenomenon: Upright forests plunged underwater intact.

“Entire swaths of forest on the coastline that dropped into the ocean. The entire stretch of forest still standing upright just plunged downward.” — Josh Clark (12:02)

4. Tsunamis: The Biggest Danger

• Only ~15 people died from the quake itself; the majority of the 131 total deaths were due to tsunamis.
• Waves up to 200 feet high struck nearby villages within minutes, destroying communities like Chenega and Valdez, with additional deaths as far as California.

“A village called Chenega...four minutes after the earthquake, it just got washed away.” — Josh Clark (15:08)

• Tsunamis caused by underwater landslides (“landslide tsunami”), a mechanism unraveled by subsequent studies.

5. Secondary Effects: Fires, Landslides, and Liquefaction

• Fires erupted in Port Valdez, including oil tankers set ablaze and swept out to sea.
• Liquefaction caused entire sections of towns to sink suddenly.
• Anchorage's business district dropped by 9-20 feet, with entire sections of street now on slumped ground.

"The entire business district sank about 9ft... others just look kind of like the forest just dropped." — Chuck Bryant (16:40)

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Science Transformed

6. Birth of Modern Seismology & Plate Tectonics

• The earthquake cemented plate tectonics as scientific consensus.
• Paleoseismology was born, as researchers realized cycles of forests sinking and being replaced, evidenced by geological layering.

"It birthed a new science in paleoseismology... We try all the time to birth new sciences and no one's listening." — Chuck Bryant (27:35)

• This event led to identifying similar threats along the U.S. West Coast, e.g., the Cascadian Subduction Zone.

7. Tracking Tsunamis

• The event prompted creation of the National Tsunami Warning Center and improved global tsunami science.
• High-quality seismograph networks expanded rapidly post-1964, leveraging both scientific and Cold War surveillance imperatives.

"By the mid 2000s, I think 197 sites in Alaska and western Canada...The thing that really got seismographs out there, though, was the arms race, the nuclear arms race." — Josh Clark (37:35)

8. Strange Aftereffects: The Invasive Fungus

• Cryptococcus gattii, a tropical fungus, established itself in Alaska, likely transported by tsunami-washed ship ballast water, later causing infections decades after the quake.

"...by the 90s, it was capable of infecting people again...the only way you could have taken this stuff and gotten it all over the land is from a tsunami." — Josh Clark (30:53)

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Lessons Learned & Lasting Changes

9. Urban Planning & Building Codes

• Damaged towns like Valdez were relocated to safer ground; old sites burned to prevent resettlement.
• Strict, California-level building codes were adopted, minimizing loss in later earthquakes (e.g., the 2018 Anchorage quake: 117 injured, no deaths).

"Alaska...started adopting...new building codes...larger buildings...now kind of neck and neck with California for having the strictest building codes, and it’s worked pretty well." — Chuck Bryant (36:28)

• Seismic Hazard Mapping helped city planners avoid future disasters.

10. Preparedness Practices

• Broader understanding: after an earthquake, “run to high ground” if near the coast — a lesson still vital today.

"If you were living on the coast, probably if you were of European descent, I'll bet if you were indigenous, you already knew this. But if you feel an earthquake, go run to high land." — Josh Clark (39:37)

11. Current and Future Threats

• Alaska remains vulnerable due to glaciers melting, permafrost changes, and heavy fossil fuel infrastructure atop seismic faults.
• Recent large quakes (2018, 2021) serve as reminders of ongoing risks, though improved resilience is clear.

"The reason this one was so bad was because it, it hit the towns and cities along the coast." — Chuck Bryant (40:27)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “10 out of 10 of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded have been megathrust.” – Chuck Bryant (05:25)
• “Entire swaths of forest...still standing upright just plunged downward into the ocean.” – Josh Clark (12:02)
• “It birthed a new science in paleoseismology.” – Chuck Bryant (27:35)
• "If you feel an earthquake, go run to high land." – Josh Clark (39:37)

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Key Timestamps

• [01:47] - Episode proper begins; hosts’ banter and personal earthquake stories.
• [04:41] - Defining the 1964 quake and its magnitude; comparison with Chile.
• [05:25-07:35] - Megathrust earthquakes, subduction zone dynamics, and proof for plate tectonics.
• [08:46] - The size and suddenness of the land shift.
• [09:30] - Startling extent of the quake’s physical and hydrological impact, ‘seiche’ waves globally.
• [12:02] - Coastline forests submerging.
• [13:57-16:40] - Tsunamis and liquefaction devastate coastal towns.
• [21:02] - Immediate aftermath; Alaskan isolation; damage estimates and recovery.
• [23:36] - Scientific advances, ride of plate tectonics as accepted theory.
• [26:43] - Evidence for repeated cycles of catastrophic changes; birth of paleoseismology.
• [29:36] - Fungus Cryptococcus gattii story.
• [35:39] - Building code changes and later earthquake outcomes.
• [38:00-39:37] - Seismograph network expansion; "run to high ground" advice.
• [40:27-41:06] - Modern threats and environmental vulnerabilities.

