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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve

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camera. It's ready. Are you welcome

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to Stuff you Should Know from

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house Stuff Works dot com.

0:15

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:17

Clark. With me is always as Charles W. Chuck

0:19

Bryant and this, friends

0:22

is stuff you should know. It's

0:27

rain and frogs. Hello, do you Yeah?

0:30

I got a lot of those during the

0:32

search for this. Oh really yeah,

0:35

during research for this, you've got it's raining men references.

0:37

Yeah, kept coming up and that predictive

0:41

search and really yeah. And

0:43

then there's a lot of um raining

0:45

different things. Mouse pads out

0:47

there available, yeah,

0:50

at e retailers like Etsy and Zazzle

0:53

and stuff like that. Basically, if you type something

0:55

in Zezel will be like, well, you know, we'll put

0:57

that on a mouse pad for you, you know. Um.

1:01

And there's an adorable umbrella

1:03

out there, a see through umbrella with

1:05

with frogs all over it. That's cute.

1:08

Uh no, they're not and they're actually it didn't

1:11

show up there in this article. There's

1:13

triplets holding them.

1:15

Yeah, three times the adorable

1:19

So um, Chuck, I

1:23

ran into a lot of um

1:26

descriptions of crazy

1:29

stuff happening over the course of history

1:32

here on planet Earth. Um,

1:34

as far back as I could see, there

1:36

was a guy named Athanas

1:40

He lived in the fourth century BC, and

1:43

he was a traveler and writer. And

1:46

he mentioned that in the area

1:48

that is now Dinar, Turkey, Uh,

1:50

it frequently rained fish and frogs

1:53

frequently. And not

1:56

only did it frequently do it.

1:58

Once it rained frogs for three days

2:00

there. He said, wow, ye, and

2:03

so much so that the villagers had to leave because

2:05

it was they were just inundated with frogs. They poisoned

2:08

the water. Um, whenever they tried

2:10

to cook. There was like frogs and their frogs

2:12

everywhere, and it was raining frogs.

2:15

Sounds like the ramblings of a fourth century

2:17

BC Greek madman. Right, sure,

2:19

okay, that we'll say that. But what

2:21

about Bergen, Norway in fifteen

2:24

seventy eight and fifteen seventy nine,

2:26

when it rained supposedly yellow

2:28

mice and lemmings. It

2:31

rained lemmings supposedly, Now

2:33

that's been widely discredited. But

2:36

what about Memphis, Tennessee

2:39

January eighteen seventy seven It

2:41

rained live snakes,

2:44

some as big as eighteen inches long. And

2:47

this one was reported in Scientific

2:49

American. Yeah.

2:52

Uh, Pliny the Elder,

2:55

which is the name of a beer as well. I found

2:57

out an I p. A even Um

3:01

first century a d reported

3:03

rains of flesh, blood and wool. Yeah,

3:06

wool eighteen seventy three.

3:08

Kansas City, Missouri, rain and frogs.

3:11

Australia rain and fish yeah,

3:13

Acapulco night raining maggots

3:16

you yeah, uh, tadpoles

3:19

jellyfish and Tasmania jellyfish.

3:22

Yeah, that's scary, scary. The

3:24

one of squid that's b s. It was

3:26

some guy who found a single squid. Yeah.

3:29

So while we're talking about all these are documented

3:32

cases of it raining, crazy crazy

3:34

stuff. It's rain blood before supposedly

3:37

when really it was an algae um.

3:40

But it did in India and Russia, and

3:44

the people in Russia found that they had the

3:46

biggest crop yield ever thanks

3:48

to the blood rain. No weird. Yeah,

3:52

um, but all these are documented

3:54

cases and you can for the most

3:56

part throw a lot of them right out the window,

3:58

like the Lemmings one in Bergen, Norway

4:01

it was just a lie. Other

4:03

ones um like, uh,

4:05

there was a report of rain, I believe

4:07

in London, somewhere in Great Britain.

