Like many young Irish people in the late 1800s, my great-grandmother, Mariah Johanna Burns, came to America looking for a better life. She arrived here in her early teens as an indentured servant. She spent her teens working as a maid for a wealthy family in St. Louis to repay the cost of her passage. That's what makes America great. The best, most-ambitious, most hard-working people from around the world come here for the opportunity to be the best they can be.
During World War 2, landing ships and submarine chasers were built in Southern Indiana. From there they traveled down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River to get to the ocean.
Duluth Minnesota, about as far from an ocean as you can get is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via a waterway. Duluth is on the western terminus of Lake Superior, and by traversing the Great Lakes and a few locks can access the St. Lawrence Seaway and follow the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. Duluth is important in the steel industry as iron ore has been mined in northern Minnesota (and Michigan) for over 100 years. Also, massive amounts of grain follow this route as well.
Even though it is not big enough for typical lake freighters (boats) the Chicago river connects Lake Michigan to the illinois River which is part of the Mississippi River system.
Not sure if any other Americans have mentioned this, but the length of our cargo/ freight trains has recently become a hot-button topic over here. Within the past few months a handful of tragedies have occurred that could’ve been prevented but the emergency services were stuck waiting for some insanely long train to pass.
There is an article in the Washington Post about some 400 (I think it was, or possibly 4000) trains crossings are going to be modified, or simply eliminated. This was one of the reasons why.
I believe freight trains are also getting longer now that railroads are using DPUs (Distributed Power Unit) - in other words a locomotive that is in the middle or end of the train that is controlled from the head of the train by radio signal.
The reason that US trains are so incredibly long is that, with very few and specialized exceptions, the US rail system is optimized for carrying freight, rather than passenger transport. That is why, with the noted exceptions, European-style high-speed rail is really not a thing in the US. If you are moving freight, cheap tends to outweigh fast (freight tends not to care that its journey took 35 hours as opposed to 5, people not so much) and those immensely long trains are the best way to move the maximum tonnage by rail for the minimum cost. Hence, the expense of a rail system capable of handling trains going hundreds of KPH doesn't make sense given what most of the US rail system is used for.
The most expensive grocery item is beef. That's why I usually wait for it to go on sale and buy some to eat and some to freeze for later. Since 2020 the prices have almost doubled.
Not mentioned in water: the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence river. The lakes are shared with Canada, and Canada gets the entirety of the river, but a lot of shipping takes place by way of that system. The river system is a blessing, but I'm skeptical about it being the primary cause of the growth of the country. I give the credit to other things that would take too long to list here, and would probably turn the comments into a battleground. ED and Chewie have been strangely quiet in recent videos. Chewie makes frequent appearances in Patreon and Instagram postings, but where has the stern one hiding lately? I think her cameos over the past few months could amount to less than fifteen seconds in the aggregate. Let her know we miss her snarky comments.
If I remember right, immediately following the Revolution it cost as much to ship something 200 miles overland as it did to ship it 2,000 miles by ship. Especially for the first 150 years of our country, water transport was massively more efficient, even with losses from storms and piracy, than land transport.
The Great Lakes, once the Erie Canal was finished, opened up the Midwest in a huge way. Folks could ship directly East versus going overland or down the Mississippi. I was surprised the lakes weren't mentioned in the video.
Read about the history of the Erie Canal. It changed the economics of the entire country, and should remove any skepticism about the vital importance of America's water ways.
My most expensive grocery item is probably olive oil. Good-quality oil now costs over $20 a bottle. But it takes a while to go through a bottle of oil, so it's not what I spend the most money on. The most expensive thing I buy regularly in terms of cost per meal is probably lox (cured salmon), which comes in small packages but may be as much as $32 a pound. The video has a lot of interesting points about how navigation affects the U.S. economy. I'm not sure I'd attribute so much of the success of the U.S. to this, though. One advantage we have is isolation from our enemies. We've never had our infrastructure destroyed in war, which happened twice in Europe in the 20th century.
