Geography Is The Nile River: And The Dam That Might Kill It

📝 Substack: https://geographyiseverything.substack.com/
📽️ YouTube: @GeographyByGeoff
📷 Socials: https://linktr.ee/geographybygeoff
📖 Check out Hunter's atlas' here: https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=hunter+shobe

The Nile River is an incredible geographic feature on our planet. But despite being so closely associated with Egypt, it actually runs through many other countries making it equally important to hundreds of millions of people. Despite this importance, one dam being constructed in Ethiopia could upend how and where water goes throughout much of the Nile River basin. And this is leaving some really large geopolitical questions hanging out in the open.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hey, Jeff, I have aquestion. I have two questions. You
can answer either one, okay,okay, do you know all the countries
that the Nile River runs through,or alternatively, the countries of the Nile
River valley, So you can takeeither one of those. Okay, Well,
I'm gonna go ahead and love Butthe easy one out of the way,
which is Egypt. I think that'sfine. That one's probably that one's

(00:27):
I would say Egypt is probably thecountry that people most closely associate with the
Nile River. But obviously, Ithink, or perhaps maybe not as obvious,
is that the Nile actually doesn't startin Egypt. It starts I believe.
Well, because there's two. There'stwo Nile rivers, aren't there.
Yeah, well we'll get we'll getto that. Let's stay focused here.
Okay, there's okay, I'm gonnago rattle off some countries. Egypt,

(00:51):
Ethiopia. I don't think Eritrea isone of them. I think that's too
far close to the ocean. We'llsay Sudan and South Sudan. Correct,
what about like Kenya or something oror or Uganda. I'm gonna maybe throw
those out there. Maybe that's itthat's I'm gonna tap out that, all
right, So Ganda is correct,and then Kenya is part of the Nile

(01:14):
River valley, but I'm not hunderdpercent sure that the Nile actually it touches
like Victoria, which is one ofthe sources of the Nile, and so
that's usually included when we're talking aboutit. Other countries that fall into the
river valley situation are Burundi, theDemocratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda and

(01:36):
Tanzania. So in Tanzania also boughtborders like Victoria. So yeah, it's
it's it's not as easy a questionas it would seem necessarily because there's sort
of different ways you're answering it.But that's yeah. You know, the
reason I asked, of course,is because today geography is the Nile River,
that's the episode. That's what we'retalking about today. That that basin,

(01:57):
the now River basin incidentally cover there'sapproximately ten percent of Africa, so
you know, Africa's pretty big,and it flows through five different climatic zones,
so tropical, subtropical, semi arid, arid, and Mediterranean. So
there's a lot of changes that goon in different parts of the Now River.
It's interesting though, because as you'rerunning through those, it's five different

(02:22):
sort of climate types, but they'reall I would say, fairly similar in
that they're all very hot sort ofclimate types, as opposed to say,
yeah, like Mississippi, which runsthrough you know, much colder down to
subtropical. Right, So it's it'sit's sort of similar, it's sort of
it's bordering, I would say,similar biomes than maybe some of the other

(02:44):
large rivers. And I do wonderhow that impacts things like how much water
gets evaporated when there's just not asmuch you know, coverage. That's I
don't know. I also wonder becauseand we'll talk about the origins of the
Nile but one of them is inthe Ethiopian highlands, and I'm wondering which
of these five that fits into orif it's a different one that I maybe

(03:06):
missed. But let's talk. Let'slet's lay out some basic information here about
the Nile River, because people haveheard about it, but maybe people don't
know that much about it, andso that's one of the reasons we're talking
about this today. The Now Riveris more than four one hundred and sixty
miles long, I've found many differentestimates, and so the answer is nobody
knows exactly how long it is,but it looks like it's over four thousand

(03:29):
let's say forty one sixty and itruns south to north, which most major
rivers run north to south or eastto west or west to east. So
this is a little bit different inthat regard. It is the longest river
in the world, maybe, right, So that's what people usually think.
That's what people usually say. Thesecond longest. You can you guess which

(03:52):
one? I mean, I wouldhave to say it's either the Amazon River
or that's correct. Maybe. Ohokay, I was going to guess the
Mississippi River. I know it's reallylong, but Amazon is correct, and
the Amazon is at the moment peoplethink about four thousand miles long, so

(04:12):
about one hundred and fifty miles shorterthan the Nile. So that's a pretty
close race there. Third is theYangsa River, which is about three nine
hundred and fifteen miles long, orabout two hundred and fifty miles shorter than
the Nile. And the fourth isthere's some contention whether it should be called
the Missouri or the Mississippi River.Oh boy, because if you go by

(04:32):
the beginning of the Missouri River andconsider the rest of the Mississippi to be
part of that, then it wouldbe the Missouri. So some you know,
researching this, some sources say it'sthe Missouri River and some say that
it's the Mississippi River. And thisbegs the question, where does one river
begin in another end. I'm notsuggesting we can solve this today, but

(04:53):
I have been thinking a lot aboutthat question and researching this episode. Yeah,
it's an interesting question, I thinkone. I think it's it's kind
of, you know, superfluous,a little bit about like, you know,
where one begins and ends. It'slike, here in Oregon, we
have the Columbia River and at somepoint the Snake River sort of joins into
that and the Snake River becomes theColumbia River. But there's not really a

(05:16):
logic behind that. In fact,I would argue that it's probably goes based
on early European maps as they werebeing made at the time, and that's
just sort of what's stuck and that'sthe only reason why. And I've heard
the same thing about the Missouri versusthe Mississippi. It's like, well,
why isn't the Missouri. Why isn'tit the Missouri River? And it's like,

(05:38):
well, if I look at amap of the Mississippi and the Missouri,
the Mississippi goes sort of mostly northsouth and it's fairly you know,
east relatively, whereas the Missouri Ibelieve, goes to the far west for
a long distance, right, Andso I can just imagine like, yeah,
they didn't know that that was there, the map makers, that they

(05:58):
already named the river, and hehad already named the river, and so
that's what it was. Yeah,No, I think that's true. And
so, in fact, because somepeople contend that Amazon is longer than the
Nile, the dispute hinges a littlebit on where the Nile begins and where
the Amazon begins. And apparently there'san expedition that's underway right now to track

