Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of Ologies
Speaker 1: with Ali Ward. I'm clearly Ali Ward. I'm very very
Speaker 1: excited that this is finally up. I've been working on
Speaker 1: this for so long, like the better part of a
Speaker 1: year just to put out the first few episodes. And
Speaker 1: I've wanted to do something where I explore all these
Speaker 1: different ologies for over a decade. I came across this
Speaker 1: list of ologies, all these obscure ones, and I just thought, like,
Speaker 1: who does this stuff, who studies it? Why do they
Speaker 1: study it? Like what happened to spark their obsession with this?
Speaker 1: There's got to be something. So on the list was volcanology,
Speaker 1: and I thought, who studies volcanos and why? And so
Speaker 1: I sent out some emails and I just kept hitting
Speaker 1: like Culda Sax where I couldn't find anyone to interview,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I'll find a volcanologist later. And a
Speaker 1: few weeks later, I happen to be at one of
Speaker 1: those dinner parties where you're socially just completely out of
Speaker 1: your league, like I think I brought a dip that
Speaker 1: wasn't vegan when I was supposed to bring something vegan,
Speaker 1: and people were talking about art films from the seventies
Speaker 1: and Romanian philosophers. I was unaware of wonderful people, very smart,
Speaker 1: much smarter than me. And as one of them was leaving,
Speaker 1: she's like, I gotta peace out, I gotta get up
Speaker 1: and do some campaign stuff.
Speaker 2: And I said, what, who is that?
Speaker 1: So she's a volcanologist who's also running for Congress. So
Speaker 1: I approached her and then gently stalked her and we
Speaker 1: became friends on the Internet. And then she invited me
Speaker 1: up to her campaign headquarters, which is a shared office
Speaker 1: space in the valley right now.
Speaker 2: She made me a cup of tea.
Speaker 1: I met her dogs, and we sat down and we
Speaker 1: talked about volcanoes, and she told me about lava flow
Speaker 1: and how islands get burped up from the ocean floor,
Speaker 1: and her experience with horse bandits and the best way
Speaker 1: to die. And we talked about running for congress too
Speaker 1: and what that entails, and spoiler, there's entails a lot
Speaker 1: of work. But if anyone is going to do it,
Speaker 1: it's going to be this chick who stares into the open,
Speaker 1: gaping maw of a volcano. So get ready to learn
Speaker 1: a lot about volcanoes and also have an immediate crush
Speaker 1: on jazz Phoenix.
Speaker 2: But let's get levels on you and then we're ready
Speaker 2: to go lo everyone.
Speaker 1: Hell he now, do you say volcanologists or volcanologists? I've
Speaker 1: seen you both ways. Yeah, so I say a.
Speaker 2: Volcanologists because I am an American and we ruin everything.
Speaker 2: That is what we do volcanology with the you actually
Speaker 2: in ancient times and if you think about it, Italy
Speaker 2: is one of the centers of the study of volcanoes
Speaker 2: because of things like Pompeii. The Italians their god was
Speaker 2: vulcan with a U, and so anything related to volcanoes,
Speaker 2: those folks address it with a U. Again English speakers,
Speaker 2: it's with an O volcanology.
Speaker 1: So Jess came to La to do grad school in
Speaker 1: geology and it's sort of like a'd be kind of cool, whim.
Speaker 1: She applied for a summer volunteer researcher position with the
Speaker 1: Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, because like, if you're going to volunteer somewhere,
Speaker 1: do it on an island paradise. They actually said, yes,
Speaker 1: you can come. So she was a new grad student.
Speaker 1: She wasn't sure what she was going to focus on.
Speaker 1: She thought maybe plate tectonics.
Speaker 2: I really thought subduction zones were really cool as a
Speaker 2: subduction subduction zones are where the ocean floor dives beneath
Speaker 2: the continents. And because the continents are less dense than
Speaker 2: the ocean floor, so the continents are granite, granted, is
Speaker 2: less dense, and then the ocean floors are basalt, more dense,
Speaker 2: so the basalt sinks beneath the continents and that's called subduction.
Speaker 1: Okay, So pay attention because this is the basic premise
Speaker 1: of what a volcano is. This is it, and it's
Speaker 1: followed by an egregious geology pun and it's.
Speaker 2: Pretty cool because then the sinking ocean floor gets melted
Speaker 2: as it gets hotter as it deepens, and then it
Speaker 2: rises hot things rise, so it rises back to the
Speaker 2: surface and often forms volcanoes that are ruped on the surface.
Speaker 2: So subduction leads to volcanoes. And there's there's a joke
Speaker 2: actually in volcanology and in all geology that subduction leads
Speaker 2: to erogeny, which is orogeny is mountain building. So I
Speaker 2: have a shirt that says subduction leads to Rodney.
Speaker 1: I did not get this joke, but I laughed in
Speaker 1: the Momentnydney, because I felt stupid, and I to this
Speaker 1: day I think it's a play on seduction and erogenous zones.
Speaker 1: But I googled it just to check, and let me
Speaker 1: tell you, I did not find an explanation. But I
Speaker 1: did find shirts and pins and hat that's an all
Speaker 1: manner of Etsy items available with this phrase on it.
Speaker 2: Subduction leads to a.
Speaker 1: Rag for anyone who needs to rep a lust for geology.
Speaker 2: I mean the humor it's there. We love our terrible puns,
Speaker 2: and we love anything that is well for the most part,
Speaker 2: the kind of alcanoloists or what I should say, geologists
Speaker 2: I hang out with. We love the destructive things. So
Speaker 2: if it's got a terrible pun that can be made,
Speaker 2: or you know it's going to kill everybody, we're into it.
Speaker 1: No, I mean that is one thing about Olkano's like
Speaker 1: is I feel like it's such a thrilling study because
Speaker 1: there's like a doom attached to it, Like you can
Speaker 1: throw virgins in it, it can destroy your entire city.
Speaker 1: Did you grow up being interested in like Mount Saint
Speaker 1: Helens or Pompeii or anything, the history everything?
Speaker 2: Actually, it's funny. My undergraduate degree is in history and
Speaker 2: I studied Latin, and my emphasis was in art and
Speaker 2: architecture of ancient Rome. So is really aware of how
Speaker 2: ancient natural disasters affected people? Right, So you had volcanic
Speaker 2: eruptions that really shaped the founders of modern civilization, the
Speaker 2: Romans with POMPEII in seventy nine a d. And that
Speaker 2: was when the first volcanology was done. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: I was studying history but also learning about my future career.
Speaker 2: And I didn't even know it.
Speaker 1: But what's been a really exciting discovery for you? Either
Speaker 1: an actual discovery that hasn't been made by anyone, or
Speaker 1: an epiphany that you had while you were doing this.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a really it's a cool question. I'll
Speaker 2: just tell you about the time that I actually really
Speaker 2: realized that. I was like, volcanoes are it? This is
Speaker 2: this is the most amazing thing I've ever done. There
Speaker 2: were several but when I was at the Volcano Observatory
Speaker 2: my third day on the job. First two days were
Speaker 2: paperwork because it's US government, that's what you do. The
Speaker 2: third day, my boss said, hey, we're going to go
Speaker 2: to the summit of Mount Ala and that's the world's
Speaker 2: largest volcano and you could see it looming like, it
Speaker 2: looms very well. It's not your typical impressive, straight up
Speaker 2: and down cone that people see. It's long. The name
Speaker 2: in Hawaiian means long mountain, so it's really really long.
Speaker 2: There's no way to effectively convey it. Even when I'm
Speaker 2: standing in front of someone and trying to gesture with
Speaker 2: my hands, you can't explain how long this thing is.
Speaker 2: I mean like long vertically horizontally. It spreads Hawaiian lava's flow.
Speaker 2: They ooze. They're not like explosive like the ones you
Speaker 2: think of when you think of Mount Saint Helen's or
Speaker 2: Saint Dante's Peak. They're more oozy, and so the mountain
Speaker 2: builds up over time and the lavas just ooze out
Speaker 2: and they stack on top of each other. So Mount
Speaker 2: a Loa is a shield volcano, which they named it
Speaker 2: because it looks like a warrior shield on its side.
Speaker 2: So it's a gentle slope, but when you're on the
Speaker 2: summit of it, you're almost fourteen thousand feet high. Oh
Speaker 2: my god. So to drive up there, we took my
Speaker 2: boss's modified Chevy Tahoe, which the US government gave him
Speaker 2: expecting him to take care of it. He put rock
Speaker 2: crawling tires on it, ripped off the bumper, well sawed
Speaker 2: it off actually with a hacksaw, and then pulled off
Speaker 2: the running boards, and then it had adequate clearance to
Speaker 2: go up Mauna Loa. Because you're driving over lava, nobody
Speaker 2: goes up there. But when you get into the summit
Speaker 2: of it, there's a caldera. The caldera is related to
Speaker 2: the word cauldron. It's basically where if you envension yourself
Speaker 2: standing on the edge of a volcano and you look
Speaker 2: at the royling lava lake, that's what you're thinking of.