4:10

Um. So it's London

4:12

or the rest of Great Britain like

4:14

that. Um, that's where some

4:16

guy, some doctor came out into his garden

4:19

and there's a bunch of frogs there, and

4:21

the day before it had been dry and he

4:24

had a high garden wall, so the only way they could

4:26

have gotten there was rain. So it rain frogs

4:28

in Great Britain that year. There's a lot

4:30

of stories like that. People

4:32

are just stupid. I

4:34

didn't notice that that. A lot of the stories were people

4:37

didn't actually witness it, but they just assume

4:40

there's tadpoles all over my car, so it must

4:42

have rained them exactly. Um, you know,

4:44

it's not the most illogical conclusion. Even

4:46

one of my personal heroes, Charles Fort,

4:49

through his goofy hat in the Ring forty

4:51

Times is the greatest magazine

4:53

ever created. Um, Charles Fort

4:56

said that there was something called a super

4:58

Sargasso Sea that was suspended

5:01

above the earth, and every once in a while

5:03

this it would dump some of its contents

5:05

in the form of rain on the earth, and that's how

5:07

you got raining frogs. Yeah. That was

5:09

from the Book of the Damned. Yeah,

5:13

and by damned he meant excluded. I found out,

5:15

Yes, I didn't realize that. Yeah, I didn't

5:17

either until today too. Um with a

5:19

snakes one that wasn't scientific

5:22

American man live snakes foot and a half

5:24

long. I caught a snake the other day in

5:26

my yarn from the sky. No, no, no

5:28

no, I was just doing the weeds and I saw and he was

5:30

a copper head. He was oh wow,

5:32

it was deadly. But I picked him up like

5:35

Steve Irwin, and Emily

5:37

was very impressed. It's so bad.

5:40

Then I took him across the street and displaced

5:43

him. Displaced him with extreme

5:45

prejudice. No, I just you know. I did

5:47

the trick, and I snuck it behind him and I

5:49

grabbed him behind the head and

5:52

took him away. The poisonous snake popped

5:54

his head clean off. He was fine. Field

5:56

dressed him and ate him on the spot. He

5:59

wasn't that big. But you're gonna

6:01

get some mail for letting a poisonous snake go in

6:03

the neighborhood. It was already in the neighborhood.

6:05

I just moved them to a to

6:07

a empty wooded open

6:10

wooded land. But you didn't exercise

6:12

extreme prejudice and to kill him. That's

6:15

what a lot of people are going to say they're

6:17

crazy. So anyway, there's a lot of crackpots

6:20

and cooks and dummies out there who say that it's

6:24

rained frogs, it's rained squid.

6:27

That squid one just irks me. Um,

6:30

it's rained a bunch of crazy stuff people not

6:32

named Pete Anderson. Yes, um,

6:35

which, by the way, I finally saw there will

6:38

be blood yesterday day before. Yester, you've

6:40

never seen that. What do you think? There

6:42

was a lot? Okay,

6:45

Um, that is one word of you a

6:48

lot two words. It could be too, It

6:51

depends. Uh. The crazy thing

6:53

is if we're finally going to get to the point here,

6:56

it actually has rained things

6:58

like frogs before that. This

7:00

really has happened, not just

7:02

people saying, oh, there's a bunch of frogs

7:04

everywhere. They couldn't have possibly come from

7:06

anywhere else but the sky. There have been people

7:09

who have reported frogs

7:12

specifically falling from the sky

7:14

in the middle of a storm. And it's true.

7:17

It happened is recently two thousand five, Yeah,

7:20

and was that the Serbia where

7:22

people there was a big old storm and people

7:24

saw and heard frogs

7:28

raining down from the sky hitting

7:30

their roofs and

7:32

basically apparently what like you were saying

7:34

P. T. Anderson and magnolia what he

7:37

depicted. It's probably a lot with something

7:39

like that would look like I would imagine. So, uh,

7:43

there's an explanation for this. Oh,

7:46

it's not the end of the world. We're gonna go into that.

7:48

It's not one of the plagues biblical plagues, although

7:50

we'll get into that. Uh. First explained

7:52

by French physicist Andre Marie Empire

7:55

in the early nineteenth century. He said,

7:58

you know what this is. This is water spout.

