What Does the Future of Water Look Like?

I meet me too. And these were obviously not sharp spikes. But the idea of Spiky, as it was called, was to crowd the shower after you've been in there long enough and encourage you to wrap things up. And I just thought it was so funny. But Beaucher designed a shower curtain that would also slowly squeeze and trap you. This was a different one. I guess this was like an area of expertise or hers. And so I started thinking about Spiky the other day, and I wondered if

this ever actually became a real product. Unfortunately, when I searched for shower curtains with spikes, I found dozens of options for curtains with cacti on them, but not the spiky I was looking for. But even if this didn't become a real product, it was a fun way to make people think about water usage and the very real water issues the planets facing today and those issues along with the solution scientists are trying so hard to find or exactly what we'll be talking about today, So let's

get started a their podcast. Listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man guest shot Ticketter. A few weeks ago, we published an episode titled Can We Feed ten Billion? If you didn't hear it was an episode focused on many of the efforts being made to feed a rapidly growing global population. Well after the episode ran, we heard from several listeners asking if we would do a similar

one but focused on water. Well, there's no question the future of water and our access to clean water is a major issue, So much like we did in the Feeding the World episode, we'll be talking about many of the attempts to find solutions. We have some really interesting guests, like we've got Martin Reese, who's the world's most respected water Somalia water Somalia I have to have Before this episode, I did not know that job existed. Well, he's actually the only one certified in the US, and he is

so enthusiastic. And we'll also be talking to Florence Metz, who is the winner of the two thousand fifteen Dancer PhD contest, which I'm just so excited to talk to her as well. And have you seen this competition. I love this competition. Actually you kind of have to see the submissions to understand it fully, but it's pretty much exactly what it sounds. You get all these PhD candidates and they submit these dance videos that help explain the

research that they're doing. It's pretty awesome. I know, I want, like PBS to do a reality show based on this. And I was like, so I could think your dance. So Florence's research was about government policy and its effects on water quality, and it's super sophisticated. Oh that's great. All right, Well, I know we'll be talking about solutions in a bit, but I think we have to start with the numbers and why this is a very real issue. And now, Mango, I know you pulled several of these

so why don't you tell us what you found. Yeah, So here's a quick rundown on the stats I I located. So the Atlantic reported that the global middle class will start from one point eight to four point nine billion by which will lead to a serious rise in fresh water consumption. That's a huge increase. Yeah, and combine that with the fact that by there will be an estimated one point eight billion people living in areas plagued by water scarcity, and two thirds of the world's population will

be living in water stressed regions. Plus the demand for water is expected to grow by more than fifty over the next thirty years. I mean, those numbers are just staggering. And these issues affect people in more ways than one, right, I mean, like water scarcity can threaten the political stability of regions. And we won't really get into this, but

water access isn't really fair. Like, right now, more than six million people are without access to safe water, and more than one point five billion or accessing a source that's contaminated by feces. And this is a little different. But at the end of the movie, I don't know if you remember this, but the Big Short, there's this ominous line about Dr Michael Blurry, one of the investors who saw the mortgage collapse coming, and how he's only

investing in water, which isn't exactly true. He's not buying up water rights, but he is using water scarcity as a way to guide his investment decisions, which is fascinating. And all those are striking and and honestly very concerning numbers. But let's bring this back to the US for just a minute. So a few years ago, there was this really interesting book published called The Big Thirst, The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, and it was by

a reporter named Charles Fishman. You and I have talked about this before, and it really helped us see what water uses like in the US and how it's a

resource that's completely taken for granted. Yeah, there's a fascinating section earlier in the book that talks about study that looked at how Americans flush and the research team in the study used electronic water flow sensors and over a dozen cities to keep track of water and how it was being used over the course of a mon And even though the study is nearly two decades old now, it was considered so extensive and detailed that the e p A still looks at it as this like pretty

clear view on how we use water in the States. Yeah, they looked at pretty much every way we use water, whether it's taking baths or washing clothes, using the dishwasher, and how often we flush the toilet, And as Fishman notes, the studies overall conclusion can be summed up in four words. We like to flush. I mean, it's really crazy, isn't it. Yeah, for Americans, it's by far the biggest way we use water in our homes, more than cooking or bathing or

even washing our clothes. The study found that the average American flushes the toilet five times a day and uses over eighteen gallons in this process. So, if you're gonna like put that in perspective, that's nearly six billion gallons of water flushed every day. I mean, when you consider that there are six million people without access to water who use only honestly, like five liters a day, and we're using seventy just to flush our toilets, it's completely insane.