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Conclusion

The 1964 Alaska earthquake was not only a natural disaster but a catalyst for seismic science, urban resilience, and global disaster preparedness. Through engaging discussions, Josh and Chuck illustrate the event’s profound, lasting importance — both its tragedy and its immense value to knowledge and safety today.

Transcript

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I turned off news altogether.

[Josh Clark]

I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.

[Guest on Guaranteed Human]

It feels like it's trying to divide people.

[Chuck Bryant]

We got clear facts.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe we could calm down a little.

[Chuck Bryant]

NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News.

[Mangesha Tekodar]

Reporting for America, I'm Mangesha Tekodar and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, blue zoners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way.

[Robbie Kaplan]

I'd say probably start bone smashing.

[Josh Clark]

That doesn't work.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Make it look more defined.

[Chuck Bryant]

They say it works.

[Guest on Therapy for Black Girls]

I don't know.

[Mangesha Tekodar]

Listen to Skyline Drive, how to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Michael Rapaport]

This is Michael Rapaport and my podcast, the I Am Rappaport Stereo podcast, is unlike anyone you've ever heard. If you're looking for strong opinions about sports, entertainment, politics, pop culture and whatever else catches my attention, then subscribe now. This kid, Jafar Jackson should absolutely, positively get nominated for his portrayal as Michael Jackson. Listen to I Am rapaport on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you should know about earthquakes in Alaska in 1964. I'm gonna talk like this. Oh, no, the rest of the podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

What do you think that 60% of the people just stopped listening?

[Josh Clark]

Well, they are going to be sorry because this is going to be an interesting episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this is. You know, I had no idea how earthquake prone Alaska is, was and is until doing this kind of research.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I was raised on that knowledge. My family talked about it a lot.

[Chuck Bryant]

No comment.

[Josh Clark]

In Toledo. Hey, Chuck, I have a question. Will you ask me the first time I was ever in an earthquake or ever felt an earthquake?

[Chuck Bryant]

When's the first time you ever felt an earthquake?

[Josh Clark]

Yesterday. Chuck, will you ask me a follow up question? What I was reading while I experienced that first earthquake?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, where were you and what were you reading?

[Josh Clark]

I was reading this article about the Alaska earthquake of 1964. And I was at home.

[Michael Rapaport]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't know that you guys felt a tremor.

[Josh Clark]

There was one in Cuba, like a 6.8. And I felt it in central Florida, plain as day.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. I lived in LA for five years and I never felt a single anything.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I pretty much assumed I would go the rest of my life without feeling an earthquake and. Nope, nope. Cuba had other ideas.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Well, I mean, after reading about how far away. Like, there's some pretty startling stuff in this episode, like, as far as how far away you could feel things and, like, the. The upset that it caused, like, around the world. It's nuts.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, a lot of people were upset about this, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, we're talking about the Good Friday earthquake of 1964 in Alaska, which at the time was the biggest. Well, the second largest ever in the world that they had recorded at 9.2, just behind the 9.5 that hit Chile in 1960.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And considering the devastation that happened in Alaska, and probably only because it happened in Alaska, it only killed 131 people, which is a lot. But I think the earthquake itself in Alaska. How many people? It's like 15 people, maybe.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think there was actually in the whole state, something like.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no, I'm saying how many people it killed was only.

[Rebecca Nagle (First America)]

Oh.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, sorry, I thought you were saying how many people lived in Alaska.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, just like the literal earthquake of people in Alaska.

[Josh Clark]

I think it was like. Yeah, 15 or 16 people. That was it from the actual earthquake. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wonder why you laughed.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was why. Cause I thought you were making a joke and I thought it was hilarious.

[Chuck Bryant]

So let's get to it, eh?

[Josh Clark]

Well, there was one other big thing about this earthquake besides just the massiveness. I mean, 9.5, that is awfully close to as high as you can go on the Richter scale. Right, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

9.2. Was this one.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, 9.2. Sorry. Chile was the 9.5. Still nothing to sneeze at. Right. Second largest earthquake on record. One of the other reasons that it's important or significant is because it basically opened up the door for seismology and our understanding of earthquakes and tsunamis and basically everything we know about those things today kind of kicked off with this 1964 earthquake because we were able to, like, go study it. It happened at just the right time, in a sense.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. And this was a megathrust earthquake. And as it turns out, the most destructive kind of earthquake that the world knows is the megathrust. 10 out of 10 of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded have been megathrust. And that is where. And, you know, we've talked about this in the earthquakes episode as well as other ones. Probably the Japanese tsunami one as well.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