8:01

Yeah, it's a tornado that forms

8:03

and then goes over the water becomes

8:06

part of you know, partially water. It

8:09

picks up these little light things from as deep

8:11

as what like three ft for

8:13

a big one, and uh picks these

8:15

things up because they're obviously lighter than

8:17

you know. It might not be picking up like a great

8:19

white shark, but it'll pick up a little fish

8:22

or a little frog or a tad bowl and

8:24

then as it dies out, it spits them

8:26

back out when it gets over land because it decreases

8:29

in pressure. Yes

8:31

for filler. Since you just explain the

8:34

whole podcast, let's just talk about

8:36

how water spout forms. Okay,

8:38

so you've got two kinds of water spouts.

8:40

You've got tornadic which is just like a tornado,

8:43

and it starts with a vertical clockwise

8:46

turning column of air that eventually goes

8:48

down, so it's cloud to surface, right.

8:51

Those are really scary ones and they're associated

8:53

with storms. There's another kind called a fair

8:55

weather water spout, which can

8:58

whip up on a sunny day and

9:00

they go from surface to sky. But in

9:03

both cases, a water spout is

9:05

an example of warm air forming

9:07

a low pressure area which

9:10

is formed by low rising air

9:13

and as it goes up, remember, cold air

9:15

comes in to fill the void. And

9:18

those two things interplaying the low pressure

9:20

warm air rising and the cold

9:22

air um dropping

9:26

high pressure dropping form

9:28

of vortex which creates section

9:30

in the middle and the low pressure area the

9:32

difference in pressure, and that's

9:34

how you can suck something up up

9:36

to three ft beneath the surface,

9:39

or if you're a tornado, you might suck up a dog

9:42

or cow or a cow or

9:44

a car. And we didn't

9:46

do how tornadoes worked. We just did what it

9:48

like in the eye of a tornado, which is pretty awesome.

9:50

It was good. So

9:54

are we done? I don't think so.

9:57

Um. Sometimes

9:59

it's just a few dozen frogs.

10:02

Sometimes it's hundreds, sometimes it's thousands.

10:05

Sometimes it's pieces of animal.

10:07

Sometimes they're frozen solid

10:10

yeah, and hail. Um.

10:13

And all that is the water spout got

10:15

high enough into the atmosphere there it

10:17

reached an area that was beneath

10:20

zero. Sometimes it's not just animals.

10:24

Sometimes it's tomatoes or

10:26

coal or coal. There's a guy

10:28

in Manassas, Virginia who got a frozen

10:30

ten thousand Deutsche mark note. Really

10:33

yeah, wow, yeah frozen? Was

10:36

this after they converted to the euro? I

10:39

don't know you can still trade those in it? I'm

10:43

sure are they completely out of circulation?

10:45

I wonder I hope not

10:47

for this guy's sake. Um,

10:49

So frozen is one way

10:51

that they come down, which would be kind of really

10:53

interesting if a frozen frog landed on your car,

10:56

right, shredded like you were

10:58

saying, because of the the violent

11:01

wind speeds, right

11:04

yeah. Um.

11:07

One thing that always kind of sticks out to

11:09

me, and I'm sure the answer is is because it's

11:11

just not the case. But why

11:14

is it that it's always just one specie.

11:16

I know you're going to say that an answer, Well,

11:19

I don't have an answer, um, because I wondered

11:21

the same thing. Uh. There is a

11:24

professor at UM Washington

11:26

University that says, um,

11:28

you know, it just makes sense because they're

11:31

similar size and weight, they might

11:33

be all hanging out together at the one point where

11:35

this thing goes down. That still

11:37

didn't explain it to me though. I mean, the water

11:39

spout goes down over water, it's gonna be spitting

11:42

out fish and frogs and

11:44

whatever else. And it's always almost

11:46

always reported to be one one thing. It's

11:48

like it's raining frogs or it's raining fish, and fish

11:50

supposedly are the most common. Um.

11:53

Yeah, old rains fish

11:56

in Australia like every day. Yeah. It's

11:58

like they're like yeah, of course, Um,

12:00

but yeah, why why they're not mixed together,

12:03

or why they're not reported to be mixed together

12:06

is the weirdest thing that is weird. Um.

12:09

There's another professor from Southern

12:11

Illinois that theorizes

12:13

that it's not just water spouts. He said, it

12:15

can be any kind of unusual updraft.