Totally true on the olive oil and salmon. It's nuts. I had a dear friend named Barbara (R.I.P.) living in New Zealand, but who was originally from the USA, who said New Zealand actually has salmon in abundance, but the fishing industry there sells it all overseas and all the New Zealanders get are overpriced tiny cuts or filets of it. I wonder if that's why it's so pricey here too.
check out the great loop, combined with canals, the entire eastern half of the USA is now actually a giant island, small boats (under 50 feet) of shallow draft (5 feet) can travel all the way around the eastern USA, the main sections being the Mississippi river and the inter-coastal waterway
Your videos are always fun to watch and react to. Usually my most expensive grocery store item is usually the meat products like hamburger, bratwursts, or steaks. Also charcoal can get to be expensive too. And finally I learned a lot from this video too.
@@paullangland7559 I lived there for 10 or 11 years, in Madison! I'm on the East Coast now. In the first apartment that I had here, one of the houses across the street was occupied by a Navy commander and his wife. They decided to have a barbecue to ask forgiveness of all of the neighbors for having taken up a large part of the parking on that street with a semi truck for a day. The wife had an obvious Texas accent. But he did not. As soon as I saw him come out of the house with a tray of Brats, I had to ask "where are you from?!" It was the beginning of a friendship 🤣, they have since gone on to Italy, Japan, and back to the States a couple of times. They're still in touch and make sure to get in touch with me every time they're in town.
Thanks Diane for bringing us this video, definitely learned something today (which is always good)! Inflation and an outbreak of avian flu has really impacted the price of meat so I am always looking for sales, or going vegetarian from time to time.
Diane you might find it interesting to know that an earthquake once caused both the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to flow backwards for a day. This was in 1812.
Hmm, that must have been an environmental issue at the mouth of the Mississippi, with salt water backing into areas that are normally fresh. Perhaps a day's worth of backflow further upstream would have simply dropped river levels north of the Gulf without causing Gulf waters to reverse direction. I wonder if that coincided with the Battle of New Orleans. It is known that the British attack at Washington D.C. was halted by a rare hurricane and tornado, scattering the British troops and saving the Capitol building. Wouldn't it be equally strange if an earthquake and river disruption somehow effected the battle in Louisiana.
One of the best collection of the barrier islands he referenced is the Outer Banks here in North Carolina. Such a great place to visit...and you can see wild horses running around, too.
@@DianeJennings that's the Kill Devil Hills I was talking about, although the horses are on Shack (Shackleford) farther south. On the water taxi out there, we had a school of dolphins swimming alongside/playing with the boat!
@@LindaC616 I did some work at the container shipping port at Charleston. Whenever the container ship started out of port, dolphins would appear to dance behind the ship. If they were dancing, it was because they were dancing for joy for the quantity of chopped fish from the great ship's props.
@@lawrencedavis9246 🙂 this was a small fishing boat, and they were alongside, so I think they were just having fun with the wake. Whatever it was, it was a sight to see! I told the boat pilot, "I'll bet this never gets old." He said that would be a great bet.
Mr. Zeihan has done similar analyses of a number of other large countries or of multi country regions. Versions of these analytic pieces are worked into his longer-form tailored specialized presentations for government entities, Geo-Strategic conferences, and trade associations. Mr.Zeihan occasionally makes very specific categorical predictions based on demographic trends.
Very interesting. I’ll admit I thought based the video’s title that this was going to a history lesson of the US from the beginning to the present day and not a summary of the US’s transportation network
One summer in high school I was on a bus trip in Texas with my church. We went through an industrial park to get to out destination. A train stopped on the tracks blocking the only road. After 10 minutes of sitting there, we went to turn around and a train had stopped on the tracks half a mile behind us locking us into the industrial park. It was the weekend so they figured no one was there. Luckily our bus driver had a cell phone because he had to call the railroad to get them to send a crew to move one of the trains. We were stuck there for 2 hours.
@@mattheweudy2396 ~2003, driver had a phone but most of us on the bus did not. It was 2 years before I got my first cell. The driver got out, walked to the train engine to find the crew but they had already gone home. There was an emergency phone number posted on the control box of the crossing gates so he called that and got them to dispatch a crew to move the train.
