Eco-Disasters 101: The Salton Sea

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Eco-Disasters 101 – The Salton Sea

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark, Chuck Bryant
Date: November 11, 2025
Podcast Network: iHeartPodcasts
Episode Focus: Exploring the creation, history, environmental collapse, and uncertain future of California’s Salton Sea, one of America's most striking man-made ecological disasters.

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Episode Overview

Josh and Chuck take a deep dive into the bizarre, tragic story of the Salton Sea in California. Once a shimmering oasis and major resort destination, the Salton Sea is now an ecological disaster zone—a manmade lake that accidentally sprang into existence due to mismanaged irrigation and has since lurched through cycles of boom, bust, and environmental catastrophe. This episode covers the geological history, human mishap, failed interventions, environmental collapse, and possible future (or futures) of the Sea.

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Key Discussion Points

What is the Salton Sea? (01:59–03:30)

• Chuck opens by clarifying: The Salton Sea is an inland lake in Southern California's Imperial and Coachella Valleys.
• Laughter about its name: Despite being called a "sea," it’s an inland, salty lake—a persistent confusion.
  • Chuck: “I think that’s the difference between a sea and a lake. I think a lake has no outlet to the ocean and a sea does.” (03:00)

Ancient Origins and Cyclical Lakes (05:07–08:51)

• The Salton Basin has supported large bodies of water for thousands of years, with the Colorado River occasionally overflowing and filling it.
• Josh details: Past cycles saw lakes form and vanish, including Lake Cahuila (~1300 years ago), once 26x the size of the current Salton Sea.
  • Josh: “For our European listeners, that’s larger than Belgium. ... In Australia, that’s two times the Greater Sydney metro area.” (07:48)
• The basin was made fertile by repeated silt deposits—“that soil is good stuff ... if it ever rained.” (10:10)

The Accidental Creation (Early 1900s) (09:59–13:35)

• Irrigation schemes (Imperial Canal) tried to bring Colorado River water to farms—but silt blocked the canal, and a temporary bypass was dug without proper safeguards.
• During a period of major floods and snowmelt, the Colorado River broke through:
  • Josh: “90,000 cubic feet of water per second was flowing into the Salton Sea. ... That is the size of an Olympic-sized pool ... every second.” (11:30)
• Massive engineering efforts (with Union Pacific Railroad help) finally stopped the inflow in 1907, but by then there was a giant, permanent inland lake.
• Josh: “Now we got a 400-square-mile inland sea or lake, depending on who's podcasting many years from now, right?” (12:30)

The Heyday: California Riviera (18:53–22:22)

• Agricultural runoff stabilized the Sea, making it salty ("1/3 or 50% more salty than the Pacific Ocean" – 18:11).
• The Salton Sea became an accidental paradise—teeming with fish, attracting birds along the Pacific Flyway, and turning into a hotspot for resorts, speedboat races, and celebrities.
  • Chuck: “It was just a big recreation area out there in the middle of a desert in Southern California... they had, you know, I wasn't kidding about the water skiing ... Elvis performed there, Frank Sinatra performed there.” (21:00)

The Environmental Collapse Begins (22:49–29:13)

• Salinity kept rising. Agricultural runoff poured toxins and pesticides into the lake, creating dead zones.
• Algae and bacteria blooms triggered mass die-offs:
  • 150,000 eared grebes died in a 5-month span (1991–92).
  • 10,000 pelicans died in a single outbreak (1996).
  • Infamously, 8 million tilapia died in one day in 1999.
    • Josh: “8 million tilapia died in one single day in August of 1999.” (26:01)
• Recreation and tourism plummeted. Homes were stranded as the shoreline receded, the famous North Shore Yacht Club closed, and communities became “ghost towns.”

Public Health and Social Fallout (35:29–43:53)

• As the Sea shrinks and evaporates, toxic dust from the exposed lakebed now blows through area towns, with particles laced with DDT, heavy metals, and more.
• Asthma and health effects are rising in children; a USC study is tracking the impact.
  • Josh: “Yes, this is causing asthma at the very least in little kids.” (41:51)
• Despite shrinking further—“it’s projected to lose 40% of its surface area by 2030” (29:13)—nearly 650,000 people still live in the region, many drawn by cheap housing.
• The economic toll could reach $70 billion over 30 years (43:02).

Failed Fixes and Glimmers of Hope (44:27–46:59)

• Multiple restoration plans, mostly underfunded or delayed, have failed to make a dent (e.g., the Salton Sea Restoration Fund with no funding; federal studies instead of real projects).
• Full restoration (“California Riviera 2.0”) is off the table—just creating wetlands for birds will cost $383 million, but for the first time, enough funds ($200M California, $240M federal) are on hand to do more than planned.
  • Josh: “Now ... they can actually do more than they wanted to do in their 10-year plan ... things are starting to pick up and they're starting to restore wetlands.” (45:56)

The Future: Wetlands, Lithium, the "Weird Art Zone" (47:53–51:17)