And uh, it's even more insane when you consider that the fact that the water we're flushing is cleaner than most people get to drink right right. And while that's true, that definitely doesn't mean we don't have our own water

sanitation issues to deal with here. You know, there was the tragic news out a flint, of course, but a report from the NRDC looked at fifty two thousand community drinking water systems across the country and what they found was that a third of those had reported violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. So this affects something like seventy seven million people in the country, which is so troubling.

And by the way, all this talk of flushing made me remember a story from about seven or eight years ago. This guy Anton Stookie, who is the head of a German sewage treatment plant, started piping in classical music while he worked this yeah, and he realized that Mozart specifically was stimulating the microbes that were cleaning the water, and it made them work faster. And apparently they responded particularly

well to the magic flute. I mean, who doesn't. But before we leave the topic of water usage, we should note that whild toilet flushing is the number one use of water in the home. The biggest consumption of water in the country comes from power plants like our utilities use about seven times more water than Americans using their homes. And this is about two billion gallons of water each day.

And we're not just talking hydroelectric power. This is the water needed for coal and gas and nuclear power plants and processes like cooling. Nearly half of the water used in the US is coming from power plants. Yeah. One of the things Fishman talks about in his book is how a big part of the problem with water usage in the US is that water is largely invisible. But luckily you don't have to panic. There are some incredible solutions on the horizon. But before we get to those,

let's break for a quiz. So, Omega, who do we have the line? Today? We've got the winner of the two thousand fifteen Dancer PhD contest, Florence Mets, and she's joining us from the University of Verne in Switzerland. All right, well into part time genius. Florence, thank you very much for having me in your So for those of you who have never seen the dance your PhD contest, you've definitely been missing something awesome. There's some great videos you

really need to google. Florence. Is that if you just google Florence Mets. The last name is EMM E. T Z. It's a terrific video. But we'll talk a little bit about that. But Florence, before we jump into that, why don't you tell us a little bit about your research. You know, we've been doing this episode on the future of water and and obviously your your research was relevant

to this, but tell us a little bit about it. Yes, So, my research is about corporation in politics, and I took the example of water protection policies where there's new um new pollutants that are called emerging pollutants on micro pollutants because they're in the water in very small concentrations, and until now we didn't really know whether that they are in the water. But because technology improved, we can now find pollutants in very small concentrations, for example, from um medication,

from cleaning agents, from all types of cosmetics. And the question really is does it matter to have these pollutants and water in these small concentrations, and how can we agree on a political solution. So Fors, how did you decide to enter this contest? Did you just feel it would naturally be communicated and dance form well? I once heard about a colleague who participated in the Dancer PDD contest, and first of all, I could really believe that this exists.

The business a thing, and then um, I watched a few a few videos and I just thought it's such a funny idea of such a cool idea, And because I love dancing and I do this since I can practically walk, and I also love um research, so I thought it would be a cool way of combining both of my interests. Did you have any other favorites from the from the competition that you feel we should check out. There is a video on the mating behavior of fruit flies.

I think that is really creative because the dance that they do kind of transports the well, how how this can possibly work? So I also really liked the video from the year before the year one, which was two thousand, so from two thousand and fourteen, that was somebody explaining in chemistry how to make my knees with less that he's very creative. It was actually a little source of

inspiration for my video. Because you are clearly a talented dancer, I don't think you'll have any problem with this quiz. What are we playing today? With Florence Mango. It's a game called So you Think you Know Dance, and it's a true false about important moments in dance history. All right, here we go, Florence. Are you ready? Yes? Okay? Question number one. As a teenager, Bruce Lee was a Cha