But this megathrust earthquake is what happens when you have two tectonic plates hitting one another. And in the case of the megathrust, the heavier one slides below the lighter one, and that heavier plate just dives into the mantle. It's. You know, we talked about subduction a lot, but it subduces, Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's subdued by the top one. Right. And as it goes further and further in, like, the whole Earth's crust gets recycled over incredible spans of time. The problem is, what causes a megathrust earthquake is that in some places, that subdued plate doesn't go down. It locks with the plate on top when they converge, and they just press and press and press and press, and then eventually one of them's going to give. It's like a game of chicken or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And when they give, it just slips. And it slips really quickly, and the entire. An entire region of Earth suddenly lurches forward like 50ft. And when that happens, that's where you get, like, 10 out of the 10 most powerful earthquakes. That's where they come from. They're all megathrust earthquakes, and that's how they're produced.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. The 1 in 64 in Alaska was at the Alaska Aleutian Subduction zone. And that's where the plates here in North America slide over the Pacific plates, is where they meet one another. And I think it runs from the Gulf of Alaska. And as we'll see, the epicenter was kind of right there on the waterfront almost.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it runs along the Gulf of Alaska to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

[Josh Clark]

Which is an island in Russia.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's basically like the worst place to live. But at the time when people were settling along Alaska, Seward, and what was the other big city that was affected by this? Anchorage, and then a bunch of other slightly smaller cities. They didn't know that the subduction zone existed. It's nothing you can walk up to and point to. This thing exists under the oceans offshore. So they didn't know, but they found out in a big way after this earthquake that, oh, yeah, actually there's a subduction zone. And as a matter of fact, the whole theory of plate tectonics is correct. This was another thing that it proved or showed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So you know, you said that that can happen really quickly. That's kind of what happens with these megathrust earthquakes. And why they're so kind of spectacular is that the speed at which it happens. And then in this case, just like, how much was moving, they said that the plates moved. They estimate between 30 to 60ft, kind of all at the same time. And that the area that moved, this is staggering, was 500 miles by 125 miles.

[Josh Clark]

Suddenly moved 60ft, like in seconds.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's just. Yeah, it's hard to believe.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And so again, like, this 500 by 125 mile chunk, Anchorage, Valdez, sorry, Valdez, Seward and a bunch of other towns are like, on that chunk of land that suddenly lurched forward. So not only did the land lurch, this earthquake just had all sorts of crazy effects, in part because the earthquake itself, 9.2, lasted for like four minutes. Four minutes of a 9.2 earthquake. Sounds terrifying and crazy destructive.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this was on March 27th of that year at about 5:36pm is when it kicked off. And, you know, when I talked about, like, how far reaching it was, here are some, like, pretty startling examples. There were water level changes registered across every United States state, except for Connecticut, Rhode island and Delaware. And when you see things like a well or a pond sloshing back and forth, like water that doesn't normally move around is being moved, those are called seash waves. And those were reported as far away as Australia and South Africa.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Can't you see some little Australian king going, pah, the pond's moving.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a good Australian kid.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I thought so, too. So those. What'd you call them? Seisch waves?

[Chuck Bryant]

I call them seash waves.

[Josh Clark]

Sich waves. Okay. So in the Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico, fishing boats sank off Louisiana because those seash waves sloshing back and forth in the Gulf of Mexico was so potent that it swamped some boats and sank them in the Gulf of Mexico, which is nowhere near Alaska.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It swayed the Space Needle. And by the way, you maybe have been reading too much German on the show, because I think it probably would be seisch in German.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Something happened. My brain, like, just ticked into just enough German that I mispronounce stuff a lot now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I may be wrong too, but. Because maybe it's a German word. I have no idea.

[Josh Clark]

Well, let's spell it for everybody and then the listeners can make up for themselves how to pronounce it. Shall we? I'll take the first letter, you take the second we'll just alternate like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

S E I C H E E

[Chuck Bryant]

E E Waves just want to get the end. Yeah, that thing rocked the Space Needle, which is about a thousand miles away, and they did, you know, geological surveys afterward. They showed some parts of the coast were close to 40ft higher than they used to be. Other parts were up to 8ft lower than they used to be. It literally changed the coastline of Alaska as much as 50ft in some parts. And this is like, you know, this is the kind of thing you think of when you think of an earthquake, like in a movie. Like, you know, train tracks getting curled up and telephone lines snapping like toothpicks and cars being sucked into the earth.

