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Jon Stewart
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Josh Clark
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- [00:30]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is back at the Daily show, and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondents and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:10]
Josh Clark
Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [01:19]
Chuck Bryant
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. And we are giving up right out of the gate on our episode about the bar marathon.
- [01:32]
Josh Clark
That's right, our friend Chad. We want to shout out our friend Chad Crowley, who we've talked about before, who was the producer and director and showrunner of our TV show back in the day.
- [01:43]
Chuck Bryant
Right.
- [01:44]
Josh Clark
I got this idea from Chad because we had coffee over the holidays and he is running ultra marathons now.
- [01:52]
Chuck Bryant
Wow.
- [01:52]
Josh Clark
Which is a very Chad thing to do. Like, he starts running a handful of years ago and now is running ultras. And I was like, chad, how long is that? And he said, 60 miles generally. And I said, could you run to Athens? He said, how far is Athens? And I said, I don't know. I can't remember how far. I said, like 80 miles. He said, I could run 100 miles.
- [02:13]
Chuck Bryant
Wow. But he'd need a ride back.
- [02:16]
Josh Clark
Are you kidding? He said it might take a while, but I could probably run a hundred miles. And I'm just like, floored by this idea that people can do this. And he said, man, you should do a. I should do an episode on the Barkley Marathons, which I'd heard of before.
- [02:29]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, really?
- [02:30]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Which is this ultra Marathon Plus, a trail run plus in the mountains of northeastern Tennessee that is known for just being a crazy race, a crazy hard race, and having a really unusual origin story, an unusual founder, and just how it's all done. Just this remarkable story. And I agree.
- [02:54]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, There's a really great documentary from 2017 called the Barkley Marathon, Colon, the Race that Eats Its Young, which is a nickname for that race. And there's a few people in there who are seasoned trail runners, ultra thoners, like, people who. Who know their stuff and have done crazy things as far as running goes, who are like, this is far and away the hardest race on the planet. Like, there's nobody who's doing anything like this. And if you think you know what you're doing, you're going to be completely amazed at how far off you were and what you thought this is going to be like. It's that hard.
- [03:33]
Josh Clark
Yeah. You got a chance to watch it.
- [03:35]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it was good. And there. There was a guy who was a special operations, like, I guess a former. A special ops soldier. It was like, I've done crazy stuff with my body and this. Like that did nothing to prepare me for this.
- [03:51]
Josh Clark
Yeah, it was really well done. It's on YouTube and I recommend watching it because it really. There's a lot of drama that takes place the year that they did the documentary. I think they did it on 2012 or 2013, maybe.
- [04:07]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, was it.
- [04:07]
Josh Clark
And it came out in 2017, you said.
- [04:09]
Chuck Bryant
Okay. So, yeah, I was confused at what year it was.
- [04:13]
Josh Clark
I think it was 2012 or 2013. And there's a lot of good drama. So we don't want to spoil some of the stories that happen, but I recommend watching. And here we go with Barclay marathons.
- [04:25]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, okay. So the whole thing about Barclay marathons is that you can trace them back. I mean, you could start at the very beginning. We talked about in our. What was the one crazy marathon episode we did not too long ago?
- [04:36]
Josh Clark
It was on marathons.
- [04:38]
Chuck Bryant
No, it was on a specific marathon in, I think, Los Angeles.
- [04:42]
Josh Clark
Oh, I don't know. We did one of marathons years ago.
- [04:45]
Chuck Bryant
No, remember the guy who was running the human zoos at the World's Fair came up with. He called it the Special Olympics marathon. This was months ago, man.
- [04:58]
Josh Clark
Hey, you can't remember it either, buddy.
- [05:01]
Chuck Bryant
All right, well, I can't remember it.
- [05:02]
Josh Clark
Do you remember it existed at least?
- [05:04]
Chuck Bryant
Yes. Anyway. Oh, get this. Apparently we did an entire short stuff on Saturn's rings and didn't mention it because I have no recollection of doing a short stuff on Saturn's rings, do you?
- [05:17]
Josh Clark
I don't remember that.
- [05:18]
Chuck Bryant
You do remember. We did a Saturn episode that came out, like, a few days back.
- [05:22]
Josh Clark
I'm so mad at you right now.
- [05:24]
Chuck Bryant
Don't you?
- [05:25]
Josh Clark
We're still getting emails on that one, so, yes, I do remember.
- [05:28]
Chuck Bryant
Okay. All right.
- [05:29]
Josh Clark
What LA marathon are you talking about?
- [05:31]
Chuck Bryant
It might not be la, but it was like, just, you remember, like, that one Italian guy, I think he was running in, like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. He'd stop and eat people's fruit and stuff. Everybody. And there were the two guys from Africa who were.
- [05:45]
Josh Clark
I remember that now.
- [05:46]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it was. I can't remember where it was or what the name was. Yeah.
- [05:51]
Josh Clark
Oh, boy. People are just screaming at their pod player right now.
- [05:55]
Chuck Bryant
The sad thing is, the whole reason I brought that up, Chuck, was to say that we went over a lot of the origins of marathons in that episode. So we don't need to do that in this episode. Can you hear that? We just did all that.
- [06:08]
Josh Clark
And in our marathons episode. Yeah, anyway, let's not even do that. Marathons have been along a long time. Ultramarathon started in the 1970s, and that's what we're really talking about. And this guy, Gary Kontrell, aka Lazarus Lake, or Laz, he's in his 70s now. He is the creator, along with this friend, of the Barkley marathon, whom he named after his friend, a farmer named Barry Barkley. In the documentary Very Sweetly over the end credits, they ask with Barry why he named it after Barry. And he said, well, he used to help me with a lot of races, and I don't know, it just fit.
- [06:48]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, Barkley, he's a farmer. He's never run anything like that. And he said, I have no idea why he named it after me.
