From NHPR, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Nate Hedgie. ["The King Kong Theme Song"] It was the spring of 1936, and the producer of King Kong was getting ready to make his next movie, a sweeping romantic epic called The Garden of Allah. The Arabs have a saying, madam. The desert is the Garden of Allah. This movie, it was set in the Sahara Desert, and David Selznick, that's the producer's name, he was tired of always shooting indoors on studio lots. He wanted the real thing. So, he hauled the entire cast and crew out to film in the desert of Southwestern Arizona. And they actually were at the desert where Return of the Geni was filmed. That's authored Jeff Williams. So if you remember Jabba the Hutt, that scene where he's trying to kill Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. You tell that slimy piece of worm-ridden filth, they'll get no such pleasure from us. That's where they filmed The Garden of Allah. ["The Garden of Allah"] When the crew got to this desert, it was in the middle of a scorching heat wave. Triple digits every day. Way hotter than it normally is in spring. Film stock began to melt. The toupee on the lead actor kept falling off because of sweat. People started getting sick because of the heat. And then there was a baby camel named Dejamila. And it was sort of the camp mascot. And everybody loved Dejamila. Every day, the leading man, the leading actor, Charles Boyet and the director, they would bring snacks to feed the baby camel. And everybody was sweaty and miserable. But they all kind of came together with this baby camel who died in the heat. It was too hot for a camel. The final blow came when the film star, Marlene Dietrich, collapsed in the heat. After that, the producer threw in the towel and moved the whole production back to an indoor studio in Hollywood. The Garden of Vala bombed in the box office and faded into obscurity. And so did this epic heat wave that gripped Arizona and most of America in 1936. You probably haven't read about it in history books or seen a documentary about it. But by the time summer ended, this heat wave had become one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history. It touched the world. It touched almost every state in the country. At least 12,000 Americans died. And it just kind of became an almost forgotten piece of history. Today on the show, a conversation with Jeff Williams, author of the upcoming book, The Summer of Death, about a heat wave 90 years ago that transformed the country. It became so hot that glaciers melted and then swept away houses. What is a heat wave? How do you decide who counts as a casualty? And we'll have some much-needed lessons on how to survive a hotter world today. Stick around. Insurance isn't one size fits all. And shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. 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Discover castles steeped in legend. And feel the genuine warmth from locals you meet in a place that will stay with you long after you leave. Start planning your own Scottish holiday today at Expedia.co.uk slash Visit Scotland. Hey, from NHPR, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Nate Hedgie. Think of your favorite disaster movie. Maybe it's Volcano, where Tommy Lee Jones is going up against a volcano. It's gonna punch through! You're gonna be rough! Yeah! Or Twisters, where Glenn Powell is going up against Twisters. Down! Hold me! Hold me! Hold me! Hold me! Or Perfect Storm, where George Clooney is going up, uh, well, you get the gist. Now, there is also a movie called Heatwave. One word, exclamation point. It was made for TV back in 1974. What's going on? Oh, you had to call for two weeks to get a simple, stupid air conditioner fixed. Heatwave was not a blockbuster hit. In fact, it got some pretty rough reviews. I'm sure the acting wasn't great, but the main complaint, Heatwave? Kind of boring. It looks dull. I mean, everybody gets tired and sleepy, and it doesn't look like much to write about, but if it's really, really bad, it touches just about every facet of your life. Jeff Williams' new book, The Summer of Death, deals with arguably one of the worst heatwaves in American history. In 1936. This was a tumultuous year, to say the least. America was in the midst of the Great Depression. Spain broke into civil war. Hitler's Germany hosted the Olympics. For 14 days, Berlin will be the scene of the fiercest battles between 50 nations. Battles of peace. All of which is to say, there is a reason the history books might have forgotten the heatwave. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a very big deal. It really is a survival story. The whole country, it's like a national trauma that almost everybody went through. The National Weather Service defines a heatwave as a period of abnormally hot weather lasting longer than a couple of days. We've probably all experienced at least a mild heatwave in our lifetime. A few sweaty days in July where you cooled off with a hose in your backyard. But the heatwave in 1936, it was almost like a heat dome, and it's so hot that it's like a hot-air. But the heatwave in 1936, it was almost like a heat dome, and it sort of just parked over the entire country, and it essentially stayed there for months. This heat dome was caused by a stubborn high-pressure system. And Meteorology 101, a pressure system that's high, means a very clear sky. So the sun was baking down onto some parched and arid land. Remember, 1936 was in the middle of the Dust Bowl years. The Great Plains had been ravaged by drought and plowed into oblivion by farmers. So all that bare, dry ground was able to absorb and radiate heat, creating a feedback loop that turned America into a frying pan. People will oftentimes joke it's so hot you can fry an egg on the ground, but people were actually cooking. They were able to cook stuff on the ground because it was so hot, right? Yeah, onions were cooking in the ground. I mean, that's what I love. Like literally, onions being planted just growing in the ground, they're cooking already in the ground? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, popcorn. Around the country, there were instances of corn that got so hot that it, popcorn was created. Corn on the cob in a field like popping. Corn on the cob became popcorn. Okay, so I have looked this up and the internet is very confident that corn popping in a field is basically impossible. So maybe this was like a 1930s version of a viral rumor, but newspapers from Illinois to Oklahoma to Texas did publish accounts of corn popping on the stock because it was so dry and so hot. And some of the stories from this heat wave are just as outlandish, but also verifiable. Pigeons were landing and getting stuck in the tar and people were going out to rescue them and trying to free them from the tar, getting their shoes stuck and then having to pry their feet out of their shoes and get across the road. And weren't sidewalks exploding as well? Yeah, it's just amazing what heat can do to the concrete. They're little, it's porous. The air expands and so sometimes sidewalks and roads would explode. All of this sounds cartoonishly hot, but actually the temperatures weren't dramatically higher than the heat waves today and some of this stuff still happens today. I mean, sure, we've since put additives into asphalt to help it withstand extreme heat, but roads will still buckle when it's too hot. And back during a heat wave in 2019, a mayor in Iowa warned residents to watch out for exploding sidewalks. We're dealing with blowouts is the term they use in the concrete. Above the ground, we're dealing with sewer collapse. So if heat can become so intense that it blows up sidewalks and cooks onions in the ground, can you imagine what it does to a human body? When it comes to our core body temperature, we humans are very much Goldilocks creatures. If that core temp drops below 95 degrees, we start getting hypothermia. But if we get hotter than 99 degrees, it's called hyperthermia. We begin to overheat. And as your temperature rises, your blood vessels widen. That's a good thing because your blood is flowing toward the skin and it's sending the extra body heat away. And then your sweat is carrying hot water out of your body. So it hits the surface of your skin. The water evaporates. You cool off. Your heart's always working harder as those blood vessels widen. It's pumping like two to four times more blood a minute during the warmer months than the cold ones. So the hotter it gets, the harder your heart works to keep your body cool. Well, it kind of reminds me of like a car engine running on a hot day, you know? Like if you don't have enough coolant in there, it's running harder and harder. And so the human body you're saying is just like it's working harder to cool off. Right. Yes. Yes. We were not built for weather that is like 100 degrees and more. And a lot of these cities and states around the country were seeing 100 degree weather, not just, you know, once or twice, but like for 20 days in a row. And it's hard on people's hearts. The newspapers said that John Baden had a weak heart. It was early May and John, 69 years old, was outside remodeling a home in Omaha, Nebraska. Average temps that time of year are in the 60s, but on that day, it was almost 90 degrees. And in the late afternoon, John collapsed and died. He was the first of an estimated 5000 people across the country who were killed directly by the heat wave of 1936, which means their death certificates said stuff like heart attack induced by the heat or passed out in the heat and hit his head. But Jeff estimates that thousands more Americans were killed indirectly by the heat wave of 1936. Car