[Josh Clark]

This is the kind of thing that presents a challenge to the rock.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. Only he could save us.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Unfortunately, he was just a little tyke, if he was even born at this time, so he couldn't help anybody. One of the things that just fascinates me is that there were entire swaths of forest on the coastline that dropped into the ocean. Not like, oh, the land's caving in and all these trees are like falling over down into the ocean. The entire stretch of forest still standing upright just plunged downward into the ocean and was covered by the water. It just dropped. And that, to me, just is crazy fascinating. Like anything underwater I find fascinating, but also the idea of that happening like that suddenly is just mind boggling to me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Anything underwater is fascinating.

[Josh Clark]

Anything that's not supposed to be underwater, that is underwater.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ah, okay.

[Josh Clark]

Have you seen the Drowned House?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think so.

[Josh Clark]

It's like a found footage, but it's actually good found footage. It's an indie film where these scuba divers are exploring this house that was like, at the bottom of a reservoir. So it's now underwater. And just that alone is awesome. But the plot's pretty cool too, so I recommend it.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're going deep with your pour.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, there's just so much bad horror out there that you really have to hunt.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know, and I didn't mean that to be a pun, by the way.

[Josh Clark]

Going deep with the horror.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Underwater.

[Alec Baldwin]

Oh.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. That German part of me. I'm taking everything quite literally. There's no such thing as anything funny.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, we're going to talk a lot about the. The effects of the water because again, some pretty, like, devastating and remarkable stuff happen. I was right. It was only about 15 people were killed from the actual earthquake. Most of the people died in the tsunamis that followed.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

There was one Big one and a lot of smaller ones. I think the big one reached a wave, reached a height of about 200ft, which is incredible to think about as far south as California. Like, 12 people died in California from an earthquake that happened in Alaska.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it went southward. It also went westward, went right past Hawaii all the way to Japan. It had kind of petered out by the time it hit Japan. But, I mean, like, that's a long way for a single wave to travel. I mean, 200ft, that's just nuts, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Thing is, the big wave, it is.

[Josh Clark]

It's a giant. So with a tsunami, though, you have a really long time. You kind of have some warning after an earthquake you can expect, if you're along the coast, that a tsunami is probably coming so you can get away from that. The problem was is that all sorts of different towns and communities along the coast got swamped, like, almost immediately with tsunamis. Not 200 foot tsunamis, but still enough to wreck an entire town. And that was another thing that that kind of the science finally got to the bottom of. But in some of these tsunamis, like, for example, there's a village called Chenega, and four minutes after the earthquake, it just got washed away. There were 68 people who lived there. 23 of them died. And the only thing that survived, as far as their buildings are concerned, was the schoolhouse, which was built on higher ground, 100ft above sea level. So, like, everything else in the town was just gone thanks to a tsunami that hit like, lightning fast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I've got one for everyone here. Valdez. At Port Valdez, they were, you know, everything kind of along the coastline there was obviously swept into the ocean. 32 people very sadly passed in Valdez, and it ended up catching on fire. The oil tankers and stuff that were there, and then those were brought out to sea. So, like, you talk about a movie like oil tankers on fire in a wave being transported across the ocean.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And then one of the other problems with Port Valdez was that the town was built on sand and gravel, not bedrock. And one of the things about a megathrust earthquake is it liquefies the soil. It turns what seemed to be totally solid ground into essentially a liquid, and it can swallow stuff up, like, almost immediately. So huge parts of that town were also swallowed up by the earth all of a sudden. Like, this is biblical end times kind of stuff, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And, you know, at the risk of just going on and on, I got one more, I think, and then we can probably Take a break. But if you're talking about Anchorage, you know, the biggest city there that got, you know, in Alaska, at least, that got hit. There was a landslide. Cause it also triggered landslides. We should have mentioned that. And the entire business district sank about 9ft. There were some building collapses, to be sure, but others just look kind of like the forest just dropped, like, you know, anywhere from 9 to 20ft below. Ones that were just on the other side of the street.

[Josh Clark]

Did you see photos of that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. Life magazine has a. I mean, there's a ton of good photos online that are just kind of hard to wrap your head around, like, what you're looking at sometimes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it takes a second for sure. Like one of those 3D eye posters, but with earthquake stuff instead.

[Chuck Bryant]

We did a whole episode on those.

[Josh Clark]

We did. And if I remember correctly, that was pretty interesting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, the magic eye thing.

[Josh Clark]

You want to take that break you mentioned?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we'll take a break and talk about sort of what happened after. Right after this.

[Rebecca Nagle (First America)]

The Declaration, which is full of these beautifully rendered, you know, sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals, does also have this darker history to it.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution? Why is it important that Americans know about it?

[Rebecca Nagle (First America)]

Well, if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I'm Rebecca Naglekayatli, gay LA citizen of Cherokee Nation.

[Josh Clark]

Are you guys big Chiefs fans? Hell, yeah.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment. Listen to First America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

What did black music, food, and culture teach us about who we were becoming?