12:18

Um, anything like at

12:21

a speed of sixty miles an hour plus

12:24

can pick up light objects and deposit

12:26

them elsewhere, So not

12:28

necessarily just a water spout, although

12:32

it has been observed by like you know

12:34

bona fide people. Okay, like

12:36

this one professor in Louisiana, he

12:40

worked with the Department of Wildlife. He

12:43

was eating breakfast in he

12:45

saw like an average

12:47

of one fish per square

12:49

yard raining down. So

12:52

that's that's a significant amount of fish depending

12:54

on the side of the fish. Like people say fish,

12:56

Are they talking about guppies? Are

12:59

they talking about crap? Are

13:01

they talking about do you say crap?

13:04

Is it crappy? Crappy? Are

13:07

they talking about you know, swordfish?

13:10

Those are really dangerous when they raigne.

13:13

Uh No, I mean I think they're light because that's the whole

13:15

point. Even an updraft from

13:17

a water spolled to two isn't

13:20

going to be picking up you know, great white sharks.

13:23

Right, that's that's a movie for you, raining

13:25

sharks. What about Piranha

13:27

Parana two? They flew and made

13:29

it on the land, right, the original

13:32

parity so

13:35

not the new Paranha three double

13:37

D. Is that what it's called?

13:40

Jez? I know? So I guess

13:43

um Acam's razor,

13:45

uh teaches us. In this case,

13:48

the simplest explanation is that, um,

13:51

this is Satan's work, Okay,

13:55

Um, what a water spout

13:57

forming supposedly and just picking

13:59

up things then dropping them over land. Okay,

14:02

right, um, and raining

14:05

frogs is explaining it, I

14:07

guess is part of this larger

14:09

trend that's gripped the scientific

14:11

community lately. Um, which

14:14

is explaining biblical

14:16

phenomenon phenomena.

14:20

Um. I thought this was pretty interesting. You dug

14:22

up this article on the biblical plagues.

14:24

Yeah, the ten plagues of Egypt, one of

14:26

which was frogs. Yes, but

14:29

it didn't rain frogs. A lot of people think

14:31

that it's supposedly rain frogs. Now, what supposedly

14:33

happened was apparently it's like where

14:35

you know dinar and Turkey is now, they were

14:37

just overrun by frogs. Um.

14:41

And I guess I can imagine.

14:44

There was another horror movie from the eighties about

14:46

that. It was just about giant frogs and lots

14:48

of them, right. Yeah, it was like the birds,

14:50

but with frogs. And

14:53

a frog can be kind of unsettling when it's

14:55

staring at you, especially if it's surrounded

14:57

by thousands of its companions judge

15:00

you yeah, um, And they'll kind of get all

15:02

over everything, and they'll get underfoot and you'll step

15:04

on them, and things get slippery and mucky real

15:06

quick, and that was one of the

15:08

plagues of Egypt. It wasn't

15:11

the first one though, No,

15:13

So should we explain this away? Yeah,

15:16

again, it's in vogue right now to explain

15:18

away the plagues. And the cool thing

15:20

is that these um, these researchers

15:22

figured out or they suggest that

15:25

all of these things were linked. It was a

15:27

series of events of amazing

15:30

events that um

15:32

became what we know as the Ten Plagues

15:34

of Egypt that eventually caused Pharaoh

15:37

to say, hey, Moses, you

15:39

guys can go back

15:42

your stuff and leave. Yeah. Uh,

15:44

yes, you dug this up from the Telegraph,

15:47

one of my favorite publications. And

15:50

Richard Gray, the correspondent

15:53

the Telegraph. You can tell these the science

15:55

correspondent, look at that hairline.