Speaker 2: The called era, but this called era it wasn't erupting,
Speaker 2: so it hadn't erupted since the eighties. So the lavas
Speaker 2: were all cooled and they're just shiny and black and beautiful.
Speaker 2: And the caldera is miles long and miles across. It's huge.
Speaker 2: So we were standing in the summit caldera and I
Speaker 2: was sitting there on lavas that were young, that were
Speaker 2: younger than me. They were from nineteen eighty four. The
Speaker 2: world's largest volcano is still growing. And I was looking
Speaker 2: into this vent where the lavas had come up from,
Speaker 2: and it's this abyssle looking hole. I mean you look
Speaker 2: down into it and there's just nothing. And my boss said,
Speaker 2: we're going to go down there and look at some
Speaker 2: of the lavas because we might want to take a sample.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, really, we can just go down there.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, and he's like, yeah, we can go
Speaker 2: down there. So of course I went down there, and
Speaker 2: I'm in this vent on the world's largest volcano, almost
Speaker 2: fourteen thousand feet high, and I went, this is the
Speaker 2: best thing ever, Like, this is so amazing. And that
Speaker 2: wasn't even flowing lava that came later, but just the
Speaker 2: scale of it, and the fact that we're still building
Speaker 2: this planet, like we're not doing anything, I should say,
Speaker 2: humans aren't, but the planet is still alive. It's still
Speaker 2: growing and changing every day, and I'm like, this is
Speaker 2: living history and I just fell in love. Were you
Speaker 2: at all scared being down there at all? Yeah? I
Speaker 2: mean that's my problem. My parents would probably agree. Whenever
Speaker 2: I'm going to go do something. You know, I'm really
Speaker 2: pretty well versed in doing risk assessments, hazard assessments. It's
Speaker 2: been some of the stuff I've had to do for
Speaker 2: my jobs. And so I look at the risks, and
Speaker 2: I take calculated risks, But I guess my scale for
Speaker 2: what's scary is a lot different than most people's. Like
Speaker 2: I mean, I work in areas where there are venomous
Speaker 2: snakes and spiders, there are active volcanic eruptions. I've worked
Speaker 2: in areas where there have been narco trafficking roots going on.
Speaker 2: Of dealt with narco traffickers, I've had to deal with
Speaker 2: horse thieves thieves, yeah, and peru on. But you can't
Speaker 2: like put a club on your horse. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: when you're at sixteen thousand feet elevation, no help is coming.
Speaker 2: Helicopters can't even get there, really, so you're basically in
Speaker 2: a remote valley and if the horse thieves come, you
Speaker 2: better hope that the wranglers who are taking care of
Speaker 2: your pack animals have a rifle, which they did, so
Speaker 2: all was well, we didn't lose any animals, But did
Speaker 2: you just shoot at the at the thief. They just
Speaker 2: had to show them the rifle because the thieves were
Speaker 2: armed too. But when they saw that our camp was armed,
Speaker 2: that was it. But you know, it's when you deal
Speaker 2: with things like that, that's what you do. That's science
Speaker 2: today and that's what people don't see. They see the
Speaker 2: volcano and they go, oh, it's erupting, but they're not
Speaker 2: necessarily thinking about the poisonous gases or the heat stroke,
Speaker 2: the less sexy and glamorous parts of doing field research.
Speaker 2: But is that kind of what thrills you about it
Speaker 2: a little bit? Yeah, because it's you know, it kind
Speaker 2: of strikes a little bit more at the true heart
Speaker 2: of exploration as it was intended to be. Right, everybody
Speaker 2: needs to do what draws them, and for me it's volcanoes,
Speaker 2: you know, And for some people it's circumnavigating the you know,
Speaker 2: the South Pole, who knows.
Speaker 1: So what is it like when you're your particular study
Speaker 1: of volcanoes? Yeah, do you focus on the spewy ones,
Speaker 1: the ashy ones, the uzzy ones, Like what's your what?
Speaker 2: What's what's my nation?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What's your jam? So really, you know, I started out
Speaker 2: on Hawaiian volcanoes and I ended up doing under sea
Speaker 2: as well, and then I've also studied the explode sorts
Speaker 2: of volcanoes too. I mean, I've done work in Mexico
Speaker 2: on some extinct volcanoes. I've done work in Ecuador on
Speaker 2: more like eruptive currently currently erupting volcanoes, and then just
Speaker 2: all over the US on the Cascades volcanoes specific northwest.
Speaker 2: So really it's a mix. And my real specialty, what
Speaker 2: I love is volcanic hazards. So what do you do?
Speaker 1: And you're the only person I'm ever gonna meet in
Speaker 1: my life going to say that?
Speaker 2: Senden you say this, But you could go to you
Speaker 2: could go to visit killaue a volcano in Hawaii. They
Speaker 2: have a visitors center there, and you know, the volcanologists
Speaker 2: are usually inside doing work or outside doing work, but
Speaker 2: sometimes they'll wander around over the overlook and you know
Speaker 2: where the public is and they'll look out and you
Speaker 2: may you may be standing next to a volcanologist and
Speaker 2: not know it. So, oh we look like normal humans.
Speaker 2: Is that you guys need to do? You need to
Speaker 2: wear some cool hat? Just make the pointy ears, because
Speaker 2: then that would make the Star Trek jokes I get
Speaker 2: like they would make them all completely relevant. How often
Speaker 2: do you get that? Like pretty much all the time.
Speaker 2: Everyone goes, wait, so I didn't know that star trek
Speaker 2: was something you could get a degree in, And I'm like, yes,
Speaker 2: I've heard that one thank you though, but no, I mean,
Speaker 2: and then I usually respond with livelong and prosper and
Speaker 2: I do the hand gesture. So that's yeah too, kind
Speaker 2: of you. You have to because I mean, hey, to
Speaker 2: people who meet a volcanologist for the first time, it's
Speaker 2: a cool thing, right, you work on volcanoes. But then
Speaker 2: you know, when you're a volcanologist, you're like, yeah, so
Speaker 2: I get up in the morning and I have to
Speaker 2: pay the water bill, right, so you know, you're just
Speaker 2: like anybody else. But it is cool and you can't
Speaker 2: forget that, Like, whatever you're studying, you love it, otherwise
Speaker 2: you wouldn't be doing it. You have to keep that joy.
Speaker 2: And that's what I think is so important these days
Speaker 2: for scientists. We have to be telling people why we
Speaker 2: love what we do and what makes it so cool.
Speaker 2: And now what gets you excited is the hazards. Hazards.
Speaker 1: So, and you mentioned the Pacific Northwest. There was an
Speaker 1: article going around last year that like the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: is just screwed pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like how screwed are they? Yeah? So there's just
Speaker 2: a number of hazards there. You've got tectonic hazards. They
Speaker 2: could have a major, major earthquake. We have that documented
Speaker 2: that there have been major earthquakes along the faults up there.
Speaker 2: There's also the possibility of tsunami. But then the volcanoes,
Speaker 2: which are my favorite. And a good example is we Near.
Speaker 1: Which is that really really big beautiful mountain that's just
Speaker 1: outside of Seattle, And it looks like a drawing of
Speaker 1: a mountain on a bottle of water. It's so beautiful
Speaker 1: it belongs on a beer can.
Speaker 2: And I have friends in Seattle and I love to
Speaker 2: terrify them. It's also very dangerous. It just sits there
Speaker 2: looming over Seattle. I love things that loom. It's kind
Speaker 2: of my my favorite concept. It really looms and it's
Speaker 2: good at it, and so it looks picturesque. It's covered
Speaker 2: in glaciers, twenty six of them. And those glaciers, if
Speaker 2: you think about it, what happens to ice when you
Speaker 2: melt it water? So when rainier erupts again, it's on it.
Speaker 2: If it's a when and it erupts about every eight
Speaker 2: hundred six to eight hundred years, it's been about five
Speaker 2: hundred years. Oh no, so it's considered. It was identified
Speaker 2: as a decade volcano as part of the A global
Speaker 2: effort to identify some of the most dangerous volcanoes based
Speaker 2: on the people who are nearby. So you look at
Speaker 2: the exposure and then you look at the hazard, like
Speaker 2: what does the volcano do? Hawaiian volcanoes there are no glaciers,
Speaker 2: so we're not worried about volcanic mudflows or lahars. It's
Speaker 2: not an issue for Hawaii. It's totally an issue for mountaineer.
