June 24, 2023 • 39 mins
It's easy to overlook the importance of ocean currents - they move along out at sea, while we stay mostly on land. But we are globally affected by them every day. Currents form the base of the food chain, drive weather and keep life as we know it going. Explore them with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, everyone, Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Here on a wonderful sunny Saturday afternoon, everywhere I can
forecast into the future and guarantee that wherever you are
right now, it is a lovely, wonderful Saturday afternoon. This
one harkens back to June fourth, twenty fifteen, which was
also a lovely sunny day, but probably just a Tuesday
or a Thursday. This one is how ocean currents work,
(00:22):
and it was super fascinating.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Never knew anything about.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It, and now I do, and now you do too.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and Jerry And this is stuff you should know,
the one about ocean currents.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
We should start titling our episodes like Friends did.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, the one where Ross talks about ocean current Yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
One where Chuck's eyes glazed over.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I love this stuff, man, Yeah, Like Earth's science really
gets me jazzed. That's good, it really does. Like it's
so like it's very detailed.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, there's a lot to it.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
It's often oversimplified, but it's also very understandable, and when
you really like learn about it, you realize what an
elegant system the whole thing is. Sure, maybe not necessarily
a living organism, but I could see how someone would
characterize it as such.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah, I like that. It's good intro.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
That's what I got.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So, yes, title ocean currents, well, not title, that's part
of the ocean currency.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
It's a type of current. Yeah, it's under the current umbrella.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I've misspoken in the first ten seconds.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I think it's funny that in this article the word
current refers to the motion of water when speaking of water.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Is that what it says?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, speaking of water. Yea, the word current refers to
the motion of the water.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, that was a little clumsy Miriam's defines.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, well, this is about ocean currents. There are all
kinds of currents, river currents, yeah, you know, there's currents
in marshes and swamps and currents all over the place.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
But this is about ocean currents.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, as long as water's not stagnant, there's currents present.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
If it's stagnant, it's bad news. Jack mosquitoes disease.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Sure, but then again, junk you can make the case
that if it's not stagnant, if there's a current, it'll
carry your car away in the blink of an eye.
Don't even think about it.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Boy, did you see the photos of the Downtown Connector
the other day in Atlanta when it flooded. No, apparently
the storm drains backed up in the downtown Connector of
Atlanta was a lake.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Wow, Like it literally stopped traffic.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I can believe that. Yeah, people in Atlanta don't know
how to drive in the rain to begin with.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Oh, I don't know about that really. Yeah, that's all
we do is driving the rain. Man, people in La
don't drive in the rain.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Seems to me like everybody's brain just drops a couple
of years when rain starts, and everyone starts like bumping
into everybody else and like driving it two miles an
hour and.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You just like pedal through the metal. Yeah, what's different?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
All the time? I got good tires.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, looks as you like tire stores.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I don't like tires stores, but I'm willing to spend
time there to get good tires.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
That move water away from my car so I can
drive really fast no matter what the weather.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
You should start your retireble on.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
I want to point out Jerry just sighed heavily at
this tangent.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I think your retirement business should be Josh's Tire House Emporium. Yeah,
and then have a really sweet setup. We'd be like
buying tires here is like no place else on earth.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Oh yeah, you got Wi Fi. You got a coffee machine.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Well there's coffee.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Well, no, I mean resta.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Oh gotcha, like a you know, a little mini Starbucks
right there in your tires. Sure, games have icebreakers, meet
and greets.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, I could serve icebreakers, gum too.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
You have tender tender day.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Okay, you know else, I don't know, that's all I got.
Aroma therapy would be good.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, it would be a big one massage.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, all right, that's my it's my plan. B all right,
Josh's tire Warehouse and Porium, I think is what we
came up with.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Sure, Josh's big House of tires or house of big tires.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Okay, So ocean currents, we're back to it. So one
of the things that I did not realize, Chuck, when
researching this is that ocean currents they're they're old, but
there they aren't permanent. They haven't always been around. Yeah,
currents change, you know, some currents have been at it
for thousands and thousands of years. Other currents change months
(04:54):
and month. They're very fickle in some cases. But there
are some really ancient currents, some ancient ocean currents out
there that are very old and have been this way since,
say like like the Gulf Stream has been around for
about five million years, ever since the Isthmus of Panama. Yeah,
(05:15):
pretty cool stuff, huh.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I think what I found the most interesting was that
ocean currents they have a purpose. You know, it's not
just like water moving around willy nilly. You know, if
it wasn't for ocean currents, there would be no life
in Antarctica. Well maybe not all of Antarctica, but no
ocean marine life.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
They make that possible.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
But that's an important point. Like if there's no ocean
marine life, then there's no like say there's no fido plankton. Sure,
there's no fital plankton. There's no fishies eating the fyto plankton.
There's no fishies around to eat the fyto plankton. There's
no seals to eat the fishies. If there's no seals,
like everything finds its support, its basis in that ocean life. Absolutely,
(06:02):
that's all supported by the currents.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So the fact that as purpose, it's very teleological of you, chuck,
thank you. So let's not put this off any longer.
Let's talk about different types of currents.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
You can't talk about tire stores anymore.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
No, Okay, we're done with the tire stores. Like I
started to get nauseated just talking that much about tire stores.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Oh really, all right, I don't feel good.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well let's start with surface currents then, buddy, I'll bring
you back to the ocean. Earth science, your home, Earth
sciences that you love. Surface currents occur about three to
four hundred meters deep and above.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
That.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, they're called surface.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Currents, right, and they're driven by the wind.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
They make up for about ten percent of the ocean.
And if you've ever gone to the beach, you've seen
coastal currents.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Surface currents. There's a couple of types. Coastal is one
of them.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You've seen them in action, right, like playing in the
sand as a little kid or as an adult. You're
seeing coastal surface currents at work.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
So let's step back one more degree. So service. Currents
are created by wave.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Action, that's right.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Especially coastal currents are created by wave action, which is
created by wind. Waves are created by wind. And you
know Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome, among
other great things. Sure he was the person who pointed
out that the wind doesn't blow, the wind sucks. That's
a good point, right, So and so if coastal currents
(07:34):
begin with waves, waves begin with wind. Wind begins with
heat because at the equator you have a lot of
sunshine all year round and it's very warm, as anyone
who's been near the equator can attest. And that heat
heats up air. And as the air heats up, it
moves away from the equator. It's like, I gotta go
(07:56):
cool off. It moves towards the poles north end south
and as it moves toward the poles, it cools down
and turns. Background is like I need to heap back
up at the equator. Yeah, right, And as a result
of this, you have wind. And this wind, yeah, pushes
on the surface of the water, transfers some of its
energy in the form of friction to the water surface,
(08:17):
and creates waves. And those waves transfer the energy to
the shoreline, and when they come in in an angle,
that's when you get that coastal current. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, Like if you've again, if you've ever been to
the beach and you see the tide or the waves
coming in at that angle, and you see it moving
with the beach, Like if you've ever been out playing
on like a raft as a little kid, you look
up an hour later and your parents are like half
a mile down the beach from where you start, right.
It's a bit of a panicky situation.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
It is. And also you're like, what kind of parents
do I have that they just let me drift half
a mile?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, you know, they're passed out in the sand at
that point.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So that is called.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
When a wave breaks on the beach at that angle,
it's gonna pull sediment and sand and water down in
what's known as a long shore current. That is it's
directed off parallel, also perpendicular, but the parallel movement is
the long shore current.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah. It's like when a wave comes in in an
angle to the shore, Yep, it distributes its energy, part
of it directly onto the shore, part of it parallel
to the shore. That's that long short current, like you said,
and one of the things that it does you also said,
is it takes that sand and other stuff and deposits
it elsewhere further down and along the way. It creates
(09:32):
things like barrier islands and sand bars and all that stuff.