• Efforts now focused on wetlands, wildlife habitats, and mitigating toxic dust.
• The area is being eyed for geothermal energy and lithium mining—the “21st-century gold” for high-tech batteries.
• The Salton Sea area is a magnet for urban legends, sunken military planes and dummy bombs, and offbeat art installations such as Slab City and Salvation Mountain.
  • Josh: “Such a bizarre place generated some really interesting urban legends ... there’s a whole idea that there’s a Viking ship potentially under there, too.” (49:00)
• Local oddities: The Ski Inn, “the lowest dive bar in the Western Hemisphere ... 237 ft below sea level” (50:29). Artists and “weird, decrepit” communities persist.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The Salton Sea is a genuine ecological disaster. Yeah, human-made at every step of the way.”
  – Josh Clark (03:30)
• “Elvis performed there, Frank Sinatra performed there ... it was just a big recreation area ... Palm Springs by the Sea.”
  – Chuck Bryant (21:00)
• “8 million tilapia died in one single day in August of 1999.”
  – Josh Clark (26:01)
• “As the Salton Sea evaporates ... exposed lakebed ... is turning to dust that's getting blown off ... and causing all sorts of problems.”
  – Josh Clark (40:55)
• “Now ... they can actually do more than they wanted to do in their 10-year plan ... things are starting to pick up and they're starting to restore wetlands.”
  – Josh Clark (45:56)
• “My money is definitely on them lithium mining.”
  – Josh Clark (48:42)
• “Urban legends ... there’s a whole idea that there’s a Viking ship potentially under there, too.”
  – Josh Clark (49:00)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:59 – What the Salton Sea is and why it’s called a “sea.”
• 05:07 – Ancient cycles and Lake Cahuila comparison.
• 09:59 – How a century-old irrigation mistake created the modern Salton Sea.
• 13:41 – “Now what do we do with this giant accidental lake?”
• 18:11 – How and why the Sea turned salty.
• 21:00 – The California Riviera era: recreation, celebrities, development.
• 22:49 – Algae blooms, pesticide runoff, collapse of ecosystem begins.
• 26:01 – Mass fish die-offs, particularly the 8 million tilapia in one day.
• 29:13 – The shrinking sea and property/tourism decline.
• 35:29 – Toxic dust and public health crisis.
• 43:02 – $70B estimated total impact over 30 years.
• 44:27 – Political inaction and failed solutions.
• 45:56 – Finally, substantial funding for wetlands and dust mitigation.
• 47:53 – Geothermal and lithium extraction as the new economic hope.
• 49:00 – Urban legends, lost ships, Navy bombs, and weird art installations.
• 50:29 – Dive bars and the offbeat communities around the dying sea.
• 51:17 – Closing thoughts and the ongoing saga.

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Tone & Style

Conversational, inflected with deadpan and dry humor, sometimes a little silly but always rooted in research and deep curiosity. The hosts balance equal parts awe, skepticism, and dark amusement at the human folly underpinning the Salton Sea’s story.

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In Summary

This episode chronicles how the Salton Sea accidentally became California's largest lake, its bizarre transformation into a mid-century resort haven, and subsequent implosion into one of the country’s nastiest environmental disasters. Josh and Chuck skillfully blend science, history, dark comedy, and social commentary—making this both an ecological cautionary tale and a uniquely American piece of weird history. Despite the dismal present, there are glimmers of hope: belated restoration efforts, scientific study, dreams of lithium wealth, and the enduring spirit of the community and art scene. It’s a must-listen for anyone interested in earth science, environmental policy, or just a good “how did this possibly happen?” story.

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Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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. It's a little bit of a jazzy Earth Science edition, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I mean, we might as well get into it because I just told Jerry the name of this was Salton Lake. And even though it's called the Salton Sea.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is a. It's an inland lake in Imperial and Coachella Valleys in Riverside and Imperial county in California. Southern California. But. And I said, it's not really a sea. And you said, it's an endless sea. Then you said, save it.

[Josh Clark]

I said, this is gold. I didn't say save it like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, no, I mean, I'm not going to do my Josh impression.

[Josh Clark]

You just did a really mean Josh impression. Save it.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. So I guess we need to determine this. Why do they call It a sea.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, it's an inland sea. I don't know. I just know that most people call it that. I failed to go look up whether it is a sea or a lake.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, I don't think it has any outlet to the ocean anymore, right?

[Josh Clark]

No, not anymore. We're going to talk about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, that makes it a lake.

[Josh Clark]

Save it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that's. See, I nailed it. I think that's the difference between a sea and a lake. I think a lake has no outlet to the ocean and a sea does.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, good point.

[Chuck Bryant]

If I'm not mistaken, I might be wrong about that. I didn't look it up, but I.

[Josh Clark]

Think California has a lot of work to do. They need to go rewrite all their pamphlets and update their websites and all that stuff. It's now the Salton Lake.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, now all their pamphlets just say don't even bother coming here. Right to the Salton Sea. That is not California. I love California.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And the reason that they would have pamphlets that say don't come here is because the Salton Sea is a genuine ecological disaster. Yeah, human made it every step of the way. And it's got a really interesting history too. It's just a good all around topic if you ask me. Plus it was a so so movie starring Val Kilmer back In the late 90s or early 2000s I think it was early 2000s.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was okay, I saw it.

[Josh Clark]

The extra supporting character was meth.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was very methy. Yeah, I've been here by the way.

[Josh Clark]

I was wondering that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. On my big out west trip many years ago after college where I spent several months driving around with my best friend Brett. We went through the Salton Sea and it wasn't great back then, I imagine. Well, it sounds like it's even worse now. But when did we talk about this before? Was it desertification?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cause I know we've talked about it.

[Josh Clark]

That doesn't ring a bell.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I mean, so much so that I was convinced we did a whole episode. But it could have been one of our ill conceived videos that we used to do.

[Josh Clark]

That's possible too, because I think I could see us taking the angle that there were ghost towns there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

You know, maybe ghost towns there are. There's a lot of ghost towns there. As we'll see, the area was once quite developed and for good reasons. Again, as we'll see, people largely abandoned this area. But let's talk about how the Salton Sea even came to be, because that is an Interesting story in and of itself.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it totally is. It's in the Salton Basin. And that's s a L T o n, by the way.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that is a very large trough, just sort of a natural geological trough that. That led into, at one point, the Gulf of California. But there were other seas before this sea, or lakes, if you want to go that route.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The oldest I saw is that we have geological evidence of inland seas or lakes, depending on your definition, going back at least 40,000 years, and that it was almost cyclical. There'd be a lake that was there for a few hundred years, and it would dry up or flow out to the Gulf of California, and then it would happen again a couple centuries later. And the thing that made it happen was the Colorado river, which flows to the east along the border of California, Nevada, and California and Arizona, down into, I guess, the Gulf of California. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You asking me?