(06:18):
if the Montero River, which isin the Andes of Peru, should be
considered the origin of the Amazon River, at which point the Amazon would hold
claim to the world's longest river.So there's some people who want to prove
this. They're out checking it out. And if this were to happen,
or maybe this is happening, Anyways, I would expect you find another expedition
to find the origin the Nile andmaybe look at some tributaries to Lake Victoria

(06:42):
or something that haven't been identified.So this could go on and on and
in fact, for thousands of yearspeople have wondered about the origin of the
Nile, where it is, howlong it is. You might be interested
in knowing that the Greek geographer andhistorian Herodotus, who we've mentioned in several
consecutive episodes. Now, somehow Ibelieve you know that was something that he

(07:03):
thought a lot about, and wewon't This won't even be the last mention
of Herodotus in this episode, sowe're keeping the streak going. We might
just have to eventually do an episodeon him, because he seems to come
up all the time. One ofthe oldest identified geographers in the world.
There are probably people who consider thatthat we could consider geographers that maybe have
been lost to history, or ormaybe haven't been lost to history. But

(07:27):
anyways, Herodotus strikes again. Jeff. My question after all this is why
do you think determining what the longestriver is is such a big deal for
some people? Well, I mean, we've talked about this on various episodes.
There's a lot of place identity andpride wrapped up into sort of various

(07:47):
physical features right to mountain, ayou know, river, something else,
something you know that's sort of naturalsort of geographic feature, or even a
city you know, not natural.And I think generally, and I don't
know why this is probably you know, we had like a sociologist or somebody

(08:09):
on who had this expertise, butI think generally humans like to, you
know, say that they have thebiggest, the best, the grandest,
the whatever ist of it, allright, and so they want to sort
of attach that to their place.Got to have a superlative, right and
that because that attracts interest, andthat might come in the form of tourism

(08:30):
or might become in the form ofother things. But yeah, there seems
to be a contest throughout the planetto have the most or the best,
or the longest or the tallest ofvarious geographical features, and that debate I
think probably rage on for a longtime. Incidentally, the Amazon River is
the large has the largest drainage areaof any river on Earth. So the

(08:54):
Amazon drainage basin covers about thirty fiveto forty percent of South America, where
the Nile drainage base covers about tenpercent of Africa, so it drains more
water, but at the moment it'snot considered to be the longer river.
And so it's interesting also, Ithink for us to consider that what might
be a straightforward question, you know, in the twenty first century, how

(09:15):
long is the Nile River, it'sstill kind of unknown and debated, right
like that, we see we thinkwe know everything, but we really don't
know everything. In fact, there'sa lot we don't know, including some
basic stuff like that the obsession.There was this obsession with some nineteenth century
Europeans which catalyzed searches for the originof the Nile. This was something that

(09:35):
explorer types really wanted to find out, and the knowledge that was gained from
such expeditions was used subsequently in Europeancolonial conquests. So this is interesting,
the connection between so called exploring andthen taking over these areas that other people
live in that Europeans will claim.And this also led to the naming of

(09:56):
bodies of water and landforms after Europeanand these names are still common in many
parts of the world today. Andyou alluded to that earlier, right,
like Lake Victoria. You're already mentionedVictoria. Yeah, yeah, there's there's
all kinds of lakes and things namedafter like for example, Lake George,

(10:16):
like Edward, Lake Albert. Areall sources of the Nile. And these
these are names that are I'm thinkingvery common in England, or they were
at one point in the UK.They're very European, very European sounding names.
Of course they've come to be namesof other places in the world as
well. But if we were totrack their origin, that's what we'd find

(10:39):
out. So I promised I wouldtell you what the sources of the Nile
are, and of course that's stillbeing discovered apparently. But there are two
main tributaries to the Nile River,the White Nile and the Blue Nile.
And so they meet in Khartoum,which is the capital of Sudan, and
of these two, the Nile,So the Blue Nile brings about eighty five

(11:01):
percent of the flow south I'm sorry, north of Khartoum, and the remaining
is from the White Nile. TheBlue Nile has its origin in the Ethiopian
Highlands. The Nile River itself isthought to be about thirty million years old,
and that is around the time thatthe Semian Range of the Ethiopian Highlands
was formed. This is the locationof Lake Tana, which is about six

(11:24):
thousand feet above sea level, soit has a while to travel in altitude
to get to sea level. TheBlue and the White Nile are thought to
have connected a bit more recently thanthat long ago thirty million years ago,
more than like twenty five thousand yearsago, so that's pretty recent that those
two rivers and met. The WhiteNile begins in Lake Victoria, which is

(11:46):
located between Kenya, Uganda, andTanzania. Lake Victoria is the second largest
freshwater lake in the world, secondto Lake Superior and followed by Lake Uron
and Lake Michigan. So the GreatLakes are pretty big. But again then
we get into another kind of geographicaldebating point here, which is because the

(12:07):
largest inland body of water is actuallythe Caspian Sea, right contains enough saline
to designate it a salt lake ora sea, but a lot of people
refer to it as a sea insteadof a lake, and it's salt water,
so maybe it doesn't count. Sothe debate rages on. Yeah,
I mean there's all kinds of likethese little things too. Right. So
there's also the and it's not quiteas prominent anymore because it's been drained.

(12:28):
But there's the Aral Sea, whichis I think based in Russia or maybe
one of Kazaks down or something likethat. That's right, And it's like
as well, yeah, yeah,and it's like why why is that?
Why is that called the sea insteadof a lake? You know, if
you if we follow like geographic conventionsor sort of how we term things,
then they would both be lakes,right because they're not connected to the larger

(12:52):
body of waters called oceans that wehave on this planet. But yeah,
yeah, because they're they're likely andthe fact that they don't they drain to
the ocean because everything does eventually,but they're not, they're not connected intimately
connected to the ocean in that kindof way. So in addition to this,
there's several rivers that flow into LakeVictoria and then flow into these other

(13:16):
lakes I mentioned, like George,like Edward Lake, Albert, Lake Yoga
as well, which contribute to theflow of the Nile. There are others
as well. The maximum water levelof the Nile, it tends to be
in August and September, particularly thatwhich flows through Ethiopia, Sudan, and
Egypt, because the rains in thehighlands of Ethiopia are in the summer and

(13:37):
so they're catching all that rainfall andthat leads to the high level flow in
August and September. The Nile depositssilt along its banks in the Nile Delta,
which begins about twenty miles north ofCairo and which makes the soil extremely
rich in nutrients and very favorable forfarming. Delta is some two hundred and