And that's ever shifting, ever moving, eroding and depositing of
sand and sediment, and those little underwater and sometimes above
water deposits create other types of current, specifically a riptide current.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, that's the long shore drift.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And like, if you've ever seen like the beach curve
back end pretty hard. The water can't make that turn really,
so it's just gonna deposit stuff and sort of drop
it off there at the end of that point, and
it'll build up in what's known as a.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Spit, right, And so yeah, all those obstructions, all of
those deposits form obstructions for waves when they're going back out.
Once they transfer their energy, they're like, oh, I'm pretty
far inland. I need to get back out the ocean.
And so it backs up right, and as it does,
(10:31):
it encounters these underwater barriers that it itself have deposited.
It's kind of a big ironic moment, and so it
can't get back out to see as fast as it
wants because it's running in these obstructions. And when there's
like a break in the obstruction, like a sandbar or
something like that, a break in the sandbar, it provides
a natural funnel and that creates a riptide current.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, like, hey, look at that little narrow channel. I'm
gonna take all this water that would normally just flow
out and I and easy, I'm going to send it
through there, and I'm gonna grab your little kid and
take it, take them.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
With me, right this It creates basically suction, just like
when you open a drain in a bathtub and it
starts to drain, it drains pretty quick.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, it's dangerous, like that's how you drown when you're
swimming in the ocean.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
You hear about strong rip currents and inclement weather, and
it's no joke. Even really good swimmers can get caught
in a rip. Oh yeah, And it's bad news.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Riptide, very bad news. Yeah. And then there's some other
currents that are created that don't just occur at the
at the shore, but they do. They occur in the
ocean and at the shore. Yeah, there's this thing called upwelling. Yeah,
like this stuff and upwelling can happen in a few
different ways, but as far as the coast is concerned,
(11:50):
when wind comes in and it basically blows water away
from an area, yeah, like from the shore, right, water
likes to try to even itself out. So it's some
water's blown away from the surface, the stuff that's below it,
the deeper water will come up and basically replace it. Yeah,
and that's upwelling.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
It's another like what strikes me when you look at
wind and all these currents, everything is circular almost.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Right, so a lot of spinning going on.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah, there's a really distinct relationship between wind and water.
It's inseparable, especially when you're talking about global winds and
currents together, right, Yeah, but both of them are broken
down to fluid dynamics, and they do form these circles
and cycles and clockwise motions and counterclockwise motions depending on
where you are in the world.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah, And in the case of upwelling and down welling,
it's not a horizontal spin, but it is a vertical
from top to bottom and then from bottom back up
to the top.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, and you want to talk about that was which one.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Well both, it's the same pattern from top to bottom
and bottom to top with upwelling and down welling.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Right. And the whole thing about upwelling and down welling,
whether it's at the shore or in the ocean, is
that the ocean is kind of It's not like if
you take a slice of ocean at the top and
you take a slice of ocean at the bottom, very
different and you look at them, yeah, under a microscope
or test them for whatever, you know, using some sort
(13:20):
of spectroscope, maybe some sort of oscillate or glavin or
something like that, or just look at it. Yeah, you're
going to find that there's it's like two different types
of water, even though it's from the same part. It's
from the same section of ocean, right, Yeah, And the
stuff at the top is going to be very oxygen rich.
There's going to be a lot of life, vital plant
(13:42):
and that kind of stuff, but not too many nutrients.
The stuff at the bottom is going to be lousy
with CO two yeah, cold, yeah, very cold, and a
lot of nutrients. Right, And when both of these things
are needed at different spots. Yeah, So the upwelling and
the down welling creates this kind of gas exchange, in
nutrient exchange throughout the ocean, and the oxygen at the
(14:05):
top when it's deposited down lower. Thanks to down welling,
all of that oxygen circulates downward through the ocean and
all the fishies that need oxygen in their gills get
to breathe it in, right.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, And with upwelling, like I mentioned earlier in Antarctica
where it's super cold and you would not expect marine
life to do so well, it is because of the
upwelling that brings the nutrients from the bottom up to
the top.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yep, and that cycle and that's called life.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
And one other really neat thing about upwelling and downwelling
is the oxygen that's at the top of the ocean.
Were it to just sit there for very long and dissolve,
we would have a very big problem because all of
that life, once it dies, would decay very quickly up top.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah that's not good.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
No, it wouldn't because anaerobic bacteria would begin to thrive
and we'd have a overabundance of hydrogen sulfide, which would
lead to ocean acidification, which would mean the end of
the world basically.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, So that nutrient swap is very important for everybody
on the planet.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yep. And there's this elegant solution to the oceans that
happens every day everywhere in the ocean thanks to upwelling
and downwelling.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
All right, well it's a good start, my friend. My
eyes are not glazed over. Actually good, they're sharp, full
of life. We will talk after this break about some
more surface currents. All right, Josh, there's more than one
(15:49):
kind of surface current. We covered the I kind of
like that first part, but there's also surface ocean currents.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
And again the wind is the big contribute to how
these babies form, and specifically, I guess we should talk
about the Coriolis effect.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yeah, this is a this is a game changer, as
people who read self help books on airplanes would call it. Right.
So yeah, so again, it all starts with heat, and
all that heat is found in its thickest part at
the equator. And my brain is broken. So at the
equator it's the hottest, right.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
That's right. And it's also also spinning faster at the
equator than at.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
The poles, right it is, Okay, So it's the Earth
that is Yeah, So at the equator it's hot, it's
spinning faster because of the spin. Because of the heat.
The ocean is actually about eight centimeters high, higher here
than at the rest of the ocean.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, that's so much higher.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
So there's a right, it's just enough to make water
flow away from the equator. Now, plus you've got wind
that's whipped up because hot air at the equator starts
moving northward and cools down and that creates wind. Right,
So if the Earth didn't rotate, you would still have
these things, but wind would travel in a straight line
(17:13):
away from the equator toward the poles, cool down and
turn around and come back in a straight line.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
That's right. But that's not the case.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
No, it isn't because the Earth does rotate and it
produces the Coriolis effect.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, it's like a curve.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Basically, it curves to the right and the northern hemisphere
and to the left in the southern hemisphere.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Right, So it makes wind curve, and since wind drives
surface currents, it makes surface currents curve as well. Right,
that's right. So what's really cool is the ocean has
its own topography. Oh yeah, it's definitely not flat. Anybody
who's looked at it ice, you could be like, oh,
it's pretty choppy. But if you could step back even
further and you had the right kind of topographical glasses on,
(17:57):
maybe yeah, you would see that there's like valleys and
and mountains, and maybe not mountains, but little tiny hills
and valleys in the ocean.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
So, like I said, it has its own topography. And
this is created by those winds that push on the water.
And as they're pushing the water up and the Coriolis
effect is turning it, some water starts to kind of mound.
So in some parts of the ocean you have water
that forms a mound that's about like three to six
feet tall.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah. It doesn't sound intuitive, No, I don't water mounting
up on itself.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
You think of it as flat. Yeah, but there is
actually water that's mounded up into little hills. Yeah okay.