accidents are a great example. I mean, there were a lot of people the summer of 1936 who died in car wrecks caused by the heat. There were tire blowouts. There were people passing out at the wheel. If you pass out at the wheel and then you crash into a tree, you can say, well, yeah, you know, he died in the car crash, but you know, the heat that caused it. This heat wave kind of acted like death in the final destination movies. It devised Rube Goldberg-like ways to kill people. Take trains, for example. In that summer of 1936, the hot sun was beating down day after day on railroad tracks. They called it a sun kink when the heat would make the metal expand. And so occasionally trains would be coming along and there'd be a sun kink there and suddenly you had trains, you know, going off the track. This, by the way, is the same reason Amtrak sees an uptick in delays during heat waves today. But back then there were fewer safety precautions and train derailments were more common. And there were a few people who were killed. There was a fireman, I think, a train like, you know, spilled over, caught on fire. Then there was a grass fire and then a fireman died putting out the fire. People also died or got hurt trying to escape the heat. We're going to get to this later, but back in the 1930s, most homes didn't have air conditioning or even electric fans. So on really hot days, people would flock to cold water. But back then public swimming pools weren't really a thing, so they'd often go to rivers, lakes, or abandoned quarries and standpits. And sure enough, people would drown or they'd get hypothermia or get swept away. There were even people who were swimming in cooties' quarries and there'd be a rock slide and, you know, that would finish them off. People also tried to escape the heat by sleeping outside, sometimes on roofs or window ledges where they would roll off and die. Other times they slept in ditches or in parks where people were attacked by animals. Really? Oh yeah, yeah, there was one poor guy bitten by a skunk. Bitten by a skunk? Yeah, yeah, he was asleep. I don't know if it was a lawn chair, you know, but a hand was hanging there in the air. And a skunk bit his thumb and he's fighting with the skunk. Now, I don't want to make light of all these bizarre deaths and injuries, but I think they say something about the way heat waves ripple across every aspect of human life. The strangest death Jeff told me about. The one that really should be in a final destination movie occurred in a small town in eastern Pennsylvania. It was early May and 95 degrees out. A teenager went swimming in a lake to cool off when he was hit by cramps and he drowned. Now, that in itself isn't very strange, but what happened next was... There was a firefighter named William Stoker, who's one of the people looking for his body. They found a 13-year-old, they worked on him for a long time, tried to bring him back to life. They couldn't. So they... a bunch of firemen, they get into a car and they put the 13-year-old boy's body in the rumble seat. Now, a rumble seat back then, you know, you basically opened up the trunk of your car and there's a seat. Kids would sit in the rumble seat. It was not a safe thing to do. There were no seat belts. Well, you had two firemen get into the rumble seat with the dead body in between them. And then the rest of the car, that's packed with people. William is next to a 13-year-old dead body. He was very uncomfortable. And so he was leaning, kind of trying to get as much space from him as possible in this rumble seat without seat belts. Well, they hit a pothole or something, some sort of bump. William fell out. The fireman hit his head on the road. So they, you know, they stop, they pull over. He's alive, you know, and he's like, I just want to get home. They're like, you know, we think you should go to a hospital. So they take him to a hospital. A few hours later, he's on a coma and he dies. Did the heat wave kill him? Well, no, not really. But, you know, if the heat wave hadn't existed, he would be alive. Even today, it is really hard to track heat deaths. Death certificates aren't standardized in the United States, meaning it's up to the individual corner to decide whether heat played a factor in, say, a heart attack. There are also reporting gaps between the state and feds. For instance, in Missouri in 2023, the state's public health department said that more than 30 people died from heat-related illnesses. But the National Weather Service, who also tracks heat deaths, said that zero Missourians died. The heat wave of 1936 was like a match, a little fire that swept across the country. But it also sparked a transformation in how we dress, how we cool ourselves, and how we understand climate change. That's after the break. So, I started playing music again. I actually just played this folk festival recently. And now that I'm playing music, I need to look a lot sharper than my typical athleisure sweatpants working from home outfit, right? So, I picked up this blue chorecoat from Quince that I absolutely adore. It's durable, it fits great, it looks cool, and it costs less than $100. You see, everything at Quince is priced 50-80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. 