Speaker 2: What's a lahar? It's a volcanic mudflow. When you have that,
Speaker 2: you superheat the glaciers, they melt, it mixes with the
Speaker 2: the dirt and debris, and it forms a mudflow. So
Speaker 2: volcanic mudflows lahars are incredibly dangerous, even in modern era.
Speaker 1: This is where I find out that America as a
Speaker 1: nation is rife with volcanoes.
Speaker 2: We're just lousy with them.
Speaker 1: So many volcanoes here in our backyard in the United States,
Speaker 1: we have the second highest number of volcanoes on the
Speaker 1: planet of any country.
Speaker 2: Really, I didn't know that. I mean, does that counts Hawaii. Yep,
Speaker 2: it counts Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, California, the Nevada Yellowstone
Speaker 2: or Yowstone, and Wyoming. I mean the whole Western US,
Speaker 2: most of the states, let's say a lot of the
Speaker 2: states have areas that we've had volcanic activity. Anywhere you
Speaker 2: have hot springs. Hot springs are geothermal, so it is
Speaker 2: powered by a magma chamber somewhere underneath. So if you've
Speaker 2: sat in a nice hot spring in Colorado and Glenwood Springs,
Speaker 2: for example, that's geothermal.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: I almost cut this reference to Glenwood Springs out because
Speaker 1: it seemed too specific, and then I Google image searched
Speaker 1: it and was like, like, what the place's tight?
Speaker 2: I want to go? Where are we right now? Like
Speaker 2: how good of a warning system do we have? We're
Speaker 2: working on it. So here's the thing. We can only
Speaker 2: do as much science as we have money for. And
Speaker 2: if you don't have a volcano in your backyard, you
Speaker 2: might not be very concerned about volcanic corruptions. Like see,
Speaker 2: if you live in Kentucky, it might not be your priority.
Speaker 2: Are there enough volcanologists out there? You know there there's
Speaker 2: a good number, and you know, I wish there could
Speaker 2: be more. But again, it's all about where you're going
Speaker 2: to get the funding from. That's like any science, and
Speaker 2: it's not as like you know unless a volcano has
Speaker 2: killed a family member, like cancer has killed your family member.
Speaker 2: If cancer's killed your family member, you're going to be
Speaker 2: more likely to donate to cancer research. But until a
Speaker 2: volcano kills your family member, you're probably not going to
Speaker 2: donate for volcano research. That's a very good point. So
Speaker 2: we need more volcanos killing more family members. That's my problem.
Speaker 2: So that's that's the other thing. This is my conflict. Right,
Speaker 2: So if I hear about a volcano going off, my
Speaker 2: instinct on one hand is to go, oh, my god, yes,
Speaker 2: that's a I want to go see it. And then
Speaker 2: on the other hand, I go, oh, no, I wonder
Speaker 2: if anyone's in the path of that eruption. I really
Speaker 2: hope no one's affected by the ash cloud or by
Speaker 2: the gases. So I'm constantly torn between like, and a
Speaker 2: lot of my colleagues are the same, like we really
Speaker 2: want We're like, we want to see this nature in action, la,
Speaker 2: and then at the same time we're like, oh, ouch,
Speaker 2: So we don't really want people to die, but we
Speaker 2: totally want more data, so we want to see this
Speaker 2: stuff happen. Plus it's cool, lava is cool. Eruptions are
Speaker 2: amazing to witness, and I just wish that there was
Speaker 2: a way that we could move people to safety more effectively.
Speaker 1: And so that's what a lot of disaster preparedness works on.
Speaker 1: All Right, here's the PSA from Jess. I'm going to
Speaker 1: relay it. If you live in southern California, you need
Speaker 1: to have an earthquake preparedness kit. Apparently you should have
Speaker 1: five days worth of supplies minimum for every person in
Speaker 1: the household. You should have a plan not just for yourself,
Speaker 1: but for your pets or for your kids of anywhere
Speaker 1: important who care about dying. I don't know, uh where
Speaker 1: you're going to meet on any given day of the week.
Speaker 1: So also have batteries, have food. I will tell you
Speaker 1: I do not have an earthquake preparedness kit yet, I
Speaker 1: should get one. I grew up in the Bay Area
Speaker 1: and we had one for earthquakes and it was a
Speaker 1: suitcase that had a gallon of water and I think
Speaker 1: some canned green beans and some canned Vienna sausage, because
Speaker 1: it's weird that sausage even comes in canned. But we
Speaker 1: had a can of sausage and we're like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: just put it in an earthquake kit. So do yourself
Speaker 1: a favor, get an earthquake kit in a plan. Okay,
Speaker 1: speaking of growing up and hazards, Jess is no stranger
Speaker 1: to a household that involved dangerous jobs.
Speaker 2: This is insane. My parents were REFBI agents and so
Speaker 2: it's what, yeah, so the fact that I went into
Speaker 2: volcano research is probably not that out of left field.
Speaker 2: It's like I had to do something cool. But like
Speaker 2: every eye agent's do you say what they? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 2: what the deal was? They were, well, my mom was
Speaker 2: one of the first wave of female agents in the
Speaker 2: bureau because she joined in the seventies. And my dad,
Speaker 2: you know, he was a lawyer. Hey, when you join
Speaker 2: the FBI, then you basically were a lawyer, an accountant,
Speaker 2: or like a language expert. My mom is a language expert,
Speaker 2: so she spoke Spanish and she taught me when I
Speaker 2: was a kid. And my dad, my dad specialized with
Speaker 2: his lawyer background. He did white color crime and then
Speaker 2: he did a bit of gang task for his work,
Speaker 2: and then he did cybersecurity. And my mom was a
Speaker 2: terrorism and foreign counter intelligence expert. Oh my god, So
Speaker 2: what do they think of your career? They are, well,
Speaker 2: my mom is the one who's like, honey, get out
Speaker 2: of that volcanic event. You're going to get hurt. And
Speaker 2: then I kind of always want to say, hey, Mom, Dad,
Speaker 2: you guys took bulletproof vest to work and wore guns
Speaker 2: every day, so you know, let's just put it in
Speaker 2: perspective here. But you know, it all depends on what
Speaker 2: you're comfortable with and what you're good at. My parents
Speaker 2: are trained and using guns every which way. And my
Speaker 2: mom used to say when I would act up, she goes,
Speaker 2: I could make you disappear, and so I was a
Speaker 2: good kid. She was joking she would never do that, right,
Speaker 2: you know it was I'm like, well, actually, my parents
Speaker 2: had good threat and my boyfriends were all terrified.
Speaker 1: It would be kind of scary. But her mom's such
Speaker 1: a badass that she gets a pass from me. Speaking
Speaker 1: of goosebumpy things, volcanoes.
Speaker 2: Breathe so oh that's creepy. Yeah. The magma chambers actually
Speaker 2: fill and then release magma, depending but the magma like
Speaker 2: it's not always visible, and when it's not visible in
Speaker 2: the summit, that means it's going out to the sea.
Speaker 2: So it's like when it would inflate, the magma chamber
Speaker 2: at the summit was filling. You could see the lava
Speaker 2: visible at the lava lake there at the summit, and
Speaker 2: then when it deflates, it just kind of empties and
Speaker 2: then it goes out to the ocean. So that's called
Speaker 2: the lava lake. There can be a lava lake. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's basically exactly what it sounds like, a lake full
Speaker 2: of lava.
Speaker 1: And I ask a creepy, horrible question, how often are
Speaker 1: like human remains found in volcanoes? Because I feel like
Speaker 1: the worst way to die we've all agreed is to
Speaker 1: get thrown into a volcano, or to throw yourself into one.
Speaker 2: This is where I get weird. So I've actually decided
Speaker 2: that if you know, if I become like, you know,
Speaker 2: incapacitated i'm old, rather than doing like you know, euthanasia
Speaker 2: for myself, you know, assisted suicide, I would just request
Speaker 2: to be tossed in an active volcano. Oh hell yeah,
Speaker 2: because because I have reasons. So the gases, the sulfur
Speaker 2: dioxide fumes that volcanoes produce will actually stop your breathing
Speaker 2: very very quickly. They will basically solidify your airways. So
Speaker 2: you're going to die from that. You're going to die
Speaker 2: from the fall, if you're the one I think of
Speaker 2: is Kilauea, because I've stood at the edge of it
Speaker 2: and look down into the lava lake a couple like
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty feet below me and thought to
Speaker 2: be pretty good because you're you're going to fall, so
Speaker 2: you may die of a heart attack on the way
Speaker 2: down because you're terrified. But you're going to fall into
Speaker 2: an eighteen hundred degree plus roiling lake of molten rock.