I was on a trip to Oakland to do some work at the container shipping port. There is a rail yard by the port. It was not uncommon for the port area to be locked in by rail car switching operations that block the access roads. The ordeal can last for a painfully long time.
I live in Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the mighty Ohio River which flows into the Mississippi River. I've seen the confluence of these rivers many times, but it never ceases to amaze me. The size and power of the Ohio is truly something to behold.
It is common, at least in the western US, for trains to be 100 cars long (or perhaps a few more than that). I believe that would be about 5,000 - 6000 feet (1.5 - 1.8 kilometers) long. Sometimes the entire train is dedicated to one product (e.g. wheat, crude oil, coal, etc.)
If the entire train is dedicated to one product it is known as a unit train. By far the biggest advantage of a unit train is the cars do not need to be classified (switched in a railroad yard) taking up tons of time. Also, I believe all the the North American Class I railroads have a locomotive sharing agreement which makes it possible for a unit train to go from its origination to its destination without having to uncouple/couple any locomotives or rail cars - thereby saving the time it takes to do this.
Grew up in a City on the Ohio River and the amount of ships that took cargo like coal and other items was huge. Red Meat is the most expensive right now
BRICS is an acronym Finance folks came up with a few years back to refer to the countries with the fastest developing economies. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are all thought to have huge potential to anyone willing to risk investing in them.
You asked if he's from Vancouver. No, he's from Iowa. He makes his money teaching geopolitics and predicting trends for business and governmental organizations worldwide. He's also written four books. He's prone to a little bit of exaggeration from time to time but the general direction of his predictions tends to come true over time, so it's always worth worth considering his opinion.
So glad that you're checking out Peter Zeihan. He has a lot of very interesting analyses on global events. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up in a Presidential cabinet some time in the future. Look for more of his stuff.
Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple kind of between roadkill and spam. It looks like a brown soggy piece of bread. It tastes really good with syrup. It's basically fancy haggis.
Most expensive "grocery item" is probably Tullamore Dew. (Or maybe i just buy too much of it.) 😎 Did E.D. get distracted by Chewie at the end? Did he need a "walk" that bad? HAHAHA Everyone have a wonderful day.
The Columbia River and Snake River systems are very important to commerce in Washington state, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana (in the western US). These large rivers, with numerous dams along the way, allow agricultural, wood, and mining products grown or produced up to 400 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean to be economically shipped to the coast for transport and trade overseas. In the opposite direction on these rivers, much needed supplies can be shipped inland economically. The river system is enhanced by railroads and over-the-road trucking to reach nearly every location in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Same on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in California's Central Valley. The rivers are fairly shallow, so you can't navigate very far upstream; but Sacramento and Stockton have large port facilities to move produce out of the Valley - they're not entirely dependent on the big container port downstream in Oakland.
I never even thought about US waterways giving it such a big advantage in transporting goods. Canada was born because our East West, North South, water ways were extensive but few allowed distance travel of large vessels. I mean canoe's and York boats aren't in the league of Mississippi water vessels and barges. Add the fact that most Canadian waterways are frozen ice half the year means rail and roads are much more important, and costly to build and maintain. So once again Miss Diane teaches me stuff I never thought about. The price of all foods have skyrocketed, but meat has risen the most. So I got to pay attention not to burn my food so bad that I can eat it, cause I'm watching a Diane Jennings TH-cam video or Twitch stream. Dam good content affects my diet.
@@edschultheis9537 According to the experts ( so I'm just going with that statement) Canada has more lake than the rest of the world combined. Many are not easily accessible road. Yep, we got a lot of them.
Hi Diane, this is the earliest I've been able to see your latest post. I enjoy all your content. Thanks for the positive and weird environment. I tend to buy in bulk, so there are a number of expensive grocery items. The most expensive tend to be meats though. Luckily they last a while. Since I have your attention, I would like to suggest a few bands and comedians for your journey. Comedians: Brian Regan John Pinette Kathleen Madigan Bands: Three Dog Night Steppenwolf Deep Purple Janis Joplin Thanks again for your work.
yes, i know about the length of the freight trains. i used to live right next to one of those blasted railroads and it would wake me up at night and keep me awake for too long.