- [06:55]
Josh Clark
Yeah. So there's no real reason, but they're called the Barkley Marathons. And Cantrell has an interesting story in that he is a former athlete. He's run, supposedly over about 150,000 miles in his life, but he smokes Camel cigarettes. He just floods his body with Dr. Pepper. He's an older gentleman now and has kind of wrecked his legs from all that running. So he hasn't run for a while, but he got interested in this as a Boy Scout in Tennessee as a teenager, or preteen, I guess, when he started doing backpacking trips that he hated until he found out there is a great joy in overcoming a hardship and doing something tough physically and completing a goal and got kind of hooked on that feeling.
- [07:42]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. He also apparently really liked the idea that if he continued to work at something, he would continue to improve. And that's a big part of running. That's a big part of running. That's a big part of hiking. That's a big part of doing everything. That's hard. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, he got the bug pretty early on. He started running marathons, I think in 1966. He started running. By high school, he was running marathons. And then he started running ultra marathons. And he was there, like right at the beginning of the ultramarathon craze, which I think kicked off in 1974 with California's western states. 100 guy named Gordy Ainsley set that up. And so by this time, you know, ultramarathons were starting to catch on. And Gary Cantrell was enough of a runner that he knew of these things. But he was also married, he was starting to have kids, he had a job as an accountant. And he just couldn't travel the country to go participate in ultrathon. So he started setting his own up around Tennessee.
- [08:48]
Josh Clark
Yeah, exactly. They first took the form of what he called journey runs, which is, this all sounds fun. If I was into running, I would do something like this. But he and his friends would get together and be like, all right, let's run from Knoxville to Nashville or let's run. I love the through run. Their idea of a through run was either from Alabama or Kentucky running to the other, just straight through Tennessee. Let's run through the state of Tennessee.
- [09:12]
Chuck Bryant
Right.
- [09:14]
Josh Clark
Pretty fun idea. They were doing these. They led to some other kind of legit races. I think one of the two is still around. He called it. And he's always had a sense of humor. You can tell by the way names these things. The last annual Ball State, obviously, Volunteer State Road Race, which is a 311 mile run from Missouri to Georgia, in Missouri to Georgie. Exactly ten day cutoff time. No comfort stations along the way. You have to source all your own food and water and shelter along the way. And then another one called the Idiots Run, which I don't think is around 123 mile gravel, all gravel road run. Yeah.
- [09:59]
Chuck Bryant
That's so bad. That's just such a bad idea. Well, he called it the Idiots Run for a really good reason.
- [10:04]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [10:05]
Chuck Bryant
And that's the whole. His whole jam is like, he loves coming up with a kind of race that just is at the border between the possibility and the impossibility of human endurance of what the human body can actually do. Like, he wants it just inside of that limit so that you could, if you push yourself enough, complete this race. But most people are just not going to be able to because it's so close to impossible.
- [10:36]
Josh Clark
Yeah. I mean, many, many years. Barkley Marathon has no finisher at all. Many years. No one makes it to the fifth loop. There are four loops that we'll get into all this in a second. It's happening more and more now. I think just there are more veterans that come back that once you kind of know the deal, I say it gets a little easier. But, you know, a little easier in that it's possible to finish. It's never easy, but I think the veterans have an advantage for sure.
- [11:05]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. Because I think the astonishment at how difficult it is probably takes up a lot of your mental energy and focus while you're. While you're doing it for the first time. And that. Yeah. Once you've even tried it before and even dropped out, you probably are past that. And it's got to be a huge leg up.
- [11:24]
Josh Clark
Totally.
- [11:26]
Chuck Bryant
So we should talk a little bit about the whole. The whole basis of all this. Right. Or do you want to take a break?
- [11:32]
Josh Clark
Yeah, let's. Let's talk about where this thing's held. Right.
- [11:34]
Chuck Bryant
Okay. Well, the whole thing is held at Frozen Head State Park. It's named after. Yeah, it's named after the tallest peak in this state park. It's in northeastern Tennessee, which is kind of, I guess, where northeastern Tennessee is, where Virginia and North Carolina come together with Tennessee. It's beautiful area. This would be in the Cumberland Mountains. And this particular state park is not like the kind you just, you know, go to. Everybody goes to on the weekends for a picnic. It's pretty remote. It's 330 acres. But this 330 acre state park is surrounded by 24,000 acres of forest land. And the whole thing, I guess, started with convict leasing. So this. This area is, like, really dark.
- [12:20]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [12:21]
Chuck Bryant
You know.
- [12:22]
Josh Clark
No, totally. And if you look at, you know, they do these aerial shots in the documentary of this prison that we're about to talk about, and it's just, you know, it's in the middle of nowhere, like at the bottom of, you know, sort of a ravine and very inhospitable. I mean, you'd like to think about places like Alaska being like, you know, some of the most inhospitable places in the United States. But, I mean, the mountains of northeastern Tennessee are no joke.
- [12:50]
Chuck Bryant
No. And this area is inhospitable. Because of its terrain and in part because of the weather and the elevation.
- [12:57]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [12:57]
Chuck Bryant
But the whole reason there's a prison there is because back in the 19th century, Tennessee started making money by leasing its prisoners. Convicts to mining companies, coal mining companies. Just make a little extra on the side from forcing your prisoners to engage in hard labor. Right. Well, I think in Our Man, I need to keep a list of all of our episodes, like, handy, because I can't remember the name of it, but do you remember that one war, the Strike war in the 19th century, and.
- [13:28]
Josh Clark
I think coal mines in Matawan.
- [13:31]
Chuck Bryant
Matawan, yes. Thank you. In that episode, we talked a lot about what happened also in Tennessee's coal mines, where the labor was taking on management and it was resulting in wars. Well, one of the things that resulted out of this in Tennessee was that the laborers, the free laborers who worked for the coal mining companies would frequently help the convicts whose labor was being leased out by the state escape. And so Tennessee was like, well, fine, we're not doing that anymore. But undeterred, they just started setting up their own coal mines and using the prisoners directly instead of leasing them out.