Cha champion. True or false? Well, it's funny that you mentioned Bruce Lee because all the mactual arts and kung fu is really beautiful towards it's like a dance. And I really like these choreographies of kong fu in the movies, So I would I can very well imagine that somebody who does kung fu and martial arts also is into dancings. I would say, yes, Well, you're right. He was an excellent dancer in he won a Hong Kong championship. Oh wow,

that's pretty great, alright. Question number two. The Chicken Dance wasn't inspired by chickens, but by skiers. The dance was invented after an accordion player noticed the way Swiss skiers happily flap their arms as they came down the mountains. Is this true or false? Well? I should know because I live in Switzerland, but I've never really noticed anybody

doing after skiing. I know, I know the Chicken dance more from funk Dance, which has a move called funky Chicken, and this is a thing, so I would just assume, yes, it's true. Alright, yea lawence provides better commentary than we do for days. That's pretty great, alright. Question number three. In South America, the Hokey Pokey is known as totally barotely. I would say it's um, let's say it's true. Oh good, guess it's actually a false though the song is known

as the Hokey Coke in the UK the Hokey Coke. Alright, Well, she's two for three. Still on a path toward a prize, I think so. Number four slots engage in a Pooh dance when they use the bathroom. Once they've climbed to the base of a tree. They hold onto the trunk as they slowly sway and wiggle their hips. True or false. That sounds very very handy, like in relieving nature is fantastic, and I would say it's true. That's right, and they only go once a week. Wow, alright, well, I haven't

dance too okay. Number five last one for the big prize. Michael Jackson had a line of lavender scented medicated dance socks to combat stinky feet. The tagline was, you don't have to be a wallflower just to smell like one true or false? So I would say this, you're right, all right? So how did Florence do today? Mango? So Florence went an amazing four for five, which wins her a note to her mom or boss sing her praises.

But in addition to that, we're actually gonna send her Martha Graham finger puppet, which is probably the most important way to honor Martha Graham's legacy. That's right, Well, congratulations Florence, thanks so much for being on Part Time Genius. Thank you very much. That was fun. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. And I was promised we're going to talk about some of the technological developments that will hopefully help us in an effort to provide much more of the

Earth's population with access to clean water. But real quick, can we just talk about how old Earth's water is? Yeah, this is fascinating to me, and it's similar to what we discussed the other day with Caesar's Last Breath, when we talked about the fact that each time we take a breath, there's a good chance that there's some molecule in that breath that was breathed by Julius Caesar. It's

really weird to think about. And with water, we don't think about the fact that the water we drink and swim in and even wash our clothes with has been around since just after the Earth was formed, that's right. I mean, the Earth is somewhere around four point four or four point five billion years old, which is kind of weird when something is old enough not to think of a margin of ara of a hundred million years is very pick But the solar system itself was formed

around four point six billion years ago. But the point is when the Earth was created, water was present shortly after that, and new water has been neither created nor destroyed since then. So the water used today has pretty much always been here. So the issue we're talking about today is not really that there's a lack of water on Earth. There's a whole lot of water on Earth. It's the water that we can actually drink that's the issue.

And to begin, less than three of the water in the world is fresh water, and less than one percent is even accessible and most of the rest would either be found underground or in glaciers. All Right, So we keep saying we're going to get to the fun stuff, the science behind some of the solutions to providing access to more drinkable water. So let's get to it. So I'll start us off. So I know this isn't exactly a new technique, but I think we should talk about

fog harvesting. And this is something that's been practiced in several countries, even ones that get very little rainfall. But in this case, it's not about developing a completely new idea. It's about making significant improvements to existing systems to get a visual of how fog harvesting works. Imagine giant tennis nets being put up in the desert, except the netting is mesh like and has much much smaller holes, so it actually catches the water and fog as it passes through.