And so that means that gravity wants to push this
water downward, right, But it doesn't just go back down
the hill, because the Coriolis effect pushes it upward. And
the net outcome is that instead the water just says,
(18:55):
how about it just go around instead? Yeah, you stay
up here on the mound, you stay down here. But
I am going to just go around. And what it
does is, since a mound is roughly circular, it creates
a current that goes around these things, around these mounds.
And there's five major ones in the entire world I
know where you're headed at, and they form what are
called gyres.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
That's right, g y r e s and they are
the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and
then the Indian Ocean has its very own gyre. Yes,
there were smaller ones around Antarctica, but those are the
five major gyres.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
We talked about the Gulf Stream earlier.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That is a part of the North Atlantic gyre, and
it carries forty five hundred times the water of the
entire Mississippi River.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, the Gulf Stream does.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, the Gulf Stream is.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
The hero of all gyres.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It is it moves. Let me see, I've got to
find this one because this is so amazing. So the
Gulf Stream, at any given point, it moves water at
a rate of fifteen superdomes worth per second. So you
remember the superdome in Louisiana. Yes, sure, say you filled
(20:10):
it with water, okay, and then you took that but
copied it fifteen fourteen more times h So you have
fifteen super domes full of water. That's how much water
passes through any given point per second. Okay in the
Gulf Stream, all right, that's a lot of water.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
How many big max is that it's trillions of big macs,
billions and billions served.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
But the Gulf Stream itself is actually it's technically the
western boundary current of the North Atlantic Gyre.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, and it's going to carry warm water. It has
a big impact in the world.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
It's gonna carry warm water up north from the Gulf
of Mexico. And that's why if you're living on the
east coast of Florida, you're gonna have cooler summers and
warmer winters. Western Europe is going to be a lot
warm than other places on its exact same latitude. And
this is all because of the Gulf Stream.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
You can deposit bodies in it if you're a dexter. Yeah,
and those things are gonna yep, see a later body.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Yeah, it'll probably get carried to England and they'll be
like blind, he what was this? So that's just the
Gulf Stream. There's actually at least four major currents that
form the boundary currents of the North Atlantic Gyre. Yeah,
and then the North Atlantic Gyre is just one. We've
also talked about gyres before with the Great Pacific garbage Patch.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, we covered did we do waves or did we
just do We did waves.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
We did rogue waves too, but we covered waves and surfing.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, remember that.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
But these these boundary currents are created again in part
by the winds flowing away from the equator, the Coriolis effect,
turning the waves and the mounds of water circulating the
waves in it around them.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
So you've got these like just clockwise or counterclock depending
on which hems for you, are currents that are just
massive that move water around and again they cycle nutrients.
Like you said, they affect the weather, yeah, because they
deposit warm water from the south up to all the
way up to England apparently. So you know, England is
(22:21):
on the same latitude as like some glacial parts of Canada. Yeah,
that makes sense, but their winners are like nothing compared
to that, you know, thank you Ocean. Same thing as
a Bermuda is very temperate, it has very nice climate,
and it's on the same latitude as North Carolina. Which
is you know, it can get kind of cold there.
(22:44):
Oh yeah, sure, that's all thanks to the Gulf Stream.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Thank you Gulf Stream.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And if you want to thank the Gulf Stream, Chuck,
you can thank Ben Franklin because he's the one who
named it.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Oh really.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah. As the first Postmaster General of the United States,
he wanted to figure out why mail took so many
more weeks longer to get from England to the US
than it did from the US to England.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Because they're going against traffic exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
But he didn't know that, and he found out and
he took some measurements and roughly charted the golf stream
back in the eighteenth century.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Man, he was a smart dude, he really was. That's
pretty amazing. Yeah, I didn't know he dabbled in oceanography.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
But again, the golf stream amazing. And it's just one
boundary current of one major gyre.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, it's kind of a hypnotic if you look at
these motion maps of global motion maps of like trade
winds and ocean currents.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Yeah, I could watch those videos all day.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, it's just stuff spinning around and like traveling around,
and it's really it's soothing.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
And especially when they do like heat gradients or topographical gradients.
So it's really colorful too, and it's ever shifting. Oh yeah,
you can just get a little jewel out of the
corner of my mouth when I watch though.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's about as good as watching Fantasia.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
There's one other thing we should say about those surf
currents is they drag on the water below them, right,
So the wind is transferring its energy to the surface
of the water.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, and it drags a little bit less is the
deeper you go, right?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Apparently though the current that the motion of water usually
goes in opposition to the motion of wind. So what
you end up having if you could take a column
slice from top to bottom of the ocean, you would
find that the water ultimately is making a very long
downward spiral. Yeah, and that's called the Ekman spiral.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
That there's a graphic of that that looks pretty neat
as well, pretty neat again, mesmerizing stuff, So Chuck.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
After this we will talk about the global conveyor belt.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
That's my favorite part, I think, okay, Ken, all right,
(25:08):
my favorite part of ocean currency ocean currents. It works
the deep ocean current aka the global conveyor belt.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
If you're talking about this is about ninety percent, if
the surface currents are about ten percent, about ninety percent
of the ocean's water is part of the deep ocean current,
and we can't see it because we're up here on
Earth and we are not deep under the water. It's
invisible to us, right, But it circles the globe at
afore sixteen times as strong as all of the world's
(25:43):
rivers combined.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Which is again still not as much as the the
Gulf Stream. Yeah, still pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
It's pretty impressive. Yeah, but it's slow, so like water.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
It moves super water a few centimeters a second, whereas
the Gulf Stream moves waters at like a couple hundred
centimeters a second.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
I think the conveyor belt, they said, like one patch
will take a thousand years to completely around, yeah, the circuit.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, and it takes ten years for water to make
a full circuit on the North Atlantic Gyre.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, so ten years yeah, and then a thousand years
right wow. Yeah, So the global conveyor belt, it is
driven by density, which I think is pretty interesting.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, because up to this point it's all been driven
by wind, which is ultimately driven by heat. This is
also driven by heat in a way, but in a
completely different way.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, heat and salt thermohaline circulation, the thermo being heat
and haleine being salt.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Warm water holds less salt.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
So what happens is like, let's say you're in the
Antarctic and water freezes to form an iceberg or water
evaporates either way, salt is not going to be a
part of that equation.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
No, the salt is left behind as Yeah, water freezes,
and you know icebergs aren't salty their fresh water.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, so the salt is left behind. It's got to
go somewhere. It is going to be very dense at
that point. So it is going to be cold and
dense and sink to the ocean floor.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Right. So remember back when we're talking about right, and
we were talking about coastal coastal currents and up welling
and down welling.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, this plays a part.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
When water sinks, other water moves in to replace it.
And so what starts off here and this actually I
think starts around the North Pole definitely in the North Atlantic.
As that water sinks and moves downward, it creates. It
starts this current that goes all the way around the
world and again takes a thousand years to complete.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, it just kick starts it basically.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
And it's called the conveyor belt, I think because it
never stops moving and it's super slow.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah. I kept getting that, remember that whatever that Bugs
Bunny assembly line song? Like it was always the same.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Like, dude, don't remember that.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I can't remember it either. Now I have our theme
song in my head. I'm trying to think about it.
But there's like anytime Bugs Bunny messed around on a
conveyor bell or something, they use the same like composition.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Oh really, yeah, I'll try to find it all right.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
So, once this water hits Antarctica, basically the same thing
happens all over again. The cold water is gonna split.
