Selects: When Mount St. Helens Blew Its Top

Mount St. Helen's is a lovely sight to behold, but was a pretty scary thing to be around in the Spring of 1980. Listen in to the harrowing story in this classic episode! See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:02Josh Clark?

  Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's S Y S K Select, I've chosen our January 2023 episode on the Mount St. Helens eruption. Seems like just last year. It's a really good episode that's packed with science, action, adventure, heroics, life and death danger. It's got it all. It's one of my favorite episodes, so I hope you enjoy it as well.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:43Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and sitting in for Jerry today is our great friend and co-producer Dave C. And the C stands for cool.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Say hello, Dave. Hi, everybody.

• 1:57Josh Clark?

  That's a really great Dave impression.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  He's a troll.

• 2:02Josh Clark?

  Yes, I always hear him as.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Uh, Dave is great. I wish you all knew him, but we do, and so he's ours.

• 2:11Josh Clark?

  You're gonna have to take our word for it.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:14Josh Clark?

  Speaking of take our word for it, Chuck, I have to say to all the people who don't know much about Mount St. Helens, prepare to have your socks knocked off.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Or your lid blown.

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  Or your skin seared off of your, your muscle.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a good one. This is a, I mean, this is so bread and butter stuff you should know.

• 2:33Josh Clark?

  It is.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  I don't know why it took us almost 16 years to get to it.

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  And none of that margarine stuff or low fat. It's like full milk fat butter.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 2:42Josh Clark?

  Bread and butter stuff you should know.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Salted butter even.

• 2:46Josh Clark?

  You like salted, huh?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on what you're using it for.

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  I like just plain unsalted butter, even on a bread and butter piece of like bread with butter.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, mainly with like baking and cooking. It's like, that's when it matters.

• 2:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I got you. Um, what's your brand?

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Oh, boy, it depends. Uh, I mean, I love to get the, I hate to be that guy, but I do love to get the local butter when we go to our farmer's market and get it from our CSA.

• 3:12Josh Clark?

  What's wrong with that?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. People, oh, Chuck, can't just say Parquet, can you?

• 3:17Josh Clark?

  Right. You must be a social justice warrior. You buy local butter.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  I do like that. Uh, what's the stuff, the Irish butter in the grocery store?

• 3:24Josh Clark?

  That's my brand. Kerrygold.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Kerrygold. That's good, too.

• 3:29Josh Clark?

  Like, I've, I've researched it. Like, I've literally researched butter, cause I wanted to get the most bang for my buck. And it is at the top of basically every list.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  It's good.

• 3:39Josh Clark?

  Of like any butter of any kind. It's really, really good butter.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I totally agree. I love Kerrygold. I take that stuff camping.

• 3:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I carry it around in my pocket.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Well, I like that you can get a, a tub. It's a smaller tub, but I do like a spreadable tub as opposed to a stick.

• 3:54Josh Clark?

  I haven't seen the tub. We have a stick because we have a cute little butter dish that we use, so we have, we use the sticks. So anyway, back to Mount St. Helens. The episode today, I was four years old when this happened, so I mean, I didn't know what was going on. But I imagine you were like, holy cow, this is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on my TV.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was nine and I remember it being a big deal, but it's funny when I was researching this and then watching. There's a really, really great thing on YouTube that I recommend that A and E put out. Years ago, it had to be, it was called Minute by Minute, colon, uh, the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Really gripping stuff as A and E used to do, you know, they probably still do that kind of stuff, but.

• 4:42Josh Clark?

  I don't know.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Um, all of the media around it, I was thinking like, man, and I don't know if it was more regional or if it truly was nationwide, but I remember the eruption. But I didn't remember like the six weeks leading up to it, which was a very big deal.

• 4:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, although I think it was more of like a, yeah, a regional thing for this, the lead up. And then also if you were a geologist, a volcanologist, a seismologist, anything that had to do with volcanoes erupting or mountains. Then it would have been a big deal to you too. And it definitely attracted them from far and wide. And because there was so much warning, um, and it was able to, and by it, I mean, Mount St. Helens was able to kind of draw to it like a magnet. All of these amazingly well-trained researchers, um, they were there when it went off. And it's probably the most best documented volcano in history because of that.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, cause like you said, they, Mount St. Helens is basically saying, it's coming, everyone. Would you like to document this?

• 5:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  I'm telling you again, it's coming.

• 5:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Uh, and I'll show you in lots of different scary ways that it's coming. And people left, people stayed, people came there.

• 5:55Josh Clark?

  People laughed, people cried.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Like tourists came to see this thing, so.

• 6:01Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Let's get into it.

• 6:03Josh Clark?

  Okay, so just a real quick refresher. We've done volcanoes and I think we've done supervolcanoes too, because that sounds like us.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, 2010 was volcanoes, 2017 was supervolcanoes.

• 6:17Josh Clark?

  Okay, so we talked a lot about how volcanoes work in those episodes. So if you want to know a lot more in depth, go check those out. But just as a refresher for the specific kind of volcano that Mount St. Helens is, it's a stratovolcano and it's created when one younger plate is subducted under an older plate. And as the younger plate goes down into the bowels of the earth, all of the rock it carries with it gets heated up. Same with water too. And that stuff travels upward because it's less dense than the surrounding mantle down below. And as it gets closer and closer to the crust, it wants to pop out of there.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:54Josh Clark?