[Guest on Guaranteed Human]

2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture where we still consumed things in community.

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From Beyonce and Rihanna. Everybody wanted to be Beyonce.

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Ugh, I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna.

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

To Soul food, memory, identity, and the stories we carry through black culture.

[Guest on Guaranteed Human]

What does it mean to be black

[Guest on Therapy for Black Girls]

and eat in America? So we were this group of people who knew how to work the land, who knew how to live with the land. We make it do what it do.

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Therapy for black girls is bringing together the conversation shaping black life right now.

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[Host of Guaranteed Human]

Therapy for black girls is bringing it all to the mic. Listen to therapy for black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing. I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like composer Marc Shaiman.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbutz for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time together.

[Alec Baldwin]

Laughing Lawyer Robbie Kaplan.

[Robbie Kaplan]

The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. I mean, you can really make a difference to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time.

[Alec Baldwin]

Marriage equality.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Yeah. Windsor's the perfect example.

[Alec Baldwin]

Director Morgan Neville.

[Morgan Neville]

Film school teaches you all the wrong things about making documentary. What do you want to say? Documentary is all about your ear. What do you hear? I feel like my job is listening really, really hard.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

So four minutes later, the earthquake stops. But there's still tsunamis. There's fires at sea even, like, whole towns have collapsed. Like, it takes a little while for the dust to finally settle. When it does, I think, like, the next day, Lyndon Johnson, who was president at the time, said, Alaska as a whole is a major disaster area. Remember I said, like, telephone poles snapped and there were no roads anymore or railroads. That meant that people couldn't communicate with the outside world. So if you had family and friends outside of Alaska and they heard about this earthquake, they couldn't get in touch with you, and you couldn't get in touch with them. So it was a very hairy time for a lot of people until they could find out whether their loved ones were alive or not. And I think the damage is something like $3 billion in today's dollars.

[Alec Baldwin]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Which, again, like, this is a state with, like, a population of, I think 250,000 people at the time. Like, it was not populated at all, but that's how much damage that earthquake did still.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they had to. You know, I mentioned earlier that it changed the shape of Alaska and its coastline. It was so drastic that they had to kind of redraw the shipping lanes and say, like, hey, like, you can't go that way anymore because of this and they had to kind of, you know, redraw all of that area. Some people were, you know, Alaska strong, said, we're not leaving. We're going to build on top of where we were. Other people said, you know what? I'm going to go higher. Entire towns were gone and then popped up in other places. And Valdez is a great example because the Army Corps of Engineers came in and said, you know, Josh Clark one day will say that this was built on a gravel foundation, so you shouldn't even rebuild there. And there were only about 500, you know, plus or minus people living there at the time. And they said, you got three years to get out of here. We got a new Valdez for you about four miles away. And that's generally what happened. People left, set up the new town of Valdez, which now has close to 4,000 people, and they. They burned the rest of what was there down just to make sure that people didn't kind of like, set up and squat there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's kind of cool. You can go hike the old Valdez town. There's a intersection still of the two main drags, and I think, like, there's the street sign up still, and then they have plaque showing what used to be where. It looks like a pretty cool hike.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, Chuck, we talked about how this kind of changed science. I think we should really kind of expand on that because it really changed science, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And, you know, this next part we need to thank specifically, I think Livia used a Smithsonian magazine article by Christian Elliot for this part. So big thanks to Christian Elliott for all the hard work.

[Josh Clark]

And Livia.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, of course, in Libya, always. She's our North Star, after all. But, you know, we've already kind of said it, but I guess more specifically we should say that, you know, at this time in 1964, the idea of what we knew about plate tectonics was not, you know, entrenched. Like, people kind of had a good idea of what they thought was going on. For a long time. People had been checking out maps and saying, like, hey, I think this used to be connected right here. And maybe things drifted apart. But it was still sort of being actively debated at the time. And this really kind of like, laid bare, like, yeah, this is not a hypothesis anymore.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think that plate tectonics wasn't accepted until the 60s, but that's exactly how it was. So this was such a massive earthquake. It just presented all sorts of different places where evidence kind of came along that Said, okay, explain this. What explains this? What explains that? And it turns out that plate tectonics essentially was the only theory that fit. You know, that explained how the Earth went up here or how it sunk here, or how it moved 50ft under the sea here, or why this, you know, this town just got swallowed up. All of this could be explained by plate tectonics and not the other rival theories. I think the other rival theory was that earthquakes were God's will, and plate tectonics just explains it better.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I agree. This is obviously a gold mine for the U.S. geological Survey. So they got people to Alaska really quick and got out all their doohickeys and whirligigs and measuring tape, and we're like, hey, we can really learn a lot from this stuff. You know, people are being taken care of. So now we need to kind of figure out what happens moving forward. One of the interesting things they found, and some of this stuff gets really, really interesting. I think that popped up especially. I'll just tease out the fungus that's coming among us soon.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