Some of it heads to the Indian Ocean, some heads
to the Pacific, and this upwelling and down welling, this
cycle just starts all over again.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah. As it moves closer to like the Indian Ocean
and the Pacific, it gets closer to the equator, the
water starts to warm up, it loses some of its salinity,
it starts to thin out a little bit, and so
it rises, and when it does, it takes all those
nutrients and all that CO two up with it. And
it's very much like the gas exchange that occurs in
(28:54):
the human cardio pulmonary system. Right.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yeah, it's not homeostasis, but it almost feels like that.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
If you took the whole system overall. Yeah, it's homeostatic
for sure, but it's like that by this exchange, this
transfer from one part to another, from the deep ocean
to the surface. And this as it reaches the surface
and it depletes its nutrients, it's carried back around. It
basically tries to go up hits Alaska, Russia, Asia, North Asia,
(29:25):
Northeast Asia, and turns back around and goes ends up
finally back in the North Atlantic, up near the North Pole.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
And gets cold and starts all over.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Right, And by the time it gets there, it's basically
nutrient depleted and it sinks and it starts to recharge again.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
That's right in that just like blood.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
In your in your cardiopulmonary system, it gets depleted, it
ends up going past the lungs, it transfers out CO two,
it gets in oxygen. This is just the opposite. This
is transferring out oxygen and gaining CO two and nutrients.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Way to feel connected to the Earth when you start
looking at things like that, you know, yeah, it's not
so different.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
It's I mean, we're all connected, man.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
And again there's a big nutrient swap meat happening as
well with the conveyor belt like we're talking about, and
basically kind of has the same effect as those surface
currents do. Yeah, as far as exchanging the oxygen and
the CO two and nutrients and just moving everything where
it needs to be.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I thought this was pretty cool. In this article it
talks about there's also a density driven to Thermohalian current
in the Mediterranean because the Mediterranean is apparently saltier than
the Atlantic, and as a result this gradient. Anytime you
have a difference in something, whether it's height, temperature, salinity, density,
(30:56):
homeostasis is the ultimate goal, so it's going to try
to go toward the middle, from higher to lower. Yeah,
and this is the same thing. So it creates that
oceanic current. And apparently in World War two, subs would
run silent by going in and out of the Mediterranean
without their engines on, just using that current.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Oh really, Yeah, so they would run like a glider.
Deep run, silent run deep exactly. Wow, that's frightening. All right.
Are we at tidal currents?
Speaker 3 (31:26):
You don't have to be frightened. It was years ago. Yeah,
we're at tidal currents.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I think they still do that.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
No, there's no submarines anymore. We haven't been at war
for years.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
They retired all the submarines.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, all right. Tidal currents are generated by the tides.
We did talk about, like we said, I think in
the Rugue waves and surfing about tides and waves.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
The gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, but
more of the Moon because the Moon is closer, Yeah,
is what's gonna cause that bulge on the sides, and
it's going to drive the water level at that bulge. Basically,
it's going to decrease. It's going to increase where it's
aligned with the moon and decrease at the halfway point
(32:14):
between those two places.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Right, and so, And it's always changing because the moon,
the position of the Moon and the Sun and the
Earth are always changing, but they change in a very
predictable manner. So we can predict when the tides happen.
But if you just took a snapshot at any given
point of the tidal effect, right. And if you imagine
(32:36):
that the moon is on one side, the Sun is
on one side, and the Earth is on the middle,
the world's oceans around the Earth stretch out on the sides,
and because of that gravitational pull, and just imagine that
it's always like that. It's always just this elliptical oval
(32:56):
shape the world's oceans are and then the Earth, the
dry Earth, is spinning within that and so the land
masses on the Earth are always coming in and out
of that bulge, and so they're going from higher to
lower tide. It's kind of it just makes it easier
for me, rather than to think of the oceans moving
around the Earth, to think of the Earth spinning within
(33:17):
the ocean, and that causes the change in tides.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
That does something for you.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Does it all the way?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
And these are different than the other currents who talked
about because they're not it's not a continuous stream and
they switch directions. That's the high tide and low tide
and it doesn't impact like the ocean.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Current that much. It's shoreline stuff.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah, but it's pretty important. I mean, like fish, fishes
lay eggs, and sure low tide will pull those eggs
out into the open ocean and those fitch they'll hatch.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
It also brings food in from the ocean into like
marshland that kind.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Of stuff, yeah, or washes up jellyfish yep. And to
delight the children on the beach.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yes, but don't touch them. You can just look.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
And when the tide is rising, that flow is directed
toward the store.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
That's called the flood current.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
We've heard about that flood and the EBB, and the
EBB is when it's directed back out to sea.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
That's right, and that makes it all very predictable.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Like you said, we can go to the beach and
listen to the tide report.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
That's also a very relaxing thing to do.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, listen to that like the am
like fishing and charts and tidle reports.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, it's very relaxing for me.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I like it. I remember growing up listening to like
grain future reports and hog reports.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Oh really like that. Pork bellies, yeah, pork futures.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah, chuck, just a couple more things. So, like, there
are plenty of other currents and there's also plenty of
other wind patterns that drive these currents. They do things
like create the El Nino, yeah, which basically takes weather,
thunderstorms and stuff around the equator and move them in
different places that we're not used to, which can lead
(35:03):
to droughts and floods depending on where you are. And
then also there's a lot of concern among scientists who
are who know about this kind of stuff that changes.
Climate change is going to ultimately and negatively affect the
global conveyor belt because as the Earth warms up, more
(35:27):
and more icebergs are gonna melt, creating much less salinity.
And since the water will be less saline and warmer,
it's going to sink less. And so that global conveyor
belt that relies on cold, dense, salty water to sink
to get it started, is going to slow. And that
(35:48):
could be bad because remember it's all that's the global
nutrient exchange. That wouldn't be good, No, because then the
phytoplankton dies. And again when the phytoplankton dies, the fishies die,
seals die.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Polar bears are upset, well, the poor seals die. Either way, Yeah,
it is very sad.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yeah, you got anything else, No, that's it. That's ocean currents.
If you want to know more about ocean currents, you
can type those words into the search bar at HowStuffWorks
dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time
for a listener mail.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I'm gonna call this A French speaker doesn't like our
heavy metal music interludes.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
There's a few people out there who.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Don't, So here we go. I'm going to read this
just as it came. I like you very much. Sorry
for my bad English, but I speak French so it compensates.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
I have a little problem. I feel like I need
to tell you, please.
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Don't take it the wrong way. I have had problems
to sleep for a while now, and I found that
listening to podcasts helped.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Me a lot.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
I put my iPod under my pillow while it plays,
or I put only one head sound thing in one ear.
I love your podcast because it's very interesting, intelligent, and
also your voices are nice and you are never yelling,
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(37:13):
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Usually I relistened to it in the car. Now my problem,
why do you have to put loud heavy metal music
for a break. I always wake up in panic when
it starts. I do want to continue to listen to
you at night, I really do.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
So you have two choices.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Either you don't change your music and think of me
every time and laugh, or you change it for something,
let's say nicer. Maybe in exchange. I'm sorry, exchange, I
could give you pickup lines in French orvoir of Danielle.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I have to say hats off Danielle because I couldn't
write that in French.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Oh well, no, you don't speak French, do you?
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Mpikito perfect? Thanks a lot, Danielle. We will consider removing
the heavy metal music, which we did before and then
we brought back because other people are like, bring back
the heavy metal music. So we're kind of caught between
a rock and a hard place.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Caught between an amp and a hard place.