  But it can't necessarily. Sometimes it can, and when it can, it just spews out all sorts of molten lava and that builds the volcano in a kind of a cone shape, which is what Mount St. Helens was up until May 18, 1980.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a part of the Cascade Arc arranged there in the Pacific Northwest. And all of this happened in, you know, geologically speaking, pretty quickly.

• 7:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  It happened over the course of about 40,000 years in the case of Mount St. Helens, which is pretty speedy. And Ed helped us out with this. We did a great job on this article. And Ed points out that, you know, in the Pacific Northwest, that's why you see so many, you know, sort of coney mountains like that.

• 7:36Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Is because of this Cascade Arc and how these mountains were formed, you know, not too long ago.

• 7:41Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, 40,000 years ago, maybe less.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  40,000 First St. Helens, and I think the whole arc is less than 100.

• 7:49Josh Clark?

  Right. So the whole thing that's driving Mount St. Helens, and apparently also, there's some other. I guess volcanic mountains in the area like Adams, I think Mount Adams is one as well.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:03Josh Clark?

  There's a, there's a magma chamber somewhere under there. I think possibly miles and miles below the surface, but under normal circumstances, like I said, when a stratovolcano is formed, the, the lava just kind of is able to find cracks in the crust and like it's, it's released through there and it builds the mountain up slowly and slowly. But if there's not a crack in the crust, as in the case where Mount St. Helens is, that magma starts to back up. It hits the crust and it starts to back up below and all of a sudden you have a lot of stuff going on that makes things go kaboom when the, the right set of circumstances happens.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, this is pretty notable. Uh, this magma chamber is, uh, well is and was quite large. And like you said, it's, it's looking for a place to go, but if it doesn't have a place to go, what'll happen, and as you'll see, this is what happened in the case of Mount St. Helens, is it starts bulging and like the mountain, i- if you're a geologist, it's super exciting to see this happen, um, even though it's very scary and dangerous. But when a geologist sees an actual mountain start to bulge out in a direction, and we're talking, you know, hundreds of feet of bulge over the course of a pretty short period of time, then it, it's pretty like, uh, it's, it's a pretty notable thing. And that's exactly what was happening in the case of the magma chamber there in, uh, in Washington.

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like this pressure is building up so much, it's causing a boil on the mountain.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:30Josh Clark?

  The mountain grows a goiter, basically, and that's just full of pressure and magma just waiting to go off. It doesn't always go off. And in fact, uh, Mount St. Helens had two bulges, also called crypto domes, which is pretty awesome, um, from previous volcanic eruptions. One was called Goat Rocks Bulge, um, and then the other one was called the Sugar Bowl Bulge. And they just never, like the, the magma found its way out other ways, but the bulge was left. This is a new bulge and like you said, it was growing, I think about six feet a day, every day. It kept growing another six. Six feet, which is really fast for a mountain to grow. Uh, and that was one of the big signs initially that that something was going on.

• 10:15Josh Clark?

  And and one more thing before we start to get into um, Mount St. Helens itself, Chuck. Think we need to say like, Mount St. Helens was big. It was a big eruption, but it was not the biggest eruption Mount St. Helens has ever had. Apparently, the biggest eruption it's ever had came just about 4,000 years ago, which is within um, traditional like folk tale memory.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it had been an active volcano for 40,000 years, but the big one before 1980 was uh, yeah, like you said, for I was trying to look at a specific year, but let's just say 4,000 years ago.

• 10:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Because once you get back that far, you know.

• 10:53Josh Clark?

  Who cares?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Who cares? Uh, but it became, like you said, part of folklore, uh, the indigenous people there, uh, especially the uh, Puyallup people called the mountain Loewit, L O O W I T. And there is a Loewit Brewing Company, so I wanted to shout them out. This is one of those things where uh, I thought, I wonder why? Because there's been such a push to change names of things over the past like decade or so. This is one that was, it seems so like, sort of egregious that we should call it Loewit and not Mount St. Helens.

• 11:30Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  That I'm I'm pretty curious. I'm sure there's been pushes over the years to get it changed, but the Europeans, of course, named it Mount St. Helens in 1792, uh, after Captain George Vancouver, if that name rings a bell, it should, uh, gave the name of it because of a diplomat named Alan Fitzherbert. Uh, didn't call it Fitz Herbert Peak or anything like that.

• 11:53Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Uh, because his noble title was Baron St. Helens.

• 11:56Josh Clark?

  Thank God.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Uh, but here's the rub is that Alan Fitzherbert never even saw Mount St. Helens, the mountain named after him. So like, I don't know, maybe, maybe let's call this one Loewit.

• 12:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think that's a great idea, actually. And the reason they call it Lewitt, that was, she was named after a, like, a famous volcanic fire tender woman. And Lewitt and a couple of other men who fell in love with her and fought for her, became, Lewitt became Mount St. Helens, or Lewitt, if you want to call it that. And then the other, the other men who were fighting for her became Mount Hood and Mount Adams. They were smited by the creator god and turned into mountains for fighting. And there's legends, not just from the Puyulup, but other indigenous tribes around the area, that something really big happened and it, it looks like what it is is a geomyth, which we've talked about before, and I think the Great Floods episode.