I had friends who took a canoe trip from Olean NY to New Orleans. They started near the beginning of the Allegany River (that's how it's spelled in NY) to the Ohio in Pittsburgh, then on to the Mississippi to Louisiana. They had a great time!
I built entire power plants that were delivered in large parts by river in the US. They built it in shops and we put it together in one fifth the time of building it one piece at a time.
Hi Diane! I think the most expensive grocery store items for me are meat and beer. A good video. Another plus is being located between Europe and Asia. Hope you and Chewie are doing well, give him a hug for me and I love you, goodbye for now!
The bays on Lake Erie in Monroe County, Michigan were instrumental for rum runners during Prohibition. And there were major routes linking the area to both Detroit and Chicago. A help to the local economy, as Monroe County was pretty much just a farming area at the time. (It was a major source of beef and butchery during the 1800s, but had died down by the 1920s. Prohibition also was why the governor had to pull the Monroe County sheriff for corruption in 1923... ) It's how an area that was known as Frenchtown became a Little Italy still today. 😂
As far a geography go's the United States is absolutely the best place on earth, from the deserts of Death Valley to the junglue like Everglades, from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains, from frezzing in Wisconsin to sweating in Alabama in a couple days drive, the great lakes, Grand Canyon and thousand+ miles long rivers and coastlines, from tropical islands to permafrost frozen tundra, from sea to sea to shining sea, we have basically EVERYTHING here🇺🇲💯
Happy Monday! Thanks for sharing this. The most expensive grocery item would have to be any cut of meat or snack chips which are as expensive as steak. ‘Murica! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 ❤️🫵🏻☘️🇮🇪🇺🇸
The Real Life Lore channel did a video a few months back that this sounded like it simply summarized. He went fruther into the coastal ports and the Great Lakes being connected via canals and such, compared the US's agricultural belt to the river network, showing how they overlap to great extent, and so on. It's a much longer video, at about 30 minutes, though, so much harder to do a reaction to, sadly.
That's because both videos are taken largely from Peter Zeihan's book, The Accidental Superpower. THIS video itself is just an excerpt from the audiobook narrated by Peter himself that someone else put together. RealLifeLore's video actually lists Peter's book as a source material for the video.
Hi Diane! My most expensive grocery item recently was the nice bottle of red wine I bought that had been imported from Italy. 🙂 I've said this before, but you are ALWAYS welcome here in the USA (and so is Chewie)! You can even bring ED. 🙂
Peter is from Iowa. His expertise is global production and demographics. While he makes some errors and is more long view than short, his book "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" is worth a read (or listen) as it lays out how civilizations were created and how the moderm world came about, and how it is getting ready to come apart. In it he breaks down the world's resources, supply chains, inderdependancies and vulnerabilities which gives you an idea of what the world looks like today. He does it so as not to be boring. Young people, you have much more too worry about than global warming.
I once "measured" a freight train by driving past it when it was stopped on a track. It was just over 3/4 of a mile long. My most expensive grocery item: The Walmart brand of Raw Honey. $10.97/32 ounce bottle. Next up after that is milk at $5.38/half gallon, followed by Kerry Gold @ $4.16 for 2 sticks. Don't know if you count dog food as part of groceries, but that would def be my most expensive item. 😋
Some of those great big trains that you mention will soon be moving without a person on board. The companies are pushing to have unmanned trains. There are already some trains doing that in Canada and there are caravans of over-the-road-trucks with only a single driver in the lead and the rest of the trucks playing follow the leader.
Pittsburgh became the engine to build American is steel. This is because The Allegheny River and Monongahela River Meet at Pittsburgh and converge to form the Ohio River that empties into the Mississippi River that runs to New Orleans into the Golf Of Mexico. So you can go near Lake Eire and into New York wildly snake threw Pennsylvania, Up from West Virginia into Ohio down the Mississippi River that cut the nation in half. Pittsburgh River system is called a confluence. When they made the Eire Canal it opened the east to the Upper Middle West cut threw the county and out to the Golf. Yes confusing and impossible to explain without a map. But this is how the Nation was built.