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Don't wait for someone else to bring change. Today, start your fundraiser in just minutes at GoFundMe.com. That's GoFundMe.com to start your fundraiser. GoFundMe.com. This is a commercial message brought to you by GoFundMe.com. When life gets hectic, energy ups and downs are all you need. If you're seeking energy reassurance, Eonnext can help. From regularly updating our tariffs to get you our best value, to SmartTech that helps you take control of your energy future, we're here for whatever's next. Just one of the reasons why we're rated excellent on TrustPilot by our customers. Find out more about how we can help at Eonnext.com. Eligibility and T's and C's apply. TrustPilot February 2026. From NHPR, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Nate Hedgie. Across the West tonight, a scorching March heatwave making winter feel more like the height of summer. From California to New York. As I was working on this episode, a heatwave was gripping much of the American West. Cities like Tucson and Phoenix bracing for triple digit temps. Neither have ever before seen a 100 degree day in winter. Even usually snowy ski towns like Aspen, Colorado hit a record breaking 75 degrees. I mean, my buddy sent me pictures of him wearing shorts and chakos in March in Idaho. Not normal. Or is it? The number of heatwaves in U.S. cities has tripled since the 1960s and the average heatwave season has increased by more than 40 days. Heatwaves are becoming more common. And inevitably, when it does get hot and sticky outside, we wear exactly what my buddy was wearing. Shorts. And if you're going to a lake to cool off, a swimsuit. Maybe even a bikini. And we can think the heatwave of 1936 for that privilege. Here's author Jeff Williams. In 1936, you know, people were still wearing gloves and hats and layers. Men could not always go onto a beach wearing just swimming trunks. You would have a bathing suit, you know, from top to bottom. But as this heatwave fried America, the country began sounding more and more like Nelly. It's getting hot in here. So take off all your clothes. In mid-July, there was a headline in the front page of the Des Moines Register that read, quote, wear little clothing if you like, it's legal. And it argued that, yeah, you can't be naked. That's indecent exposure. But nothing in the law says you can't wear God forbid, shorts, or even a skimpy bathing suit. There were like women in Cleveland creating their own makeshift bikinis. So people were experimenting a lot. But there were a lot of people, traditionalists, who didn't want you, you know, wearing shorts, you know, any of that. So there were fights in, you know, in court, in church, in department stores. I mean, you know, people would allow sometimes employees to wear shorts and would be worried that they'd get a lot of blowback from the public. And they did. In Yonkers, a man and a woman in the 20s were found guilty by a judge of wearing shorts in public. They appealed the decision and strutted into the streets of Yonkers again wearing shorts, knowing they would be arrested. But they kept fighting and eventually that city's ban was overturned. I tend to think that 1936, you know, wasn't like the 60s where everybody suddenly, you know, is like, ah, you know, tie dye and shorts and you know. But it did, you know, kind of open the door for fashion to start getting a little more relaxed. But shedding clothes alone isn't enough to keep you cool during a heatwave. Nowadays, you probably also flip on your air conditioner. But back in 1936, most folks didn't have AC. It was new and expensive. Sure, the White House had it. But regular folks, they looked at AC with a lot of skepticism. There was some editorial in one of the Southern newspapers that said the North, the reason they couldn't handle the heat was because they were all going soft. So you kind of had a country that was worried about going soft, you know. And so technology in general, if it could help you out, you know, people would wonder, you know, well, is that a good idea? People are resistant to change. They were back then, they are now. And sometimes it takes a absolute disaster to make you accept that new technology, you know. How did views and how did our use of air conditioning change after the 1936 heatwave? Yeah, well, the entire summer was like an advertisement for the air conditioning industry. People were like, yeah, you don't need to convince me, you