• 12:53Josh Clark?

  That's been handed down generation after generation that describes this enormous eruption 4,000 years ago.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Pretty good stuff.

• 13:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And it was a big eruption, too. There's just one other thing. There is a layer of tefra, of basically volcanic ash and debris and stuff, that is so thick and so wide, it goes up into British Columbia. And 62 miles away from Mount St. Helens, it's still 20 inches thick. Almost two feet thick of ash, 62 miles away. That's how big that 4,000 year ago eruption was.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  That's huge. And all this to say that Mount St. Helens, which has an S, by the way. Did you know that?

• 13:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I did.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  You keep saying Helen, I just wondered.

• 13:38Josh Clark?

  I'm, I'm being short, because I don't want to take up too much time talking about certain things.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Oh, that's good. That reminds me of the guy in college who fell on the sidewalk and his books splayed out and then he acted like he was reading.

• 13:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I love that story. Forgot about him.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  All this to say is that Mount St. Helens had been, you know, had a long history of activity. So it's not like anyone ever thought, well, well, that thing is done and it's never going to happen again.

• 14:06Josh Clark?

  No, definitely not. Because also in the 19th century, there was a lot of eruptions, too. There's a painting by a Canadian artist named Paul Kane, who painted an 1847 eruption. So, I mean, starting in the 19th century, Mount St. Helens was documented pretty, pretty clearly scientifically, too, as, as being an eruptive volcano, a disruptive volcano, you could almost say.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  All right, shall we take a break? Yeah, that's a nice prelude.

• 14:36Josh Clark?

  I think so, too.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be back right after this.

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• 18:22Speaker 02

  Okay, so we got a nice background on Mount St. Helens. It had been very active for about, or on and off active for 40,000 years, including, I believe the last sort of big one was in 1857. Not too long after that, in 1908, about a million acres of land became part of Columbia National Forest, which was hence renamed Gifford, Pinchot or Pincho, I never know how to say that.

• 18:49Josh Clark?

  The Bronson Pincho National Forest.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  National Forest, and that was in 1949. And Mount St. Helens is inside that national forest. All this is sort of a long way of saying it wasn't like super populated, it didn't have, wasn't surrounded by neighborhoods and suburbs and stuff like that.

• 19:06Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  But there was something, or is still something called Spirit Lake there, near the base of the mountain, which is, they have like youth camps there, people had cabins here and there, there were recreational activities that all over the place. So it's not like no one was there, but it wasn't heavily populated.

• 19:26Josh Clark?

  Right, well put. So, um, the whole thing starts, actually even before the whole thing started, and I saw in 1975 that two volcanologists published a paper, um, saying that it was very likely Mount St. Helens was going to erupt in the 20th century at some point, like a big one.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:44Josh Clark?

  And five years later, on March 20th, 1980, the whole thing was kicked off by a 4.0 earthquake, which is nothing to sneeze at. And it was at the mountain, like this earthquake took place at the mountain. And all of a sudden, within five days, there were quake storms. There was 24 quakes of 4.0 or greater within eight hours.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 20:07Josh Clark?

  When a volcano starts doing that and you're detecting it, you, you, that's when the geologists come running from far and wide.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they, you know, the word gets out, and they did come running from far and wide, and they, you know, set up camp there at various places, uh, other, just sort of, um, as I learned from watching this, uh, A and E special, that, um, there are like volcano chasers even, that, um, they hear about this stuff, they're fascinated by it, I guess it's just sort of amateur geo enthusiasts. And people started kind of coming in there because they got wind that something may be brewing at Mount St. Helens, uh, including, and this is, you know, there are all kinds of people we could feature story-wise, but, uh, one gentleman we are going to feature, his name was David Johnston, uh, and he was a volcanologist at the USGS, the United States Geographical Survey.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  And he was one of the, um, there were some great interviews with him in this A and E special. He was, he's a very young guy, um, super excited to be there, and he was one of the ones kind of sounding the alarm, uh, along with his partner, this guy named Don Swanson, about, hey, like, you know, the S is getting real here, everybody, and it, it looks like thing, like, people need to start leaving.

• 21:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like, the thing is, is there were the people who did live on the mountain were not the kind of folk who listened to like, you know,

• 21:28Speaker 02

  The government.

• 21:29Josh Clark?

  Pencil neck college boys.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:30Josh Clark?

  Or the government to be told like, leave your home. And then also, there was those youth groups that were like, you're gonna ruin our week at Spirit Lake.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:41Josh Clark?

  There was also Weyerhauser.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  They're hoping to get to first base.

• 21:44Josh Clark?

  Exactly. It's like a roller rink over there.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:48Josh Clark?

  And then there was Weyerhauser, who had a contract to be able to log on the, on the mountain. They definitely didn't want to have to shut down operations. So there's a lot of pressure, a surprising amount of pressure, you know, more than you would think, to keep the mountain open. And David Johnston and Don Swanson and some of the other colleagues were like, you really can't do this. And they managed to convince the governor of Washington that it was the right move. And then later on, as we'll see, there was even more pressure to reopen because things didn't go as fast as everyone thought. And they managed to push that back as well. And as a result, David Johnston is frequently credited for saving thousands of lives, potentially, which is pretty cool.