15:57

So they have some evidence that what

16:00

kicked this whole thing off was a

16:02

climate change, a climate event that happened

16:05

way back in the day. Um. There

16:07

was a city called um pie

16:09

Rameses on the Nile Delta. It

16:12

was abandoned about three thousand years ago, which

16:15

they think this explanation works

16:17

in concert with that abandonment of

16:20

the city. And they

16:22

said that there was a dramatic shifting climate towards

16:25

the end of the second rain of Rameses,

16:30

Rameses, Rameses, and

16:34

uh, we had a goat

16:36

name ramesay. Uh,

16:39

you can't just say that things like that, sure

16:41

I can. Um. So

16:43

they found that the end of the rain um coincided

16:46

with a warm, wet climate and then switched over

16:48

to a really dry period, and that was not

16:50

good news for the nile. It kicked

16:53

off the first plague, which was the nile

16:55

turning to blood. So how did that happen? Well,

16:57

the nile supposedly dried up

17:00

um and became kind of this muddy,

17:02

mucky, slow moving mess, no

17:05

longer vital and prime

17:08

for this type of algae that we know

17:11

was around back then. It's still around

17:13

today called uh

17:15

burgundy blood algae,

17:18

and basically it sucks the life out of

17:20

a mucky area,

17:22

which would have caused the second plague

17:25

frogs. Right, Well, then, what

17:27

did you say the name of the first plague? The river turns

17:29

to blood, and so

17:32

frogs suddenly infesting where

17:34

the people were living because there's no place to

17:36

be in the river, right, It's

17:38

suddenly turned lifeless. Right,

17:41

and so now the frogs are everywhere, um,

17:44

which would have they're everywhere

17:46

but the river, which would have

17:48

led to the third,

17:51

fourth, and fifth plagues, right,

17:54

third and fourth, third, and fourth, which

17:56

were flies and lice. All

17:59

of a sudden, the frogs are around to eat these

18:01

things, so you're gonna have a lot more lice

18:04

and flies. Yeah, okay, so

18:06

far, so good. Now

18:08

what well after that, all everybody's

18:10

itching and like swatting and like

18:12

trying not to slip on all the dead

18:15

frogs that they've stepped on. Um,

18:18

the following plagues were disease, livestock

18:20

and boils, which you're gonna have

18:22

if you've got lots of flies and lies and mosquitoes

18:25

spreading disease, spreading disease. Okay,

18:28

so that's that's okay, that's I

18:30

mean, it makes sense. But that's not like the oh yeah,

18:32

of course. Um. After

18:35

that we have the

18:38

seventh, eighth, and ninth plagues hail, locusts,

18:40

and darkness, which they think was

18:43

coincidentally caused by the

18:46

eruption of a volcano at Theara

18:48

on the islands of Santorini, which happened

18:51

thirty years ago and which

18:53

they found evidence of in Egypt.

18:56

Excavating some uh some locations

18:59

in ancient Egypt, they found pumics volcanic

19:01

stone from the

19:04

Thera volcano. Like,

19:07

there are no volcanoes in Egypt. Yeah, how could

19:09

there be pumas exactly? Well, they looked and they said,

19:11

oh, it's from Santorini. Wow, it's kind of big.

19:13

Um. So you have the

19:15

um, this volcanic eruption, huge,

19:18

huge volcanic eruption. UM.

19:20

The ash mixing with

19:22

the clouds over Egypt

19:24

would have caused hail worth writing down

19:27

in the Bible. UM.

19:29

And then it would have also um

19:32

created locusts because

19:34

it would have raised the humidity and the temperature

19:37

right right, which locusts

19:39

love. I thought that was a little tenuous, but it's

19:41

still made sense. But then the

19:44

darkness volcanic ash

19:46

blotting out the sun, which we've heard

19:48

could happen. Ever heard of a nuclear

19:50

winner. That's right, same thing. And

19:53

so there you have it. All

19:55

the plagues explained, sort

19:57

of except for the last one.

19:59

John, This one didn't seem to be connected

20:02

to anything. It was kind of free standing if

20:04

you ask me. But the tenth plague

20:07

was the death of the first borns Um.

20:10

The firstborn sons, I should say

20:13

um in Egypt were suddenly dying

20:15

mysteriously as a plague,

20:18

and I think that possibly there was

20:20

some sort of grain fungus that

20:23

killed the firstborns who would have had first DIBs

20:25

on food, so they

20:27

would have been the first to die. I thought

20:29

that was a little hanky. A couple of these were little hanky, but I

20:32

thought it was interesting to read, for sure. But I mean,

20:35

yeah, they weren't going to be like, hey,

20:37

we're gonna get front page exposure

20:40

in the Telegraph by saying we've explained eight

20:43

of the ten plagues of Egypt. You have to

20:45

go for ten, and you got to fudge

20:47

apparently if you are a researcher

20:49

looking to get media coverage. So we don't know if

20:51

they budged. Still

20:55

that was that was not the greatest link. Well,

20:58

that's it. That was a we weird,

21:00

weird episode all over the place. We

21:03

talked about raining frog that was based on an

21:05

article on the website. Can it really

21:07

rain frogs? It can?