(14:01):
fifty kilometers wide. If you're lookingat the coast of the Mediterranean from Alexandria
to Port said, the delta formsthe shape of a triangle, which not
coincidentally, is the shape of theGreek letter delta. So that's apparently where
that comes from, because we hearthe term delta, but it's a Greek
letter and they're connected because of theNile. Interesting. Yeah, I mean

(14:24):
that, I guess that makes sense. I don't know if this is necessarily
true off the top of my head, but Alexandria sounds very Greek. I
would imagine there was a Greek cityat one point. Yeah, I believe
that's right on the Delta, So, yeah, that's right. It was
a very important, you know cityat the time. Cairo is not on
the Mediterranean. Cairo's removed from theMediterranean a little bit and is a city

(14:46):
would that wouldn't exist without the NileIt just couldn't exist. Cairo has over
twenty million people, or about elevenpercent of Egypt's population. It is the
capital of the and the largest cityin Egypt, and it's the sixth largest
city in the world. Since we'redoing a little bit of ranking action here
in the first part of the episodeand the you know, you can count

(15:09):
in all kinds of different ways,as we always say, but many sources
that I've consulted suggest that the largestcities in the world are Tokyo first,
and this is probably the metropolitan areaas well Deli, Yeah, Tokyo,
Delhi, Shanghai, South Paolo,and Mexico City, and then Cairo.
The area surrounding the Nile River andthe Delta are extremely arid, making this

(15:31):
source of water vital for I mean, it's vital for people in all the
various countries that we mentioned before,but for Egyptians it's particularly important. Some
ninety five percent of the Egyptian populationlives within a few miles of the Nile,
and population density along the Nile isamong some of the highest in the
world to one hundred percent, itdepends on where you go for your statistics.

(15:58):
Of Egypt's fresh water supply comes fromthe Nile, So almost all of
it. Yeah, you know,it's really hard to Certainly for smaller countries
you can do this, but forcountries that are both as large in population
and size as Egypt, it's hardto find another example of one that's so
dependent on a single source of well, really anything, but in this instance,

(16:22):
water of fresh water. Right.It gets to the point where if
the Nile were for some reasons,you know, let's say there's a giant
tap and somebody turns it off,there's no more water going down the Nile
River. It's like, would Egyptbe able to survive? And I think
based on the statsu you just readto me, I would wager that the

(16:42):
answer would probably be no, thatthey would not be able to survive.
You've just foreshadowed a later part ofthe episode, so we'll be ripping off
of that very scenario, not completelydrying up but we're going to consider what
would happen if the flow of waterthrough the Nile. It would be threatening
to all these different countries, butEgypt in particular. Just a quick population

(17:04):
statistic here, in the early eighteenhundreds, the population of Egypt was three
million people. So this was inthe early eighteen hundreds, right before the
population of the world really spiked ineighteen hundred. There's still weren't a billion
people on the planet at the sametime. It was approximately eighteen thirty that
happened, and now we have goteight billion. Today, the population of

(17:25):
Egypt is approximately one hundred and fourteenmillion people, making it the fourteenth largest
country in the world. And thenEthiopia, where the Blue Nile originates,
has a population of almost one hundredand thirty million, making it the eleventh
largest country in the world. Sothese are large countries, large populations that
depend on this river. And we'lltalk more about the importance of the Nile,

(17:47):
not only to contemporary but to ancientEgypt after we take a short break.
All right, we will be rightback, and we're back. It's
the Geography Is Everything podcast. We'retalking about Geography is the Nile River and

(18:07):
I thought I'd mentioned how this rivergot its name. So the word Nile
is derived from Nelios, which isa Greek word for river valley. Oh.
Interesting, you get it from theGreeks. Ancient Egyptians called their ancient
Egyptians called the river our, whichmeans black and refers to the rich,
dark sediment that the river carries withit after the seasonal flooding. So you

(18:33):
know, we get river, weget river valley from the Greeks. That's
the name of the Nile. Butit used to be referred to as the
Black River if you go back far. Yeah, that's interesting. Wo.
I would have thought, and I'massuming many people would have thought, that
the Nile originally got its name fromsomething in ancient Egyptian mythology, a god
of some sort. I would nothave guessed that it came from a Greek

(18:56):
word, although maybe I should have, you know, based on the fact
that Herodotus and Alexandria are already aprominent end this episode, right, Yeah,
So the Greeks were pretty dominant fora while in the Mediterranean, and
the Nile was obviously it was importantto ancient Egyptian society and civilization. But
for the Greeks, it was importantas well. In fact, without the

(19:17):
Nile, ancient Egyptian civilization as weknow it wouldn't have existed. It would
be much different, much smaller ifit existed at all. No empire,
no pyramids, no sphinx. Allthat stuff relates to the Nile River.
So let's talk a little bit sincewe'd like to go on the way back
machine about ancient Egypt and the Nile, just to sort of set things up
and to sort of illustrate that asimportant it is today, it was equally

(19:42):
important thousands and thousands of years ago. It was instrumental in the development of
ancient Egyptian civilization, and it's alsowhy those populations, such large populations,
as we mentioned before, the breakcan inhabit what is basically a large desert.
Herodotus wrote that the land of ancientEgypt was given to them by the

(20:04):
river, and his map of theworld clearly display displays the Nail the Nile.
Now there's no copies of Herodus's map, but it's been recreated from his
writings, so maybe we can gointo that again some time. Irrigation has
supported farming, fishing, and nourishedharsh human populations for at for thousands of

(20:26):
years. Right. Well, Imean, like the there's that famous sort
of like quick fact, fun factor whatever that. So there's Cleopatra,
right, and she was sort ofin the around the time of the Roman
Empire, which was probably you know, early you know, part of the
turn of the v yeah, turnof the calendar. But the quick fact

(20:48):
is that we are closer in timeto Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the building
of the Pyramids. Right, Sothere's like thousands of years. Yeah.
It's interesting to think about, right, because we so closely associate Cleopatra as
being part of that ancient world,and it's like it's ancient to us,
but to them, the Pyramids werebuilt in a much more ancient time.