• 22:29Josh Clark?

  I mean, and everything I've seen about him, he was a genuinely great person and also like a really great pioneer in volcanology, too.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they did eventually set up what they called a red zone. And a lot of people did evacuate. There were some notable people who didn't. Certainly, we need to mention Harry Truman. Obviously, not the president, but he was this old codger who ran the lodge there and he became a folk hero because he famously thumbed his nose and stayed and said, you know, I'm a part of this place. It's a part of me. If the mountain goes, I'm gonna go with it. Art Carney played him in the movie version. He was, he got a lot of media attention, along with this 16 cats, which is the only

• 23:19Speaker 02

  part of the story, like, hey, man, I'm all for people evacuating, keep people safe, but I'm also like, If some old, old, uh, mountain man wants to stay up there and go, go down with the volcano like,

• 23:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  That's his right, but send the cats away. Don't say like, I'm gonna go down and kill these 16 cats at the same time.

• 23:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's kind of like being buried in like, you know, medieval times and having your live horse buried with you.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, I don't know, man. Once I heard about the cats, cause I was all into this guy.

• 23:49Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  And then I heard about the cats. I was like, oh dude, you should have at least sent the cats away.

• 23:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no way. Not, not a lodge codger.

• 24:02Josh Clark?

  So, um, Harry Truman will come back in. This is Harry R. Truman, by the way. Everybody said his middle initial to differentiate him.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:10Josh Clark?

  He'll come back in later. But so this, the last thing that we, that happened on the mountain, March 25th, in eight hours, there's 24 4.0 or greater magnitude earthquakes, and that brought everybody running. This whole thing was so perfectly planned that on the day of the eruption, there was the, um, mineral and gem show in Yakima, like, I think less than a hundred miles away from Mount St. Helens. So anybody who has any, had anything to do with geology just happened to be in the area or was purposefully in the area.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:44Josh Clark?

  And then on March 27th, it's just getting more and more and more. There was an actual eruption, right?

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this was, uh, I mean, compared to what eventually ended up happening, you could call this a sort of mini eruption. Uh, even though it sent, it made a big boom. Uh, apparently it was a pretty cloudy day, so it wasn't super visible, but the ash column went up 6,500 feet into the air.

• 25:08Josh Clark?

  It's nothing to sneeze at.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  And a new crater formed at the summit, uh, which grew to about 1,600 feet wide. So it was a major thing. There was another one on the 28th, again, throwing ash into the air. And this is like, basically from that point through the big one in mid-May, it was just constant, uh, warning, constant upheaval, mudslides, avalanches, craters growing. And like, the mountain is saying like, it's gonna happen, people. This is not a false alarm.

• 25:42Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Uh, until things calm down, and that's what you were talking about early, like, things kind of settle down on, uh, what was that like?

• 25:50Josh Clark?

  May, around the 15th.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, around the 15th of May to where the people. Got antsy that we're evacuated and said, hey, listen, we want to go back and check on our stuff.

• 26:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  And the governor eventually was like, all right, I think it, you know, at the time, and I think Washington still is a little bit of one of those like, uh, not quite live free or die, but you know, like, all right, listen, these people pay taxes, they want to go back to their homes. Sign a waiver that you're not going to sue us and let them go back there. And that's what they did.

• 26:19Josh Clark?

  They did. There's footage of them signing waivers on the hood of a car with some obvious state lawyer in a three-piece suit, like handing people a pen and being like, sign here. It's really hilarious. But, um, they did. They started, some people started to trickle in. Um, and that's actually why there were, you know, I think, and we ended up with 57 casualties, 57 people died. And that was one reason why it was actually that high. Could have, could have been less, but people were allowed to trickle back in. They still kept like a perimeter, but I think it was kind of porous. If you wanted to get through, you could get through. And there are stories in that minute by minute

• 27:00Josh Clark?

  episode of people, there's this one backpacker who is probably hilarious at parties because he makes like a funny, a funny voice for the police when the police is talking, when he's recreating a conversation he had.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was funny.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  Um, he, he's, he snuck through with friends. There are a lot of people on the mountain that otherwise might not have been had they kept it closed, but they did open it up a little bit. And it was because nothing had happened for a little while. And then about three days later, everything happened. You said, you said S was getting real. This is when the S hit the fan.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, well, I mean, just prior to this, I guess, let's, let's back up one half second and let you know about what happened with David Johnston and Don Swanson. They had moved from their initial base at Coldwater One, which was about, uh, I think eight or nine miles away, uh, to their second station, which was called Coldwater Two, which is about five to six miles from the mountain. Um, and notably it was on the northeast side of the mountain, which, uh, turned out to be the wrong spot to be. Um, but you know, these guys knew what was going on. Uh, they know it's a dangerous job. And apparently they were swapping, um, taking shifts. And Don Swanson got the call from Johnston and he said, hey, listen, I've got tonight and tomorrow. If you come and relieve me the next day.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  And then on May 18th, 1980 is when, uh, Johnston was there when everything went boom.