- [14:06]
Josh Clark
Exactly. And they needed somewhere to put those prisoners or workers, I guess, prisoners. So they built a new prison. It is called Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. And in the 1930s, a lot of that land eventually became that great conservation area that we were talking about, those 24,000 acres. And the New Deal era Civilian Conservation Corps built a lot of trails. It became a natural area officially in the 1970s. But there are these trails there now, again, like you said, not like a lot of state park trails that you go to. A lot of these trails are still pretty rough. The prison stayed open. But why we're telling you all this is for a couple of reasons. One is at one point in the race, they navigate through a tunnel, like a little water channel that goes under the prison. And that's part of the race route where you're definitely gonna get your feet wet. I don't think we mentioned you're running through rivers and things. So, like, wet feet. And it's just a part of the challenge of this race.
- [15:11]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [15:12]
Josh Clark
But the prison remained open, and James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. Was sent there with six other men. He escaped in 1977 from Brushy Mountain and spent 54 hours in that rugged terrain, eventually being recaptured about eight miles from the prison and Lazarus Lake. Old Laz Cantrell heard this story, heard they made it only eight miles in that 54 hours. And he said, man, I could travel 100 miles through that terrain in 54 hours. So he invents this race sort of inspired by this. He said that he still gets hate mail every year and angry letters for people that think it's some sort of tribute to James Earl Ray. And he's like, no, it's the opposite. Like it was started. Because I'm making fun of the fact that this guy only made it eight miles and we're doing 100.
- [16:10]
Chuck Bryant
Right?
- [16:10]
Josh Clark
Right. 130. Really?
- [16:12]
Chuck Bryant
You want to take a break?
- [16:14]
Josh Clark
Yeah, let's take a break. We know the name of the marathon. We know where it takes place. We know who started it and where it came from. And we'll be back with more of the Barclay marathons right after this.
- [16:35]
Jon Stewart
Catch Jon Stewart back in action on the Daily show and in your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [17:09]
Os Velozian
Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaloshin, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.
- [17:21]
Cara Price
And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.
- [17:25]
Os Velozian
And often on tech Stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.
- [17:36]
Josh Clark
One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality. How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?
- [17:53]
Cara Price
Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity?
- [18:04]
Os Velozian
So join us, listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:10]
Katherine Legge
Hey, you guys, I'm Katherine Legge. I'm a racing driver who's literally driven everything with four wheels across the planet. And I've got a new Podcast. It's called Throttle Therapy. This season, I'm gearing up to make history, competing in some of the world's most notorious racing events, starting at the Indy 500. Join me as I travel from racetrack to racetrack in my quest to continue a memorable career in racing. I'm also going to bring you inside stories with legends of sports, new faces from the next generation of auto racing, and conversations with the people who've supported me throughout my career. We'll be getting into everything from karting to nascar, even Formula one. Whether you dream about being a pro athlete or an astronaut, we're talking about what it takes to make it. Listen to Throttle Therapy with Katherine Legge, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:06]
Josh Clark
Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
- [19:10]
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- [20:00]
Chuck Bryant
So, like you said, I think in 1977, James Earl Ray escapes and Cantrell lived in the area. He said it was big news at the time. So he was aware of this. And a few years later, he and his friend Carl Henn, known as Raw Dog, for reasons that I don't want to ask about, they decided, I think.
- [20:17]
Josh Clark
It was in 1985. I don't think.
- [20:19]
Chuck Bryant
You don't know.
- [20:20]
Josh Clark
All right, you're good point.
- [20:22]
Chuck Bryant
So they decided to hike into the state park. This is. This is a place where he's like, okay, like, we could totally do so many more than 8 miles in 54 hours. Let's go check this out and have fun. And like you said, most of this area are not nature trails. Where, like, there's signs posted, there's a path you can look down and follow. Like, these are hard to find trails that you need to know how to use a compass, a contour map. Like, all you have to. You have to be good at orienteering is what it's called. That's right. In addition to hiking and putting up with all sorts of terrible, just uncomfortable stuff and pushing your limits. So these guys were like, let's just go for a fun hike for a day.
- [21:07]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And they showed up there. There was a park ranger that was like, you guys should leave. Like, you shouldn't be out there. It's like, it's not like you think you're gonna get lost, you're gonna get hurt, you're gonna need rescue. They ignored him. They did make it through. They did an 8 mile.
- [21:25]
Chuck Bryant
They didn't even, like, note his existence.
- [21:29]
Josh Clark
Yeah, they just walked right by. They made this eight mile hike, this loop, but it took him a full day, which is, you know, you should be able to hike much more than eight miles in a day. And it required a lot of orienteering, like you said, and paying attention to that kind of thing. And he said, all right, I think I have an idea here for a race. Let's make a nearly impossible to finish race. I think it's kind of hard to tell because there's not a website for this. You can't get like historical. I mean, people have written about it since then, but you can't get like the official website documentation on this race in history, because it doesn't exist. They keep it very much under wrap. So the way he tells it on the documentary, it was always supposed to be a hundred miles, but no one ever did more than the first three loops out of the five. I think, though, maybe this first version was shorter. It was about a 50 to 55 mile course. It was held over April Fool's Day weekend, 1986.
- [22:30]
Chuck Bryant
And.
- [22:30]
Josh Clark
And the initial cutoff was 24 hours with 13 participants and zero people finishing.
- [22:37]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And this is just a 50 to 55 mile version, like you said. Officially, the current Barkley Marathon is 100 mile, when in reality it's also like 120 to 130 miles, based on reports from people who've actually run it. Right?
- [22:53]
Josh Clark
Yeah. I mean, he changes the route every year a little bit. That's why it varies. But the year they did the documentary, it was documented at 130. And everybody is like, it's not 100. Just stop saying that.
- [23:06]
Chuck Bryant
So the first version, like you said, is three loops. And it wasn't until two years after the first one that somebody completed it. And I mean, we're talking like dozens of people attempting this. And it took three times before one person finished. And there was something about this that I don't know if we've mentioned yet. Just this first version, there was an elevation gain of 24,000ft. So all of the times you went up and down, if you count all the ups, it would equal 24,000ft in elevation that you've climbed over these three loops. And that is a lot. And in fact, the guy who finished Frozen Ed Fertaw. Yeah, he was just Edfertaugh until he won. From then on he was frozen Edfertaugh. He thought that there was a misprint in Ultra Running magazine, that the elevation was actually 2,400ft, not 24,000.