(21:11):
Is how ancient are we talking abouthere? Yeah? I mean those are
thousands and thousands of years of historythat go by before you get to the
era of Cleopatra for example. Totallyyep. So you know, one of
the most important things about the Nilefrom a perspective of people is that it's
good for agriculture because it's freshwater andmajor crops along included wheat and barley,

(21:33):
which were staple foods back in ancientEgypt, and then flax, which is
used for making textiles, making clothing. The other thing that grows really favorably
in the Nile River delta is papyrus, and papyrus was used for making cloth
and making rope, but perhaps mostfamously paper, right, I mean,
that's why I don't know if thisis true, but I've always heard that

(21:57):
papyrus was sort of the first paperaround, right. It's like sort of
the first instances of people like havinga paper like substance that they're now writing
and scrolling on so they don't haveto write in stone, for example.
It's transport. Yeah, and thenI guess incidentally, the papyrus is also

(22:17):
famous for making the basket that babyMoses was put in when he was put
in the river. So that's alegend of the birth of Moses relates directly
to the Nile because he was floatedout into the Nile. Farmers practiced basin
irrigation a long time ago, andthis involves creating basins alongside the river.
Floodwater is directed into the basin fora month to saturate that soil, and

(22:41):
then it's drained off to a canalor a secondary basin, and the crops
were planted in that drain plot,so once it had been super saturated with
water, and this is the waythat ancient irrigation was practiced. This annual
process kept the soil very fertile overmillennia, and leaving land fallow was unnecessary,
as it was necessary in places likeMesopotamia, which is not too far

(23:04):
away, which is another place whereagriculture rose apparently independently. Base and irrigation
originated at least five thousand years ago, So that's we're talking about. Like
you said, that's further that's furtheraway from Cleopatra than we are today.
New evidence I've read about new evidenceof stone walls that are built perpendicular to

(23:25):
the Nile River and Sudan and Egyptsuggests that efforts to engineer structures to break
the water flow and sediment erosion maybefour thousand years old. So that means
attempts to at damming are that old. Of Flooding in Egypt is now controlled
by the Aswan High Dam, whichwe're going to get to in a moment
because it's an important dynamic of what'sgoing on. We have a whole episode

(23:51):
on Dams at least I think it'sa single or maybe it's a double episode,
but anyways, go check it outafter this one. You hear us
out here, and then if youwant to get some more context and Dams,
please check it out. And we'regoing to get into some contemporary projects
on the Nile in a moment.But let's take a leap into the industrial
period for a moment, specifically theeighteen hundreds and so we've gone from ancient

(24:11):
to the industrial history here. Andcotton has been grown in Egypt for over
forty five hundred years. Egyptian cottonis famous, right, right, I
mean yeah, you find it allall over It's like a brand now,
right. We've talked about this withour coffee episode, right, Columbia Columbia
Beans or something like. It's likeall this branding. It's like, Egyptian
cotton is definitely something you see splatteredacross the sort of the label of any

(24:34):
sort of you know, high endI would say sheet, you know,
material you've got a high thread countmight be Egyptian cotton, yeah, exactly.
But beginning the eighteen sixties, cottonproduction increased dramatically in Egypt. So
my question to you, Jeff,is why do you think cotton production increased
so dramatically in the eighteen sixties.Well, I mean, it's a interesting

(25:00):
because I wouldn't have guessed that cottonwould have been a let's say, staple
crop of some sort, an economiccrop of some sort for the country,
because I know cotton is very waterintensive, right, that's exactly. Really
Obviously the Nile has a lot ofwater going through. How could it not.
It's currently supporting one hundred and thirty, you know, one hundred and
twenty million people in Egypt and countlessmore millions across the rest of you know,

(25:23):
it's sort of drainage basin that said, it still seems like cotton would
be as an industrial product, asan economic product for export, something that
would be infeasible at best. WhatI'm going to suggest, however, is
that with the Aswan dam damn Isthat what you said? Yeah, that
came that was sort of a projectthat was sort of built during this time.

(25:45):
They were able to now manage waterand all the water that was coming
in, and I was able tosend create irrigation, and cotton was such
a valuable crop during that period oftime. I'm going to guess maybe potentially
because the US Civil War had happened, and maybe cotton had production the US
had gone down because plantations were nolonger allowed to use free labor, or

(26:07):
maybe had gone too expensive. Wheream I at here? So the second
part of your answer, you nailedit. The Aswan i am doesn't come
until after the eighteen sixties, sothat doesn't really factor into it however,
although it will eventually. But you'reabsolutely right that most of the cotton that
was on the global market was fromthe southern part of the United States,

(26:29):
and during the Civil War that kindof came to a crashing halt, and
so Egypt sort of filled in thegap and they greatly expanded production of cotton
during the time of the Civil war, which is a pretty interesting example of
how globalization affects different places. Starthaving a global market for something and the
supply ends in one place or itdiminishes greatly, and then some other part

(26:52):
of the planet is going to pickthat up, and it has enormous ramifications
in different parts of the world.Oh, it's absolutely fascinating. I think
this is another instance, and we'vehad a few of these different examples on
a number of our episodes. Butit's just another example of the fact that
globalization is not something that just occurredstarting in the nineteen seventies, which is
come I feel like it's commonly attributedto the nineteen seventies and that's when like

(27:15):
things started happening. It's like,well, no, globalization has been around
for hundreds of years, and maybethey just want Yeah, thousands of years,
they weren't able to be tracked asmuch, the impacts weren't able to
be tracked as much as they aretoday because communications technology today is so much
faster. Well, that's exactly that'sexactly right. That the nineteen seventies is
the period that is usually referred toas the start of the contemporary period of

(27:38):
globalization, and it's exactly that.It's the technologies of both transportation and communication
that became so advanced that things couldtravel around the world much more quickly than
ever before. However, people havebeen moving around the world for thousands of
years, bringing crops with them,bring different technologies and cultures, and so

(28:00):
in that sense, globalization is notnew at all, but we can we
can. One of the ways wecan categorize it is in these different eras
based on the speed of things.So let's talk about dams. Let's talk
about the Aswan High Dam. Itis a dam that provides hydroelectric power in
addition to controlling the flow of theriver for agricultural purposes. Behind that dam

(28:25):
is Lake Nassar, or at leastthat about eighty percent of that reservoir is
in Egypt, and the Egyptians callit Lake Nasar, and in Sudan the
reservoir is referred to as Lake Nubia. This body of water is two hundred
and ninety eight miles long ten milesacross, which is about a third of
a Connecticut to use our standard measuringdevice when you would get that in there

(28:48):
someplace. I produced the math onthat one, but it was worth it.
The first dam was constructed near thissite was the Aswan Low Dam,
which I didn't really know anything about, which opened in nineteen oh two and
was built by the British. Constructionof the Aswa High Dam, six miles
upstream, began in nineteen sixty andwas mainly built to store water for irrigation,