[Josh Clark]

I think so. So that would make the Colorado River a sea, but it flows into there, and every once in a while, there's a lot of snow melt, there's a lot of rain, and the Colorado river will flood its banks so much that a bunch of it gets diverted into the Salton Basin, forming one of the Salton Seas over time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for a while, like you said, you know, it could be there for a while. Eventually it's out in the middle of the desert, so eventually it's going to evaporate.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But as the river flowed in there, it carried a lot of silt with it, and eventually that silt gummed up the outlet so it couldn't get anywhere. So there was a natural dam that was formed. And, you know, it was, like you said, it was a lake for a long time. Sometimes it was a saltwater lake, Sometimes the heat would dry it out and evaporate it, and it would just become a dry bed once again. And it just. It was this kind of weird geological cycle. I mean, I'm sure this has happened elsewhere, but this seems particularly noteworthy for this area.

[Josh Clark]

It does. It seems kind of unique, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think so.

[Josh Clark]

There's also one of these lakes or seas. You'll like this one because they call it a lake, Lake Kahuila, which formed about 1300 years ago, as well, as geologists can tell. And it stuck around for hundreds of years, possibly up into the 1500s. And at one point in the 1500s, it flooded, so it was already there. And it grew to about 26 times the size of the Salton Sea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

Which, in and of itself, that sounds pretty impressive. But I came up with a few comparisons for some of our listeners around the world, if I may.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

For our northern listeners, that is larger than the size of Lake Erie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

For our Canadian listeners, it's four times larger than the capital city of Ottawa. For our European listeners, that's larger than Belgium.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

In the uk, that's bigger than Wales. In Australia, that's two times the Greater Sydney metro area. And for our friends In California, that's 26 times the size of the Salton Sea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. You did your homework.

[Josh Clark]

I did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is there a program that you use, like, just like Joshconverts.com?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I make like $12 a month on Webex.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's great.

[Josh Clark]

No, there's websites that says, like, they're called, like, the size of or something like that. So usually it's type in what's the size of 10,000 square miles? Which is what that would be.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is the landing page just a banana?

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

It starts from there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Where did that come from, using a banana for scale? Do you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I don't know. I never. I mean, who starts any of these things?

[Josh Clark]

Okay. I didn't know if it was something that you had kind of brought up or something, because I know this stuff. You should know army is crazy for that.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it's just an Internet thing, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, thank you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ron's doing all of that stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Good old Ron. He comes up with the best memes.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. So that was the cycle for thousands of years, depositing that silt. One of the byproducts of that is it made that soil very rich, and stuff could really grow on it if it rained ever, which it doesn't. So that was a problem, and irrigation's gonna solve that problem. So in the early 1900s, the Imperial Canal was built to say, hey, let's divert some of that Colorado river toward us so we can have drinking water and so we can irrigate this rich, rich soil that lies beneath our feet. And they completed it, and, you know, it was pretty good. But that same silt is going to keep clogging up even, you know, kind of any moving body of water. And that eventually happened to the canal, like, in a bad way not too long after they opened it?

[Josh Clark]

No, just in a couple of years. And this one clog was so bad that they were like, we're not going to get rid of this anytime soon. So they dug a bypass around it, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Which makes sense. It's smart. And they just expected it to last Like a couple of months until they cleaned that silt deposit out and could go back to the original canal. The problem was because they thought it was going to be temporary, they didn't install the proper head gates. Head gates control the flow of water in a canal. So that means that the water in that bypass was literally out of control, which was fine. They dug it well enough that under normal circumstances, the water was flowing normally. But the year after they dug that bypass, it stayed around longer than expected. And the year after, there were some genuinely abnormal circumstances that caused a huge problem for everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it rained a lot. A big rainy season. And then, you know, snow melt in the Rockies can always be a problem if it was extra and that year it was extra. Coinciding with those rains, the Colorado river swollen up again and it, you know, did what water does. It goes downriver in a. In a pretty impactful way and really overwhelmed that temporary channel that they were using to divert around the clogg canal. Yeah, it carved it. It just made it bigger and deeper and eventually it started overflowing into that salt and sink and just became one big body of water.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So essentially the Colorado river decided, I'll go this way instead. So it actually changed its course from the way that it had been going for millennia to this way directly into the Salton Sea. And it started flowing so fast that 90,000 cubic feet, feet of water per second was flowing into the Salton Sea. Right. That is the size of an Olympic sized pool. That much water flowing in every second.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And for our friends in the north, that's an Olympic sized pool.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not going to keep going.

[Josh Clark]

Well, what about our friends who like McDonald's?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I mean, if you did a Big Mac conversion, that's really going the extra mile.

[Josh Clark]

It is exactly 2,295,918 Big Macs all flowing into the Salton Sea per second.

[Chuck Bryant]

So delicious.