• 28:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I think there have been other colleagues and grad students and everything around Coldwater too. And Johnston sent him away. He's like, this is outside the red zone. It's still potentially dangerous. There's no reason for more than just one of us to be here at a time. So you guys go. So at 8:32 a.m. on May 18th, 1980, Mount St. Helens like blew up. And there's like, a typical idea that people have of a volcano going off. And most of the time, it's shooting like a huge thing of ash and magma straight into the air from its top.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:58Josh Clark?

  But that is not what happened with Mount St. Helens. Mount St. Helens was a very specific and unusual type of eruption, because it didn't go out of the top. It came out of the side. And it came out in what was known as a lateral blast eruption.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, like we said earlier, that pressure is building up a lot under the surface. There's a lot of moisture down there. Some of it was, like you mentioned, from that initial plate subduction. That's called magmatic water. Some of it is just regular old groundwater from rain and snow and everything, because it is the mountains. That's called meteoric water. And all of that stuff is just heating up. It's got pressure from below, because it's heating. It's got pressure from above, because all of that weight of the rock is just pushing it down.

• 29:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  And all of this magma is just, like, boiling under there. But, and I know we talked about this before, I guess it was in one of the volcano episodes, but it's not allowed to turn to steam, because there's no room for it. Like, steam is expansive, and it can't expand. So it's just this superheated, beyond the boiling point level of liquid, that's just distributed all throughout the the upper half, and notably, sort of the north side of this mountain.

• 30:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and that created that bulge that kept growing by about six feet a day.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  That was so scary.

• 30:22Josh Clark?

  It is. Because like, it's as violent as you can imagine that a bulge, something that can make a bulge on the side of a mountain would be.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:31Josh Clark?

  And so, under, under other circumstances, a, a, a Pliny eruption where, where a volcano explodes out of the top, like you typically think of, that pressure, that magma is going to basically force the top of the mountain open, and that's how it's going to explode. This is not what happened with Mount St. Helens. That kind of, um, I guess the hump was on one side, it was on the north flank, wasn't it?

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:56Josh Clark?

  So it was on the north flank, and the thing that kicked off Mount St. Helens eruption wasn't the volcano, it was actually an earthquake in the volcano. And that, that vol- that earthquake caused the largest landslide in recorded history on Earth. More than half of a square mile of Mount St. Helens suddenly vanished away. It just suddenly dropped off the side, the north side of the mountain.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, um, like, you should really go check out the footage of this stuff. It's some of the most amazing, like, natural geologic disaster footage I've ever seen. Just to see this mountain, and then the, you know, especially in the A and E thing, to see people interviewed, uh, describing, like, seeing this with their eyeballs, that was, it was just like, it was incomprehensible what they were witnessing, like, a mountain that large, and, and part of it just going away immediately.

• 31:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and one of the reasons they were able to witness it, and we have such great documentation, is because at 8:32 a.m., a pair of geologists, husband and wife geologists, happened to be flying in a plane.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:02Josh Clark?

  Because they'd hired a plane to go look at Mount St. Helens, because they'd heard that, you know, it was, there's some stuff going on. And they happened to make one more pass right as the mountain, that earthquake dropped the side of the mountain. They were, like, right above it in a plane, as a matter of fact.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's, where's your quote? Should we read that?

• 32:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Uh, this is Dorothy, uh, Dorothy Stoffel, uh, in 2019, she said, "The whole north half of the mountain that we were flying just 500 feet above began churning, and a mile-long fracture shot across the mountain, faster than our minds could absorb. The north half of the mountain just became like fluid and slid away."

• 32:40Josh Clark?

  Amazing. I saw somebody else describe it as like a zipper opening along the mountain.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and you know, there, there were amateur photographers around for some of this stuff, um, some of these hikers like that guy you mentioned that was telling the story in funny voices.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  And volcano chasers, like, they got some, some, like, some, one guy got like 22 pictures in a row, and this is when it eventually blew. The other guy got like six or eight pictures. There was a family, uh, camping with their two young daughters.

• 33:10Josh Clark?

  Oh, man.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  And that guy, they were, you know, on the north side, um, you know, well below it, but, uh, you know, within the range. And he was like, you know, speaking to how it didn't blow from the top, he said, it looked like somebody shot a shotgun

• 33:24Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  out of the side of this mountain, pointed at us. So ash, ash was raining down, but it was raining like at people and less down from the sky.

• 33:33Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. It wasn't going up and then coming back down. It was coming straight at you if you were anywhere north of the mountain.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:40Josh Clark?

  And the reason why the north of the mountain was so dangerous is because that's where that hump had been. That's also where the earthquake moved a good portion of the mountain, which meant that all that pressure that was keeping that pressurized, superheated water from boiling under the mountain was suddenly exposed. It was, that pressure was gone. And so all of that incredibly hot water flash heated into steam. And when that happens, that expands. Like you said, the reason that, one of the reasons steam can't exist in that situation is because it's too expansive. When it does have the chance to expand, uh, it, it does so with incredible force.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:22Josh Clark?

  And that's what happened. That's why Mount St. Helens blew out the side rather than the top, because there had been a weakening in the pressure that allowed all that to just blow out. And blow out it did.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was, um, If you look at it, it looks almost like a controlled demolition blast or something.