(29:11):
so that was the motivation at thetime. The Soviet Union at the
time was the entity that provided mostof the funding and technical advice and heavy
machinery for the dam's construction. Theysort of outbid everybody else. That's the
way it panned out. It wasn'tnecessarily the way it was going to start,
but that's the way it panned out. And keep in mind that Egypt

(29:32):
is occupied by the British until eighteenfifty six, so in the wake of
them having complete control and there wasindirect control happening from Britain for a while,
they make this large dam because theywanted to sort of harness the power
of technology for a modern state.The dam provides, as we said,

(29:52):
flood control, hydroelectric power, andincrease in agricultural production and improve navigate as
well, and these are the kindsof things we talked about in the Damn
episode. However, there's always issuesthat come with dam creations. There's benefits
and there's costs. And some ofthe costs are that the silt that flows
through the river builds up behind thedam, which reduces the silt deposits at

(30:15):
the delta, which contributes to erosion. So the erosion of the Nile delta
means that there is increasing amount ofsalt water that can come in into the
delta area and which compromises some ofits ability to be agricultural soil. In
agricultural area. The dam limits annualflooding as well as it controls it,

(30:40):
but that decreases the fertility of soilsat times. And the dam also contributes
to the pollution of water because itthings that would normally flow through and be
washed out into the ocean are stuckinto the river and become highly polluting and
mitigate the ability of that water tobe used for the things that people need
it for. The other thing isthat as one high dam, which as

(31:00):
we said is nineteen sixties, sothat means it's what's sixty years old,
sixty five years old or something likethat, is predicted to last about two
hundred years. So there are alreadylike a third of the way through the
life cycle of that dam, unlesssome new technology comes along, at which
time the built up sediment will renderthe dam unusable. So it's interesting that,
you know, two hundred years seemslike a long time, but it's

(31:22):
not a long time, and youknow, dams aren't built to last forever.
It's interesting because some of the olderdams in the world, I think
ran for a long time with thesize of the dams that were able to
create today, that's not necessarily acase. You know, it's really interesting.
I would say this dam in particular, is really highlighting the negative sort

(31:44):
of consequences of building one of thesemega projects that I don't know when they
were building at the time, whattheir assessments were, but I'm assuming that
a large I'm assuming that a lotof people who were building it were like,
this will fix all of our problems. We'll be able to do so
much here, We'll be able tocontrol the water. Everything will be great.

(32:06):
But the actual reality is that naturehas been plotting this path for you
know, hundreds of thousands of years, and there are certain ways that which
things happen because of that, Andwhen you start to try and control it
yourself, there's all these little unintendedconsequences, such as the silts, such
as the delta becoming no longer asyou know, agriculturally productive, all this

(32:28):
kind of stuff, And it's like, yeah, you can now you can
maybe build closer to the river,right because now you can control the flood
flooding, But what are you reallylosing in all of that? I think
that's that's a constant question for alot of different things that we do around
this planet. No, that's that'sabsolutely the case. And you know,
I think at the time this damwas built, it might have been the
biggest dam in the world, certainlyone of them. And so that's a

(32:51):
step into the unknown. You know. It's like, well, we know
we can we need electricity, wewant electricity, we want all the benefits
that would come from having it,but we don't necessarily know how this is
going to play out because dams ofthis size aren't very common and haven't been
made before. And now the reckoningstarts to come with time, and as
you said, nature won't be deniedand is going to find its way to

(33:14):
get in the way people's thought thatthey can control it. The formation of
the reservoir, I want to mention, also displace tens of thousands of Sudanese
Nubian people, as well as tensof thousands of Egyptians. So when we
talk about dams, that's one ofthe things that comes up, is that
a lot of people who are livingin an area that they've been living in
for generations or eons or however youwant to measure, it are suddenly displaced

(33:38):
and often relocated to areas that theyfind it hard to replicate the kind of
life that they had before. Sothat is true in this case as well.
You know, this highlights all thenot all, but some of the
major political, social economic issues relatedto international water rights, which is what
we're going to start to turn ourattention to right now, because that's way

(34:01):
we are very If you think back, our very first episode was a two
parter on the water pressures in thesouthwestern part of the United States. Yeah,
it was a I mean, it'sit's interesting because there's a lot of
water pressures. Well, they're actuallybeen mitigated a little bit because of twenty
twenty four's, you know, hissort of historic rainy season. That said,

(34:24):
I imagine in a few years it'llcrop back up again, and that'll
be another issue. Long term projectionsshow that, you know, there's a
lot of water issues in that area, and I think there's probably a lot
of water issues along the Nile,just as there are a lot of water
issues along a lot of places thesedays. That's absolutely the case, and
I think you're right that there mayhave been a slight raprief for the situation

(34:46):
in the American Southwest, the USSouthwest. But you know what you have
there is a bunch of different statesparts of the United States that are contending
for water rights with this river.And of course there's also Mexico and the
United States who are having there's contentionsabout how the water is used so that

(35:06):
the water will flow to Mexico andbe able to be used by people there.
But think about that. The situationof the Nile. It's a little
bit similar, except that it's tendifferent countries vying for water rights from the
same river, so that becomes evenmore complicated. So you know, when
we talked about the case of theColorado River, we're talking about some agreements

(35:28):
that were made in the early nineteenhundreds that some states assigned to first,
and you know, Arizona came tolast, and so now they're catching the
bunt of that. So let's talkabout water rights on the Nile, Like
what agreements are on place related towater rights in the Nile. And in
nineteen twenty nine, Egypt in Britain, and you know Egypt was occupied by

(35:52):
Britain eighty two to fifty six,signed an agreement with allotment of water rights,
which is a curious thing because Britainis not part of the river basin.
It's pretty far away. But atthe time, the UK controlled various
parts of Africa, including occupying Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya, so I

(36:13):
obstensibly they were representing those places inthis negotiation, which is pretty self serving
for again, for a country thatis not part of this continent, and
they're negotiating this in a way thatwould be good for their colonial enterprises.
So that was in nineteen twenty nine. It also kind of because Egypt during
this time was occupied by Britain.Britain controlled all these other sort of territories,