21:10

But I have to say that just

21:12

a little bit of skeptic in me says

21:15

I would have to see that one to believe in me

21:17

too. In the meantime, I'll just

21:19

watch Magnolia very frequently.

21:22

If you want to learn more about frogs and rain.

21:24

You can type those things into the search bar at how

21:27

Stuff Work dot com. And uh,

21:29

it's time, it's weird.

21:31

Uh for a listener mail, that's

21:36

right, Josh, I'm gonna call this. Uh

21:39

it's a family there, that's

21:41

a sly and the family stone.

21:43

Um. Hey, guys, I'm a twenty

21:45

four year old stay at home mother of two

21:48

wonderful children. My husband is a marine

21:50

who has been deployed in the Middle East for just over a

21:52

year. You may be interested

21:54

in somewhat surprised by how much of an effect your

21:56

podcast has had on our family. Firstly,

21:59

I began listening while on bed rest during my second

22:01

pregnancy. Sorry to hear that,

22:03

by the way, had rested no good with

22:05

us. Yeah, I quickly became addicted

22:07

to the fun tidbits of knowledge that you two

22:10

throughout. I began listening

22:12

to your podcast in the car after my daughter was

22:14

born. My husband, who isn't big

22:16

on listening to people talk, also took

22:18

quite an interest at this point, as well as our

22:20

six year old son Man. So I

22:22

think about it, though, we probably have had like

22:25

a real hand in their daughter's development

22:28

from the womb. That's right. When

22:30

you began talking about Kiva, I realized how

22:32

wonderful this would be to teach our son about

22:35

helping others all over the world while also

22:37

teaching him about how money lending in

22:39

percentages work. He's extremely

22:41

proud and excited to be doing so much good, and

22:44

he even asked if he could use his birthday money to lend

22:46

on CIVA. Oh sweet kid.

22:49

Um. I was so touched by this even shed

22:51

a little tear. That's her

22:53

talking about me, Um,

22:55

I might have got weepy. Though our

22:58

son is extremely intelligent for his aid and his

23:00

school doesn't seem to adequately

23:02

feed his appetite for knowledge. He wanted

23:04

me to let you know that he loves your podcast

23:06

on animals the most and request that

23:08

you include more insects and animals in your

23:10

lineup. Uh, my

23:13

husband listens Wait wait, this one kind of counts.

23:15

Yeah, sort of. My husband listens

23:17

to your podcast religiously while deployed,

23:19

and even had a little baby fit when his iPod

23:22

pooped out a few months ago. Dude,

23:24

you get a new one, I hope so um he

23:26

has me and oh yeah, he had me immediately

23:28

send him my iPod so that he could

23:31

survive We often email

23:33

back and forth as we don't have any opportunities to talk

23:35

on the phone, and the subjects of the podcast

23:37

often come up in the emails between my son

23:39

and my husband. Gives them something to talk about

23:41

that isn't too heavy, since I don't want my

23:43

husband's sign to get too upset about the distance

23:46

between them. Doesn't do any good for

23:48

a marine to have his mind office mission. Thank

23:50

you so much, Kate, dan Olive

23:53

and Ryan Man. That is awesome

23:55

and nice whole family listening. That is

23:57

awesome. I love hearing that. Hey there, Kate,

23:59

dan Olive and Ryan thank you very

24:01

much for listening. Guys, be careful

24:03

over there. Yeah, and

24:06

sorry for this one. Sorry for this episode.

24:09

She'll never hear this one. She just turn it off. Um.

24:12

Well, it's cool if you have a story

24:14

about how s Y s ks and

24:18

had an impact on your life. We love

24:20

hearing stuff like that. Um,

24:23

we would love it if you would let us

24:25

know about it. You can tweet to

24:27

us at s Y s K Podcast.

24:29

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24:31

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24:33

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24:36

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24:38

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24:46

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