And the work that's being done between M I. T and the researchers in Chile is it's it's really impressive. Yeah, they've been working for a few years now to improve the efficiency of previous nets by five or six times, which may seem difficult, but it's really going from capturing about two percent of the fog that passes through them to about ten per and that can make a huge difference if each square meter of mesh can yield several

more liters of water each day. Yeah, and in a desert region where there are really few options for getting drinkable water, I mean, this is pretty promising thing. But there are other options being developed to One that I think is really cool is being developed by a company called Zero Mass Water. And this is another effort to take water out of the air and turn it into water that we can drink. And the tech ology behind

it is so cool. So to simplify it, it's basically using solar panels to help create drinking water instead of electricity. That's awesome. How does that work? Well, there was this terrific popular science article by a guy named Jeremy Deaton on this from last year, and his Deeton explains, imagine a salt shaker with grains of rice interspersed among the salt. The rice absorbs moisture, keeping the salt dry, and Zero Mass Water developed a material that acts like those grains

of rice. They absorbed the water from the air, so the waters extracted from that material and then purified and source adds calcium and magnesium to match the flavor and pH of bottled water, which produces five liters a day. And that's enough to say the family of four. And this is done using solar panels because they make it possible to create power in developing countries and areas that are far from any power grid. It's actually pretty amazing. Yeah.

There's also been some pretty significant advances in water generators, which use these plastic leaves that created station by cooling the air around them. And on a pretty warm and humid day, some of these generators can create over eight gallons of water. And obviously these work better or generate more water and humid climates, but they still work in dry climates, even if a little more slowly. It really is incredible to see all the thinking going into solving

these kinds of problems. I know, the other day when we were talking about how exercise doesn't actually contribute that much to weight loss, I made a comment that science was stupid. I want to go ahead and change my mind. I guess science is is pretty incredible. But anyway, so these are just some of the ways people are trying to capture more water. We should also talk about wastewater and the progress scientists and engineers are making towards being

able to reuse it. To think about all the water we talked about Americans using every day, right and once it's flushed or used, there's got to be a more efficient and even productive way to reuse it. I mean, there is some reuse of treated wastewater, but not nearly

at the scale that it should be. Yeah, right now, wastewater is typically pumped pretty long distances to these centralized plants to be treated, but there are efforts to figure out how to have that wastewater treated more locally, then it can be returned more easily to nearby users rather than having to be pumped several miles. And there's also the big project happening out in Modesto, which is going

to be California's largest wastewater to agg project. They're actually building a federal canal to move recycled water to farmers nearby, and you can just imagine how helpful this is going to be during times of drought. This kind of thing is done on much smaller scales around the country, but getting this right on a much larger scale, it's going to be huge. Yeah, hopefully it'll be a big success. And I see here at schedule to start maybe by the end of the year, which would be which would

be pretty incredible. All right, since we're already talking about wastewater, I've got one that may take some time for people to get used to. It's one thing to think about reusing wastewater for farming, but what about the research going into turning urine into drinkable water. I feel like that's the plot point that uh made water world collapse. But I can't say i'd be ready to sign up for road I'm not sure I would either. But my favorite part of about this is where some of the earliest

testing was done a couple of years back. The researchers in Belgium have created a solar powered machine that gets rid of all the yucky stuff pretty sure that's the scientific term, but the yucky stuff in urine that turns it into drinkable water. And guess where they tested this, I don't know, tell me. So it was at a huge music festival in Belgium. They took lots and lots of festival p and were able to recover over a thousand liters of water and that was then available for

use in making Belgian beer. Again, this was all from the urine of people attending this festival. Festival, p that's right, So tell me how it's possible. Well, there's a distillation process where the main purpose is to get rid of the ammonia in urine, and then the remaining liquid goes back into this big tank and it's heated up by

solar power and this boiler. Then it goes through another filtering system which separates things out like nitrogen and potassium, and those things can actually be reused for products like fertilizer. And then you're left with this drinkable water, which I I know I was down on it earlier, but it

actually sounds pretty incredible. It does, and I know NASA has been successful in turning urine into drinkable water too, and obviously if this can eventually be executed on this larger scale, that could provide a ton of drinking water. But since we're on the topic of drinking water, why don't we talk to our next guest. I'm really excited about having Martin on Wine. Our guest today is the only one of his kind in America. He's a water Somalia.