Speaker 2: And so you've got three things there that are going
Speaker 2: to kill you, the gas, the fall, or the actual
Speaker 2: lava itself. And I'm like, you're assured of dying, like
Speaker 2: there will be no like leftovers, There will be no
Speaker 2: you know what, I messed up. It didn't work out right,
Speaker 2: You're done, So you don't find like human remains, mainly
Speaker 2: because everything that you throw in is disintegrated, Like I
Speaker 2: lost a pocket knife in a killawey A lava flow
Speaker 2: at one point, like this was on the side of
Speaker 2: the volcano. It's flowing through, you know, flowing over the
Speaker 2: other flows, and it's also flowing through a little forested
Speaker 2: area and that was standing there and it was burning it.
Speaker 2: Those are called kapuka which is a Hawaiian word, and
Speaker 2: so it was flowing through this kapuka and you know,
Speaker 2: it's like a lava river. I have a picture of
Speaker 2: me poking the lava with a stick because for science,
Speaker 2: you know, you have to poke things with sticks. Plus
Speaker 2: it was a cool picture, and I was like, I
Speaker 2: just mainly wanted to poke it on fire with a stick.
Speaker 2: And the stick caught on fire, as you would expect,
Speaker 2: so I threw the stick in. But then we were
Speaker 2: hiking through this kapuka like kind of through underbrush and everything,
Speaker 2: and I had my pocket, my pocket knife clipped in
Speaker 2: my pocket, and when I got through, it was gone.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, Like, there was a Jack Handy
Speaker 2: quote from Saturday Night Live where he said something like,
Speaker 2: if you lose your keys in a you know, river
Speaker 2: of lava, you used to let them go, man, because
Speaker 2: they're gone. And I was like, oh my god. I
Speaker 2: had the same thing with my pocket knife, Like my
Speaker 2: knife not coming back. You would never find it. It
Speaker 2: would be just gone.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is a question that I feel like
Speaker 1: is on everyone's mind. Okay, Dante's peak or volcano, Okay.
Speaker 2: This is important, this is scientific too, all right, My
Speaker 2: opinion is scientific in this case, but it's not representative
Speaker 2: of the scientific community as a whole. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: have to say that disclaimer. So Dante's Peak has Pierce
Speaker 2: Brosnan plus, that's good. It was vaguely more scientific. Although
Speaker 2: you still cannot drive a car into an old mind
Speaker 2: shaft to escape a pyroclastic flow or it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work, so that one kind of breaks apart too.
Speaker 2: But they at least tried to give it some sort
Speaker 2: of semblance of credibility in in volcano so that the
Speaker 2: tar pits, the LaBrea tarpits cannot and will not erupt,
Speaker 2: especially not with magma. Like the tarpits are related to
Speaker 2: what we get oil from, like it's it's dead dinosaur bones,
Speaker 2: you know, like it's plant matter, you know, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's a completely different, different thing like rock. It's like
Speaker 2: saying pudding is the same as cheesecake. No, they're not.
Speaker 2: They're two different things. They're both dessert. They're two different things.
Speaker 2: So you know, like like volcanoes and tarpets, there are
Speaker 2: both holes in the ground, I guess, but that's about
Speaker 2: where the similarity ends. So the tar pets, though, when
Speaker 2: they you know. Okay, let's say it was volcanic, right,
Speaker 2: If a volcano were to erupt in la that'd be amazing.
Speaker 2: But if it happened, you cannot stop lava with a
Speaker 2: Jersey barricade, those concrete barriers, and you definitely cannot stop
Speaker 2: it with a bus. Buses do not stop lava flows.
Speaker 2: I'd like to debunk that one here and once and
Speaker 2: for all. And yeah, I mean bus would melt. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it would just be it would be eaten, I mean
Speaker 2: just eaten. And so the lava because it's solidifying as
Speaker 2: it's cooling. There's a cool sign in Hawaii Volcanos National
Speaker 2: Park by where lava flows overtook a road. The sign
Speaker 2: says no parking, and it's buried like up almost to
Speaker 2: the sign itself, like the whole the stand for the sign.
Speaker 2: The pole is covered like several feet of lava flows
Speaker 2: and then there's just this sign sticking out that says
Speaker 2: no parking. So it didn't you know it. The metal
Speaker 2: pole is now part of the rock. Like it's my god,
Speaker 2: those flows were cool enough that you know it's it's
Speaker 2: still you know it's in there, but you know, anything
Speaker 2: else you toss into lava is going to disintegrate. But
Speaker 2: the cool thing is human remains. Because I was a
Speaker 2: history major, so I geek out on any of the
Speaker 2: human interactions with the volcanoes. You will find petroglyphs around,
Speaker 2: you know, volcanoes. You will find that the ancient Hawaiians
Speaker 2: Native Hawaiians buried people in lava tubes. So they were
Speaker 2: the where the lava had flowed through and then there
Speaker 2: was this empty tube of rock. That's they where they
Speaker 2: buried their dead. I mean, they don't have like nice,
Speaker 2: big dirt plots where you can put people in. That's
Speaker 2: how they did it. So you don't go into lava tubes,
Speaker 2: if your tourist in Hawaii, don't do it. Don't go
Speaker 2: into lava tube except for the ones that they've set
Speaker 2: up for the public, you know near the volcano observatory.
Speaker 2: That's okay. Is it like walking through an open graveyard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's basically desecrating somebody's ancient family members. So you don't
Speaker 2: do it. And then the same thing, Well, in Chile,
Speaker 2: there's a volcano there that people may have heard about.
Speaker 2: They've found mummified remains of kids up there who were sacrificed,
Speaker 2: and they were basically drugged and then led up to
Speaker 2: the summit because it's very high, and they died of
Speaker 2: exposure and they were mummified. But one of them was
Speaker 2: struck by lightning too, which was crazy. But you find
Speaker 2: them on volcanoes and around volcanoes, but definitely never in
Speaker 2: because I mean, the lava just melts. Yeah. Wow, So
Speaker 2: there's so is there like an anthropological part of your
Speaker 2: job too, Not technically, but if I were to, like
Speaker 2: depends on what you're doing. Really, I because we've worked
Speaker 2: in so many places around the world, I try to
Speaker 2: be really sensitive to the local cultures. You don't want
Speaker 2: to be disrespecting somebody's long held beliefs, even if it's
Speaker 2: a culture that's no longer there, mainly because you could
Speaker 2: be ruining some sort of historical artifacts too, and it
Speaker 2: all has value to understanding the world around us. So
Speaker 2: I love learning everything. And they're a scientists who are
Speaker 2: more focused and more specialized. But for me, I mean,
Speaker 2: if I'm in an area that has an extensive history
Speaker 2: of the locals interacting with the volcanoes, then it makes
Speaker 2: it extra interesting for me, and I like to learn
Speaker 2: the historic names of mountains, for example, Crater Lake in Oregon.
Speaker 2: It was originally called Mount Mazama and it was considered
Speaker 2: I believe, and somebody will correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: because it'll be on the internet. Mount Mazama was. I
Speaker 2: think it was considered a deity or the home of
Speaker 2: a deity by the local indigenous people. So, but Mazama
Speaker 2: blew everything. It blew its top off, essentially, it collapsed
Speaker 2: and spectacular eruption and uh and that that massive crater
Speaker 2: you see, like if you actually were to draw a
Speaker 2: line from where the crater walls are up to a peak, like,
Speaker 2: that's how big Mazama was. God, So it was much bigger.
Speaker 1: And Yosemite is or not Yellstone and Yellowstone is essentially
Speaker 1: just one big volcano.
Speaker 2: Oh Yellowstone is Yeah, Yellstone's crazy. That's those are super volcanoes.
Speaker 2: That's there's actually what they call them. So, you know,
Speaker 2: thank you BBC for popularizing that with the Supervolcanoes pseudo documentary.
Speaker 2: It was fictionalized, but it did have a lot of
Speaker 2: good science in it. So people want to see something
Speaker 2: that's more accurate but still cool than Volcano or Dante's Peak.
Speaker 2: Check out super Volcanoes by the BBC because that is cool.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of good science in there, and
Speaker 2: it explains that Yellowstone is massive. And vulcanologists have a
Speaker 2: scale called the VEI index. It's the Volcanic explosivity Index,
Speaker 2: and it goes up to an eight, and Yellowstone are
Speaker 2: ups at an eight. Whoa and zero is the Hawaiian eruptions. No,
Speaker 2: it's a zero. Mount Saint Helens was, I think, and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I see I forgot my Saint Helen's trivia,
Speaker 2: but it was pretty low. It was like a three
Speaker 2: or four, and Yellowstone is an eight. Yeah. When Saint
Speaker 2: Helens erupted, people didn't know that volcanoes could erupt laterally
Speaker 2: on the side.
Speaker 1: Oh right, yeah, because it really it was almost like
Speaker 1: a projectile vomited ash.