[Josh Clark]

It does seem delicious. But imagine them all kind of flowing at once and smacking into one another. It'd probably get kind of gross.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, pretty gross. So, I mean, that happened for a couple of years and they tried to redirect the river. It was a pretty expensive proposition. It was a pretty frantic thing. The US Government got involved, the Southern Pacific Railroad got involved. They fully sealed it in 1907, but that's like, what, three years later? And you know, by that point it was too late. They were like, all right, now we got a 400 square mile inland sea or lake, depending on who's podcasting Many years from now, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The way that they sealed it, the Union Pacific Railroad, because their lines were threatened. They're like, we better do something because these government yokels have no idea what to do. And so apparently it took two. They built a trestle across the river to install a dam made of 2057 carloads of rock, 221 carloads of gravel and 203 carloads of clay, all dumped into one spot to finally fill that breach. That's what it took. That's how big of a breach it was.

[Chuck Bryant]

How many Big Macs?

[Josh Clark]

A lot. I didn't do that one. Sorry.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's okay. Should we take a break now? Or is that a. Should we? It seems like a good time for a break.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The Salton Sea is now there. The breach has been sealed and people are saying, what the heck are we going to do with this?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we're going to water ski eventually. So we'll come back and talk about that right after this.

[Josh Clark]

Learning stuff from Joshua and child. Stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

The Limu emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating.

[Josh Clark]

It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Chuck Bryant]

Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Josh Clark]

Cut the camera.

[Chuck Bryant]

They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty. Liberty Savings Fairy underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Lately I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminium. How about the one on borderline disorder order? Better yet, birth order. Heard that one before, but it was so nice I learned it twice. Everybody listen up. Oh, it's Charles and Joshua. It stops. It stops. It stop. You should know. All right, so when we last left you, human experimentation and sort of error and rain and snow melt caused a 400 square mile, almost 35 mile long and 15 mile wide, about 30 foot deep on average lake to form in the middle of the California desert because it's where it was. Eventually, if humankind had not intruded once again, it probably would have eventually just completely evaporate like it had been doing for millennia. But like we mentioned, that soil is good stuff. So they started to build, you know, farmland out there and irrigate that land. And what do you do when you irrigate stuff? You gotta have runoff. And so they're running this irrigation water off into the lake, which basically it's like, hey, we're putting at least as much water as you're evaporating so you're not going anywhere.

[Josh Clark]

No. Yeah, that's right. So it stabilized the lake indefinitely. Just the agricultural runoff. One of the other things that the other impacts that this had because they started doing that in the 20s, is that agricultural runoff is chock full of salt, which I didn't realize, but this irrigation produces a lot of salt and that stuff is flowing right into the salton and it turned it salty. Today I saw anywhere between 1/3 or 50% more salty than the Pacific Ocean the Salton Sea has become because of all that introduction. So it started fresh water, and then because of agricultural runoff, it turned into a saltwater inland sea lake.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And because it's located along the Pacific Flyway, which is a great migratory bird route, the birds were like, hey, this is great. Now there's water here. The locals were like, we should put some fish in here. So they stocked it with tilapia, a lot of tilapia, and sport fish for sport fishing. And of course, the birds love that even more. So all of a sudden, by the 1930s, you have a sort of a brand new wildlife refuge forming such that the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service even created the Salton Sea Wildlife Refuge to protect all the stuff that was there now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So when the Salton Sea first formed, everybody's like, this is actually kind of great. This is a mistake that turned really wonderful for everybody. We turned river water into lemonade, in other words.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

There are some other weird things that didn't make it, but that were introduced flamingos, which I guess aren't that weird. But a guy introduced sea lions too, at one point, and they were accused of stealing pigs in the area. But the guy who introduced sea lions and flamingos, he had a legendary restaurant out on an island in the middle of the Salton Sea called Mullet island, which is actually just sitting atop a dormant volcano. It's very important to remember this for later. It's a dormant, but not extinct volcano. It's just kind of sitting there chilling, waiting to go up.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And you know, once you have flamingos, you're going to have people, because people want to go see those flamingos. So by the 1950s, developers had come along and turned it into what they called the California Riviera or the Salton Riviera, or Palm Springs by the sea. And it's exactly what you think. It's tiki bars, it's restaurants. Had a very Palm Springsy vibe. Like, you know, Elvis performed there, Frank Sinatra performed there. They had, you know, I wasn't kidding about the water skiing. They people yachted, people swam. It was just a big recreation area out there in the middle of a desert in, you know, Southern California. They were like, yeah, we'll take another one of these. We got plenty of people around.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And Palm Springs gets a little crowded. So now we have this beautiful inland sea lake.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. People started building vacation homes there. There were very famous speedboat races that were held there every year at One point, Some developers sunk $2 million in 1960 money into building the North Shore beach and Yacht Club, which became basically the crown jewel of the Salton Sea area. There were postcards that said, greetings from the Salton Sea. There was a Bombay beach resident who's called Postcards. They had postcards. Swear to God.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did they sell shot glasses?

[Josh Clark]

I. Yes, there was. There was a Spencer's Gifts on the Salton sea in the 60s.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

You could also get a Bitch and Grateful Dead poster and a Latoya Jackson and lingerie poster.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. She in a. Is she in a Lambo?