I just heard an interesting report today, saying that trains in the US are becoming a problem. In order to offset inflation, and the declined "supply chain", railroads are using longer and longer trains. This is making for longer stops to other traffic at railroad-street intersections, and actually becoming a negative for productivity and safety, as more people try to "beat the train", or get to work late more often due to getting caught by trains.
Hi Diane! My most pricy grocery item is Beyond Sausage. But it's worth it. And did you know?! Monsters are bad at math unless you Count Dracula 🧛♂️ Happy Monday!
7:57 BRICS nations, is a relatively new term. The origin I believe comes from the Georgia Guidestones (sometimes referred to as America’s Stonehenge). The Guidestones where erected in 1980 and were destroyed last July (2022).
My most expensive grocery item by weight is Golden Saffron at $186 an ounce. Of course I don't buy it by the ounce, so my most expensive single item is usually Leg of Lamb or Tenderloin Steak, about $25-30.
Diane is sneakily trying to educate us. It’s working, good job Diane!
🤫
Ouch! My brain is growing, it sings😭
Sad I learn more about my own country from here than I ever did in school?
You were supposed to know this already. I learned nothing new from this video because I graduated high school long ago.
@@jettslappy7028 my HS sucked ass
Peter Zeihan Rocks! Love his videos!
Like many young Irish people in the late 1800s, my great-grandmother, Mariah Johanna Burns, came to America looking for a better life. She arrived here in her early teens as an indentured servant. She spent her teens working as a maid for a wealthy family in St. Louis to repay the cost of her passage. That's what makes America great. The best, most-ambitious, most hard-working people from around the world come here for the opportunity to be the best they can be.
During World War 2, landing ships and submarine chasers were built in Southern Indiana. From there they traveled down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River to get to the ocean.
Submarines were made in Milwaukee and shipped by barge down the Mississippi. They were laid on their sides so they would fit under bridges.
My Uncle was the captain of a towboat on the intercoastal waterway. He traveled between Galveston, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Been a fan of Peter Ziehan for a long time. Quite excellent at explaining the big picture
Duluth Minnesota, about as far from an ocean as you can get is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via a waterway. Duluth is on the western terminus of Lake Superior, and by traversing the Great Lakes and a few locks can access the St. Lawrence Seaway and follow the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. Duluth is important in the steel industry as iron ore has been mined in northern Minnesota (and Michigan) for over 100 years. Also, massive amounts of grain follow this route as well.
Even though it is not big enough for typical lake freighters (boats) the Chicago river connects Lake Michigan to the illinois River which is part of the Mississippi River system.
Not sure if any other Americans have mentioned this, but the length of our cargo/ freight trains has recently become a hot-button topic over here. Within the past few months a handful of tragedies have occurred that could’ve been prevented but the emergency services were stuck waiting for some insanely long train to pass.
I just got to that point in the video and stopped it to see if anyone chimed in with the issues about the freight train length
There is an article in the Washington Post about some 400 (I think it was, or possibly 4000) trains crossings are going to be modified, or simply eliminated. This was one of the reasons why.
Then there’s the trains actually causing the emergency lately
I guess you could say that the fact that freight trains often transport crude oil and other flammable liquids is one other concern too.
I believe freight trains are also getting longer now that railroads are using DPUs (Distributed Power Unit) - in other words a locomotive that is in the middle or end of the train that is controlled from the head of the train by radio signal.
His logic is solid. I imagine that if Oz had a similar system of rivers the population would spread to the centre more
DEFINITELY
If OZ had anything comparable to the Mississippi River system, Oz would be a super power.
One also has to remember the US is about the same size as the EU, and has had no internal customs barriers a lot longer.
Yes one does 😊
one has to remember that WE figured out this successful formula centuries before the Europeans, even though they had us as an example.
Actually the US is over twice the size of the EU. The US is about the same size as Europe.
Or war
@@badstar9670 the US has been in more wars than the EU at large...