Speaker 2: A landslide triggered the eruption. So it was the largest
Speaker 2: landslide on record, and it basically a whole chunk of
Speaker 2: the mountain slid off and it released the pressure on
Speaker 2: you know that was going on, and then the eruption came.
Speaker 2: So know that. Yeah, So it was a landslide that
Speaker 2: triggered the eruption and then it produced pyroclastic flows. It
Speaker 2: was crazy. But until that point. We didn't know that
Speaker 2: volcanoes could do that.
Speaker 1: Just a side note, I looked it up. Hyroclastic means
Speaker 1: relating to or consisting of fragments of rock erupted by
Speaker 1: a volcano. Mountain Helens is also a stratovolcano, which is
Speaker 1: also called the composite volcano, and this means that they're
Speaker 1: made up of strata or layers of ash and lava.
Speaker 1: These kind of volcanoes tend to be the conical, pointy,
Speaker 1: iconic ones. They're also the most deadly and a few
Speaker 1: examples of stratovolcanoes are Mount Fuji in Japan, There's Krakatoa
Speaker 1: in Indonesia, Italy's Mount Vesuvius. These are like the celebrity
Speaker 1: strato volcanoes. Okay, back to Yellowstone.
Speaker 2: And Yellowstone is an eight. Yeah, I was going to
Speaker 2: go to Yellowstone. You can go, I mean, so here's
Speaker 2: the thing. We're not going to die. No, So this
Speaker 2: is this is what I tell people. I mean, you
Speaker 2: can if you go into pools like the superheated right,
Speaker 2: don't go in those pools, people. I could get bored
Speaker 2: by a moose.
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows, yeah, exactly, so by a moose
Speaker 1: rather yeah, or you know, I could never be bored
Speaker 1: by a moose.
Speaker 2: I was just talking about riding a moose the other
Speaker 2: day with somebody. I don't know it's it's been it's
Speaker 2: been a week. But so Yellowstone is is what's It's
Speaker 2: basically a called era. So it's a giant called era,
Speaker 2: like the like the summit of Mount a Loa, but bigger.
Speaker 2: And so it's a huge, huge, massive magma chamber underground
Speaker 2: and calderas are crazy because if it's an old one,
Speaker 2: people might not even know it's there. A good example
Speaker 2: is Long Valley called Eera, which most people have never
Speaker 2: heard of that they don't know what it is, whereas
Speaker 2: that it's right near Mammoth in California, and there are
Speaker 2: hot springs near Mammoth, A lot of people who've been
Speaker 2: up there skiing will know that the Long Valley caldera
Speaker 2: had an ancient massive eruption similar to Yellowstone, not quite
Speaker 2: as big and and if you're driving through it, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't know you're in a volcanic called era unless you
Speaker 2: look at the rocks on the side of the road.
Speaker 2: It is like thirty feet thick. I think of ash
Speaker 2: that was deposited from the volcano, and you'd have to
Speaker 2: know you were looking at volcanic ash. So it's it's
Speaker 2: cool when ash falls. Ash is rock when you're talking
Speaker 2: about volcanic ash, it's pulverized rock. So you've got magma.
Speaker 2: Magma is essentially the rock and it's molten. It's like
Speaker 2: a plastic solid. So it's underground. It's really hot, so
Speaker 2: it oozes. When it builds up under pressure. The volcanoes
Speaker 2: actually explode, you know. But if the rock breaks into tiny, tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny pieces, it's volcanic ash, and that is what causes
Speaker 2: airplanes to have problems. And you know when the Icelandic
Speaker 2: volcano erupted a few years ago. That's why it was
Speaker 2: such a hazard. Is you've got fine rock particles that
Speaker 2: will jam your plane engines, so and you can't breathe
Speaker 2: that in like so you know, if you're if you're
Speaker 2: around an ash rich eruption, you want to put a
Speaker 2: bandana on because it actually will you know, you'll breathe
Speaker 2: in this fine rock and that will shred your lungs,
Speaker 2: like you don't want that. Well, why the hell do
Speaker 2: chinchillas have to bathe in volcanic ash? Where Where did
Speaker 2: chinchillas get this idea? Yeah? You know what, it's just
Speaker 2: about their environment. They're adapted to the environment and there's
Speaker 2: that really fine ash that is around where they're from
Speaker 2: in South America, So they're really cool animals.
Speaker 1: I like, I used to have one, really and did
Speaker 1: you have to did it have to roll around a
Speaker 1: volcanic ash?
Speaker 2: It's finely ground pummas, which is like really it's it's
Speaker 2: what we call it vesticular, but it basically vesicles are
Speaker 2: like little airholes, right, air bubbles, and so when gas
Speaker 2: is trapped in rock, it forms vesicles. So if you
Speaker 2: have really highly vesticular rock, we call it pummush And
Speaker 2: that's what the pumma stones that you use on your
Speaker 2: on your fever their actual, like if you get a
Speaker 2: real one, it's an actual rock from a volcano that
Speaker 2: you're using to scrub your dead skin off with.
Speaker 1: Whow I have another pop culture volcano custure. Okay, did
Speaker 1: you see that weird Pixar short that was before Inside Out?
Speaker 2: Yes? What the fuck was that? Like?
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's like a big man volcano who's really
Speaker 1: lonely and then suddenly, like a hot young volcano erupts
Speaker 1: next to him. All right, So there is a short
Speaker 1: Bypixar called Lava, and boy Howdy did it ruffle my feathers.
Speaker 1: It is about a horny volcano who really wants a woman,
Speaker 1: and he just hangs out, getting older and grosser the
Speaker 1: entire short, and he's thirsty as hell for a hot
Speaker 1: lady and she finally erupts from the ocean floor and
Speaker 1: then they live happily ever after, and it's like, just
Speaker 1: chill out, dude, Your life is fine. Your life is fine.
Speaker 1: Why do we have to teach everyone that they need
Speaker 1: a life partner. You can be a volcano in the ocean,
Speaker 1: but I'm sorry, if you don't have a plus one
Speaker 1: to a wedding, you're a piece of shit. I don't
Speaker 1: think so volcano Lava. Also, I live in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I don't need to see a volcano looking for a younger,
Speaker 1: hotter Instagram model equivalent of another volcano. I see it
Speaker 1: everywhere I go. I see it in the White House.
Speaker 1: We don't need it in volcanoes. Also, if she sprouts
Speaker 1: up next to him, I feel like they've come from
Speaker 1: the same magma chamber, perhaps under the seafloor. Does that
Speaker 1: mean that he's just fallen in love with his conjoined twin,
Speaker 1: but who is much much younger.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I get that subduction leads to erogeny, we know that,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to think about this volcano having
Speaker 1: a chub and needing to rub it on someone.
Speaker 2: I don't need that. I don't like it. Pixar, I
Speaker 2: love you.
Speaker 1: You make me cry all the time and it hurts,
Speaker 1: and I love it. This one mm And if you
Speaker 1: worked on this, I'm sorry because you're probably legitimately a
Speaker 1: really good person.
Speaker 2: This it just was.
Speaker 1: It was a miss for me, all right. So when
Speaker 1: they're not crooning about get in some tail, what are
Speaker 1: volcanoes sounding like? I had never thought about this. Jess
Speaker 1: had joined a research scientist named Jeff Johnson from Boise, Idaho,
Speaker 1: and they recorded some volcanoes. They laid down some hot tracks.
Speaker 2: So when you record a volcano in infrasound, you then
Speaker 2: have to bump it up so we can hear it
Speaker 2: in the playback. And we listen to some of the
Speaker 2: playback and it's like the volcano goes all all and
Speaker 2: it's it's guts are talking.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Does it sound like a demon? Yeah? Actually it really
Speaker 2: really does like exactly what you think of volcanoes. Sounds
Speaker 2: like deep inside it's magma chamber. It sounds like that,
Speaker 2: but at the surface too. This is another cool fact
Speaker 2: that unless you go stand above a lava lake, you
Speaker 2: won't know this, but it sounds like a guy banging
Speaker 2: a hammer, like a big, big, big hammer. It sounds
Speaker 2: like crashing metal, and what it is is the rocks breaking.
Speaker 2: But it sounds like. You can totally see where the
Speaker 2: ancient Greeks and Romans got Fostus and Vulcan guys who
Speaker 2: are underground banging out tools on a forge.
Speaker 1: If you're like, who's hast fascifas or whatever? FYI googled that. Also,
Speaker 1: that is the Greek god of fire, metallurgy, volcanoes, and
Speaker 1: he was the blacksmith of the gods. So apparently he
Speaker 1: was a god who was also a blacksmith to the gods.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that works. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they had unions or do gods even need jobs, it'd
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I'm I'm the god of volcanos, Like
Speaker 1: I don't need to be working on anyone's iron gates
Speaker 1: as like a side hustle anyway has a facipus.