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Yes. If you want to let us know how you
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(38:45):
Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
All right, everyone, Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Here on a wonderful sunny Saturday afternoon, everywhere I can
forecast into the future and guarantee that wherever you are
right now, it is a lovely, wonderful Saturday afternoon. This
one harkens back to June fourth, twenty fifteen, which was
also a lovely sunny day, but probably just a Tuesday
or a Thursday. This one is how ocean currents work,
(00:22):
and it was super fascinating.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Never knew anything about.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It, and now I do, and now you do too.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and Jerry And this is stuff you should know,
the one about ocean currents.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
We should start titling our episodes like Friends did.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, the one where Ross talks about ocean current Yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
One where Chuck's eyes glazed over.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I love this stuff, man, Yeah, Like Earth's science really
gets me jazzed. That's good, it really does. Like it's
so like it's very detailed.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, there's a lot to it.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
It's often oversimplified, but it's also very understandable, and when
you really like learn about it, you realize what an
elegant system the whole thing is. Sure, maybe not necessarily
a living organism, but I could see how someone would
characterize it as such.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah, I like that. It's good intro.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
That's what I got.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So, yes, title ocean currents, well, not title, that's part
of the ocean currency.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
It's a type of current. Yeah, it's under the current umbrella.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I've misspoken in the first ten seconds.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I think it's funny that in this article the word
current refers to the motion of water when speaking of water.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Is that what it says?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, speaking of water. Yea, the word current refers to
the motion of the water.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, that was a little clumsy Miriam's defines.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, well, this is about ocean currents. There are all
kinds of currents, river currents, yeah, you know, there's currents
in marshes and swamps and currents all over the place.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
But this is about ocean currents.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, as long as water's not stagnant, there's currents present.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
If it's stagnant, it's bad news. Jack mosquitoes disease.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Sure, but then again, junk you can make the case
that if it's not stagnant, if there's a current, it'll
carry your car away in the blink of an eye.
Don't even think about it.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Boy, did you see the photos of the Downtown Connector
the other day in Atlanta when it flooded. No, apparently
the storm drains backed up in the downtown Connector of
Atlanta was a lake.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Wow, Like it literally stopped traffic.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I can believe that. Yeah, people in Atlanta don't know
how to drive in the rain to begin with.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Oh, I don't know about that really. Yeah, that's all
we do is driving the rain. Man, people in La
don't drive in the rain.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Seems to me like everybody's brain just drops a couple
of years when rain starts, and everyone starts like bumping
into everybody else and like driving it two miles an
hour and.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You just like pedal through the metal. Yeah, what's different?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
All the time? I got good tires.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, looks as you like tire stores.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I don't like tires stores, but I'm willing to spend
time there to get good tires.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
That move water away from my car so I can
drive really fast no matter what the weather.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
You should start your retireble on.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
I want to point out Jerry just sighed heavily at
this tangent.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
I think your retirement business should be Josh's Tire House Emporium. Yeah,
and then have a really sweet setup. We'd be like
buying tires here is like no place else on earth.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Oh yeah, you got Wi Fi. You got a coffee machine.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Well there's coffee.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Well, no, I mean resta.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Oh gotcha, like a you know, a little mini Starbucks
right there in your tires. Sure, games have icebreakers, meet
and greets.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, I could serve icebreakers, gum too.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
You have tender tender day.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Okay, you know else, I don't know, that's all I got.
Aroma therapy would be good.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, it would be a big one massage.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, all right, that's my it's my plan. B all right,
Josh's tire Warehouse and Porium, I think is what we
came up with.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Sure, Josh's big House of tires or house of big tires.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Okay, So ocean currents, we're back to it. So one
of the things that I did not realize, Chuck, when
researching this is that ocean currents they're they're old, but
there they aren't permanent. They haven't always been around. Yeah,
currents change, you know, some currents have been at it
for thousands and thousands of years. Other currents change months
(04:54):
and month. They're very fickle in some cases. But there
are some really ancient currents, some ancient ocean currents out
there that are very old and have been this way since,
say like like the Gulf Stream has been around for
about five million years, ever since the Isthmus of Panama. Yeah,
(05:15):
pretty cool stuff, huh.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I think what I found the most interesting was that
ocean currents they have a purpose. You know, it's not
just like water moving around willy nilly. You know, if
it wasn't for ocean currents, there would be no life
in Antarctica. Well maybe not all of Antarctica, but no
ocean marine life.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
They make that possible.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
But that's an important point. Like if there's no ocean
marine life, then there's no like say there's no fido plankton. Sure,
there's no fital plankton. There's no fishies eating the fyto plankton.
There's no fishies around to eat the fyto plankton. There's
no seals to eat the fishies. If there's no seals,
like everything finds its support, its basis in that ocean life. Absolutely,
(06:02):
that's all supported by the currents.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So the fact that as purpose, it's very teleological of you, chuck,
thank you. So let's not put this off any longer.
Let's talk about different types of currents.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
You can't talk about tire stores anymore.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
No, Okay, we're done with the tire stores. Like I
started to get nauseated just talking that much about tire stores.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Oh really, all right, I don't feel good.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well let's start with surface currents then, buddy, I'll bring
you back to the ocean. Earth science, your home, Earth
sciences that you love. Surface currents occur about three to
four hundred meters deep and above.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
That.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, they're called surface.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Currents, right, and they're driven by the wind.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
They make up for about ten percent of the ocean.
And if you've ever gone to the beach, you've seen
coastal currents.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Surface currents. There's a couple of types. Coastal is one
of them.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You've seen them in action, right, like playing in the
sand as a little kid or as an adult. You're
seeing coastal surface currents at work.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
So let's step back one more degree. So service. Currents
are created by wave.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Action, that's right.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Especially coastal currents are created by wave action, which is
created by wind. Waves are created by wind. And you
know Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome, among
other great things. Sure he was the person who pointed
out that the wind doesn't blow, the wind sucks. That's
a good point, right, So and so if coastal currents
(07:34):
begin with waves, waves begin with wind. Wind begins with
heat because at the equator you have a lot of
sunshine all year round and it's very warm, as anyone
who's been near the equator can attest. And that heat
heats up air. And as the air heats up, it
moves away from the equator. It's like, I gotta go
(07:56):
cool off. It moves towards the poles north end south
and as it moves toward the poles, it cools down
and turns. Background is like I need to heap back
up at the equator. Yeah, right, And as a result
of this, you have wind. And this wind, yeah, pushes
on the surface of the water, transfers some of its
energy in the form of friction to the water surface,
(08:17):
and creates waves. And those waves transfer the energy to
the shoreline, and when they come in in an angle,
that's when you get that coastal current. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, Like if you've again, if you've ever been to
the beach and you see the tide or the waves
coming in at that angle, and you see it moving
with the beach, Like if you've ever been out playing
on like a raft as a little kid, you look
up an hour later and your parents are like half
a mile down the beach from where you start, right.
It's a bit of a panicky situation.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
It is. And also you're like, what kind of parents
do I have that they just let me drift half
a mile?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, you know, they're passed out in the sand at
that point.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So that is called.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
When a wave breaks on the beach at that angle,
it's gonna pull sediment and sand and water down in
what's known as a long shore current. That is it's
directed off parallel, also perpendicular, but the parallel movement is
the long shore current.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah. It's like when a wave comes in in an
angle to the shore, Yep, it distributes its energy, part
of it directly onto the shore, part of it parallel
to the shore. That's that long short current, like you said,
and one of the things that it does you also said,
is it takes that sand and other stuff and deposits
it elsewhere further down and along the way. It creates
(09:32):
things like barrier islands and sand bars and all that stuff.
