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Chapter 1: What is the significance of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool?
Sean Ramos from out here on the National Mall, about halfway between the World War II and Lincoln Memorials, which is to say, I'm standing next to our reflecting pool. And I'd like to take a moment, just sit right there, talk about how It isn't just nominally a reflecting pool.
I've lived here for about a decade, and just about any time you come out here, you'll see people in a state of quiet contemplation. I think that's because, you know, it's a quiet place. It's open. It's free. It's free for you in the winter to try and test your luck skating.
the reflecting pool, in your sneakers, or in the summer, I've seen people take a little dip in, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. As you know, as of late, it's felt a lot less free out here at the reflecting pool, and we're going to get into it on Today Explained from Vox.
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I'm green, and it'll do fine. Today Explained.
I'm Christina Cotarucci. I'm a senior writer at Slate.
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Chapter 2: What problems have previous presidents faced with the reflecting pool?
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That's drinkag1.com. Sean Rommelstrom, let me ask you a question.
Which journalistic endeavors do you pay money to support? Oh, my gosh. Which or like how many? Let me think. That one and that one and that one. A bunch of public radio stations. A big newspaper that I can think of. Some sub stacks. So many newsletters.
I don't know if they're sub stacks, but like I was trying to count the other day because someone asked me and I think it's like six newsletters at least. Dang. Like a lot. How about you? Are you in the newsletter camp, too?
All of that, not so much newsletters, a lot of podcasts on Patreon.
Heck yeah. Which reminds me. Oh, yeah. You were like yes anding me. Okay. You, dear listener, can support this show, Today Explained, and in doing so support Vox, which makes this show possible by going to vox.com slash members. There's benefits. You get to listen to the show without ads. You get little perks. Check it out. And thank you.
When green is all there is to be, it could make you wonder why. But why wonder, why wonder?
Today Explained is back. Christina's gone, but we now got Benji Jones here. He's a senior correspondent at Vox who writes about the environment and biodiversity. And this week, algae. And you called up a bunch of scientists to better understand the algae situation. Were the scientists eager to talk about algae?
No.
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Chapter 3: How did Trump attempt to address the algae issue in the pool?
But one approach is just to sort of blast it with chemicals in a way that the Trump administration has not done. So that's one option is more of a chemical approach, and then you'd want to monitor it over time. But then I talked to one researcher, Alan Wilson, at Auburn University in Alabama, and he's
He works in fish ponds, which often have algae problems because you're putting a bunch of food in them for the catfish. And this guy was basically like, look, you could also take a more natural approach to trying to solve the algae problem by introducing Introducing other organisms that eat algae like zooplankton.
So these are like micro Crustaceans essentially like sea monkeys like they look a lot like sea monkeys, but they live in freshwater and those Micro crustaceans do eat algae So his point was that look you could actually like lean into the way that ecosystems and food chains work you could introduce like a natural predator if you will of algae and
into the pool and over a longer period of time that could help maintain a low amount of algae because they would be eating it all up. But I don't think that is the approach the Trump administration is going to take. Should we just let the algae live, Benji? I mean, come on, Sean. It's American flag blue, not green. It's American algae. It's grown, American grown algae. We should be proud of it.
We should celebrate it. It is the base of the food chain. Lots of stuff eats it. It produces oxygen. It is essential in the environment. And some of the scientists I talked to were like, maybe we should just go all in on bringing back nature to this reflecting pool. Make it an actual swamp. And dirty, well, by some definitions, dirty water or algae-filled water can still reflect a building.
And so I don't know how much it matters if there's algae in it or not. Because when I look at it, I'll still be able to think my reflective thoughts. Yeah, exactly. The most important part of it.
That was Benji Jones from The Yellow Website, Peter Balanon-Rosen, Hadi Mawagdi, Amna Alsadi, Gabriel Dunatov, Patrick Boyd, and David Tatasciore are his colleagues, and they all made this installment of Today Explained.
I'm green and it'll do fine and it's beautiful and I think it's what I want to be
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