Speaker 2: It's the Greek pronunciation. It sounds like that, really yep,
Speaker 2: So there's a legit place that came from. Why does
Speaker 2: it sound metallic? I wonder, you know, it's probably has
Speaker 2: something to do with the gas and you know, the
Speaker 2: rock ratios to each other or something. You know. I'm
Speaker 2: not a sound expert, so there's probably a soundologist in
Speaker 2: here who knows the answer to that. But the other
Speaker 2: scientists and I when we were standing above the Lava
Speaker 2: Lea because for my first time standing there and for
Speaker 2: some of them it was our first time standing there too,
Speaker 2: and we're sitting there going like this is amazing, Like
Speaker 2: we're hearing volcano and not just you know, ron it's
Speaker 2: an eruption, but you're actually hearing the sound of rock
Speaker 2: breaking and small explosions. And that trip was really interesting,
Speaker 2: that first trip to the summit there of Kilauea, when
Speaker 2: the new eruption that's going on right now had first started.
Speaker 2: I was there like a month after the eruption began,
Speaker 2: so I was prime time for you know, setting up
Speaker 2: cameras and things. So I helped set up the first
Speaker 2: webcam that was overlooking the lava lake there at the
Speaker 2: Volcano Observatory. It was part of a team doing that
Speaker 2: and our boss for that, Tim, he's at the HBO now,
Speaker 2: Tim Or he's a great scientist. You know, we're sitting
Speaker 2: there working and we're starting to set the camera up
Speaker 2: and wearing hard hats and we're wearing high visibility shirts
Speaker 2: that were bright orange and work boots, and then we
Speaker 2: had a respirator. We weren't wearing the respirators or hanging
Speaker 2: around our neck, and then we of course put them
Speaker 2: on and go lukeuy, I'm your father. Take them off again.
Speaker 2: But but you know, Tim was talking to us we're
Speaker 2: about to start working. He goes, Okay, if you hear
Speaker 2: a big explosion, you just run, drop the equipment, just
Speaker 2: turn and go. And we're like okay. And we're sitting
Speaker 2: there looking at these little lava bombs that are sitting
Speaker 2: all around us. And that's exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 2: It's a piece of rock that's been ejected out of
Speaker 2: the volcano. And I mean these things range in size
Speaker 2: from like a quarter all the way and they can
Speaker 2: be smaller than that, but like a quarter size thing
Speaker 2: up to you know, something the size of a refrigerator
Speaker 2: can come out of that. I mean, weren't any fridge
Speaker 2: sized ones when I was there. But are they hot?
Speaker 2: Lava When they come out, they're hot, but then they
Speaker 2: cool really quickly, and they cool as they're flying through
Speaker 2: the air too, so you get some cool formations and
Speaker 2: lava bombs that look like spindles, like they're twisted or
Speaker 2: they're elongated, and it's pretty neat. But so we're seeing
Speaker 2: these lava bombs. The closest ones to us were probably,
Speaker 2: you know, twice the size of a football, so they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, good size, and you know your heart hat's
Speaker 2: not going to do anything right. And if the plume
Speaker 2: of volcanic smog, which is called vogue, if the vog
Speaker 2: plume shifts, the respirator's not going to help you for
Speaker 2: more than like thirty seconds or a minute, so you
Speaker 2: need to get out. So you know, TAM's making all
Speaker 2: this very clear. And you know it's a calculated risk,
Speaker 2: like you calculate the wind direction, you figure out like
Speaker 2: how active has it been, You look at the situation.
Speaker 2: When you're there, you're not just stupid, you know, you
Speaker 2: run and you want to live. Otherwise your data is
Speaker 2: no good. No one knows what it is. Right, So
Speaker 2: we're about to set the stuff up and Tim goes,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a very real possibility that we could die.
Speaker 2: And I said, I looked at the volcano. Looked at Tim.
Speaker 2: I looked at the volcano, and I said okay. And
Speaker 2: then he goes, okay, hand me that wrench and we
Speaker 2: got to work. And that's the thing is, you just
Speaker 2: have to be aware and you have to know what
Speaker 2: you're doing, and it's always a calculated risk because I
Speaker 2: mean volcanologists, like we're all well educated, we all have families,
Speaker 2: We want to go home, you know, like we're not
Speaker 2: out there because we're crazy thrill seekers, but we understand
Speaker 2: that in order to get some of this information, some
Speaker 2: of it can be done with satellites, some of it
Speaker 2: can be done with sensors, and we're making strides in
Speaker 2: that every day. But you still have to have people
Speaker 2: on the ground, like actually walking up to it and going,
Speaker 2: h what do we see here? And you have to
Speaker 2: have people sampling this stuff. We don't have. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you try to send a drone over a volcano,
Speaker 2: drone battery life is like what fifteen minutes and you know,
Speaker 2: electronic equipment corrodes all pretty quickly in high sulfur dioxide areas,
Speaker 2: and even even the parking breaks, the breaks and the
Speaker 2: rods on the cars that the staff at the Volcano
Speaker 2: Observatory US have to be replaced about every six months
Speaker 2: because they just corrode so much more quickly because of
Speaker 2: the volcanic concentrations. Would have thought of that at all. Yeah,
Speaker 2: no one realized that until the Summit interruption started in
Speaker 2: eight on Kilauea, and then people were starting to have
Speaker 2: to replace their breaks in the government vehicles like constantly,
Speaker 2: and it was well, must be the vog. So the
Speaker 2: vog I've never even heard that. Yeah, so it's I mean,
Speaker 2: the vog plume can actually be hazardous to people's health.
Speaker 2: So the good thing is most people on the Big
Speaker 2: Island of Hawaii, the vog plume goes south around the
Speaker 2: bottom of the island, so there's not a lot of
Speaker 2: people that live there relative to other parts of the island,
Speaker 2: like Hilo never gets vog, but Kona, on the west coast,
Speaker 2: the vog wraps around the south and then comes up
Speaker 2: the coastline. So in Kona you can have foggy days
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, vog did you make that up? I'm like,
Speaker 2: some volcano scientists made that up. You know, vog is
Speaker 2: a thing. It's a real Like if I say vog,
Speaker 2: any volcanologist knows what I mean.
Speaker 1: If you go to Hawaii and you want to see
Speaker 1: a volcano, is there like a good helicopter tour you
Speaker 1: should be hip to?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what there's I think it was Blue
Speaker 2: Hawaii was the one that that I just for this
Speaker 2: latest discovery shoot we used because the USGS, we use
Speaker 2: a different guy heat contracts just with the USGS. But
Speaker 2: I think Blue Hawaii is very very good, okay, and
Speaker 2: we had a good experience with them. We also got
Speaker 2: to fly for three hours. Most tours are not that long.
Speaker 2: Which which volcano was it? That was Kilauea, Okay, So
Speaker 2: and you know, you don't really go up too much
Speaker 2: around mounta Kea or Mauna Loa because they're so high
Speaker 2: and it's hard to fly at that altitude because they
Speaker 2: air so thin. So I think there probably are tours
Speaker 2: that do it, but you know, definitely Kilauea, like it's spectacular.
Speaker 2: If people, if you can afford that helicopter ride, it
Speaker 2: will be a defining moment of your life. And I
Speaker 2: say this not just as someone who geeks out on volcanoes,
Speaker 2: but you're human like and even if you can't afford
Speaker 2: the helicopter ride, if you can get yourself to Hawaii,
Speaker 2: and I don't care if you have to, like I
Speaker 2: don't know, hitchhike your way onto an airplane, but you should.
Speaker 2: Everybody should go, even if you just drive up to
Speaker 2: where the lava is flowing into the ocean or where
Speaker 2: at night, where it's flowing down the coastline on the land.
Speaker 2: You should see it because there's nothing like watching New
Speaker 2: Earth being born. I mean, it's spectacular, awesome, and it
Speaker 2: really puts you into perspective as a person. You're like,
Speaker 2: this is the planet forming itself right now. And now
Speaker 2: now you are busy as a volcanologist, but you're also
Speaker 2: running for congress. Yes, can we discuss that? Yeah? Sure?
Speaker 1: Now what district are you running for Congress? When is
Speaker 1: the election? And tell me a little bit about what
Speaker 1: inspired this.
Speaker 2: Sure, So I'm running in California's twenty fifth congressional district
Speaker 2: that's in La County, but also a little bit is
Speaker 2: Inventory County. It's a really big district. And then was
Speaker 2: the second part, why am I running? Or yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: So I decided to run mainly because of Trump's election.