[Josh Clark]

I know. It's Garfield.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

So there was this Bombay beach resident, which is one of the little party towns on the Salton Sea. And it's still there. There's something like 350 people that live there. But he said, back in the day, it was like a spring break party all the time. The problem was the Salton Sea. As much fun as people were having on it, it was this ticking environmental time bomb just growing underneath their water skis, essentially, day by day. Until finally, in around the 70s, it became clear that the Salton Sea's glitz was starting to wear off and there was rotten Big Macs underneath.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you know, I thought you were going to lead in with. When you said the problem is, I thought you were going to say, is it. Spring break is not meant to last forever.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's a great one. Let's go back and edit that in just a note. Okay. There'll be no context. You'll just add it in, and then we'll leave the part where you suggested in, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

I agree. Yeah. So, yeah, things would go downhill pretty quickly. I hope we've hammered home enough that this thing just sort of appeared because of people, and it's out in the middle of the desert, and it wasn't supposed to be there, really. So obviously it's not going to rain, so that's not going to fill that thing back up. They had that agricultural runoff for many years, but as we'll see, that would end up being a big part of the problem. Developments would flood, you know, because they were building, you know, lakeside properties and stuff like that. So, you know, whenever you try to intrude, I feel like, and build a big natural thing out where there probably wasn't supposed to be one. I feel like it usually goes south like this in some way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's hubris.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, the runoff would sometimes flood the lake. There'd be so much of it, and those Developments would flood. Like you were saying. The other problem with the runoff is that it not just salt, it brings lots of pesticides and fertilizers with it. And remember that there was no outlet for this lake which made it a lake in the first place. So all of this toxic water didn't have anywhere to go. Right. It just stayed in the lake.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And anytime you have a lot of fertilizers introduced into a body of water, especially a warm one, you get algae blooms. You also get bacteria blooms. And when the algae decays, the microbes that eat it also suck up a lot of the oxygen in the water. And that kills off all the stuff that needs that oxygen. So it creates dead zones. And then even worse, that bacteria that blooms some kinds of it actually produce toxins that can do things like damage humans livers or their DNA or cause respiratory failure. So all this stuff is starting to like happen in the Salton Sea starting in the 70s and 80s. And it's just becoming clear that there's problems that are starting to brew, like literally brewing within the Salton Sea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's called eutrophication. And there are some pretty staggering and very sad statistics that we're gonna kind of run through here as far as the die off, because you know, the fish die off and then eventually because of the fish die off, the bird die off was really massive. This one is fairly staggering. Just over a five month period from December 91 to April 92, 150,000 little small water birds are called. What are those? Eared grebs?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that how we're pronouncing that?

[Josh Clark]

I was going to say grebies, but I think you nailed it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not really sure, but they're little small water birds. And 150,000 of them died over five months on the Salton Sea. Another 20,094, 10,000 white and brown pelicans died out in 1996, about 10,000 other fish eating birds. And this is the really sad one. Even though it was, I say only a thousand, that's a lot. But they were endangered brown pelicans. And apparently that was the largest sort of single die off of an endangered species to ever happen.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. And all this is going down on the Salton Sea or the tilapia, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

How about that stat?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The most eye popping stat that I've found is that 8 million, 8 million tilapia died in one single day in August of 1999.

[Chuck Bryant]

How do they figure that?

[Josh Clark]

You know, I don't know. They must have counted one in like a square foot and then multiplied it by a Big Mac or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well in this case fish tacos maybe.

[Josh Clark]

Gross.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was probably insensitive.

[Josh Clark]

What? Fish tacos? Well, I mean tilapia is good for.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't eat tilapia much, but it's pretty good for a fish taco.

[Josh Clark]

Aren't they the rats of the sea?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think so. I used to eat it more.

[Josh Clark]

I'll eat tilapia. I'm not that fancy. Oh, oh yeah, yeah, I'll eat tilapia right in front of you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I'll be dining on my Chilean sea bass.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or what was that called? It was something. Toothfish. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Didn't they read that article Patagonian toothfish? I forgot. Yeah, Patagonian, that's the real name for sea bass.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Suckers.

[Josh Clark]

So yes again I think it's worth restating. 8 million tilapia died in a single day in 1999. The previous record before that had been set the summer prior and that was 500,000 that died on a single day. So clearly things are getting worse by the year at the Salton Sea, by the time the 90s roll around.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And so I mean they were running incinerators around the clock around town because you know, the smell of fish carcass was everywhere and you had all these very sadly all these animal bodies all over the place, I guess you could call them carcasses, but I'm going to say bodies.

[Josh Clark]

So there's another, there's an explanation for this too, and it's actually pretty simple. In addition to those, the eutrophication dead zones that are produced by those algae blooms, just simple summertime heat in a really saline body of water can kill fish en masse. And that's exactly what was going on. And as the Salton Sea warmed as summer started to kind of get going and there's like 105 degree August temperatures, hot water, warm water carries less oxygen than cooler water and salt water carries less oxygen than fresh water. So when you have warm briny water, fish can suffocate. And that's what was happening. And so fish die offs are just an annual part of life around the Salton Sea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and I mean not only that, it's just losing surface area, it's shrinking. So 10% has been lost in recent years. They're projecting 40% by 2030. And when that's happening in a really salty area and all those pesticides and metals and everything that have been deposited over the years due to the agriculture all around. It just makes it more concentrated and it's just. It's a bad scene. It's getting just saltier over the years. It's getting more, you know, chock full of more densely packed pesticides and things. And they're saying that the salinity is probably going to increase another maybe three times in the next 10 years. Basically kind of taking care of anything else that might still be living there.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And just from the fact that it's shrinking too, I saw that there's houses that were built along the shoreline back in the heyday that are now like a football field away from the shoreline. Now. That's how much it shrunk. And they expect it's going to shrink another 40% by 2030. So things are getting dire here. Right? And you can kind of imagine that as things started to go downhill, tourism dropped off. And that happened exactly as you'd think that North Shore beach and Yacht Club, that was the crown jewel. It closed down in 1984 because there was a flood from agricultural runoff. And then I saw a really cool, eerie picture. Chuck. There's a drive in movie theater again from back in the day. It's in Bombay beach and for some reason the cars are all parked like they're there to see the movie, but they're all junked and abandoned. Mostly missing wheels. And they're just. They just got put there like that. And it looks like everybody just kind of left the Salton Sea mid movie. It's really cool to see. I would strongly suggest looking up that picture. I don't remember where I saw it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I'll do you even better. There's a video on YouTube because that's a very. I mean, people aren't tourism wise, they're not flocking there, but people like me and people that are the same kind of people who go to like abandoned roller coaster parks, amusement parks will still go to the Salton Sea to kind of check things out, right? And one of these videos, it's from the Gnarly Speed Shop. And I think if you just look up abandoned cars at drive in on YouTube, Gnarly Speed Shop. They do a cool video sort of walkthrough of the drive in and the surrounding area. There's this very like every picture you see of this, there's a very kind of striking old orange maverick car sitting in the front of frame because I guess it's, you know, kind of closest to the road, right? And there was graffiti on it. And I could never tell what it said from the pictures, but on the video I was able to pause it and it says, you infected me in a way I didn't know was possible. Which is very creepy. I don't know if that was like a message to a a long lost love or if it was, you know, relating to the Salton Sea and what happened there, but it's a pretty cool video. And there were boats in the parking lot too. So I don't think, like it just looks like everyone got up in the middle of the movie. I think people just went and parked their cars in this abandoned lot is what happened.