- [24:06]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And I guess we can go ahead and tell everybody. The current iteration, like we said, is supposedly 100, but it's really more like 130 miles. It's got a 60 hour time limit. And the elevation is the total elevation climb over that race, if you finish it is 60,000ft, which is equivalent to walking up and back down Mount Everest twice.
- [24:31]
Chuck Bryant
Yes. Yeah. So yeah, the total elevation is 120,000 because yeah, if you go up 60,000ft and you're coming back down, you gotta come down 60,000ft. Yes, it's harder to climb up, but it's not that easy to go down too, especially if you're on an incline. And that's a big part of it too is diving into things like briar and saplings and yeah, it's, it's rough. Like just watching like the effects on some of the runners bodies and like what they were coming back to camp looking like was, oh my God. Some guy had like a head wound and they show him like slipping on rocks and hitting his forehead. It was really. It's nuts what these people are doing to themselves.
- [25:11]
Josh Clark
Yeah. I mean their legs are all. Just because these briars, they have to go through one part which is a really heavy briar area. But every single person's legs are just.
- [25:22]
Chuck Bryant
Thrashed like it looks like ground meat.
- [25:24]
Josh Clark
Oh yeah. Like disgusting bleeding. Their feet are disgusting and blistered and just riddled with. I think the one guy that we'll get to the stops, but the one guy, they were like. It would take you eight hours to fully dry your feet out. So you know, you can't. You're not gonna get dry feet.
- [25:43]
Chuck Bryant
Right.
- [25:44]
Josh Clark
Which is a big problem. And they're basically not sleeping. Right. When you complete a loop, you have what's called an interloper period where you can do whatever you want, you can take however much time you want. You can get first aid, you can eat, you can drink, you can rest, you can change your clothes and socks, you can take a nap if you want. But that clock is still running. So how long you wait is up to You, I think the winner that year said he slept about an hour total. So just try staying up and awake for 60 hours in a chair without drugs. Yeah, exactly. These people are doing this and we say it's a run. A lot of this is hiking and bouldering and walking and crawling. So it's not like they're running the whole time, but it's just brutal.
- [26:36]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it really is. One of the other things that really kind of gets us across too is in what you said. So you've got 60 hours to finish and from the start that clock's always ticking, right?
- [26:47]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [26:48]
Chuck Bryant
But you're going 130 miles. So if you do the math, Olivia helps us with this and she pointed out that.
- [26:54]
Josh Clark
Thank goodness.
- [26:55]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. You could sleep for two eight hour nights and still finish this course at a 20 minute mile pace, which you, you can basically do on your hands and knees and still complete it within the 60 hour cutoff. So the fact that some people can't even finish the first loop.
- [27:13]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [27:13]
Chuck Bryant
Goes to show you how difficult this is. That if it were flat, it would be beyond easy. But those same, those same limits, the time limit and the length put on this, this particular terrain or in this topography is just. It changes absolutely everything.
- [27:31]
Josh Clark
Oh yeah. This 12 hour time limit per loop must have come in after the documentary, right?
- [27:38]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, that confused me too, because they were finishing in like 13 hours and something like that. I didn't get that. So. Yeah, I think it must have been a new one.
- [27:47]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I think so. So finishing the three loops, if you finish three loops, that is considered a fun run and that is a designation and that is a huge accomplishment.
- [27:58]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [27:58]
Josh Clark
Just to finish the fun run. We should add, he also has a baby Barkley in the fall. The Barkley Fall Classic, which is a 50k, so 31 miles and that has about 400 runners. But only about 35 to 40 participants are allowed per year to compete in this thing because of, you know, it's out in nature. So the state won't let them have like hundreds of people, like not a ton of people can go watch. It's just like family. And I think some former winners can be there. And it's a pretty small operation because they just can't run roughshod over the area. But they have the 60 hours to complete now, 12 hours per loop. The first loop is run clockwise. The second loop, which is at night, will go counterclockwise and then again day night, clockwise, counterclockwise. And then this is pretty devious. The final fifth loop, if you get there, the first person to finish the fourth gets a choice which way they want to run. And then they start splitting people up because almost everybody runs with a buddy or two. It really, really helps to have someone out there and they're really helping each other. But at the end he's like, you're going to lose your buddy. Which way do you want to run? And the first person will say, I'll go clockwise. The next person has to go counterclockwise. And then they alternate. So at some point, if they finish that fifth loop, they're going to pass their former buddy going in the opposite direction, Right?
- [29:26]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And in the documentary, Kentrell points out, like these, by this time, these people who had like formed serious bonds by running together loops are now direct competitors. Like now it's a race because they're in the fifth loop and whoever's going to finish and what time they finish at is going to determine the actual winner. Like now there's a possible winner and everything changes. So I don't. They probably don't like clasp hands and then, you know, they're pulled apart. You know, sadly, when they have to go in different directions at that point.
- [29:58]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I think it's probably. It makes it a lot tougher. But I get the idea that if you make it, if you're one of the maybe two, maybe three, maximum four people that are even on the fifth loop, then that's when things get serious. As in that's when it turns into an actual race.
- [30:15]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, that's. That's what I took it as, too. And one thing that I didn't get, I got from context. I didn't see it anywhere because I guess it's so obvious. No one thought it needed to be spelled out except me. But it's the same loop, right?
- [30:29]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [30:30]
Chuck Bryant
Okay. So they're doing the same loop five times, which is why they do it clockwise and counterclockwise and different ones at day and night so that you can't just be like, yep, I remember this. This is nothing. Now I remember exactly what the trail is. You, you're super disoriented the first time, but it's not like you have it down pat after that first loop necessarily.
- [30:49]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And it definitely doesn't seem like it gets easier because they were finishing when they were fresh legged at Loop 1. They were finishing in about eight or nine hours for the fastest times. And then those fastest people were doing like 12 and 13 hours on the next loop through the darkness.