But they looked at those forests that you were talking about that sunk below the ocean. They filled up with, like, sediment and seawater and stuff. And they were digging around down there, trying to just study it, and they kept digging, and they said, you know what? There's other. Like, below this stuff, we're finding older land plants. And so this has happened before, you guys, like, probably more than several times over the last, like, thousands or millions of years. And it's gonna happen again.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Can't you kind of just see, like, if you sped it up, like a forest just sinking into the sea and then being covered with sediment, and a new forest grows on top of it, and that sinks into the sea. And if you do it fast enough, that Bugs Bunny powerhouse song just starts playing like it just becomes a conveyor belt.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's just nuts to think about, but

[Josh Clark]

that's exactly what they found with that. And they found that from the Alaska earthquake. And they were like, okay, didn't know that this happened. Now that we know this is a thing, we can start looking for it in other places we think are earthquake prone.

[Alec Baldwin]

And.

[Josh Clark]

And they. They started looking around, and they found it in other places. As a matter of fact, the big one along the Cascadian subduction zone that threatens California every moment of every day. We know about that thanks to the science that they figured out. Thanks to the Alaska earthquake of 64.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It birthed a new science in paleo seismology, which Is that meaning that doesn't happen every day? We try all the time to birth new sciences and no one's listening.

[Josh Clark]

No, but we don't have cool names like Paleoseismology or Megathrust, and maybe we should rethink things. That's true.

[Chuck Bryant]

Megathrust is the sexiest science.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It sounds like a Gwar album.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, it does, actually.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Another thing was that we kind of talked about that we didn't really understand before. Were tsunamis, tidal waves? And of course, we knew about tsunamis and tidal waves, and I guess scientists kind of had a pretty decent grasp on, like, okay, epicenter of a major earthquake out at sea is going to send a tsunami, and maybe we can even calculate how long it'll take to get there and all that stuff. But they were baffled by why some of these coastal areas were hit by tsunamis within just a couple of minutes of the earthquake. It just did not fit into the understanding of tidal waves at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. So they did some literal digging and some figurative digging and they came to. This was the unique shape of Alaska's coastline at the time, where, you know, very jagged, and you'd have some deep fjords where glaciers had cut into the land that would send silt onto the ocean floor. And the quake just kind of stirred all this stuff up, like, you know, sand in a glass that had been settled down there for centuries and centuries. And these were basically underwater landslides that caused these waves. So it was, I think a new term was birthed, which was landslide tsunami.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. It's like dropping something heavy in a bathtub and pluk like that. But it's a little different. But the same thing, kind of.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And you, man, you gotta tell them about the spongus. This is hard to believe.

[Josh Clark]

This is yours. I'll tee it up for you.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, Tee it up.

[Josh Clark]

There is a mystery with some fungus. Get to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So cryptococcus. That's pretty easy. Cryptococcus gatti. Two T's, two I's. No, no.

[Josh Clark]

Cryptococcus gotti.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, gottii. That's right. Isn't that how you have to say it?

[Josh Clark]

I think so, but you have to go up really high pitched Ga Ti

[Chuck Bryant]

E. So this is a microscopic fungus. It can be pretty bad. It can cause fatal infections, but it's like, it's native to the tropics. So Alaska's like, we don't have to worry about that kind of thing.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

It grows on rotting wood in the tropics and apparently it survives pretty well in seawater. At the turn of the 20th century, apparently some of this fungus ended up among us by way of a ballast in the water of a ship that was going on route from Brazil to Vancouver and off the coast of the Pacific Northwest there. Once this stuff was spilled out of that ballast, it said, hey, we like the seawater. We're going to adapt, and we're here. You don't know we're here yet, but we're going to be here in 1964 when this tsunami happens, and it's going to spread us now far and wide, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, that tsunami took this stuff that had just been hanging out off the coast that no one even knew was there, except maybe that ship captain if he was nefarious.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And just spread it inland. This is 1964. And now all of a sudden, the fungus is like, okay, we're in a new habitat, new ecosystem. Let's get to adapting here. And it did. It survived that tsunami and started to readapt to life on land. But life on land in the. The tundra, essentially. And so as that, that stuff started adapting and adapting. By the 90s, it was capable of infecting people again. And there was this mysterious outbreak of Cryptococcus gatii. And they could not figure out what the heck was going on, because as far as anybody knew, the only place you found that was in the tropics on rotting wood. I guess. Some. Some epidemiologists kind of put two and two together based on the. The tsunami. He was like, basically the only way you could have taken this stuff and gotten it all over the land is from a tsunami. So he figured that's what happened.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it's. I just. I would love to know more about the story of how they traced it to this one ship that went from Brazil to Vancouver. You know, obviously shipping records, but it's still like quite a bit of scientific detective work.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I'm not sure if he figured that part out too or not, but I know that I was reading in that article by Christian Elliott in Smithsonian, he's talking about how the guy figured out how it got onto land, at least.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, pretty cool. All right, so we'll take our final break here, and we'll talk about maybe a silver lining that came out of this right after this.