Speaker 2: I was really concerned about the fate of science and
Speaker 2: scientific research and environmental protections under the Trump administration. And
Speaker 2: you know, not just because of Trump, but before that,
Speaker 2: we saw that the Republicans in Congress, a lot of
Speaker 2: them are climate change deniers, which is weird because the
Speaker 2: experts in the field there's overwhelming evidence supporting this. In
Speaker 2: the face of evidence, I don't understand why people well,
Speaker 2: I mean, I do understand because there are financial things
Speaker 2: at play here, but it doesn't make sense that we
Speaker 2: keep scientists on the back burner of decisions that we're making.
Speaker 2: And you know, I do have a background studying history
Speaker 2: and government, and I went to a liberal arts college.
Speaker 2: I got a great education and a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Plus I worked for the State of Arizona. I've you know,
Speaker 2: my parents are in the FBI. I have a good
Speaker 2: sense of how government functions and why. So really, what
Speaker 2: I'm new to in this is actually running. It's going,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm a candidate, But I really think
Speaker 2: that we need people who look at all the available
Speaker 2: evidence on any issue, any issue, not just science issues,
Speaker 2: but you know, social justice issues, human rights, issues of
Speaker 2: jobs at taxes, on all those things. You need to
Speaker 2: look at everything that's available to you and then look
Speaker 2: at the different groups who are affected by it. Way
Speaker 2: all of that evidence and use your best analysis, get
Speaker 2: information from experts if you yourself are not an expert.
Speaker 2: That's what I do in my job. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean the last four years I've been working really hard
Speaker 2: to make a difference in the environment and the future
Speaker 2: and for students, but it wasn't enough. So you know,
Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, if I can get elected to Congress,
Speaker 2: I can advocate not only for the environments and education
Speaker 2: and science, but also for a bunch of other issues
Speaker 2: that are really important to people and affect them every day.
Speaker 2: You can't do good science if you don't have good
Speaker 2: health care, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's also true, yeah, because so you'll have
Speaker 1: a disease and no coverage and you don't have to
Speaker 1: throw yourself into a call there.
Speaker 2: Or you'll have a lot more asthma because your err
Speaker 2: is really polluted because it's no longer regulated by the EPA,
Speaker 2: and air quality will go to hell and your kids
Speaker 2: will all have asthma, and so will you. It'll be fantastic.
Speaker 2: I love that You're like hazards. That's my deal, all
Speaker 2: the hazards. Yeah. So, I mean it's like, that's what
Speaker 2: I've been trained to do in my work is basically,
Speaker 2: look at a situation, analyze it. Where the hazards? How
Speaker 2: can we mitigate them or how can we avoid them
Speaker 2: or fix them? Right? Like, that's I'm a problem solver.
Speaker 2: Scientists are creative problem solvers, and I think that would
Speaker 2: be really good to have in government. So you've got
Speaker 2: another what year and a half, yes, year and a half.
Speaker 2: It's a whild November twenty eighteen. Oh my god, so long,
Speaker 2: it'll come before you know it. I know you say that,
Speaker 2: But then you're not having to call people to ask
Speaker 2: for donations. Also very true.
Speaker 1: I imagine that's probably harder than like scaling volcanoes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when your friendly neighborhood volcanologist says I'm going to
Speaker 2: run for Congress, you usually pick up the phone, which
Speaker 2: is pretty cool. So people do want to talk to me,
Speaker 2: and people are excited, but man, it takes a lot
Speaker 2: of effort. Well, people seem very jazzed about the notion
Speaker 2: of a volcanologists also being in government. I mean I
Speaker 2: put out questions, are you ready for the rapid fire around?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: So I put out questions. I said, I'm interviewing a
Speaker 1: volcanologist who's got questions. I got a billion of them, Rosie.
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to go through them. We'll answer
Speaker 1: them as fast as we can. Okay, I will do this. Okay,
Speaker 1: ready fast. I'm like like limbering up here.
Speaker 2: Okay, crack your neck, h got it, it does crack.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 1: John wants to know hottest recorded temperature of lava.
Speaker 2: Well, on the surface, eighteen hundred is pretty standard. Eighteen
Speaker 2: hundred fahrenheit. Okay. John wants to know Dante's peak or volcano, Yeah,
Speaker 2: volcano or sorry, volcano for comedy, Dante's peak for more legitimacy. Cool.
Speaker 1: Steven wants to know what exactly is a dormant volcano.
Speaker 2: Ah, so it's one that's not currently erupting, but it
Speaker 2: has erupted in the past and it will erupt again
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 1: Okay. Michelle wants to know how close can I get
Speaker 1: to lava before I catch fire?
Speaker 2: Well, I've been right up to it. And I've sampled
Speaker 2: it with a rock hammer for scientific purposes. You can
Speaker 2: walk up to it, but you can feel your eyes
Speaker 2: dehydrating as you go. It's three times hotter than your
Speaker 2: hottest setting on your oven. Oh yeah, so go stand
Speaker 2: by your oven for a few minutes and tell me
Speaker 2: how you feel. But don't put your head in it.
Speaker 2: Don't put your head in it. Do not play with ovens. Children,
Speaker 2: if any are listening, good.
Speaker 1: To know solid advice. Nadel wants to know if you've
Speaker 1: said a drone in so.
Speaker 2: You can't send them into the lava, but you can
Speaker 2: use them, and they're being used more and more to
Speaker 2: monitor volcanos. There's a group of guys forget the name
Speaker 2: of their project. I'm so sorry, but they're going all
Speaker 2: up and down South America recording drones or using drones
Speaker 2: to do gas geochemistry recordings of volcanoes. We're sponsored by
Speaker 2: land Rover. I'm sure you can find them online. Ps.
Speaker 1: I looked this up and it's on a website called
Speaker 1: Trail by Fire dot org. It's amazing. It's like looking
Speaker 1: directly into Satan's butthole. Ten out of ten.
Speaker 2: Okay, back to questions.
Speaker 1: Diana wants to know where are the best lava tubes
Speaker 1: in the world, But now I'm worried that they're all mausoleums.
Speaker 2: Well not all of them. You can walk in them
Speaker 2: in Hawaii. There's a pretty spectacular one in South Korea
Speaker 2: that I've heard of. I've never been there, but I
Speaker 2: would say, you know, the easiest ones for people to
Speaker 2: go see are the ones in Hawaii that are already
Speaker 2: okayed for you to go in. So I don't know
Speaker 2: about all cultures in terms of how they treat their
Speaker 2: lava tubes, but definitely just be cautious, maybe do a
Speaker 2: little checking with the local government if there's any regulations
Speaker 2: about going into them or not.
Speaker 1: Right, you don't want to like accidentally invite a hex
Speaker 1: on you.
Speaker 2: No, And plus some of them the roofs aren't stable,
Speaker 2: so you could actually have a big chunk of lava
Speaker 2: roof fall on you, and you don't want that either.
Speaker 2: So there's no way to tell either, Like if you
Speaker 2: or I just walk up to it, you don't know
Speaker 2: if it's stable or not. So be careful if you're
Speaker 2: going to go into a lava tube, and you know,
Speaker 2: check around, make sure you do your due diligence.
Speaker 1: If I ever won a lava tube and it collapsed
Speaker 1: on me, I'd be just like, leave me here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why not, right, it's a burial ground already eased
Speaker 2: in Hawaii. And then no one come and like duck
Speaker 2: in here and pee on me later. You know what
Speaker 2: I mean? Just don't do that. Yeah, definitely don't pee
Speaker 2: in any lava tubes. If you can avoid it, hold
Speaker 2: it in a lava tube. That should be our lesson
Speaker 2: for the day. Avoid being in a lava tube. I've
Speaker 2: slept in one, but that was a special case. It
Speaker 2: was I was given permission by my part native Hawaiian boss,
Speaker 2: and it was creepy. I didn't sleep super well. It
Speaker 2: was on the side of Mount a Loa at nine
Speaker 2: thousand feet high and we were hiking down doing a
Speaker 2: survey and it was pouring rain and I was like,
Speaker 2: where were we going to camp because we were going
Speaker 2: to pitch a tent. And Frank was like, there's a
Speaker 2: lat of tube, getting the lava tube and I was like,
Speaker 2: but the Native Hawaiians and he goes. Haley says, it's fine,
Speaker 2: get in the lava tube. Have crazy dreams. I did.
Speaker 2: I was nightmares all night and I woke up in
Speaker 2: the morning. It was a beautiful sunrise, but it was
Speaker 2: oh my god, it was so uncomfortable. So I don't
Speaker 2: recommend it either. Okay, well I'll cross that off my bucket.
Speaker 2: Lest Yes, we do go peer inside, but don't go
Speaker 2: don't go sleeping in it.
Speaker 1: Greg wants to know how much has climate change affected
Speaker 1: volcanic activity, and also vice versa, like how much can
Speaker 1: you know? There's this notion that volcanoes are responsible for
Speaker 1: climate change.
