you know this this might be a silly
question but what do you do with the
beached whale that's a question the
small Canadian town of trout River is
trying to figure out right now an 81
foot beast of a whale washed up on one
of his rocky beaches last week as food
and it's humongous stomach begins to rot
decompose bacteria proliferate sand that
bacteria in turn begins to feed on the
whales innards microbes called anaerobic
methanogens start to break down
molecules and release methane gas into
the sealed environment blowing that
[ __ ] up like a birthday party balloon
wait too long and the whale might
explode it's a cool concept but you
don't really want that if you're trout
river bring in an unassuming gentleman
to sort of poke it with a stick and
you're gonna get the same results so
what do you do well you really have two
options you can either airlift the dead
whale back into the ocean so that its
carcass can feed an entire ecosystem of
life for decades
sidenote radio lab has an awesome
animation of how this process works and
you can find that link in the
description or you can bury the whale
somewhere on land both options are gonna
be really expensive and that's public
money
aka tax money aka your money but if you
do nothing the methane gas along with
the ammonia and hydrogen sulfide are
gonna get really smelly really fat side
note ammonia is the one that smells like
cat piss and hydrogen sulfide is the one
that smells like rotten eggs and
methane's the fart one you're gonna have
to do something trout river and and
before you say anything because like I
can see the look in your eyes don't
think about blowing it up we tried that
already in in Portland Oregon 1970 it
had to be said the oregon state highway
division not only had a whale of a
problem on its hands
it had a stinking whale of a problem
those thudding noises that you hear
that's thousands of pieces of whale
carcass showering unsuspecting
passers-by in what I'm sure still
remains the most traumatic experience of
their lives apart car over a quarter of
a mile from the blast site was the
target of one large chunk the passenger
compartment literally smashed
fortunately no human was hit as badly as
the car however everyone on the scene
was covered with small particles of dead
whale it just goes to show you can't
blow up all your problems sometimes you
have to hunker down and and and invent
the portal gun are we are we working on
this you may have noticed that sometimes
I disappear for a few weeks or months
without any message of where I've gone
and I'm sorry about that but I don't
know if you're like this but I I can't
seem to stop jumping around to different
projects like I did this sketch comedy
channel called dick soak which you can
check out or the electronic EP new
disguises which you'd listen to on
Spotify but I'm back for the nerdwriter
for a little bit hopefully I'm gonna try
to separate it into like seasons so six
or ten episodes and hopefully this is
the beginning of a stretch so thanks for
sticking with me and I will see you next
time