[Rebecca Nagle (First America)]

The Declaration, which is full of these beautifully rendered, you know, sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals, does also have this darker history to it.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. Why is it important that Americans know about it?

[Rebecca Nagle (First America)]

Well, if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we. We won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I'm Rebecca Nagle. Gohin tawa dong jalaikayetli Que la citizen of Cherokee Nation.

[Josh Clark]

Are you guys big Chiefs fans? Hell, yeah.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment. Listen to First America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing. I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like composer Marc Shaiman.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbutz for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him. The time together.

[Alec Baldwin]

Laughing Lawyer Robbie Kaplan.

[Robbie Kaplan]

The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. You can really make a difference to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time.

[Alec Baldwin]

Marriage equality.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Yeah. Windsor's the perfect example.

[Alec Baldwin]

Director Morgan Neville.

[Morgan Neville]

Film school teaches you all the wrong things about making documentary. What do you want to say? Documentary is all about your ear. What do you hear? I feel like my job is listening really, really hard.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

What did black music, food and culture teach us about who we were becoming?

[Guest on Guaranteed Human]

2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture where we still consumed things in community.

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

From Beyonce and Rihanna. Everybody wanted to be Beyonce.

[Robbie Kaplan]

Ugh.

[Guest on Guaranteed Human]

I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna.

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

To soul food, memory, identity, and the stories we carry through black culture.

[Guest on Guaranteed Human]

What does it mean to be black

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

and eat in America?

[Guest on Therapy for Black Girls]

So we were this group of people who knew how to work the land, who knew how to live with the land. We make it do what it do.

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

Therapy for black girls is bringing together the conversation, shaping black life right now.

[Guest on Therapy for Black Girls]

You will never make me feel bad for being a black girl, for being a black American girl ever.

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

Therapy for black girls is bringing it all to the Mic listen to therapy for black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so, you know, anytime something like this happens, there is usually a scientific silver lining as far as just learning, you know, about things that took place, learning how to maybe not prevent in the future, but at least get more lead time in the future. And then also, and most importantly probably is like, how to build and where to build moving forward.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And the Alaska earthquake taught us. Not there. Nope. Not there either. Yeah, not there. Not there. And it just goes on like that. Right. But people were like, no, we want to build there. So one of the things that we learned how to do is, was to, number one, figure out where not to build, but also how to build so that, like, buildings just didn't immediately collapse and whole towns weren't just swallowed up at the drop of a Richter, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Alaska, as a state, started adopting, you know, obviously new building codes. And, you know, especially if it was like a big building, if it was like a. Like a large apartment building, which, I mean, I don't think Alaska has a ton of those, but, you know, larger buildings, they are now kind of neck and neck with California for having the strictest building codes, and it's worked pretty well. There was another big earthquake in Anchorage in 2018 that injured about 117 people. It was a 7.0 and caused $76 million in damages. But. And, you know, stuff got destroyed, like roads and stuff, to be sure. But no one died. There were no, like, really serious injuries. And a lot of those buildings stayed, you know, upright.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so one reason or one way that they developed those building codes and also where to build was the widespread deployment of seismographs. Right. I think in the 1964 earthquake, there are only two seismograph stations in all of Alaska, Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And the oldest one had been installed 60 years before. Right after that, they started throwing seismic stations up all over Alaska, around California, in western Canada. And we started to develop, like, more and more information. One thing I saw is that the thing that really got seismographs out there, though, was the arms race, the nuclear arms race.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