[Josh Clark]

Sure, sure. Yeah. I know that they didn't do that. It didn't happen that rapidly, but that's what it looks like. I think it's so cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, I didn't think you thought.

[Josh Clark]

That, so I remembered where I saw it. Chuck. I saw it on a slideshow on all that's interesting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Great.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so do you want to take a second break and come back and talk about how it has gotten even worse than what we've said so far?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Learning stuff from Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Support for the show Today comes from public.com. you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there. Plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account.

[Chuck Bryant]

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves risk of loss including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds in a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC crypto trading provided by ZeroHash complete disclosures [e-mail] disclosures.

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[Josh Clark]

Limu Emu and Doug Here we have.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

[Josh Clark]

Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Chuck Bryant]

Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Josh Clark]

Cut the camera. They see us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates Excludes Massachusetts. Lately I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminia. How about the one on borderline disorder? Better yet, birth order. Heard that one before, but it was so nice I learned it twice. Everybody listen up. Oh, it's Charles and Joshua.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, Chuck. So the Salton Sea has really gone downhill. There's no denying it. People have decamped from there. Not just vacationers, but people who live there too. Just moved away because it's gotten so gross. We didn't mention it. But one of the things that happened, I think, I don't remember what year it was, there was a sulfur dioxide cloud that wafted basically all across Southern California, all the way to Los Angeles. And it stunk like rotten eggs. And they traced it back to the Salton Sea. It was all of the decomposition of all the muck, all the dead fish, all the everything. It was so bad that you could smell it all over Southern California. So this is the state that the Salton seasons people are like, we need to do something about this. And for years and years, starting in the early late 90s, early 2000s, the idea was let's just restore it to its former glory. And that idea became a non starter essentially for the next couple decades because that's just a bad idea. You can't do it now. It's too late. But it took a while for the California government to figure that out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we'll talk about a bunch of the stops and starts over the years. In 2003, the water districts of Southern California signed off. There was this deal that they had been negotiating for years called the Quantification Settlement Agreement, or the qsa. And basically what they were trying to get done was say, hey, let's once again take some of that Colorado river water. And the stuff that they had been using for irrigation is now being redirected to, like, you know, a lot of the area was then built up into more urban areas in the Coachella Valley and, like San Diego. And they're like, well, we want that water now.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And in exchange, those areas would say, all right, now what we're going to do is pay the farmers there a lot of money to upgrade their old equipment. It was really inefficient irrigation equipment. The newer versions won't have nearly as much waste water. And so they're like, let's, let's do a trade off here. We'll pay you to upgrade your stuff, and in return, you give us a lot of the water that we need.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So the, the problem as far as the Salton Sea is concerned, that agricultural runoff, remember, was keeping it going.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So since there's less irrigation runoff, because these irrigation techniques have been vastly updated, there's no, not really any agricultural runoff coming and feeding the Salton Sea any longer. And part of that quantification settlement agreement was we need to take some of this water that the Imperial Valley farmers used to use and feed it into the Salton Sea for 15 years.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They even paid the farmers to leave some of their land fallow so they could direct that water to the Salton Sea. In retrospect, that seems like total madness. They were essentially wasting all of that water, but it actually turned out to be pressing, even though they didn't quite realize that it was a good thing for there to be water there until we figure out what to do.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's sort of like leaving the water on in your tub with the drain slightly open.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And just being like, we're just going to leave the tub of water on for 15 years so we can keep this body of water.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, but your tub you got from an abandoned house and it had. It has bath water that's a hundred years old and full of pollutants and algae, and you're just running your water into it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So it's a horror movie tub.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, exactly. That's exactly what it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So you might be asking, like, hey, if this thing wasn't supposed to be there to begin with, if the whole idea of a body of water out in the middle of the desert, like, that is just going to dry up naturally. Like, just let it dry up naturally. And, like, what's the big deal? One of the big deals is that there's still a lot of biodiversity there. It's not like it killed everything. It seems like that eventually might happen, but it's still a habitat. It's still a migratory stop for birds on that fly route. And it's because Southern California has been developed so much, a lot of the other natural habitats for them have gone away. So the Salton Sea was as sad as it was an oasis for them. Almost.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Yeah, that is sad. Because if the Salton Sea is the more attractive option because that's all that's left, those poor birds are in trouble. Yeah, it's not just the birds that are in trouble. There are people that still live around there. In fact, I was really surprised to find the Salton City, which I believe is the biggest town along the Salton Sea. It's on the northwest shore. Their population actually increased since the 2020 census by almost 1,000 people, which are like a thousand people. Who cares? Well, they were less than 6,000 in population at the time of the 2020 census. So people are moving there because the housing is so affordable. It's insane. So there's people there. There's. There's. In the whole region, there's something like 650,000 people. And all of those people are at tremendous risk right now of a cornucopia of health hazards that are starting to develop because as the Salton Sea evaporates more and more and more because the runoff isn't sustaining it anymore. And it's so hot, that exposed seabed or lake bed that's so chock full of toxins that you can barely look at it is turning to dust that's getting blown off into the surrounding areas and causing all sorts of problems.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, asthma. They've already found an uptick in asthma. There's a. A doctor named Jill Johnson, a PhD, who's an assistant professor of preventative medicine at Southern Cal, and she's working on a research project called the Salton Sea and Children's Health Assessing Imperial Valley Respiratory Health and Environment and the Environment, along with partner shore Farzan, another PhD, and they're basically following elementary school children in that area and are seeing how their health is advancing. And right now, pretty bad asthma rates. And they haven't proved causation yet, but it seems like it's probably headed that way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, apparently they just like this month, published an article on their findings from this in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. You know, that rag. And it basically is like, this is. Yes, this is causing asthma at the very least in little kids. There's all sorts of other stuff to worry about too, because there's metals, pesticides, DDT has been found in there. There's just so much crud in there that now that it's drying up, is turning into dust and getting carried as particulate matter that you don't, you don't want to breathe that stuff in. And yet it's just blowing around because again, now that's turned into desert. But it's toxic desert.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that's, that's just like health issues. There's also like a financial impact. There was a study about 11 years ago or so from the Pacific Institute. They're a think tank in Oakland that deals with water policy. And they said the financial toll could be as much as $70 billion over the next 30 years. Like property values, like you said, going south, public health, which we've mentioned, the continued loss of recreational revenue and natural habitat. So there's a big financial burden. So, you know, obviously because of that, California over the past like, you know, 25 years has had various stops and starts with funding for different projects that'll get approved and then the money just gets diverted or never shows up.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And especially before that 2014 study from the Pacific Institute, people are like this. $8 billion seems like a little much to restore the Salton Sea. One of the reasons why is because the area that the Salton Sea is in, the people who live around it are fairly low income. It's a very rural area. And a lot of the people who are affected live in Mexico. So back in Sacramento, the capital of California, which is pretty far away from the Salton Sea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