- [31:05]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [31:06]
Josh Clark
And we should mention the weather, you know, with these huge elevation changes, you're gonna go from temperatures sometimes in April, in the 80s where it's low, to like 10 degrees at night. They have about 100 gallons of water they put out randomly on the course. Like there are no technical water stations, but you'll just happen upon a jug of water. And Laz said that one year they were 108 pound blocks of ice because it was 10 degrees at elevation. Yeah, it's just crazy.
- [31:41]
Chuck Bryant
I say we take a break and talk about how you would get into this race and then what it's actually like running it.
- [31:47]
Josh Clark
Yeah, let's do it.
- [31:48]
Chuck Bryant
Okay.
- [31:51]
Josh Clark
This is Sys. Kiss.
- [31:53]
Chuck Bryant
Kiss. Kiss.
- [32:02]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is back at the Daily show, and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports, and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondence and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:40]
Os Velozian
Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Os Velozian, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.
- [32:51]
Cara Price
And I'm Cara Price, the other new host. And I'm ready to adopt early and.
- [32:55]
Os Velozian
Often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.
- [33:06]
Josh Clark
One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality. How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?
- [33:24]
Cara Price
Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity.
- [33:34]
Os Velozian
So join us, listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:40]
Katherine Legge
Hey, you guys, I'm Katherine Legge. I'm a racing driver who's literally driven everything with four wheels across the planet. And I've got a new podcast, it's called Throttle Therapy. This season I'm gearing up to make history compared competing in some of the world's most notorious racing events, starting at the Indy 500. Join me as I travel from racetrack to racetrack in my quest to continue a memorable career in racing. I'm also going to bring you inside stories with legends of sports, new faces from the next generation of auto racing, and conversations with the people who've supported me throughout my career. We'll be getting into everything from karting to nascar, even Formula one. Whether you dream about being a pro athlete or an astronaut, we're talking about what it takes to make it. Listen to Throttle Therapy with Katherine Legg, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [34:36]
Josh Clark
Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
- [34:41]
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- [35:30]
Josh Clark
All right, so we're back. The race is about to begin. We should point out, too, the other thing to keep in mind is if you quit, quit near the start finish line.
- [35:40]
Chuck Bryant
Right.
- [35:41]
Josh Clark
Because, like, a lot of people finish, like a loop and are like, I'm out. Or maybe the two. Or a lot of people get to that third fun run and they say, that's good enough for me. The one guy in the documentary quit and it took him 10 hours to navigate back. Because it's not like they send somebody out. You don't tap out on radio and they come and get you. You just decide, I can't do this anymore. And then you very slowly walk back to the finish line.
- [36:06]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And at some point, you might as well be like, well, at least I guess I'm going to have to finish the first loop. I might as well keep going that direction.
- [36:13]
Josh Clark
Yeah, no, totally. Or if they're. I mean, it depends on where you are. If you're below the halfway point, a lot of people come back the way they came.
- [36:21]
Chuck Bryant
Right. Yeah. So going even back before the start of the race, you said that the Barkley Marathon has no website, and that is intentional. The whole thing is meant to be kept largely a secret. There's Not a website. There's not like some information on. This is how you apply. You have to use basically your investigative skills just to figure out Gary Cantrell's email to email to ask to apply. And they make it really, really hard to apply for this because in part they're just weeding out people who don't have even the beginning of the motivation and dedication to complete this race. Like if you can't even go to this trouble to really do your research to figure out how to apply, then don't even bother trying to apply.
- [37:12]
Josh Clark
There's no website, no thanks.
- [37:14]
Chuck Bryant
Exactly. And if you do want to apply, you have to cough up $1.60.
- [37:19]
Josh Clark
Yeah, that's a non refundable application fee. I think most people send in two single dollar bills because he says they don't give change. And he every year chooses, you know, he chooses a range of people. Some of them are very experienced, some of them are random. Every year he chooses one human sacrifice that he said the runners even appreciate, even at the expense of not getting in themselves. He chooses one person that has no business being there in the year of the documentary. That poor guy made it six hours.
- [37:52]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
- [37:53]
Josh Clark
And I knew as soon as that guy headed out in his, his camouflage cargo pants, right. I was like, this guy, what is he doing? What's he wearing? So he didn't make it very far.
- [38:06]
Chuck Bryant
No, he didn't. And he was like, this is six hours, man. Like, he didn't make it very far at all.
- [38:11]
Josh Clark
No.
- [38:12]
Chuck Bryant
And this guy was way more qualified to do it than like the average person. Like, it wasn't like he was just some like he went and plopped the guy out of McDonald's like mid bite of a Big Mac and threw him on the trail. Like, this guy was in pretty decent shape and he thought that he had a chance. It's not like he's like, yeah, I'm gonna go be the sacrificial human.
- [38:34]
Josh Clark
Right, Right.
- [38:34]
Chuck Bryant
He thought like he was going to try to complete it. He didn't even. I don't even think he made it halfway through the first loop, did he?
- [38:41]
Josh Clark
No, I don't think so. No. It was pretty funny and sad. He took it on the chin like a big boy, though.
- [38:48]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, yeah. Imagine if he'd started like yelling and.
- [38:52]
Josh Clark
You just brought me out here to make fun of me a little bit more about the application process. Everyone knows it takes place generally around April Fool's Day. They send in an essay to get in with weird prompts. Like one year, it was what's the most important vegetable group. One of the women, I think she was in the documentary that year, Beverly Abs, who by the way, that year completed the fun run. So quite an achievement. She said she was told to send the application in exactly at midnight on Christmas Day in the time zone where Lazarus Lake was. So she had to figure out where he was at the time. And then she wrote a poem as her essay and she got in. And then once you get in, you get a letter that says I'm sorry to inform you that you have been accepted. Basically, misery awaits you.
- [39:44]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, that's the whole, the whole jam. The way that it's treated is like you're like you're not going to finish. You're a dummy for even trying. There's this weird kind of push pull going on that, that Gary Cantrell established basically out of the gate. That's based on his kind of impish sense of humor.