• 34:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  It definitely doesn't look like any kind of volcano blast that you might think of in your head. It happened kind of all at once, and it was a 24-megaton blast, which I know everyone always tries to compare it to like Hiroshima. It was 1,600 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

• 35:02Josh Clark?

  Good lord. But I mean, that's what it would take to move 0.6 square or cubic miles of mountain all of a sudden, too, you know?

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:11Josh Clark?

  And that blast, Chuck, that 24-megaton blast, it was described as like a fast-moving cloud of heat and stones, moving at some points pretty close to the mountain, 300 miles an hour. Heated to like 660 degrees Fahrenheit, I think that's like 380 degrees Celsius, just blowing northward away from the mountain. And everything within eight miles of that, of the mountain, was in that blast zone. And if you recall correctly, David Johnston's Cold Water 2 camp was within about five miles.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, he obviously didn't make it. They found, I think they found pieces of his trailer like a decade later. He had time to send out one signal, which was over his radio, "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it." The only person to pick that up was a ham radio operator nearby. And they renamed that area Johnston Ridge in his honor. Obviously, Harry Truman perished along with those 16 cats. And he was close enough to where I saw that, they said that he and everything around him was basically instantly vaporized. Like, he wouldn't have felt anything. It would have happened, his death and vaporization would have happened in like less than a second.

• 36:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I have the impression the same thing happened to David Johnston and also that ham radio operator who was volunteering to kind of document it. He documented David Johnston getting covered up. He said, "Gentlemen, the camper in the car that's sitting over to the south of me," he was talking about David Johnston, "is covered, is going to hit me too." And that was Jerry Martin, that ham radio operator, and that was his last transmission. He was vaporized as well, essentially. Everything, everything, north of the mountain, within eight miles, was just destroyed, just destroyed. Like entire hundred-foot trees that were like ten, twelve feet in diameter, just

• 37:20Josh Clark?

  completely flattened and also denuded of any bark on the way as well. And this was just a blast. The landslide that was created from the earthquake that initially triggered the eruption, that had some incredible effects as well.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, because what you've got, you know, beyond this avalanche happening is you've got, all of a sudden, all this heat happens in a place where there's a lot of snow. So that snow melts, all that glacier ice melts, and you have flooding and you have mudslides. And you have a word that I had never even heard of before Ed included it in here, which was laharr, which sounds like just a mudslide on steroids.

• 38:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Like a mudslide carrying ammunition with it.

• 38:05Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  And this is just raining down everywhere and like causing a path of destruction that hasn't been seen in like modern times in this country.

• 38:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was like, it had so much power, Chuck, that slide did, that one part of it was carrying chunks of rock as big as 558 feet or 170 meters across.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 38:29Josh Clark?

  That's as big as a 50-story building. It was moving rocks that size.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Holy cow.

• 38:35Josh Clark?

  Just fast as you can imagine down the mountain into the valleys. And I saw it described as, if you were watching it from a ridge, as some people were, like far away, you would see the cloud or the debris starting to come at you. It would disappear into a valley and then all of a sudden it would come up over the ridge and keep going. It was just filling valleys with rocks and debris. It's just, it's unimaginable.

• 39:01Josh Clark?

  Trying to grasp what happened. And it's even crazier that some people are actually there watching this happen.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 39:09Josh Clark?

  It is crazy.

• 39:12Josh Clark?

  You want to take a break?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll take a break and talk a little bit more about the after effects. Right after this.

• 39:32Josh Clark?

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• 39:50Speaker 02

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• 40:05Josh Clark?

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• 40:17Speaker 02

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• 40:39Josh Clark?

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• 40:52Speaker 02

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• 41:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus it's built with a durable aluminum chassis weighing just 2.2 Two pounds and Intel Core processors, so it's fast, reliable and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. And while shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, premium support and financing with flexible payment options. Plus you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now for less. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities with XPS.

• 41:35Speaker 02

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• 41:48Speaker 02

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• 42:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so you're worried about package theft. Well, the ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  And here's the best thing, there are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there either. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors.

• 42:24Josh Clark?

  Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 42:52Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  It was good arrival, anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 43:19Josh Clark?

  That includes Field Services Manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  Through with Alan's whole crew design, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 43:34Speaker 05

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  What the fans experienced is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 43:42Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 44:02Josh Clark?

  Okay, and we're back. And as Chuck promised everyone, it's After Effect time.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Well, we talked a little bit about it. Obviously, Spirit Lake, which we mentioned at the beginning, which was at the base of the mountain, has a very strange effects on bodies of water. It did two things. It made the lake larger, but it also made it shallower because it just flooded all this water down there and raised it such that the outlet was basically dammed up. And so the lake got a whole lot bigger, but it reduced its depth by about 80 feet. I think five years later, they built a spillway tunnel to control the depth of the lake. 200 homes and cabins and about 200 miles of road and railways were completely obliterated.

• 44:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I also saw that lake was now 200 feet higher in elevation than it had been before. As if, like, there was so much debris, it, like, raised the lake 200 feet, even though it also made it shallower. It's nuts.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  And I think it lowered the ultimate height of Mount St. Helens, right?