(36:38):
they had sovereignty over them. Howeveryou wanted to find it. It's
almost like indirect rule. Indirect rule. It's almost like your right hand arguing
with your left hand over which one'sgoing to get you know, I don't
know more water thinks, right.I mean, Egypt was indirect rule in
the sense that there were you know, indigenous god governments in place and this

(37:00):
kind of thing, but ultimately theywere under control of the British and during
this time in nineteen twenty nine,there's also an agreement between that was made
between Egypt and Sudan, both controlledby the British. But it's important for
what comes next because the agreement guaranteeda discrete water allocations for both Egypt and

(37:23):
for Sudan. And the agreement alsogave Egypt, and this is the nineteen
twenty nine agreement, gave Egypt thepower to veto any construction projects on the
Nile or its tributaries. So I'mnoticing here that this is between Egypt and
Sudan. Yes, this does notinclude Ethiopia, which is where one of

(37:43):
the White Nile I believe it wasoriginates, right the Blue Nile, and
which is the major flow that Egyptand Sudan gets is from this river.
So they're somehow not part of thisagreement at all, correct, Okay?
Or shadowing here? This is thisis going to cause problems. It's causing
problem right now. Let me Yeah. So, in other words, this

(38:04):
agreement didn't involve any of the othercountries that are all upstream from the Nile
River, so they're pretty important.If you're talking about water allotments and you're
not including the countries that are upstream, that's a tricky thing, right,
And that just also shows disproportionate powerthat Egypt had at the time that they
felt and the British that they feltthat, well, we can make this

(38:24):
binding because we say it's the case. So nineteen fifty six the British leave
Egypt completely more or less, andin nineteen fifty nine there's a bilateral agreement
between Egypt and Sudan, and soneither country was controlled by Britain at the
time. The agreement reaffirmed the provisionsof the nineteen twenty nine agreement, but

(38:46):
increased water allocation to both countries.So again without any agreement from the upstream
countries, they say, well,we should even get we should be allowed
to have more water, not havingany control necessarily where that water comes from.
And neither the twenty nine or fiftynine agreement provided any allocations whatsoever for
any of the other countries that nowflows through. Yeah, I mean to

(39:09):
me, this isn't even like amatter of colonialism, which it is.
It's it's more of just a matterof do you understand that the like Sudan
does not hold the like the water. They're not the head, they don't
hold that where all the water's comingfrom. It comes to them from someplace
else, right, and so like, how do you be like, yeah,

(39:30):
actually, let's let's let's keep thesame allotment and then let's just give
us both more of it, becausethat there's like there's a fundamental logic gap
here where you're like, well,okay, but what happens if there's no
more water coming? That is thatis where we're going to lead into here.
I will say that the upstream countries, as you might expect, contend
that they never entered into any agreementand that's not bound by its provisions.

(39:52):
It's like, we didn't sign this. We're upstream and we're not involved,
so we don't have to go buythose decision. Let's continue this conversation because
it's very fascinating and there's some verycurrent aspects to it. But let's do
that after another short break. Okay, we will be right back, and

(40:21):
we're back. It's the Geography isthe Nile River on the Geography is Everything
podcast, and we were just talkingabout some of the agreements that happened in
the nineteen hundreds, nineteen twenty nine, nineteen fifty six on the Nile River
that only involved the British initially andthen Egypt and Sudan, which is problematic
when you consider that this water allcomes from someplace else. It's very problematic.

(40:44):
Yes, So let's jump ahead towhat I'm going to call recently,
and by recently, I mean nineteenninety nine. To me, that's recent.
It's pretty recent. Yeah. Right. Again, I have students,
I have children who refer to thisera as the nineteen which is technically correct.
I don't like to think about itthat way. In nineteen ninety nine,
officials from the Nile River basin countriesso Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan,

(41:06):
Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, the DRC plus Eritrea as
an observer launched something called the NileBasin Initiative, And the idea behind the
initiative was to create a cooperative frameworkto be able to share the resources of
the Nile. So, after allthese thousands of years or let's just say

(41:27):
hundreds of years of the modern statesystem, they decided, maybe we should
talk about this, maybe we shouldcome up with some agreements. In twenty
ten, which is truly recently,officials from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda,
and Tanzania signed an agreement to seekequitable water allocation for Nile River basin countries
so Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda,Tanzania. Officials from Egypt and Sudan did

(41:51):
not sign the agreement because they basedtheir own water rights from that nineteen fifty
nine agreement, and so they're thinking, well, we've gotten agreement, and
the other countries are probably thinking whatgood is your agreement if we're doing something
else, And so this is whereconflict begins, right, not begins,
it continues. This is where I'mi. This is where I get confused

(42:13):
too, because it's like, yes, you have that agreement between the two
of you, but you don't controlthe water. Where where's the water coming
from? You need these other countries. I think that they need a The
logic from the Egyptian officials is probablythis was an agreement signed originally by the
English or by the British, excuseme, who were representing where these places

(42:38):
are today. And of course theindependent countries are saying that was not our
situation. You know, this wasa colonial thing. We didn't agree to
this, and so we're not bindedby that. But remember in that initial
agreement, one of those agreements Egyptpretended to have pretended to have veto control
over any project happening on the river. Yeah, all right. So enter

(43:02):
twenty eleven April, second work wasinitiated on something that's called the Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam sometimes called jurd but wecan call it the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
And immediately Egypt and Sudan expressed theiropposition to this project like this,
you can't because we have an agreement. That's as you can't. This is

(43:24):
a dam that I'm assuming is happeningwithin Ethiopia. It is on the Nile
River, but within Ethiopia. Okay, very close to Sudan, but entirely
within Ethiopia. Oh boy. Yeah, So the dam is almost complete right
as of January twenty twenty four,reports suggested that it was ninety four percent

(43:45):
complete. I don't know how theycome up with that percentage, and that
the final concrete will be poured inSeptember. But the dam is already operating.
It is also a massive hydroelectric project, and this is on the Blue
Nisle. Of course, the damwill be will approximately double the power generation
capacity of Ethiopia. So that's inthe process of coming online, which hopes
to provide additional power to its citizens, but also export power to other countries

(44:09):
in the region. And as ofthis year, even over fifty percent of
Ethiopians that's over sixty million people livewithout access to electricity. Wow, So
this is seen as a big modernizationmoment for Ethiopia. We should also mention
that Ethiopia has had some intense politicalconflict in the last few years, which

(44:32):
complicates the situation. I don't thinkwe can do that justice on the Nile
River episode, but something we shouldprobably return to because it has been characterized
as perhaps the most violent conflict ofthe last several decades. So that's something
we want to give attention to aswell. But the idea is that Ethiopia
is looking to move forward and thatthis dam is central to its vision for

(44:54):
the future. The dam is onepoint one miles long four hundred and seventy
six feet high, which puts itin the category of megadam, which we've
talked about before. It costs betweenfour and five billion dollars to construct and
will be or maybe we should say, is the largest dam in Africa.