And that's ever shifting, ever moving, eroding and depositing of
sand and sediment, and those little underwater and sometimes above
water deposits create other types of current, specifically a riptide current.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, that's the long shore drift.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And like, if you've ever seen like the beach curve
back end pretty hard. The water can't make that turn really,
so it's just gonna deposit stuff and sort of drop
it off there at the end of that point, and
it'll build up in what's known as a.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Spit, right, And so yeah, all those obstructions, all of
those deposits form obstructions for waves when they're going back out.
Once they transfer their energy, they're like, oh, I'm pretty
far inland. I need to get back out the ocean.
And so it backs up right, and as it does,
(10:31):
it encounters these underwater barriers that it itself have deposited.
It's kind of a big ironic moment, and so it
can't get back out to see as fast as it
wants because it's running in these obstructions. And when there's
like a break in the obstruction, like a sandbar or
something like that, a break in the sandbar, it provides
a natural funnel and that creates a riptide current.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, like, hey, look at that little narrow channel. I'm
gonna take all this water that would normally just flow
out and I and easy, I'm going to send it
through there, and I'm gonna grab your little kid and
take it, take them.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
With me, right this It creates basically suction, just like
when you open a drain in a bathtub and it
starts to drain, it drains pretty quick.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, it's dangerous, like that's how you drown when you're
swimming in the ocean.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
You hear about strong rip currents and inclement weather, and
it's no joke. Even really good swimmers can get caught
in a rip. Oh yeah, And it's bad news.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Riptide, very bad news. Yeah. And then there's some other
currents that are created that don't just occur at the
at the shore, but they do. They occur in the
ocean and at the shore. Yeah, there's this thing called upwelling. Yeah,
like this stuff and upwelling can happen in a few
different ways, but as far as the coast is concerned,
(11:50):
when wind comes in and it basically blows water away
from an area, yeah, like from the shore, right, water
likes to try to even itself out. So it's some
water's blown away from the surface, the stuff that's below it,
the deeper water will come up and basically replace it. Yeah,
and that's upwelling.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
It's another like what strikes me when you look at
wind and all these currents, everything is circular almost.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Right, so a lot of spinning going on.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah, there's a really distinct relationship between wind and water.
It's inseparable, especially when you're talking about global winds and
currents together, right, Yeah, but both of them are broken
down to fluid dynamics, and they do form these circles
and cycles and clockwise motions and counterclockwise motions depending on
where you are in the world.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah, And in the case of upwelling and down welling,
it's not a horizontal spin, but it is a vertical
from top to bottom and then from bottom back up
to the top.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, and you want to talk about that was which one.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Well both, it's the same pattern from top to bottom
and bottom to top with upwelling and down welling.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Right. And the whole thing about upwelling and down welling,
whether it's at the shore or in the ocean, is
that the ocean is kind of It's not like if
you take a slice of ocean at the top and
you take a slice of ocean at the bottom, very
different and you look at them, yeah, under a microscope
or test them for whatever, you know, using some sort
(13:20):
of spectroscope, maybe some sort of oscillate or glavin or
something like that, or just look at it. Yeah, you're
going to find that there's it's like two different types
of water, even though it's from the same part. It's
from the same section of ocean, right, Yeah, And the
stuff at the top is going to be very oxygen rich.
There's going to be a lot of life, vital plant
(13:42):
and that kind of stuff, but not too many nutrients.
The stuff at the bottom is going to be lousy
with CO two yeah, cold, yeah, very cold, and a
lot of nutrients. Right, And when both of these things
are needed at different spots. Yeah, So the upwelling and
the down welling creates this kind of gas exchange, in
nutrient exchange throughout the ocean, and the oxygen at the
(14:05):
top when it's deposited down lower. Thanks to down welling,
all of that oxygen circulates downward through the ocean and
all the fishies that need oxygen in their gills get
to breathe it in, right.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, And with upwelling, like I mentioned earlier in Antarctica
where it's super cold and you would not expect marine
life to do so well, it is because of the
upwelling that brings the nutrients from the bottom up to
the top.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yep, and that cycle and that's called life.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
And one other really neat thing about upwelling and downwelling
is the oxygen that's at the top of the ocean.
Were it to just sit there for very long and dissolve,
we would have a very big problem because all of
that life, once it dies, would decay very quickly up top.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah that's not good.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
No, it wouldn't because anaerobic bacteria would begin to thrive
and we'd have a overabundance of hydrogen sulfide, which would
lead to ocean acidification, which would mean the end of
the world basically.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, So that nutrient swap is very important for everybody
on the planet.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yep. And there's this elegant solution to the oceans that
happens every day everywhere in the ocean thanks to upwelling
and downwelling.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
All right, well it's a good start, my friend. My
eyes are not glazed over. Actually good, they're sharp, full
of life. We will talk after this break about some
more surface currents. All right, Josh, there's more than one
(15:49):
kind of surface current. We covered the I kind of
like that first part, but there's also surface ocean currents.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
And again the wind is the big contribute to how
these babies form, and specifically, I guess we should talk
about the Coriolis effect.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yeah, this is a this is a game changer, as
people who read self help books on airplanes would call it. Right.
So yeah, so again, it all starts with heat, and
all that heat is found in its thickest part at
the equator. And my brain is broken. So at the
equator it's the hottest, right.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
That's right. And it's also also spinning faster at the
equator than at.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
The poles, right it is, Okay, So it's the Earth
that is Yeah, So at the equator it's hot, it's
spinning faster because of the spin. Because of the heat.
The ocean is actually about eight centimeters high, higher here
than at the rest of the ocean.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, that's so much higher.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
So there's a right, it's just enough to make water
flow away from the equator. Now, plus you've got wind
that's whipped up because hot air at the equator starts
moving northward and cools down and that creates wind. Right,
So if the Earth didn't rotate, you would still have
these things, but wind would travel in a straight line
(17:13):
away from the equator toward the poles, cool down and
turn around and come back in a straight line.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
That's right. But that's not the case.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
No, it isn't because the Earth does rotate and it
produces the Coriolis effect.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, it's like a curve.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Basically, it curves to the right and the northern hemisphere
and to the left in the southern hemisphere.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Right, So it makes wind curve, and since wind drives
surface currents, it makes surface currents curve as well. Right,
that's right. So what's really cool is the ocean has
its own topography. Oh yeah, it's definitely not flat. Anybody
who's looked at it ice, you could be like, oh,
it's pretty choppy. But if you could step back even
further and you had the right kind of topographical glasses on,
(17:57):
maybe yeah, you would see that there's like valleys and
and mountains, and maybe not mountains, but little tiny hills
and valleys in the ocean.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
So, like I said, it has its own topography. And
this is created by those winds that push on the water.
And as they're pushing the water up and the Coriolis
effect is turning it, some water starts to kind of mound.
So in some parts of the ocean you have water
that forms a mound that's about like three to six
feet tall.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah. It doesn't sound intuitive, No, I don't water mounting
up on itself.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
You think of it as flat. Yeah, but there is
actually water that's mounded up into little hills. Yeah okay.
And so that means that gravity wants to push this
water downward, right, But it doesn't just go back down
the hill, because the Coriolis effect pushes it upward. And
the net outcome is that instead the water just says,
(18:55):
how about it just go around instead? Yeah, you stay
up here on the mound, you stay down here. But
I am going to just go around. And what it
does is, since a mound is roughly circular, it creates
a current that goes around these things, around these mounds.