The reason that US trains are so incredibly long is that, with very few and specialized exceptions, the US rail system is optimized for carrying freight, rather than passenger transport. That is why, with the noted exceptions, European-style high-speed rail is really not a thing in the US. If you are moving freight, cheap tends to outweigh fast (freight tends not to care that its journey took 35 hours as opposed to 5, people not so much) and those immensely long trains are the best way to move the maximum tonnage by rail for the minimum cost. Hence, the expense of a rail system capable of handling trains going hundreds of KPH doesn't make sense given what most of the US rail system is used for.
The most expensive grocery item is beef. That's why I usually wait for it to go on sale and buy some to eat and some to freeze for later. Since 2020 the prices have almost doubled.
Not mentioned in water: the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence river. The lakes are shared with Canada, and Canada gets the entirety of the river, but a lot of shipping takes place by way of that system.
The river system is a blessing, but I'm skeptical about it being the primary cause of the growth of the country. I give the credit to other things that would take too long to list here, and would probably turn the comments into a battleground.
ED and Chewie have been strangely quiet in recent videos. Chewie makes frequent appearances in Patreon and Instagram postings, but where has the stern one hiding lately? I think her cameos over the past few months could amount to less than fifteen seconds in the aggregate. Let her know we miss her snarky comments.
She’s always lurking
If I remember right, immediately following the Revolution it cost as much to ship something 200 miles overland as it did to ship it 2,000 miles by ship. Especially for the first 150 years of our country, water transport was massively more efficient, even with losses from storms and piracy, than land transport.
The Great Lakes, once the Erie Canal was finished, opened up the Midwest in a huge way. Folks could ship directly East versus going overland or down the Mississippi. I was surprised the lakes weren't mentioned in the video.
Read about the history of the Erie Canal. It changed the economics of the entire country, and should remove any skepticism about the vital importance of America's water ways.
I was thinking the same as you
My most expensive grocery item is probably olive oil. Good-quality oil now costs over $20 a bottle. But it takes a while to go through a bottle of oil, so it's not what I spend the most money on. The most expensive thing I buy regularly in terms of cost per meal is probably lox (cured salmon), which comes in small packages but may be as much as $32 a pound.
The video has a lot of interesting points about how navigation affects the U.S. economy. I'm not sure I'd attribute so much of the success of the U.S. to this, though. One advantage we have is isolation from our enemies. We've never had our infrastructure destroyed in war, which happened twice in Europe in the 20th century.
I like that too
Totally true on the olive oil and salmon. It's nuts. I had a dear friend named Barbara (R.I.P.) living in New Zealand, but who was originally from the USA, who said New Zealand actually has salmon in abundance, but the fishing industry there sells it all overseas and all the New Zealanders get are overpriced tiny cuts or filets of it. I wonder if that's why it's so pricey here too.
Peter Zeihan is from Iowa USA
check out the great loop, combined with canals, the entire eastern half of the USA is now actually a giant island, small boats (under 50 feet) of shallow draft (5 feet) can travel all the way around the eastern USA, the main sections being the Mississippi river and the inter-coastal waterway
Thanks for sharing this. Even as an American, I learned something new today about the States. That's awesome.
Peter Zeihan is from Iowa. He lived in Texas for a long time, but now lives in Colorado, in the mountains near Denver.
Add the St Lawrence Seaway, it may go out to the Atlantic through Canada but there is a canal back exit through Chicago to the Mississippi system.
Hope you and Chew had a good weekend, Diane. The weekend was rough as you can imagine. But every day is makes it hurt a little less.
Sending healing to you 🫶🏻
Hang in there! 💔
I crossed the Chesapeake Bay twice this past weekend. 7 large cargo ships were anchored south of the bay bridge waiting to move up to Baltimore.
Your videos are always fun to watch and react to. Usually my most expensive grocery store item is usually the meat products like hamburger, bratwursts, or steaks. Also charcoal can get to be expensive too. And finally I learned a lot from this video too.
🎉🎉🎉
Brats....😋
@@LindaC616 I live in Wisconsin, we love our brats over here.