(45:15):
So giant product, right, andwe talked about and I believe maybe it's
down in Tanzania or somewhere. There'sanother really large dam that currently holds obviously
holds the record for largest dam inAfrica. I think it's in the southern
part of the Continet. Yeah,yeah, and it's I think it's the
dam that is on a river thatis the main tributary to Lake Victoria,

(45:35):
if I'm not mistaked. I thinkthat's what's going on right. Power generation
for this dam began over two yearsago. I don't have a sense of
weather, how far along they areand generating capacity and things like that,
but it's already began. The projectstarted, as I mentioned, in twenty
eleven, and created massive geopolitical tensionwith the downstream countries of Sudan Egypt.

(45:55):
The Ethiopian Sudan border is about nineteenmiles from the dam, which is kind
of cheeky. It feels like ina way it's right here and now.
And remember Egypt is the country thatis having a problem with that. But
they created the high Aswon Dam thatflooded and displaced tens of thousands of people
in Sudan. So that's part ofthe history here we have to keep in

(46:16):
mind. I yeah, Ethiopia onehundred and thirty million. About Sudan has
about forty nine million people and SouthSudan has about eleven million people. Remember,
South Sudan gained its independence from Sudanin twenty eleven. That would probably
be a great episode to look atas well. It's I don't know if
it's the newest, but it's oneof the newest countries in the world.

(46:38):
You know, the entire like Hornof Africa is a very fascinating place geopolitically,
Like there's this, there's Sudan,there's South Sudan, there's you know
what's happening in Ethiopia, there's Somaliaand Somali land. If you're familiar with
that sort of division, that wouldbe very great. Maybe it's a great
it's at least a one part oron the Horn of Africa. Let's shot

(46:58):
that down. We've got to comeback to. Yeah, super fascinating and
super important. So officials in Egyptand Saddam are, of course concerned that
the dam will severely reduce water flowinginto their countries and threaten their water supply.
Egyptian and Sudanese officials asked Ethiopian leadersleaders to stop filling the dam and
the reservoir and you know, creatingthe reservoir until agreement about shared waters could

(47:21):
be reached. But that was apretty tough set of negotiations and no agreement
was reached, so the construction ofthe dam continued despite the fact that there
was no agreement. Talks began intwenty fifteen and a declaration of principles were
agreed upon, but that was nota permanent type agreement. The United States

(47:43):
hosted talks between these three countries intwenty nineteen, but Ethiopia saw the proposal
that was being floated to be favoringEgypt, which our close political allies with
the United States, and that right, Yeah, I was like, the
US and Egypt have a pretty closerelationship overall. It's not perfect, obviously,

(48:04):
but there's a lot of geopolitical reasonswhy the US wants to have close
relationships with Egypt that it probably doesn'tsee the same sort of value in Ethiopia.
And so it's like, yeah,you're I can see where Ethiopia is
maybe is coming from. Yeah,the Ethiopian officials are like, wait a
minute, who put them in chargeto come up with this agreement? In
twenty twenty one the African Union,which was formerly known as the African Organization

(48:29):
of States, but the African Unionsponsored talks that also didn't really lead to
any agreement. And then in twentytwenty two, the United Arab Emirates,
which apparently have close political relations withboth Egypt and Ethiopia, that also ended
without resolution, without any kind ofagreement. And so Egypt continues to contend

(48:52):
that the final filling of the damis a violation of international law because of
this agreement we've mentioned earlier. Sothis is the situation as it stands today,
and there is enormous concern that theflow of water will be greatly curtailed
and that the industries and agriculture anddrinking water supply for Egypt and Sudan will

(49:16):
be greatly compromised because of this.And I don't know what the chances of
a war really are. I don'twant to say they're likely, but that
has something that's been speculated in variousmedia, like this is the kind of
situation that if it goes badly forEgypt, they might decide to take up

(49:36):
arms and try to do something aboutthe situation. So that's that's a possibility
for the future. You know,I also don't know whether that's an actual
possibility. I can see the logicbehind it, right, this is you
know, again I mentioned at theearly earlier part of this episode that it
would be hard to find another countrythat's the size of Egypt in both population
and physical area size that is sowholly dependent on a se source of water

(50:01):
that if that tap gets shut offfor whatever reason or diminished, you know,
you can definitely see where Egypt's like, well, we have no other
choice. It's either this or wedon't. We no longer function, right,
and then and then what we doright from the perspective of Egypt,
Yeah, what what you know?That's they'd have to do something because they

(50:22):
are entirely dependent on this water forso many different things, for so many
different things. And you know,I don't know, I just I can
I can see where people are comingfrom, right. You know, there's
always this refrain, you know thatyou know there's water wars are coming.
You know this idea that there canbe now you know, conflicts over sources
of water, and it's like,you know, this could be potentially one

(50:45):
of the sort of you know,conflicts that originate out of that depending on
sort of what happens right now.It does not seem like there's a lot
of agreement unfortunately, on finding asolution that all countries can agree with.
So that's kind of worrisome, tobe honest, it is worrisome. And
if you think about it, thisisn't a particular region of the world which

(51:06):
has some intense conflict right now.It has over the last one hundred years
plus, and so there are alot of geopolitical alignments that would be drawn
into any kind of conflict here.So this is a conflict that would easily
spill over into other parts of theworld, which is why I think people
are bringing lots of attention to itright now. As we sort of wind

(51:29):
up here, I want to mentiona couple other things for us to have
on our radar with relation to theNile as we as we move forward.
We've obviously established that the Nile isimportant to millions of people for water,
for agriculture, for fishing, energyproduction, transportation, and that there's a
concern for the health of the waterwith the dam, but just beyond that

(51:49):
in general as well, and aswe've also established, there's no international treaty
to which all the countries of theNile basin have established. There's the series
of bilateral agreements which are causing someproblems and of their own. And then
the Nile is changing, right,so droughts believed to be amplified in some
ways by climate change. The shrinkingof Lake Victoria that we mentioned before and

(52:13):
other bodies of water that contribute tothe Nile River means that less water is
flowing through the Nile, so thereis less water to apportion to different countries.
As sea levels rise, more saltwater is entering into the Nile Delta
as well, compounding that issue wewere talking about before, which compromises agriculture
in the delta region. Decreased waterflowalso has a negative impact on hydroelectric generation.