know, this is a good idea. And hospitals were immediately were like, we need to install air conditioning into, you know, at least our operating rooms. That's right. Most hospitals in 1936 did not have air conditioning. So if you suffered heat exhaustion or a heat stroke, you were going into a building that was often hotter than it was outside. They would get ice and a big block of ice and electric fan and blow it on the person. But yeah, it was not comfortable to be in a hospital. There were a lot of operating rooms where people would die on the table because it was too hot in there. In Minneapolis, the hospital there canceled most of its non-emergency surgeries because the temperature inside had reached 130 degrees. Something had to change. By mid-July, the mayor of Minneapolis promised that the city's hospitals would have air conditioning installed by the end of the year. In Detroit, a hospital superintendent bought two AC units after he lost almost two dozen patients because of the indoor heat. This slow embrace of AC started spreading across America. The U.S. Capitol installed it that summer. Retailers started buying it for their stores. And a scientist by the name of Clarence Mills declared in his weekly syndicated column that Americans needed to start loving air conditioning because heat waves like this were going to become a lot more common in the future. Now, Clarence Mills didn't believe that humans were changing the climate, but he was still one of the first modern folks to suggest that we need to respond to those changes anyway. You know, I mean, there was a real missed opportunity because people kind of forgot about it. They didn't totally forget about the heat wave. I mean, in just about every city in the country, you would have, you know, newspapers five, 10, 15, 20 years later would be like, remember that heat wave and they would, you know, they'd interview people, they'd do a big feature on it. But I think we got soft, you know, as a country, we got soft where we thought, oh, this isn't going to happen again. We don't have to worry about it. You know, you tell readers in the beginning of this book that it's a how-to manual to surviving a heat wave. What can we actually learn from a heat wave that happened 90 years ago? Like, what are some of the big lessons we can bring in today? Well, humans don't change. Our bodies are still pretty much the same. And a lot of the rules that they came up with back then still apply today. I mean, if it's super hot out, you really don't want to overexert yourself. You want to wear, you know, light clothing. You definitely want to stay hydrated. A lot of what Jeff is saying here is just common sense. We have all the tools to beat back heat on a personal level and even on a community-wide level. You plant more trees, open cooling shelters, check on your neighbors. We know what to do. But the problem is, we don't always do it. People are made to work outside, kids practice football on a 90-degree day, you go for a hike with too little water. We sometimes ignore the danger because heat waves aren't like hurricanes. They aren't in our face. They're more like pandemics. When COVID-19 hit our shores, there were simple things we could do to lower casualties. Wear a mask, socially distance, get vaccinated. All stuff we learned from pandemics in the past. But many Americans didn't do those things. And more people died than they would have otherwise. So one of the lessons Jeff took away from the heat wave of 1936 was that people took care of each other. There were a lot of people that banded together in really surprising and just inspiring ways to save people, you know, who were in trouble from the heat. And I think there's a lot to learn from that period. So if we're going to survive a hotter world, we're going to have to learn the lessons of the past. Because a heat wave might not make for a great disaster movie. But we got to remember, it is still a disaster. This episode was written and mixed by me, your host, Nate Hedgie. It was edited by Taylor Quimby. The rest of the team includes Justine Paradis, Marina Hanky, and Felix Poon. And HPR's director of On Demand Audio is Rebecca Levoie. Taylor Quimby is our executive producer. Music in this episode came from Blue Dot Sessions. Outside In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Enter how to. The long-standing advice show and ambi-award nominated best personal growth podcast that's back with new episodes and a new host, who? Me, Mike Peska. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from a world-class expert, you know, someone who actually very much knows what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silences. You've got questions, we'll find the experts and the answers. So follow How To with Mike Peska wherever you get podcasts. 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