@@paullangland7559 I lived there for 10 or 11 years, in Madison! I'm on the East Coast now. In the first apartment that I had here, one of the houses across the street was occupied by a Navy commander and his wife. They decided to have a barbecue to ask forgiveness of all of the neighbors for having taken up a large part of the parking on that street with a semi truck for a day. The wife had an obvious Texas accent. But he did not. As soon as I saw him come out of the house with a tray of Brats, I had to ask "where are you from?!" It was the beginning of a friendship 🤣, they have since gone on to Italy, Japan, and back to the States a couple of times. They're still in touch and make sure to get in touch with me every time they're in town.
Thanks Diane for bringing us this video, definitely learned something today (which is always good)! Inflation and an outbreak of avian flu has really impacted the price of meat so I am always looking for sales, or going vegetarian from time to time.
Eggs too!
@@DianeJennings for sure!
Thanks for reacting to it Diane!
🥰
I live and work across the street from the Mississippi river, don't know where I'd be without it!
Diane you might find it interesting to know that an earthquake once caused both the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to flow backwards for a day. This was in 1812.
The Mississippi is very reliable, but does it's own thing.
Hmm, that must have been an environmental issue at the mouth of the Mississippi, with salt water backing into areas that are normally fresh. Perhaps a day's worth of backflow further upstream would have simply dropped river levels north of the Gulf without causing Gulf waters to reverse direction.
I wonder if that coincided with the Battle of New Orleans. It is known that the British attack at Washington D.C. was halted by a rare hurricane and tornado, scattering the British troops and saving the Capitol building. Wouldn't it be equally strange if an earthquake and river disruption somehow effected the battle in Louisiana.
the new Madrid fault line had an earthquake that was somewhere between 7.4 to 8.6. ouriIt destroyed the city of New Madrid in Missouri,
This video shows why I have all of Peter Zeihan's books.
One of the best collection of the barrier islands he referenced is the Outer Banks here in North Carolina. Such a great place to visit...and you can see wild horses running around, too.
That’s so lovely 🐎
@@DianeJennings that's the Kill Devil Hills I was talking about, although the horses are on Shack (Shackleford) farther south. On the water taxi out there, we had a school of dolphins swimming alongside/playing with the boat!
My bro took his family to an island with wild ponies recently too
@@LindaC616 I did some work at the container shipping port at Charleston. Whenever the container ship started out of port, dolphins would appear to dance behind the ship. If they were dancing, it was because they were dancing for joy for the quantity of chopped fish from the great ship's props.
@@lawrencedavis9246 🙂 this was a small fishing boat, and they were alongside, so I think they were just having fun with the wake. Whatever it was, it was a sight to see! I told the boat pilot, "I'll bet this never gets old." He said that would be a great bet.
Back when I was a kid I watch a train 5 miles long (8 kilometers) go by.
Mr. Zeihan has done similar analyses of a number of other large countries or of multi country regions. Versions of these analytic pieces are worked into his longer-form tailored specialized presentations for government entities, Geo-Strategic conferences, and trade associations. Mr.Zeihan occasionally makes very specific categorical predictions based on demographic trends.
Very interesting. I’ll admit I thought based the video’s title that this was going to a history lesson of the US from the beginning to the present day and not a summary of the US’s transportation network
Me too… I wanna look at more history
One summer in high school I was on a bus trip in Texas with my church. We went through an industrial park to get to out destination. A train stopped on the tracks blocking the only road. After 10 minutes of sitting there, we went to turn around and a train had stopped on the tracks half a mile behind us locking us into the industrial park. It was the weekend so they figured no one was there. Luckily our bus driver had a cell phone because he had to call the railroad to get them to send a crew to move one of the trains. We were stuck there for 2 hours.
Omg that’s crazy!
Insane how believable that story is, Did the driver have trouble finding a phone? I’m assuming this was pre-cellphone
@@mattheweudy2396 ~2003, driver had a phone but most of us on the bus did not. It was 2 years before I got my first cell. The driver got out, walked to the train engine to find the crew but they had already gone home. There was an emergency phone number posted on the control box of the crossing gates so he called that and got them to dispatch a crew to move the train.
I was on a trip to Oakland to do some work at the container shipping port. There is a rail yard by the port. It was not uncommon for the port area to be locked in by rail car switching operations that block the access roads. The ordeal can last for a painfully long time.