• 45:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I can't remember. I think by like 600 meters or something like that, some ridiculous amount of height, just blown off. And that was another thing, too, like the after effects of it. If you look at Mount St. Helens today, or especially like right afterward, it turned into like an amphitheater.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:26Josh Clark?

  Like, the north side was blown out and the other sides were kind of curved around. And what was neat is one of the huge after effects of Mount St. Helens, one of the more positive ones, is I saw it described as like a crash course for volcanologists and seismologists and everybody, who are now just had this amazing natural laboratory to study in. And that the eruption, because it was a lateral blast, opened up like a basically a cross section of the mountain that they could study now its past history from the inside out, which I thought was pretty neat.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  And a young Trey Anastasio said, "One day I shall play at the base of that amphitheater."

• 46:03Josh Clark?

  Oh, did he?

• 46:04Speaker 02

  And bore people with noodling on my guitar.

• 46:08Josh Clark?

  Did he? They played there?

• 46:09Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so. I don't think there's anything there. I was just kidding.

• 46:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow. That was just completely made up.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I never will miss a chance to take a ticket fish.

• 46:17Josh Clark?

  I'm with you.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  So, ash is raining down and out. It literally darkened the skies. When this ash, if you were close enough to it, it would literally burn you alive. If you're far away, it can just create a lot of problems. Everything from, you know, just equipment not working, electrical outages and blackouts and brownouts. Visibility is obviously terrible. As far as crops go, certain crops were wiped out by this ash. And the toxic gases, some of them did a little bit better because they just got a little bit of the ash in it. Ash will help promote rainfall and hold moisture in the ground better. So apparently wheat crops and apple crops fared pretty well.

• 47:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was surprising.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:05Josh Clark?

  I also saw there was a lot of devastation. Any, any big game animal in the blast zone was.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:11Josh Clark?

  I said, big game animal, by the way, was, was in the blast zone, was, was killed without question. But they were, they were very surprised. Biologists who went in to investigate shortly afterward found there were like entire communities and ecosystems of smaller animals and plants, microbes, fungi, that had survived just fine. And were among the first to recolonize and were part of the reason why, um, Mount St. Helens ecosystem started to rebound so quickly.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  I mean, that's what'll happen, right? If, if, if the earth ever just burns up into a fiery ball, that'll just become a big mushroom field, right?

• 47:49Josh Clark?

  Probably. And then the animals that lived underground will come above ground and say, it's our time, baby.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  I look forward to that day for some reason.

• 47:59Josh Clark?

  Um, what else happened? Oh, I saw that the ash cloud that, that, um, that blew finally out of the top. We should say that the lateral blast was followed by a plenian blast. And that shot, like, you know, that was the money volcano shot that everybody was looking for. A plume of ash and smoke rose 80,000 feet into the air. And it was moving so fast that it circled the globe in 15 days. Came back to square one in 15 days. And of course, that was like affecting air traffic. Do you remember that Icelandic, uh, volcano that affected air traffic in Europe for like weeks? Weren't you stranded by that or something?

• 48:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:38Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 48:39Josh Clark?

  Okay. Um, it, it, like, they knew what to do in part because of how, um, Mount St. Helens affected air travel. At the time, they were like, this is brand new to us. Um, but it, it helped lay the groundwork for understanding what to look for, how to deal with that kind of stuff later on.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the other thing I wanted to point out too about Spirit Lake was if you look at footage of the lake and now these kind of rivers that were just happening. And it literally like rerouted, you know, the Columbia River and the Cowlets River in sections. But it looks like, it looks like a logging operation is happening.

• 49:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  And like you could almost, and may have been able, well, obviously it would have been too dangerous, but it looks like you could have walked over these logs. They were so like packed and these were just trees, you know, an hour before.

• 49:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, if you could do that lumberjack log rolling thing.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:35Josh Clark?

  You could have probably made it across the lake.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Probably could have.

• 49:38Josh Clark?

  But there in that minute by minute episode, there was a pair of like high school sweethearts who'd been camping.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:44Josh Clark?

  And they had a harrowing experience because they both got thrown into Spirit Lake. And the boyfriend was able to rescue the girlfriend as like the logs were starting to close in on them. He pulled her out from the lake and they were hanging on to logs when they finally made it out and were rescued. That happened, like that happened to somebody.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were in their car.

• 50:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, is that how, that's how they got in the lake? They were in their car?

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they said it just picked them up and all, they were driving and then they were floating. And they said that they're, you know, they're, she said like, my instinct was to get out of the car, but there was like nowhere to go.

• 50:18Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah, because there were trees everywhere floating around beside them, right?

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is, you know, these are just sort of, that's what was so cool about the special is it really brought in the human element of these people that were around there.

• 50:31Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  And they, you know, they all survived because they were being interviewed, obviously. Dorothy Stoffel, who was the geologist that was flying with, I guess it was her husband, Keith, or was that her brother?

• 50:44Josh Clark?

  Her husband Keith.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Okay. They survived that plane flight, like they got out of there. There were stories of people that literally, it was like from a movie, drove, you know, 110 miles an hour, like outrunning this ash debris slide coming at them.

• 51:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and some people didn't make it. So there was one guy who was chronicled in that that was driving as fast as he can and the blast just caught up with him and buried him in the ash. And he probably died pretty much instantly. But like, again, that happened to people. There's very famous footage of a house just flowing down like a newly engorged mudslidey river.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:29Josh Clark?