Of course, there are lots of wine Somalia's out there. In fact, I didn't know there were any other kinds, did you, men go, I didn't. These are experts that help us understand what to look for in a wine, what the pair wines with, how to taste them, and all that. So that's what our guest today does, and he's the only certified water Somalia in America. I know. We both love it when people have these crazy, interesting, unique jobs, and so I'm super excited to talk with

and Martin Reese. Welcome to Part Time Genius. Thank you so much, happy to be here, Martin. Martin, tell us how you got into this? I mean, was was this

something you did? You always love water, so I have to say, like, the first impression what I had about water was on vacation time with my parents, and I was around four or five years so I can't really remember so much, but it was always for me intrigue to taste the different tap waters in the different cities of Europe, and I realized it's a child that water had taste. That was for me really interesting, and my parents always thought like, why is he running always in

the cities to the tap right away? Is he thirsty or what's going on with them? And it's not like overhydration. For me, it was literally about the taste. And then in two thousand five for our guests came to me in Berlin where I worked in the restaurant business there and said, hey, Martin, you have over a thousand different wines on your wine menu, but you're just serving one particular brand of water and I don't really like that brand, like from the chaste profile. Ways do you have something

else for me? And I thought, you know what he's upsotte right, it's all about options in the restaurant business. You have a wine menu, you have different beers on tap, you have different liquors. But when it comes to water, our most important beverage in our lives, the server mostly will tell you, oh, do you want sparkling flat or tap? They don't even asking you if you prefer brand. And

I thought, I need to change that. So the constant of a water summery is not like brand new, it's not in inventional here in l A. I started that in two thousand fives in Germany. Wow, so what are you looking for in a great water? First? Of all, I'm looking where it's coming from. So there's two big differences when it comes to bottled water here in America. On the one hand, you have purified waters. On the other hand, you have natural curring spring or glacier waters.

I am a person who doesn't go out to dine when I'm going out in like restaurants, like fast food chains or something, because I think food should be healthy and food should be coming from a natural resource as well, and I want to make sure that my food actually has vitamins and all the ingredients in there. And by water, it's actually the same because purified water is nothing else

than highly processed food. That means it's tap water. In the different region where they like actually bothering that you're flutting everything out of the tap water, they're adding back some middals in very small amounts, and they're selling it for high price. In my opinion, the biggest scamra planet Earth. So so do you do you ever drink tap water? Yeah? Sure, I'm tasting it still every time when I'm going to

a new city. Are always the first thing I'm gonna do, it's tasting the tap water and see if I like it. Or don't like. Cities have amazing tap boarders. Some cities I don't. I can't even smell the tap water right away. It's not really a good sign that I want to drink it. What are the top three cities for tap water for fair opinion? The top cities for tap water. Munich is very good. I was in New York. I was actually impressed. But even New York has so many

different tap water qualities. I was in a building and in an interview on the tap water was terrible. In the next building, the tap water was actually very good. So it depends as well, a little bit on the pipes where the tap ball is running through, so it's even there. It's not even that just one city is perfect and the other city is very bad. But mostly cities a little bit northern of US, like Alaska or Canada, these CDs have way better tap water qualities than actually

here in the United States. You know, I'm not a big fan of the tap board It's it's chlorinated. I can smell it. It's not really what I'm looking for when I want to drink of water. So are you ever, you know, blown away by the taste of a new water? These days and and do you have a favorite water. Yes. I've just been in China for three weeks ago and

there was a big water tasting competition. It's an international water tasting competition from the Fine Water Society, and I tasted over a hundred and tenders from mineral waters and they were like two or three waters. I was really impressed off and I gave them then like obviously good points as well. There was one water it's called Prima from South Africa. I gave this hundred point unbelievable great water.

It was such unique. It was very sweet in your palette, almost like a gummy beer, and it was very unique for me, a characteristic to find in the water. Another water comes from Romania's called Aquaca Patica. I thought, it's an incredible, great tasting water, beautiful man reality in it nitrate free, so nothing harmful in that water. It's a very very good and taste and it's killed it for e summer from Denmark, oxygenated water. When I've shaked the bottle,

it turns into almost like milky flavors. The course, there's a lot of oxygen into this water, so it changed colors when you're pouring it into your glass. So there's so many interesting unique springs out of there. I'm really fascinated about it. Or Yeah, and the grocery store, I have to say, in America, my seeing what I'm buying is Fichi mostly of the time. It's because I like the taste of Fichi water as well. There's a very smooth mouth field to it. I think it's a great