We were using seismographs to listen out for other countries secretly testing nukes, and that that's what we were using them for initially. And then people were like, huh, let's start actually listening for earthquakes. So by being able to get a lot of information about big and small quakes, how frequent they were, where they were Epicentered, we were able to really kind of zero in and come up with entire maps of where to build and where not to build. There's this National Seismic Hazard Map which is a party in a map from what I understand. And we have that thanks to this earthquake and the science that it kicked off.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I think just like less than 10 years later, there were up to 90 seismic stations in Alaska alone. And then by the mid 2000s, I think 197 sites in Alaska and western Canada. That was just over like a three year period through the National Science Foundation's US Array project from 2014 to 2017 is when they got all those. And then what we learned about, you know, tsunamis and people living along the coast, like that led to a lot of like new information as far as what was ended up being the National Tsunami Warning Center.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we definitely got way better at predicting where tsunamis would hit, how bad it would be. And one of the other things too is I guess people didn't really realize this, but if you were living on the coast, probably if you were of European descent, I'll bet if you were indigenous, you already knew this. But if you feel an earthquake, go run to high land.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because there's probably a tsunami coming within a couple minutes. That seemed to have been widely understood only after the earthquake in Alaska, which I guess makes sense if we didn't understand local tsunamis at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I think the retreating glaciers are potentially causing even more trouble as far as today goes in Alaska. That permafrost could make the land more vulnerable to destruction. I know I mentioned the 2018 one. There was even bigger one just a few years ago in 2021 that reached 8.2. But being Alaska, it was fortunately in a more remote area and so a lot less damage. That's kind of the one benefit of Alask. The reason this one was so bad was because it, it hit the towns and cities along the coast.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Exactly. For sure. Yeah. And the, the fossil fuel industry was joyous because their pipeline, the Trans Alaska Pipeline, did not suffer much damage in, in the earthquake in 2002, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean that's one of the big worries is that there's so much oil activity there and fossil fuel infrastructure that, you know, another, another big one that did a lot of damage to. That could cause, you know, big obviously human concerns, but very much could devastate the region environmentally for sure.

[Josh Clark]

And I mean in part because so the transatlantic Trans Alaska Pipeline, in this case it was the Denali fault that caused a 7.9 magnitude earthquake, the 2002 one. And that pipeline goes right across the fault. So yes, it is a very. Seems like a tenuous technology as it stands, for sure. You got anything else about the Alaska earthquake of 1964?

[Chuck Bryant]

I do not.

[Rebecca Nagle (First America)]

Nope.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. I don't either. So I guess that means it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, we're going to forego listener mail for the next couple of weeks to chat a little bit like a fireside chat.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

About our upcoming sea voyage with Virgin Cruises above the Valiant Lady. We're going to be taken to sea.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Taking and taken to sea. We're going from New York city to Bermuda October 2nd through 7th with our colleagues, our old pals, you know, that we started the stuff shows with way back in the day, a couple of which stuff mom never told you and stuff they don't want you to know will be there with us. We'll be doing a live show. We'll be doing some other stuff. They keep talking about these other events we're going to do. I don't know if it's like a trivia night or definitely like meet and greets and stuff, but we're pretty excited about it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And I think. Did you say we're going to Bermuda?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. So I think it's worth saying again, we're going to Bermuda on this and it's going to be a pretty fun five night cruise. Cruise. And I believe there's still passages that can be booked, but they're actually selling like pretty fast. I'm impressed with this, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. I'm excited. And we just found out, you know, Matt and Noel and Ben with stuff they don't want you to know, have been on one of these before and they said it was a great time and they said, here's a little pro tip. You know, the venue where we're doing our actual. The live podcast portion, you know, can't fit 2700, like everybody on board, right. And they said, hey, pro tip here is when you get on board, you sign up for the different stuff. So I think through the app. So they like tell everybody to get on there and sign up for your live show. But I think they're also like, they're gonna have cameras and you can like watch it on TV in your room as well.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, neat. Closed circuit. Is there anything more wondrous than closed circuit tv?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. We should do a show about it.

[Josh Clark]

That should be our onboard show.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. So you can go to virgin.com stuff at sea, right?

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or just Google stuff at Sea. Virgin Cruises. Stuff you should know Cruise. It'll all get you there.

[Josh Clark]

And there really is no better time to learn how to walk around with a parrot on your shoulder than this particular cruise.

[Chuck Bryant]

Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, so we'll see you guys in October. October. But even before then, we'll see you on the next episode of Stuff youf Should Know. And in the meantime, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

[Rebecca Nagle]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

[Chuck Bryant]

Foreign

[Mangesha Tekodar]

I'm Mangesha Teegular, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, Blue zoners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way.

[Robbie Kaplan]

I'd say probably start bone smashing.

[Josh Clark]

That doesn't work.

[Chuck Bryant]

To make it look more definitely fine. They say it works.

[Guest on Therapy for Black Girls]

I don't know.

[Mangesha Tekodar]

Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Michael Rapaport]

This is Michael Rapaport and my podcast, the I Am Rapaport Stereo podcast, is unlike anyone you've ever heard. If you're looking for strong opinions about sports, entertainment, politics, pop culture, and whatever else catches my attention, then subscribe now. This kid, Jafar Jackson, should absolutely, positively get nominated for his portrayal as Michael Jackson. Listen to I Am rappaport on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Rebecca Nagle (First America)]

150 years ago, they were hunting us

[Josh Clark]

down to kill us.

[Rebecca Nagle (First America)]

And now they're hunting down immigrants to deport them.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment. Listen to First America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Host of Guaranteed Human]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.