- [40:04]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [40:05]
Chuck Bryant
And so that means that like you're just as likely to be abused or mocked when you like quit as you are to be told, like, hey, you completed one loop. That's pretty good. Just in and of itself. It just I guess depends on what his mood is right then. And a lot of people like aren't, don't really like this guy that much. They like. If you don't, if you're not tuned into his sense of humor, you're probably not going to like him. You might find him obnoxious or, you know, might find him just mean. But if you are tuned into it, I think he's pretty funny. Like reading about him on paper and reading interviews with him, I was like, I don't really like this guy. And then I saw him in the documentary, I'm like, oh, okay, same. He's just hard to translate into a description. When you see him talk yourself, you're like, oh yeah, he's fine.
- [40:52]
Josh Clark
Yeah, he's one of the great eccentrics of the world. And sometimes those people are hard to pin down, you know, because they don't fit into a box.
- [41:00]
Chuck Bryant
I know, but he has to right.
- [41:04]
Josh Clark
Some other fun things. If you're a first time runner, you bring a license plate from your home state or home country and he makes these cool signs out of them and hangs them up. You have to bring a gift as well. If you are part of the race. If you are a first time runner, you have to bring an article of clothing. And the documentary was very funny. He said it kind of depends on what he needs. One year it was a bunch of White oxford shirts. Another year it was socks, another year it was flannel shirts. And then if you have finished the race and you come back to race again, you have to bring him a pack of Camel cigarettes.
- [41:37]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And the Camel cigarettes play a big role because the start of the race is marked officially by him lighting a cigarette. So everybody's standing there at this gate that's the official starting line for the race. And just standing there waiting for him to light the cigarette. And he finally does, and it's like a random time. I think it was like 8:11am when the whole thing started. And he lights a cigarette and soon everybody takes off.
- [42:03]
Josh Clark
Yeah. When you get accepted, you know what day it's gonna be on. You go, you camp out in the campground, and you're just sort of waiting for him to blow the conch. He blows a conch sometime between midnight and noon on the Saturday of that weekend. You don't know when it's coming. So if he blows it at, you know, 7:00am or sometime in the morning, you're up all night, you're not getting sleep. Cause you're so amped up and ready for this and apprehensive. Cause you don't know when it starts again. He's just sort of messing with people. And so when he decides to blow the conch, he blows the conch. That means you have one hour. And everybody starts getting ready to go. At that point, there is no prize. We should also mention the prize is just finishing this thing.
- [42:48]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. I mean, there's bragging rights for sure. Like, if you told any ultra marathon runner, trail runner, that you completed the Barkley Marathon, they would drop to their knees and start kissing your rings.
- [43:01]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [43:02]
Chuck Bryant
It's a big deal to have finished this. And yet there's also, like, from Gary Cantrell's perspective, from everything that I've read, the way that he describes it is like he's giving people an opportunity to push themselves to the their maximum possible limits. Because remember, this race is intended to be just inside the possible human. The possibility of the human body. Right.
- [43:29]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [43:30]
Chuck Bryant
So if you can complete it, like you're doing all sorts of things that you never thought you were capable of doing. Like your mental endurance is among the greatest of people walking around.
- [43:40]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [43:41]
Chuck Bryant
And so, yeah, it's a. It's way more than just bragging rights. Like, if you're. If you're into bragging rights, you're probably not even going to finish the first loop. Like, if that's why you're doing it. And you somehow got accepted. It's not going to translate. So these people don't care about bragging rights, even though they would have bragging rights for life.
- [43:58]
Josh Clark
Totally. I like that one dude, the long haired guy from Arizona in the documentary. That was his first one. He just had a cool vibe. Everyone had a pretty cool vibe. Has a great spirit of helping one another out. And during the interloper periods where they're. Which is, by the way, the only time they're allowed to have their sort of aid crew with them. Like they don't, you know, they can't get helped along the way.
- [44:24]
Chuck Bryant
Right.
- [44:24]
Josh Clark
So this is when they see other people and there's other former winners there. And when people drop out, they stick around and they're really helping people get their feet together and they're giving them dry socks and feeding them. And it's just a real great spirit of sort of camaraderie and helping one another out. It feels like.
- [44:43]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah. Because as people get pared down, the people around them are like, they want to see somebody succeed then.
- [44:51]
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure.
- [44:52]
Chuck Bryant
Pretty cool.
- [44:53]
Josh Clark
Real quick, what else? As far as housekeeping? No gps.
- [44:56]
Chuck Bryant
That's a big one.
- [44:58]
Josh Clark
They can wear a little cheap or they're given a little cheap watch. And I think they banned altimeters in 2014 or 12 or something.
- [45:09]
Chuck Bryant
Something like that. Either way you're stripped down to like the bare essentials.
- [45:13]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [45:14]
Chuck Bryant
And you have a map, but you don't have a copy of their map. They give you the master map to use to trace the route onto your own map. And if you trace it incorrectly, well, that's ts for you. And people do get lost, like a lot. There was one guy who don't remember what year it was. Oh, in 2006.
- [45:33]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [45:34]
Chuck Bryant
This guy wandered off the course and spent 32 hours trying to get back. And in the end he only was. He only did like 2 miles of the actual course. He wandered so far off course. So the way he put it, he did 16 hour miles in this race.
- [45:52]
Josh Clark
God, I felt so bad for that guy.
- [45:54]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure. And then what else, Chuck?
- [45:57]
Josh Clark
This is another. To me, this is kind of one of the coolest things because the whole time until we had gotten to this part, I was like, well, how do they know that people are running that route? Because they're not staked out along the way. In the documentary they had some people staked out a little bit just to get some footage. But it's not like they have people at checkpoints that are Making sure they're on the route and all that. He did something pretty lo fi and genius, which was he puts 10 books out, 10 to 12, depending on the year, at different points along the way. And you have to rip the page out corresponding to your bib number. And that is the proof that you ran the real route. You have to show up with, depending on how many books, 10 or 11 pages, when you touch that start finish line. And you have to turn them over to Cantrell, and he has to look them over and verify it.