(52:37):
There was an academic study I readabout that was published in December twenty
three, so months ago, thatfound that talapia, which is an important
fish there's an industry and people dependenton food, had that talapia had consumed
microplastics in the river. And thisstudy was done near Khartoum Soudan, downstream

(52:58):
from the confluence of the Balloon andWhite Nile. So microplastics can carry other
pollutants, including heavy metals. Thestudy doesn't suggest how widespread the issue is,
but it does call attention to thehealth of fish species in the river
and to the people and animals whoeat those fish. As I mentioned,
talapia fishing is a large commercial industryin several countries that depend on the nile,

(53:22):
and the presence of heavy metals isvery concerning. There was a different
study done in twenty twenty three conductedby doctor Isam Hegey of the University of
Southern California that found that the heavymetals catium, cadmium, nickel, chromium,
copper, lead, and zinc werefound in sediment at the bottom of

(53:45):
the river and unfavorable quantities, andthe study identified untreated agricultural drainage, municipal
wastewater, and industrial wastewater as theprimary source of these contaminants. Unlike organic
pollutants, which can degrade over time, these heavy metals do not. So
that's a problem that will endure,and even if dams are removed or something,

(54:08):
it's not easily going to be flushedout of the system, and of
course that ends up in the oceanin any case. So the megadams upstream
from the Delta seem to be amplifyingthis heavy metal concentrations, which is further
critique of the new dam in Ethiopia. From the perspective of Sudan and Egypt
and those you know, those pollutantsaren't aren't flushed through the system into the

(54:30):
ocean or the Mediterranean actually more directly, so you know, the Nile River
is is life and it's created beautifullandscapes there. I saw another study that
suggested that they are looking at someghost streams, in other words, former
tributaries to the Nile that float reallyclosely to the Pyramids, which would help

(54:53):
explain maybe how they could pull thatoff because there were tributaries of the Nile
that were running right past it.So there's there's a lot of research being
done and still a lot being foundout. There's probably a lot of knowledge
in Egypt and these countries that perhapsscientists on the western side of the world
don't really know so much about.But there are some issues that are cropping

(55:14):
up and now you know, andnow you know to track these situations listener
and to be attentive to what's happeningin this extremely important body of water on
the planet. Fascinating episode, verycool. I really loved learning all about
the Nile River. We have anotherepisode about Mount Everest. I think we
didn't want about the Amazon Rainforest.These are also very fascinating places. But

(55:37):
geopolitically, I think the Nile Riverwas so much more well, for lack
of a better word, chaotic,right, There's just so much going on.
There's so much that they're still figuringout and they don't know about.
It's just there's just a lot thatgoes into this sort of single river that
I don't think most people know aboutor understand fully unless you're from these regions,

(56:00):
which case it's probably daily news foryou in fact, right right,
for some people they're like, yeah, where have you been? You know?
This is how I know this.And one thing we didn't touch on
is that there's an enormous amount ofcultural information that has been spread throughout the
world, with the Nile sort ofthe vehicle for that. So for places

(56:21):
outside of the Mediterranean, the NileRiver is really conflated with Africa more generally.
I mean, you can think aboutConrad's Heart of Darkness and these sort
of colonial representations that you get ofAfrica, and so you know, culturally
in and of itself. Locally it'svery important, but it also has been

(56:43):
a cultural vehicle I think for people, certainly in the United States, their
geographical imagination of this place. Yeah. Absolutely. And so with that,
Hunter, who are you? Wherecan people find you? I'm Hunter SHOWBM,
Professor of geography at Portland State Universe. I'm co author with David Bannis
of Portland as a Cultural Atlas andUpper Left Cities a Cultural atlass of San

(57:06):
Francisco, Portland and Seattle. Andwith you, Jeff, I'm co host
of this podcast, Geography Is Everything. Yeah, thanks Hunter. My name
is Cheff Gibson. You can findme elsewhere on the web doing geography things,
YouTube, that kind of stuff.Just Geography by Jeff is sort of
the catch all name for all ofthat. If you liked what you heard
today, please rate and review uson Apple, podcast, Spotify, whatever

(57:27):
app you use, or like andsubscribe if you're watching on YouTube. We
really appreciate that. We really reallyhelps us, if for nothing else,
just gives us a little bit ofa morale boost. If you want this
direct delivered directly into your email,go over to substack. It's Geography Is
Everything Dot substack dot com. Youcan sign up there. It's totally free,
just putting your email and it comesto you every Tuesday. Let's see
next week, hunter, what arewe doing next week? What are we

(57:49):
doing here? This is I think? So is this pizza? Are we
doing pizza? Yeah, we're doingpizza. Pizza's coming up. So now
for something completely perhaps in some waysthe Mediterranean pizza's often conflated with Italy,
but it has become something completely differentin the United States and other parts of
the world. So let's talk aboutit. Let's talk about pizza. It

(58:10):
should be I mean, I thinkit's one's So. We did an episode
a little while back on sushi,so the geographic sort of diffusion of sushi
as a meal. I thought itwas such a fun episode. A lot
of people really love that, justlike understanding sort of how this food came
to be. I think pizza isa similar food in that it's in one
way is one way tied so closelyto a specific place Italy, such as

(58:34):
sushi is with Japan, but theother way. It's also one of those
types of foods that's just completely spreadaround the world and you can probably go
to almost any country and get somevariation of what people are now calling pizza,
and of course people adapt it totheir own sort of you know,
cuisines at home and sort of becomesthis whole whole different thing. But it's
still broadly pizza, and I thinkit's gonna be really interesting to learn about.

(58:55):
I'm really excited. Yes, certainly, in the United States, we
conflate pizza with particular cities sometimes,right, because there's New York pizza,
there's Chicago pizza. We got theDetroit pizza, New Haven pizza, California
pizza, and so it's very placebased. And I imagine that other countries
probably have some variation of this.So we will look at the very delicious

(59:16):
and geographical food pizza when we reconvenenext week. All right, well,
come back and listen about to thegeography of pizza or geography is pizza,
I should say, And I guessuntil then, we will see you next time.