The political will just hasn't been there. And one of the things you could do if you were a senator, a congressperson, a governor, you could fully go after a bunch of funds to save the Salton Sea and remediate the area and get it back to its former glory. And then your legislature would say, no, we're not funding that. And you'd be like, oh man, I tried. And that seems like what the pattern was for the first, like about 20ish years, maybe a little more than that, that people started coming up with ideas to, to do something about this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Gray Davis, when he was governor in 2003, signed the Salton Sea, sorry, Restoration act and the Salton Sea Restoration Fund but that didn't receive funding. So a fund without funding is not a fund. No, just like a sea without an outlet is a lake.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Yes, absolutely.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. In 2007, the Corps of Engineers, the Army Corps of Engineers got authorization to spend up to 30 million on projects. The money was finally appropriated in 2015 and the Obama administration spent a couple of hundred grand is all on a study, another study even.

[Josh Clark]

That was the 30 million. That's what it turned out to be. From what I can tell, it went from $30 million to $200,000. And it was for another study. Isn't that crazy?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, none of this though is going to make any difference. I mean, even a $30 million thing or. I think there was one plan. Yeah, a 10 year Salton Sea plan to cost 383 million. But that's not even for restoration because like you said, that ship has sailed. It is a multi, multi billion dollar thing if they want to get this thing back to the California Riviera. So it doesn't seem like that's just ever going to happen. It's not even possible.

[Josh Clark]

No. So now they're looking at restoring parts of it to turn it back into wetlands for birds. And that 10 year plant, it was estimated to cost $383 million just to do that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it looked like it was just going to be another, another pie in the sky proposal that would never get funding, but California came up with something like $200 million of that. They're under Gavin Newsom. In the last couple of years, there's been huge crazy movements compared to what had been done the last couple of decades. And California came up with $200 million. Out of nowhere, mind bogglingly, the federal government chipped in another $240 million. 245. So now this project that needed 383 million has almost half a billion. So not only are they now on the Salton Sea saying like, you know, when are we ever going to be able to do anything about this too? We can actually do more than we wanted to do in our 10 year plan, the things are starting to pick up and they're starting to restore wetlands. And it actually looks like it's going to not be quite the ecological disaster that it would have been had California just sat on its hands.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think between 2003 and 2016, just a few dozen acres of the wetland were restored. Since then, about 2,000 more. And the Species Conservation Habitat Project has a plan over the next decade to restore another 9,000 acres. So that'd be like roughly 12,000 acres of restoration, which is pretty good. They also think that, you know, it's Southern California, so it's a moneyed area in general. Not that exact area. But they're saying, like, hey, we can. Like, we've got this great land there that we can make money off still. Remember that mullet island that's on the dormant volcano? That means there's some hotspots there. And so some people are saying, hey, let's put a few billion dollars toward a geothermal electricity plant or maybe mine some lithium.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. I believe they're already building the plants there. And then the lithium, I don't know if they've actually started that, but there's a lot of lithium there. And that is like 21st century gold, because you use that in batteries for electric vehicles, for giant batteries to back up your power grid. And there's a push and pull over whether to lithium mine there. And of course they're going to end up lithium mining there because it's just so valuable. But some people are like, it's already an environmental catastrophe. Who cares if lithium mining makes it a little bit worse? It's better than mining in a more pristine area and really screwing that up. And other people are like, no, we're trying to restore it. So lithium mining is going to not only undo that stuff, it's going to make it even worse than it was. But my money is definitely on them. Lithium mining.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