  Moving so fast that you probably could have towed water skiers from the house, essentially. It was moving that fast just down the river. So, I mean, again, it was one of the most documented volcanic eruptions of all time. So there's really amazing footage on there, or just on the internet is what I mean. But that wasn't the last time that Mount St. Helens has erupted. I think it erupted a few times between 1980 and maybe 1996, I think.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:00Josh Clark?

  And then the biggest one recently was between 2004 and 2008.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it started sort of getting a little more active again. This time, though, you know, one of the things that, to the benefit of the surrounding area, when a volcano blows like that is that pressure is released. And it's going to take a long time to build back up to that level again, kind of depending on what, how it reforms on top of it. But this time, apparently, there are, there are more ways for this pressure to be released. So I think it's just sort of the pressure's being released a little more gradually since the 2004.

• 52:37Josh Clark?

  That's my impression, too.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  But there, they do say that like, oh, no, like, it will happen again. Like, things are, there is a new lava dome growing and the pressure is going to build up and it could be in a thousand years, or it could be in 10 years.

• 52:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we just don't know.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  No, but they are studying it like there. There's a lot of active research and study going on at Mount St. Helens now.

• 53:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I believe, you know, the eruption was such a big deal that they they've opened. The USGS opened a research station nearby. And also that 2004 activity basically ran from 2004 to 2008. Like you said, they've been studying the mountain closely. So there's amazing time lapse footage of those four years. And it's astounding how fast and how big Mount St. Helens just grows from that eruption activity. It's called Time Lapse Images of Mount St. Helens Dome Growth. It's on YouTube and I recommend checking that out as well.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would just be careful when you Google dome growth.

• 53:45Josh Clark?

  Or bulge growth.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 53:48Josh Clark?

  So, man, we are so juvenile sometimes, aren't we?

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 53:52Josh Clark?

  And by we, I mean me.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  No, me too.

• 53:55Josh Clark?

  But like we said, Mount St. Helens bounced back. Spirit Lake opened back up and the Coldwater Two Station has been renamed after David Johnston. And there's an amazing memorial, too. I saw on some TripAdvisor posts that somebody said it was like the one of the best. Like not welcome center, but you know, information centers that the person's ever been to. So I would like to go there someday.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Cookies are unreal.

• 54:21Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 54:22Speaker 02

  I got nothing else.

• 54:23Josh Clark?

  All right, go forth and research Mount St. Helens with a nest. And you can start doing that by watching Dante's Peak. Since I said Dante's Peak, it's time for listener mail.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  This is following up on an email that you particularly liked from our Spooktacular.

• 54:42Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Hey, guys, thoroughly enjoying the most recent Spooktacular. The accents are comedy genius. Meagle, do you want to pop in and say hi?

• 54:51Josh Clark?

  Hello.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Perfect. I'm gonna bring Miegel back every now and then, by the way. Just want to prepare you and the audience.

• 54:58Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  I wanted to address a couple of 1800s diction issues that call some puzzlement. When you guys talked about toilet, it's basically what Josh said. I've always thought of it as a refreshing, as freshening up in the bathroom, washing your face and hands when first waking up or going to bed. I double-checked with Merriam-Webster, though, and it's more generally dressing and grooming.

• 55:18Josh Clark?

  Okay, that makes sense.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. On the other hand, the strangers in the beverage from the Toll House is a lot more puzzling.

• 55:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it is.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  I had no idea what it meant, and although Josh's guess that beverage meant the pub was clever, it doesn't really make sense. Just as a reminder, the sentence is talking about some men drinking tea in an inn and pausing to, quote, "discover the sex and dates of arrival of the strangers which floated in some numbers in the beverage," end quote. I think I found the answer, though, guys, in a dictionary of Scottish dialect. We love this stuff, by the way.

• 55:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is amazing.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Tea leaves floating on the surface of your drink are considered omens that you'll meet someone new, so these tea leaves are called strangers. If you pick up a stranger and bite it, the toughness will tell you whether the new acquaintance will be male or female.

• 56:07Josh Clark?

  Amazing.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Amazing. I'm gonna guess there's also a way to predict the date you meet this person, although I didn't see reference to that, so that's what the characters are doing, guys, using tea leaves to predict the future. By the way, other omens can also be strangers, like unburned candle wicks or soot on grates. I've loved the show for years, look forward to many more. That is a great email, Nat Jacobs. Fantastic sleuthing.

• 56:30Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  And we are super grateful.

• 56:32Josh Clark?

  Top to bottom, start to finish, wonderful email. Also, just put so nicely, too, not like you big dummies.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:40Josh Clark?

  Because I got it pretty wrong. It was a terrible guess.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  I didn't think it was a bad guess.

• 56:44Josh Clark?

  But I mean, that was really hard. Like, you, that was obscure, you know?

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Very much.

• 56:49Josh Clark?

  Anyway, I love knowing that now. That was one of my favorite emails, so thanks a lot, Nat. And if you want to be like Nat and get in touch with us in the best way possible, you can send us an email to [email protected].

• 57:05Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 57:21Josh Clark?

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• 58:48Speaker 00

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