tasting water. But hey, it's all about personal preferences. Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know if this is bad or not, but some of my favorite water in the world was when I used to drink it out of the hose as a kid. Is that bad? It tasted it almost tasted metallic, and for some reason I

liked that. Hey, this is interesting part of it. I'm glad you're saying this because now people always think, oh, but there's like taste tests made of tap water versus spring water, and some people think tap water or mostly tap water will will win the competitions. I can tell you why, because people are raised on tap water and they think that the taste of tap water is the taste of water. When they've been raised on clorin the

tap water, they don't know better. In my opinion, they oh, this is the taste of water, so they suddenly realized, oh, there's a different taste to water. But I don't really like this because I cannot think that this is actually water. It doesn't mean it's good or bad. So it's quite interesting that sometimes tap water winds in competitions against mineral water because people are just known to the taste of

tap water better than to mineral water. It's you talk about I love that very passion about that's should not be at right topic. Funny too. All right, Well, since we are speaking of bad puns, right, Since since you are a master of taste, we thought we would put you to the test. What game is Martin playing with us today? Mano, He's gonna play a game called tastes like Chicken? And every one of these answers supposedly tastes like chicken. Alright, so we've got five questions for you, Martin.

Here we go. You're ready, sure? Okay? Number one, before refrigeration, Russians used to drop these animals live into their milk to keep the milk fresh. Kermit should watch out. What are we talking about? That taste like chicken? Frockles. Yes, well done. One for one. Okay, here we go. Number two. We're in the restaurom business. I I actually add a lot of flex already myself, but not to the milk,

I hope. No, alright? Question number two, it's illegal in Queensland to own this pet unless you can prove you're a magician. What are we talking about? That taste like chicken? It's that would be a good guess. But the hint there was magician, it's actually is it rabbit? Mango? So what happens if they if they're found with a rabbit? Offenders actually face at dollar fine because the critters are considered an invasive species. Wow, but not if you're a magician. Okay, alright.

Question number three. While a popular prank involves claiming that this snake's eggs are inside an envelope and when the pranky opens at the envelope clatters, the truth is this noisy snake actually gives birth to live babies. What are we talking about? That taste like chicken? Yes? All right, Martin? Okay. Question number four. George RR. Martin claims that watching these shelled pets interact with one another gay of him. The inspiration to create Game of Thrones. What are we talking about?

That taste like chicken? It's funny. I've just been to the premiere of Game of Thrones. It was thousands of um dragons dragons, It should be dragons. I wish they were dragons. What is it? It's turtles. He imagined his pets had much less tame personalities. As you drove the outline, first book and the interesting parties. I think I was the only person on the Games of Room premiere after show party who never saw any episode of Game of Thrones.

Like that's maybe an interesting water so much effect any episodes of Game of Thrones? All right, well here we are. You didn't have to see any episodes of Game of Thrones for this last one, but we'll see how you do question number five. This one's for the big prize. While these animals and University of Florida mascot can't chew because their jaws can't move side to side, they're still capable of ripping big chunks of flesh and swallowing. What

are we talking about that taste like chicken? I would yeah, absolutely all right? How did Martin do today? Mango? Martin went an amazing three for five, which wins them our big Prize are undying admiration. All right, congratulations Martin. This has been really fun. Martin, thanks so much for being on Part Time Genius. Thank you so much, and welcome

back to Part Time Genius. So we've talked a bit about the very real water issues we're facing over the coming decades, and we've talked a little bit about the brilliant efforts to generate drinkable water in places all around the world. So we need to talk about the future and whether there's any hope of getting control of this problem more honestly, whether it's simply too late. Well, the good news is isn't too late, right though, we have

some serious work ahead of us. As Charles Fishman explains in The Big Thirst, a big part of the problem is the way we look at water and the fact that it's largely invisible. So we should explain what he means when he says invisible. Yeah, what Fishman means is that all the ways we get our water and where it actually comes from are mostly unknown to us. I mean, think about it. When you get a drink of water from your sink or take a shower, where does that