And there's five major ones in the entire world I
know where you're headed at, and they form what are
called gyres.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
That's right, g y r e s and they are
the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and
then the Indian Ocean has its very own gyre. Yes,
there were smaller ones around Antarctica, but those are the
five major gyres.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
We talked about the Gulf Stream earlier.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That is a part of the North Atlantic gyre, and
it carries forty five hundred times the water of the
entire Mississippi River.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, the Gulf Stream does.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, the Gulf Stream is.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
The hero of all gyres.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It is it moves. Let me see, I've got to
find this one because this is so amazing. So the
Gulf Stream, at any given point, it moves water at
a rate of fifteen superdomes worth per second. So you
remember the superdome in Louisiana. Yes, sure, say you filled
(20:10):
it with water, okay, and then you took that but
copied it fifteen fourteen more times h So you have
fifteen super domes full of water. That's how much water
passes through any given point per second. Okay in the
Gulf Stream, all right, that's a lot of water.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
How many big max is that it's trillions of big macs,
billions and billions served.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
But the Gulf Stream itself is actually it's technically the
western boundary current of the North Atlantic Gyre.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, and it's going to carry warm water. It has
a big impact in the world.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
It's gonna carry warm water up north from the Gulf
of Mexico. And that's why if you're living on the
east coast of Florida, you're gonna have cooler summers and
warmer winters. Western Europe is going to be a lot
warm than other places on its exact same latitude. And
this is all because of the Gulf Stream.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
You can deposit bodies in it if you're a dexter. Yeah,
and those things are gonna yep, see a later body.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Yeah, it'll probably get carried to England and they'll be
like blind, he what was this? So that's just the
Gulf Stream. There's actually at least four major currents that
form the boundary currents of the North Atlantic Gyre. Yeah,
and then the North Atlantic Gyre is just one. We've
also talked about gyres before with the Great Pacific garbage Patch.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, we covered did we do waves or did we
just do We did waves.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
We did rogue waves too, but we covered waves and surfing.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, remember that.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
But these these boundary currents are created again in part
by the winds flowing away from the equator, the Coriolis effect,
turning the waves and the mounds of water circulating the
waves in it around them.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
So you've got these like just clockwise or counterclock depending
on which hems for you, are currents that are just
massive that move water around and again they cycle nutrients.
Like you said, they affect the weather, yeah, because they
deposit warm water from the south up to all the
way up to England apparently. So you know, England is
(22:21):
on the same latitude as like some glacial parts of Canada. Yeah,
that makes sense, but their winners are like nothing compared
to that, you know, thank you Ocean. Same thing as
a Bermuda is very temperate, it has very nice climate,
and it's on the same latitude as North Carolina. Which
is you know, it can get kind of cold there.
(22:44):
Oh yeah, sure, that's all thanks to the Gulf Stream.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Thank you Gulf Stream.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And if you want to thank the Gulf Stream, Chuck,
you can thank Ben Franklin because he's the one who
named it.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Oh really.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah. As the first Postmaster General of the United States,
he wanted to figure out why mail took so many
more weeks longer to get from England to the US
than it did from the US to England.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Because they're going against traffic exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
But he didn't know that, and he found out and
he took some measurements and roughly charted the golf stream
back in the eighteenth century.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Man, he was a smart dude, he really was. That's
pretty amazing. Yeah, I didn't know he dabbled in oceanography.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
But again, the golf stream amazing. And it's just one
boundary current of one major gyre.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, it's kind of a hypnotic if you look at
these motion maps of global motion maps of like trade
winds and ocean currents.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Yeah, I could watch those videos all day.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, it's just stuff spinning around and like traveling around,
and it's really it's soothing.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
And especially when they do like heat gradients or topographical gradients.
So it's really colorful too, and it's ever shifting. Oh yeah,
you can just get a little jewel out of the
corner of my mouth when I watch though.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's about as good as watching Fantasia.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
There's one other thing we should say about those surf
currents is they drag on the water below them, right,
So the wind is transferring its energy to the surface
of the water.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, and it drags a little bit less is the
deeper you go, right?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Apparently though the current that the motion of water usually
goes in opposition to the motion of wind. So what
you end up having if you could take a column
slice from top to bottom of the ocean, you would
find that the water ultimately is making a very long
downward spiral. Yeah, and that's called the Ekman spiral.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
That there's a graphic of that that looks pretty neat
as well, pretty neat again, mesmerizing stuff, So Chuck.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
After this we will talk about the global conveyor belt.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
That's my favorite part, I think, okay, Ken, all right,
(25:08):
my favorite part of ocean currency ocean currents. It works
the deep ocean current aka the global conveyor belt.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
If you're talking about this is about ninety percent, if
the surface currents are about ten percent, about ninety percent
of the ocean's water is part of the deep ocean current,
and we can't see it because we're up here on
Earth and we are not deep under the water. It's
invisible to us, right, But it circles the globe at
afore sixteen times as strong as all of the world's
(25:43):
rivers combined.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Which is again still not as much as the the
Gulf Stream. Yeah, still pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
It's pretty impressive. Yeah, but it's slow, so like water.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
It moves super water a few centimeters a second, whereas
the Gulf Stream moves waters at like a couple hundred
centimeters a second.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
I think the conveyor belt, they said, like one patch
will take a thousand years to completely around, yeah, the circuit.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, and it takes ten years for water to make
a full circuit on the North Atlantic Gyre.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, so ten years yeah, and then a thousand years
right wow. Yeah, So the global conveyor belt, it is
driven by density, which I think is pretty interesting.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, because up to this point it's all been driven
by wind, which is ultimately driven by heat. This is
also driven by heat in a way, but in a
completely different way.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, heat and salt thermohaline circulation, the thermo being heat
and haleine being salt.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Warm water holds less salt.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
So what happens is like, let's say you're in the
Antarctic and water freezes to form an iceberg or water
evaporates either way, salt is not going to be a
part of that equation.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
No, the salt is left behind as Yeah, water freezes,
and you know icebergs aren't salty their fresh water.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, so the salt is left behind. It's got to
go somewhere. It is going to be very dense at
that point. So it is going to be cold and
dense and sink to the ocean floor.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Right. So remember back when we're talking about right, and
we were talking about coastal coastal currents and up welling
and down welling.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, this plays a part.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
When water sinks, other water moves in to replace it.
And so what starts off here and this actually I
think starts around the North Pole definitely in the North Atlantic.
As that water sinks and moves downward, it creates. It
starts this current that goes all the way around the
world and again takes a thousand years to complete.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, it just kick starts it basically.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
And it's called the conveyor belt, I think because it
never stops moving and it's super slow.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah. I kept getting that, remember that whatever that Bugs
Bunny assembly line song? Like it was always the same.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Like, dude, don't remember that.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I can't remember it either. Now I have our theme
song in my head. I'm trying to think about it.
But there's like anytime Bugs Bunny messed around on a
conveyor bell or something, they use the same like composition.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Oh really, yeah, I'll try to find it all right.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
So, once this water hits Antarctica, basically the same thing
happens all over again. The cold water is gonna split.