Speaker 2: They are not responsible for it, but they contribute to it.
Speaker 2: So volcanoes, when they erupt, they can actually affect weather
Speaker 2: for a year or two at a time if it's
Speaker 2: a big enough eruption. And we saw that Tambora can
Speaker 2: do that. Krakatoa, you know, I mean the one in
Speaker 2: Iceland affected things because it's releasing volcanic ash into the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: It's particulate matter and sulfur dioxide, which contributes to the
Speaker 2: greenhouse effect. So when gas and tiny rock fragments are
Speaker 2: floating around in the stratosphere or I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's technically the stratosphere. Polease forgive me the sphirit people.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm trying to be technically correct.
Speaker 1: So according to National Geographic volcanic ash and gases can
Speaker 1: sometimes reach the stratosphere, which is the upper layer in
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere, so we're good checks out.
Speaker 2: Anyway, when it's released really high up, we'll go with that.
Speaker 2: You know, that stuff hangs out there and it insulates,
Speaker 2: so that can actually either block Sun's rays and you know,
Speaker 2: insulate that the warmth so the area stays cooler, which
Speaker 2: is what happens, which we see that a lot, or
Speaker 2: it can contribute to gases being trapped and then that
Speaker 2: increases the greenhouse effect. So the volcanoes contribute to the climate. However,
Speaker 2: people have said maybe the rising sea levels are causing
Speaker 2: increased volcanic eruption activity. I haven't seen anything to substantiate
Speaker 2: that that I believe in just yet. I need better
Speaker 2: evidence if I'm going to think that there's sea level
Speaker 2: rise volcanic eruption frequency correlation. But for now, I would
Speaker 2: say volcanoes affect climate. Climate does not affect volcanoes.
Speaker 1: Okay, so good to know. Yeah, oh yeah yeah. Chris
Speaker 1: asked if you really drop your keys and lava, should
Speaker 1: you forget them because man, they're gone?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Oh, my god, Chris, you win, Jack Handy quote for
Speaker 2: the win. But yes, yes, keys, pocket knife, cell phone.
Speaker 2: It's gone. It is gone. It is so gone.
Speaker 1: Don't even try to fish it out. It will never
Speaker 1: come back. Just say goodbye. Then final rapid fire question.
Speaker 1: Ethan wants to know when will we finally be swallowed
Speaker 1: by the molten wrath of a super volcano that's freeing
Speaker 1: us from this pain called earth.
Speaker 2: Well, we can remove ourselves from this mortal coil by
Speaker 2: volcano any potential day, but the low, the probability is
Speaker 2: actually low on any given day. So Yellowstone, while yes,
Speaker 2: it erupts about every six hundred and forty thousand years
Speaker 2: based on our records, and it last erupted six hundred
Speaker 2: and forty thousand years ago, meaning we're quote unquote do
Speaker 2: heavy air quotes there, because you know it's plus or
Speaker 2: minus a lot of thousands of years. So human life spans,
Speaker 2: what are they like seventy five eighty Now we're in
Speaker 2: the US, Like the odds of us being alive when
Speaker 2: Yellowstone again are super low. Plus it's the activity there
Speaker 2: is not worrying anybody right now. If you want to worry,
Speaker 2: just worry about Renier worry about all your friends in
Speaker 2: Seattle and Tacoma. Yeah. By the way, side note, I
Speaker 2: thought it was pronounced Mount Renier. Oh many years. I
Speaker 2: had just never said that word aloud. Yeah, because why
Speaker 2: would you write, I don't know relevance. Yeah, we're near still.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've had, you know, tons of my colleagues
Speaker 2: work on the one in Iceland that erupted, which I'm
Speaker 2: not saying on purpose because I cannot remember how to
Speaker 2: say it properly. There is a proper way. My colleagues,
Speaker 2: you've worked on it, they know how to say it.
Speaker 2: I don't, so apologies there, But the other ones, like
Speaker 2: I worked on El Revent in Ecuador, which is a
Speaker 2: nice aculpture. Yes, the eruptuor so or you know, the exploder,
Speaker 2: depending on which translation you're using. But yeah, they have
Speaker 2: cool names.
Speaker 1: What is the one in Icelandic? What does it mean
Speaker 1: in Icelandic? I feel like it's also just all j's
Speaker 1: and k's, and I don't know there's a right way
Speaker 1: of saying that, But no, I don't actually know what
Speaker 1: it means.
Speaker 2: I don't know. And that's the thing. Never trust a
Speaker 2: scientist who's afraid to say that they don't know.
Speaker 1: So I looked it up because I was curious how
Speaker 1: you say it, and it's really easy.
Speaker 2: It just sounds like this he y a yeah, lef
Speaker 2: yo yeah.
Speaker 1: Just kidding. Who can say that? No one, I bet
Speaker 1: Yorke doesn't even know how to pronounce that. But it
Speaker 1: apparently in Icelandic it means islands, mountains, ice cap, which
Speaker 1: is so on the nose. But it's such an insanely
Speaker 1: long word that it's oftentimes referred to as just E fifteen,
Speaker 1: which is apparently a thing called a neumeronym. That's when
Speaker 1: there are so many letters. There are fifteen letters in
Speaker 1: this word, so they just put an E on it fifteen.
Speaker 1: But other neumeronyms are like K nine for K nine
Speaker 1: unit like dogs y two K is a newmeronym and
Speaker 1: shout out to my buddy joanah Ray who hosts this
Speaker 1: MST three K is a new moeronym.
Speaker 2: There you go. Final two questions.
Speaker 1: What is your least favorite thing about being a volcanology
Speaker 1: hardest least favorite thing Okay, biggest painting assid is that.
Speaker 2: I don't get to do it more often, that I
Speaker 2: don't get to spend more time on volcanoes, So that
Speaker 2: there's not like unlimited funding where I can go do
Speaker 2: research on everything I think about and take all of
Speaker 2: the scientists I want to with me and all the
Speaker 2: people who want to go see if I can keep
Speaker 2: them safe. Like I just wish I could show everybody
Speaker 2: how cool they are and do more work on them.
Speaker 2: That's a great thing to hate. Yeah, really, it's like
Speaker 2: it's like the best problem to have.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say something like insurance paperwork.
Speaker 1: What about your favorite Thing's the what's the thing that
Speaker 1: excites you most about the job?
Speaker 2: I would And this is really fundamental just watching lava
Speaker 2: in all of its forms. It is the most fascinating
Speaker 2: substance on the planet to me because it's liquid, well
Speaker 2: it's technically a plastic solid, but it's you know, it
Speaker 2: has two different states. And then the fact that you've
Speaker 2: got gas interacting like it's so cool, and lava's lavas
Speaker 2: contain the secrets of the universe, and you know, when
Speaker 2: I'm holding a piece of lava in my hand, that
Speaker 2: tells me about how our planet was formed, about the
Speaker 2: startus it was formed from, you know, and it tells
Speaker 2: me where the planet's going, and it blows my mind.
Speaker 2: So the fact that lava can blow my mind is
Speaker 2: why it's my very favorite thing. Do you have a
Speaker 2: lava lamp? I don't, but I did when I was
Speaker 2: in high school. It was blue. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think my mom may have given it to good
Speaker 2: Will a few years back there. She yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 2: was pretty great though. I should get one to gently stock.
Speaker 1: Jess Phoenix you can find her at volcanojess dot com.
Speaker 1: She's on Twitter and Facebook as volcano Jess. You can
Speaker 1: find her on Instagram as Volcanojess Official. And if you're
Speaker 1: curious about all this political stuff, you can go to
Speaker 1: Jes twenty eighteen dot com Jess Phoenix twenty eighteen. On Twitter,
Speaker 1: she's Jess PHX. She's very googleable, Jess Phoenix. She's a volcanologist.
Speaker 1: She's running for Congress. Like you're not going to get
Speaker 1: her confused with another one of those anyway. You can
Speaker 1: find us on the Feral Audio dot com page, or
Speaker 1: you can find me as ologies on Instagram. You can
Speaker 1: also email me at Hello Ali Ward at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: If you're an ologist and you want to be interviewed,
Speaker 1: if you have an ology that you want explored, if
Speaker 1: you love this or hate this, Holler at this bitch?
Speaker 1: Will you so thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with morologies.
Speaker 2: Until then, remember to ask smart people dumb questions because
Speaker 2: we're all going to die anyway. Okay, Next up is primatology.
Speaker 2: I always look fresh as a daisy. The marks on
Speaker 2: my outfit are not poo.
Speaker 3: But I'll pack adermatology, ameology, hypto zoology, platology and or technology, meteorologyology, methnology.
Speaker 2: Seriology get value.
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