water come from? And how to get to you? I'd say most people can't answer that question. Yeah. And not only that, but you know, something I'm also guilty of is just kind of seems like this endless supply. Yeah. On top of that, it costs next to nothing, Like despite the fact that we couldn't survive without access to clean water, our monthly water bill is usually a fraction of what we pay for our cell phone. I mean,

it's closer to what you'd sell out for Netflix. And according to Fishman, and I'm going to quote him here, ten gallons of tap water at home costs on average three pennies. That's the equivalent of getting seventy four of those dollar twenty nine half liter bottles of water we love so much for less than nickel. We happily pay three thousand times that price at the convenience store one

bottle for dollar twenty nine. But when the water bill goes from thirty dollars to thirty four dollars a month, customers react as if they'll have to choose between their prescription drugs and their water service. So this is what Fishman means when he talks about waters and visibility and He even points out that in many places our water bill isn't actually for the water itself, it's for the cost of everything involved in getting the water to us.

And if you pointed this out to someone, they might even say it's water, of course it's free. It's really such a weird way to think about a resource that we couldn't possibly live without. As for the future, Fishman talks about the fact that we're going to have to find ways to begin using the right water for the right purpose, like there's no reason to be using purified drinking water and our toilets and to keep our lawn screen.

And we'll probably have tiers of water based on how clean the water is and what it's used for, and those prices will probably vary. What's definitely an interesting thought and and also very interesting to think about, you know, the fact that, unlike shoes of global warming, solving this crisis really isn't that much of a global solution as it is a local solution. Every region and community will need to solve its own water crisis, though I know

regions will obviously learn from each other. Yeah, and the keys to remember that these water problems are solvable. As we discussed earlier. The water here today will be here tomorrow. We just need to learn how to harness it and take proper care to use it wisely. And I'm hopeful we can figure that out. But I'm even more hopeful that I can take home today's PTG fact Off trophy. And we'll see about that. H So, our genius researchery gave send me a list of animals that conserve water

in interesting ways. Sand gazelles in the Arabian Desert actually shrink some of their organs during periods of little rain. They can reduce the size of their heart by and their livers by. We means they don't have to breathe as much because those organs actually require lots of oxygen to function. And when they breathe less, they use less water in their respiratory process, which is a pretty cool survival trection. It is all right, Well, I've got a

short one to start. Approximately half of all water delivered to homes in Florida is used to water the lawn. Speaking of lawns, here's one about flamingos that I learned from the podcast Every Little Thing. Did you know flamingos can drink water at near boiling temperatures. They basically use geyser as like water fountains. So strange, all right, Well, when we think of water use, Las Vegas is not the first place that comes to most people's minds when

it comes to smart recycling. But it turns out that more than nine of water that's used indoors in the Las Vegas metro area, from showers, the dishwashers, toilets, whatever it is, it's captured and then recycled. Some of it goes to water in golf courses and parks, of which there are plenty in that area, and then some of it's cleaned and returned to like meat. So I guess

what I've got? Another animal fact? Australian tree frogs have these weird waterproof mucous cocoons that they can secrete when it's really hot and dry out, and this cocoon holds moisture in They can actually live for more than two

years with the liquid remaining in their bladder. Alright. After not really being an industry a few decades ago, bottled water has finally passed soda as the number one beverage in the US in two thousand and sixteen, bottled water edged out soda, with the average American drinking thirty nine gallons of water and thirty eight and a half gallons of soda. But the two largest bottled water brands, the

Sani and Aquafina, they're still owned by Coca Cola and PepsiCo. Well, I might as well use this opportunity to get in one more animal surprise. So tortoises can go a year without drinking water, and Australian tree frogs can go two years. But the kangaroo rat lives its whole life without drinking any water, at least not water by itself. They get their water by oxidizing food, meaning they can create water

by recombining molecules. That's pretty cool and crazy. I can't say that I quite understand that, but that is pretty amazing. They don't have to drink their whole lives. All right, I think you should put that back to a dance. It's so good. I'm gonna have to give you this week's fact Off trophy. Congrats Mango. Well, thank you, and that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening,

Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even again to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and

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