Some of it heads to the Indian Ocean, some heads
to the Pacific, and this upwelling and down welling, this
cycle just starts all over again.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah. As it moves closer to like the Indian Ocean
and the Pacific, it gets closer to the equator, the
water starts to warm up, it loses some of its salinity,
it starts to thin out a little bit, and so
it rises, and when it does, it takes all those
nutrients and all that CO two up with it. And
it's very much like the gas exchange that occurs in
(28:54):
the human cardio pulmonary system. Right.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yeah, it's not homeostasis, but it almost feels like that.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
If you took the whole system overall. Yeah, it's homeostatic
for sure, but it's like that by this exchange, this
transfer from one part to another, from the deep ocean
to the surface. And this as it reaches the surface
and it depletes its nutrients, it's carried back around. It
basically tries to go up hits Alaska, Russia, Asia, North Asia,
(29:25):
Northeast Asia, and turns back around and goes ends up
finally back in the North Atlantic, up near the North Pole.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
And gets cold and starts all over.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Right, And by the time it gets there, it's basically
nutrient depleted and it sinks and it starts to recharge again.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
That's right in that just like blood.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
In your in your cardiopulmonary system, it gets depleted, it
ends up going past the lungs, it transfers out CO two,
it gets in oxygen. This is just the opposite. This
is transferring out oxygen and gaining CO two and nutrients.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Way to feel connected to the Earth when you start
looking at things like that, you know, yeah, it's not
so different.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
It's I mean, we're all connected, man.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
And again there's a big nutrient swap meat happening as
well with the conveyor belt like we're talking about, and
basically kind of has the same effect as those surface
currents do. Yeah, as far as exchanging the oxygen and
the CO two and nutrients and just moving everything where
it needs to be.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I thought this was pretty cool. In this article it
talks about there's also a density driven to Thermohalian current
in the Mediterranean because the Mediterranean is apparently saltier than
the Atlantic, and as a result this gradient. Anytime you
have a difference in something, whether it's height, temperature, salinity, density,
(30:56):
homeostasis is the ultimate goal, so it's going to try
to go toward the middle, from higher to lower. Yeah,
and this is the same thing. So it creates that
oceanic current. And apparently in World War two, subs would
run silent by going in and out of the Mediterranean
without their engines on, just using that current.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Oh really, Yeah, so they would run like a glider.
Deep run, silent run deep exactly. Wow, that's frightening. All right.
Are we at tidal currents?
Speaker 3 (31:26):
You don't have to be frightened. It was years ago. Yeah,
we're at tidal currents.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I think they still do that.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
No, there's no submarines anymore. We haven't been at war
for years.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
They retired all the submarines.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, all right. Tidal currents are generated by the tides.
We did talk about, like we said, I think in
the Rugue waves and surfing about tides and waves.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
The gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, but
more of the Moon because the Moon is closer, Yeah,
is what's gonna cause that bulge on the sides, and
it's going to drive the water level at that bulge. Basically,
it's going to decrease. It's going to increase where it's
aligned with the moon and decrease at the halfway point
(32:14):
between those two places.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Right, and so, And it's always changing because the moon,
the position of the Moon and the Sun and the
Earth are always changing, but they change in a very
predictable manner. So we can predict when the tides happen.
But if you just took a snapshot at any given
point of the tidal effect, right. And if you imagine
(32:36):
that the moon is on one side, the Sun is
on one side, and the Earth is on the middle,
the world's oceans around the Earth stretch out on the sides,
and because of that gravitational pull, and just imagine that
it's always like that. It's always just this elliptical oval
(32:56):
shape the world's oceans are and then the Earth, the
dry Earth, is spinning within that and so the land
masses on the Earth are always coming in and out
of that bulge, and so they're going from higher to
lower tide. It's kind of it just makes it easier
for me, rather than to think of the oceans moving
around the Earth, to think of the Earth spinning within
(33:17):
the ocean, and that causes the change in tides.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
That does something for you.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Does it all the way?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
And these are different than the other currents who talked
about because they're not it's not a continuous stream and
they switch directions. That's the high tide and low tide
and it doesn't impact like the ocean.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Current that much. It's shoreline stuff.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah, but it's pretty important. I mean, like fish, fishes
lay eggs, and sure low tide will pull those eggs
out into the open ocean and those fitch they'll hatch.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
It also brings food in from the ocean into like
marshland that kind.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Of stuff, yeah, or washes up jellyfish yep. And to
delight the children on the beach.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yes, but don't touch them. You can just look.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
And when the tide is rising, that flow is directed
toward the store.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
That's called the flood current.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
We've heard about that flood and the EBB, and the
EBB is when it's directed back out to sea.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
That's right, and that makes it all very predictable.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Like you said, we can go to the beach and
listen to the tide report.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
That's also a very relaxing thing to do.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, listen to that like the am
like fishing and charts and tidle reports.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, it's very relaxing for me.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I like it. I remember growing up listening to like
grain future reports and hog reports.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Oh really like that. Pork bellies, yeah, pork futures.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah, chuck, just a couple more things. So, like, there
are plenty of other currents and there's also plenty of
other wind patterns that drive these currents. They do things
like create the El Nino, yeah, which basically takes weather,
thunderstorms and stuff around the equator and move them in
different places that we're not used to, which can lead
(35:03):
to droughts and floods depending on where you are. And
then also there's a lot of concern among scientists who
are who know about this kind of stuff that changes.
Climate change is going to ultimately and negatively affect the
global conveyor belt because as the Earth warms up, more
(35:27):
and more icebergs are gonna melt, creating much less salinity.
And since the water will be less saline and warmer,
it's going to sink less. And so that global conveyor
belt that relies on cold, dense, salty water to sink
to get it started, is going to slow. And that
(35:48):
could be bad because remember it's all that's the global
nutrient exchange. That wouldn't be good, No, because then the
phytoplankton dies. And again when the phytoplankton dies, the fishies die,
seals die.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Polar bears are upset, well, the poor seals die. Either way, Yeah,
it is very sad.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yeah, you got anything else, No, that's it. That's ocean currents.
If you want to know more about ocean currents, you
can type those words into the search bar at HowStuffWorks
dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time
for a listener mail.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I'm gonna call this A French speaker doesn't like our
heavy metal music interludes.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
There's a few people out there who.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Don't, So here we go. I'm going to read this
just as it came. I like you very much. Sorry
for my bad English, but I speak French so it compensates.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
I have a little problem. I feel like I need
to tell you, please.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Don't take it the wrong way. I have had problems
to sleep for a while now, and I found that
listening to podcasts helped.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Me a lot.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
I put my iPod under my pillow while it plays,
or I put only one head sound thing in one ear.
I love your podcast because it's very interesting, intelligent, and
also your voices are nice and you are never yelling,
so I do fall asleep every single time. This is
a good thing, I swear. Of course, it takes me
(37:13):
three or four times to listen to all of it.
Usually I relistened to it in the car. Now my problem,
why do you have to put loud heavy metal music
for a break. I always wake up in panic when
it starts. I do want to continue to listen to
you at night, I really do.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
So you have two choices.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Either you don't change your music and think of me
every time and laugh, or you change it for something,
let's say nicer. Maybe in exchange. I'm sorry, exchange, I
could give you pickup lines in French orvoir of Danielle.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I have to say hats off Danielle because I couldn't
write that in French.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Oh well, no, you don't speak French, do you?
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Mpikito perfect? Thanks a lot, Danielle. We will consider removing
the heavy metal music, which we did before and then
we brought back because other people are like, bring back
the heavy metal music. So we're kind of caught between
a rock and a hard place.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Caught between an amp and a hard place.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Yes. If you want to let us know how you
feel about our music or anything else, you can tweet
to us at sysk podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. You can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at houstuffworks dot
com and it's always joined us at our home on
the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot Com Stuff you Should
(38:45):
Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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