- [46:44]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And I'm guessing that they are the books in the same place every time.
- [46:50]
Josh Clark
That I'm not sure about.
- [46:51]
Chuck Bryant
But I do know that they hide them. They're not just always out in plain sight. Like, one of the things you're having to stay oriented. You're having to push your body and endure. And then you're also, at the same time, having to make sure you don't trot past one of the books. So you have to backtrack and get the page out.
- [47:07]
Josh Clark
Yeah. I mean, the one guy, the year of the documentary that won and set the record, I think he said he spent a couple of hours looking for the book at one stop.
- [47:15]
Chuck Bryant
I would lose my mind, man.
- [47:16]
Josh Clark
Oh, yeah.
- [47:17]
Chuck Bryant
And also, if you're like, well, how do you get the same page 11 times? Do you get a different bib number for each loop? So you would be tearing out a different page each time.
- [47:27]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And I think there was a story just last year, in fact, there was a French runner who got to the final loop to find that a book was gone. There was a day hiker that thought the race was over and took the book as a memento. So he's like, what do I do? He completed the race, and when he got back to the gate, they had turned the book in, so they counted that.
- [47:49]
Chuck Bryant
That's awesome.
- [47:49]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [47:51]
Chuck Bryant
I read about one runner, too, who. I think this. I don't remember what year it was. Maybe 2016 or 17. He made it. He showed up six seconds after time.
- [48:03]
Josh Clark
Oh, my God.
- [48:05]
Chuck Bryant
But he had all his pages, and they said, like, he was just collapsed on the ground. And he said, I have all my pages. But he didn't make it by six seconds.
- [48:16]
Josh Clark
You know, I bet that he feels a great sense of accomplishment, though.
- [48:20]
Chuck Bryant
I would think so. Sure.
- [48:22]
Josh Clark
Like, he finished that thing. Six seconds be damned.
- [48:25]
Chuck Bryant
You know, you'd have to be one hell of a perfectionist to be like.
- [48:28]
Josh Clark
Well, I failed technically.
- [48:30]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, for sure.
- [48:32]
Josh Clark
I think there was one more piece of housekeeping here.
- [48:36]
Chuck Bryant
Housekeeping.
- [48:37]
Josh Clark
Oh, that's right. When a runner gives up, a guy named Dave Henn, who is a race volunteer, plays Taps on a Bugle.
- [48:47]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And that's Carl Raw Dog Henn's son.
- [48:51]
Josh Clark
Oh, is it? It is raw dog Jr. Yeah.
- [48:56]
Chuck Bryant
Little raw dog.
- [48:57]
Josh Clark
Or the third.
- [48:57]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. He said that he thinks the reason why is because it's just one final punishment for you from Gary Cantrell to basically be humiliated with taps. Then on the other side, some runners, when they finish, especially when they actually complete the race, he has one of those staples, easy buttons that they press. And when you press it, a voice goes. That was easy.
- [49:22]
Josh Clark
Yeah, it was really fun to watch. It was someone just, like, on their last leg, literally, like, bleeding at the legs, and he's like, hit the button.
- [49:32]
Chuck Bryant
Right.
- [49:33]
Josh Clark
Because that was easy.
- [49:34]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. The guy who was on the documentary was. I think his name was John Kelly. He finished second of two, I think, that year, or maybe three. And he. They show him and he's just totally out of it. Like, he's sitting on a chair with people surrounded, surrounding him, talking and. Yeah, yeah, he's just in another world, like, totally out of his skull because he hadn't slept at all, like, that whole time.
- [49:59]
Josh Clark
Yeah, 60 hours.
- [50:00]
Chuck Bryant
It's crazy.
- [50:01]
Josh Clark
Oh, man. The one guy that couldn't in the documentary that tapped out and was just, like, crying.
- [50:07]
Chuck Bryant
Oh, I don't remember him. Which one?
- [50:09]
Josh Clark
Oh, boy, that was tough. He had kind of dark, curly hair, and he was pretty pumped up going into it about his chances and. Yeah, I mean, what can you say about a race where, like, whatever, probably 98% of the people never finish it?
- [50:23]
Chuck Bryant
Right.
- [50:23]
Josh Clark
Maybe more. Maybe 99.
- [50:25]
Chuck Bryant
That was a. Well, yeah. So I think officially 20 out of a thousand plus people have finished. So I'm sure we have some sixth graders who can calculate that for us and send it in.
- [50:40]
Josh Clark
Let me see. Last. I'm sorry. This year, there were a record five people completed it, and that is, I think, the maximum before that may have been three, maybe four, but usually it's one, maybe two or zero. Last. I'm sorry. This year, a woman was a finisher for the first time. Yasmine, Paris or Perry. I don't know how she pronounces it. She came in two minutes short of the deadline to finish that race.
- [51:07]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. So she finished with two minutes left. Right.
- [51:10]
Josh Clark
That's incredible.
- [51:10]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah, it really is. And one of the reasons it's incredible is because Gary Cantrell, this is another reason a lot of people don't like him. For years and years and years he would say publicly, there's no woman out there who could possibly finish this race. And you know, he was criticized for saying that kind of thing because there's plenty of amazing women, marathoners and ultra thoners and trail runners. And he defended it by basically saying if a woman could defeat this, it would be exactly the kind of woman who would need to hear somebody say something like a woman would never be able to complete this.
- [51:46]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And I don't know if I'm a being an apologist, but I got the idea that a lot of that was sort of goading someone to finish.
- [51:55]
Chuck Bryant
That's how I took it too.
- [51:56]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Like deep down he's like, there's going to be a woman that's going to do this and maybe I need to stoke the fire a little bit.
- [52:01]
Chuck Bryant
Right. So finally, yeah, I think Jasmine Paris, she's a Brit who teaches at the University of Scotland. Did you say that part?
- [52:10]
Josh Clark
No, I also said Yasmine Paris.
- [52:12]
Chuck Bryant
I know, I was just gently correcting you.