There's a couple other things that are noteworthy about the Salton Sea. I guess we can leave that part that there's actually hope for it right now. But along the way, like you can imagine, such a bizarre place generated some really interesting urban legends over the years, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Some of them are actually true. The Navy used to use the Salton Sea to. To drop test bombs or dummy bombs to basically train their bomber pilots how to drop bombs. And they actually supposedly practiced for atomic bomb drops. And they are. So there's dummy bombs under the Salton Sea still. And of course, locals are like, that's just a cover story. They actually lost an atomic bomb, and that's what's hiding there. There's an undetonated atomic bomb under there. There are a bunch of Navy planes that did crash. I think 18 flyers died over the years. But there's 24 planes sunken in the Salton Sea right now. And then there's this one really weird legend that predates the Salton Sea. There's. It's the lost ship of the desert. Have you ever heard of that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Never heard of it.

[Josh Clark]

Well, it's apparently this legendary lore that there was a. Anything from a Spanish galleon to a Viking ship that sailed up the Gulf of California and eventually got stuck and that turned into desert and the ship was swallowed up. And some people are saying it was actually in the Salton Basin, which is now underneath the Salton Sea. So there's this whole idea that there's a Viking ship potentially under there, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's a great dive bar, the Ski Inn.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's in that video. They go to Ski Inn and play creepy old piano and have some beer.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They call it the lowest dive bar in the Western hemisphere because it's 237ft below sea level, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Right there at. I don't know if they still call it Bombay beach or if they took that name away, but Bombay Non beach, because a beach without water is not a beach.

[Josh Clark]

Right. There's also. It's attracted a lot of artists, too. Like, Slab City is essentially a taken over military installation. There's a folk art installation called Salvation Mountain. There's another whole, like, outdoor gallery called East Jesus, I believe is what it's called. So there's a lot of art that's being made there that's kind of turning it into a really neat, weird, decrepit art place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, that's it for the Salton Sea, everybody. We'll have to keep an eye on it and see what happens. And in the meantime, I think it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, speaking of art, before I read listener mail, I want to give a plug to dear old Ben, our comrade here at Stuff youf Should Know, our colleague. He is a producer, along with Jerry. And Ben is a musician, Ben Hackett. And he put out a great piece of art. He put out a record called Songs for Sleeping Dogs not too long ago. And Ben's awesome Songs for Sleeping Dogs is great. It's this very vibey instrumental. I think you dig it, actually. And so. Yeah, go. Go check it out.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wherever you get music. Basically.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Ben is probably our most beloved Stuff youf Should Know Member, because he's just so cool and chill and nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Whoa.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Say that in front of Jerry.

[Josh Clark]

Mm.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. All right. Listener mail time. We've got a couple over the next couple of episodes on MTV and VH1 because we got great response. And it was also another one of those weird things where we did an episode and then something in real life happened. And we had no idea that when we did our MTV episode that, like the next week MTV would fold, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's music channels. It was just one of those strange stuff, you should know things that happen.

[Josh Clark]

Sometimes I didn't quite understand. So, like, it was just its music channels. I didn't know that it had any music channels left.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think we talked about that, that there was still some music happening. Well, Jerry just buzzed in and said it's just in Europe, so I don't know what to believe now.

[Josh Clark]

Well, they definitely did something. And it was right after our episode for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. All right, so this is about mtv. Hey, guys. Hoping that you would touch on this, especially toward the end when Josh is talking about the social impacts of mtv. But I'm talking about the MTV cut. Before mtv, the average shot in a film or television show lasted an average of 8 seconds. And the MTV cut whittled that down to 2 seconds. In college circa 2000, it was called the MTV cut. Now the MTV cut is the norm. You'd be hard pressed to find a show that stays on one shot for eight seconds consistently anymore. I wonder if people changed or if the MTV cut changed people. And the way we watch, I believe.

[Josh Clark]

I'll bet that's one of those things where if you saw it now, you'd be like, wow, this is really weird. And not quite put your finger on why, but it'd just be almost unsung. Settling to see an eight second cut, maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, I remember people talking about like, quick cut because of music videos. Like, it was a thing. That is from Chris Singleton, who is an ops manager for Independence Rock Media.

[Josh Clark]

Very nice. So Chris knows what they're talking about?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so.

[Josh Clark]

Well, thanks a lot, Chris. That was very interesting and we want to hear from you too. If you've got anything interesting to say, you can email me. Yeah, you can. Yes. We want to hear from Bono and the Edge and the other guys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, boy.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

Adam and Larry. Come on.

[Josh Clark]

There you go. Thank you. I could have come up with those given a couple of months for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, if you want to be like the band, you too, you can email us@stuff podcastheartradio.com Stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 shows. Support for the show Today comes from public.com. you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got Core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account.

[Chuck Bryant]

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds in a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provided by Zerohash complete disclosures [e-mail] disclosures.

[Josh Clark]

And now superhuman Shaq I.

[Chuck Bryant]

Keep telling them not to say that. I'm no superhuman. Believe it or not, I struggle with moderate obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity. Moderate to severe OSA is a condition where breathing is interrupted during sleep, with loud snoring, choking, gasping for air, and even daytime fatigue. Let's just say it could sound a lot like this. Sound familiar? Learn more@don'tsleeponosa.com this information is provided by.

[Josh Clark]

Lilly, A Medicine company.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey audiobook lovers, I'm Kalpen.

[Josh Clark]

I'm Ed Helms.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks. From audible, listen to Earsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Earsay and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today. This is an iHeart podcast.