- [52:15]
Josh Clark
Oh, I'm sure it was Jasmine Parry.
- [52:16]
Chuck Bryant
Jasmine Pirrie.
- [52:19]
Josh Clark
Who else? In 2024, a mechanical engineer named Jared Campbell became the first four time finisher. He's in the documentary. And an interesting just sort of side note in this and Livia pointed it out. But then when you watch the documentary it really hits home is that it seems like this race and ultra marathoning and this sort of endurance thing attracts people of very, very high intelligence. I felt like every person they interviewed were like, I'm an engineer, I'm a scientist. And they talked to, almost called him Barkley to Lazarus about this, to Cantrell in the documentary and he said, yeah, he said those are the achievers in life. Those are the people that go to graduate school and go to get their doctoral thesis and people who set hard goals and accomplish them. It just sort of fits. And I never really thought about that tie, but I don't think there's a lot of dumb dumbs that do stuff like this.
- [53:15]
Chuck Bryant
No. Although even though it's a dumb thing.
- [53:17]
Josh Clark
To do, it it's a weird dichotomy.
- [53:20]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. I say we finish on the story of John Faga Varesi.
- [53:25]
Josh Clark
All right, let's hear it.
- [53:27]
Chuck Bryant
He was a runner in, oh, I don't know what year he ran, but he was an experienced ultra marathon runner. He participated in the Badwater Ultramarathon which runs through Death Valley 135 miles. Yeah. And he was like, this is. That's nothing. I'm paraphrasing yeah. I'm sure he wouldn't say this, but he was basically like, that's. You can't even really compare the two. And he completed it. And he was so incoherent from sleep deprivation that he apparently didn't remember, like, downing a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, like, at the finish line. He had no idea that he'd done that. And he spent the next day and a half just laying around the campground, recovering. So after that time, he's like, all right, I guess I'll drive home. And he started falling asleep on the way home. So he had to stop and check himself into a hotel where he slept for another 16 hours straight.
- [54:24]
Josh Clark
Oh, man. That's called human exhaustion.
- [54:28]
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. And I say we. We quietly close the door and leave John to his slumber and go on to listener mail.
- [54:48]
Josh Clark
We. I do want to shout out the record, though. Brett Mon, who is won it a few times now. I think he's a physicist. The record, current record right now lies with Brett at 52 hours, 3 minutes, and 8 seconds.
- [55:02]
Chuck Bryant
Very nice.
- [55:03]
Josh Clark
Just incredible.
- [55:03]
Chuck Bryant
You woke John up.
- [55:04]
Josh Clark
That's right. Sorry, John. Go back to sleep. Here's your chubby hubby.
- [55:09]
Chuck Bryant
That's the best.
- [55:10]
Josh Clark
I can't find it anymore.
- [55:12]
Chuck Bryant
I can't either.
- [55:14]
Josh Clark
People say it exists. I get pictures, occasionally, emails. But it doesn't exist in Atlanta.
- [55:19]
Chuck Bryant
That's sad. What did Atlanta do to be so punished?
- [55:22]
Josh Clark
I don't know. I don't need ice cream anymore anyway. Which is the saddest part of this story. All right, I'm going to call this lake versus pond. We got quite a few emails, by the way. I want to mention one differentiator we saw said that the difference they heard between lake versus pond is if sunlight can reach the bottom. If it can, then it's a pond.
- [55:45]
Chuck Bryant
Hmm.
- [55:45]
Josh Clark
If it can't, then it's a lake. But this comes from Mark. Hey, guys. The answer, I think, depends on who you ask. But as an ambassador from the land of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota, which is technically 11,842 Lakes, perhaps I have a bit of clout. Most folks would assume the difference has something to do with size and depth. It's not quite that simple, though. According to a 2012 CBS News article, retired DNR water supervisor Glenn Yackel suggests that a lake needs to be large enough and deep enough to allow for wave action to be considered a lake that can clear vegetation from its shoreline. A pond, on the other hand, lacks this wave action, meaning its shoreline is typically surrounded by vegetation without clear boundaries. But guys, it gets even more complicated. Government agencies often have regulatory thresholds that lead to discrepancies per state. For example, here in Minnesota, with our 11,842 lakes, has fewer lakes than Wisconsin. And any Wisconsinite will gleefully point out that they have 15,000. But here's where the differences come into play. While they do have 15,000 lakes, their definition includes a body of water with an area of at least 2.5 acres. In Minnesota, our standards are higher, and to qualify as a lake here, we must cover at least 10 acres. If we lowered our threshold to match Wisconsin's, we wouldn't dare dream of it, though. We'd have over 20,000 lakes.
- [57:08]
Chuck Bryant
Wow, Chuck, I feel more lake informed than I ever have been in my entire life.
- [57:13]
Josh Clark
For real, that is from Mark, Mark said. Always pleasure to listen to you guys with my boys who are six and seven and big fans. And Mark had replied with their names and I'm very frustrated because I cannot find that reply. So let me just say Mark and sons of Mark. Thank you for the support.
- [57:30]
Chuck Bryant
Yes, and I can vouch for Chuck Mark. We just edited out many minutes of him searching for that email, so he really did give it a try.
- [57:37]
Josh Clark
Sorry guys, but they're six and seven, so maybe that's for the best, right?
- [57:40]
Chuck Bryant
If you want to be like Mark and his unnamed sons, you can write to us as well. Send us an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.
- [57:52]
Public Service Announcement Speaker
Stuff.
- [57:52]
Katherine Legge
Youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
- [57:55]
Josh Clark
For more podcast podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [58:08]
Jon Stewart
Catch Jon Stewart back in action on the Daily show and in your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [58:42]
Os Velozian
Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [59:12]
Announcer
You don't need another podcast. You've got too many already. But if you're looking for one that actually changes something, a way to take control of the chaos and find meaning, well, then, maybe the one you feed is for you. I'm Eric Zimmer, and I bring real conversations with real people to help you feed the best part of yourself. No hype, no fluff, just wisdom. That works. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.