I live in Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the mighty Ohio River which flows into the Mississippi River.
I've seen the confluence of these rivers many times, but it never ceases to amaze me. The size and power of the Ohio is truly something to behold.
It is common, at least in the western US, for trains to be 100 cars long (or perhaps a few more than that). I believe that would be about 5,000 - 6000 feet (1.5 - 1.8 kilometers) long. Sometimes the entire train is dedicated to one product (e.g. wheat, crude oil, coal, etc.)
If the entire train is dedicated to one product it is known as a unit train. By far the biggest advantage of a unit train is the cars do not need to be classified (switched in a railroad yard) taking up tons of time. Also, I believe all the the North American Class I railroads have a locomotive sharing agreement which makes it possible for a unit train to go from its origination to its destination without having to uncouple/couple any locomotives or rail cars - thereby saving the time it takes to do this.
Wouldn’t have sought this video out in my own, thanks Diane😁
Grew up in a City on the Ohio River and the amount of ships that took cargo like coal and other items was huge. Red Meat is the most expensive right now
I lived about 1/2 mile from the Mississippi, when I was in the Navy, in Tennessee.
I really enjoy this video. Happy Monday! I really hope you are having a great Monday.Have a great week.
Thank you! You too
We come to Diane's channel for fun and entertainment and she adds a great education lesson too. Diane is Awesome!
BRICS is an acronym Finance folks came up with a few years back to refer to the countries with the fastest developing economies. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are all thought to have huge potential to anyone willing to risk investing in them.
You asked if he's from Vancouver. No, he's from Iowa. He makes his money teaching geopolitics and predicting trends for business and governmental organizations worldwide. He's also written four books.
He's prone to a little bit of exaggeration from time to time but the general direction of his predictions tends to come true over time, so it's always worth worth considering his opinion.
Vancouver/ The province of BC is awesome.
I'm also bias as I live only approximately 40 minutes from the city of Vancouver.
Right now, the most expensive thing I have in my refrigerator are salmon filets. I usually buy a big one ($29.00) and cut it into small ones.
So glad that you're checking out Peter Zeihan. He has a lot of very interesting analyses on global events. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up in a Presidential cabinet some time in the future. Look for more of his stuff.
Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple kind of between roadkill and spam. It looks like a brown soggy piece of bread. It tastes really good with syrup. It's basically fancy haggis.
Ooh lala
Interesting topic! I've never really thought about this particular topic.
The "Peter" edit was perfection! You need to give the editor a bonus! 💰
A day off?
Peter Zeihan is from Iowa. He likes places with beautiful wilderness which Vancouver does have.
He uses a little bit too much vocal fry when he's reading for my taste
I live in Bend, Oregon and learned something new with the video - Thanks Diane!
Wow, I learned something new today about my country, lol, but really I had no idea. Thanks Diane
He's from Marshalltown, Iowa, but lives in Colorado.
Most expensive "grocery item" is probably Tullamore Dew. (Or maybe i just buy too much of it.) 😎
Did E.D. get distracted by Chewie at the end? Did he need a "walk" that bad? HAHAHA
Everyone have a wonderful day.
Greenspot or Redbreast for me.
My most expensive grocery item is Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame when I'm stocking up for the weekend. That and Twinkies.
That sounds fancy
The Columbia River and Snake River systems are very important to commerce in Washington state, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana (in the western US). These large rivers, with numerous dams along the way, allow agricultural, wood, and mining products grown or produced up to 400 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean to be economically shipped to the coast for transport and trade overseas. In the opposite direction on these rivers, much needed supplies can be shipped inland economically. The river system is enhanced by railroads and over-the-road trucking to reach nearly every location in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Same on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in California's Central Valley. The rivers are fairly shallow, so you can't navigate very far upstream; but Sacramento and Stockton have large port facilities to move produce out of the Valley - they're not entirely dependent on the big container port downstream in Oakland.
"Those mile long trains have four engines pulling and two pushing!"
They call that distributed power. And sometimes, they put the DPUs in the middle.
I found this extremely interesting. Thank you for sharing it.
My most expensive grocery item are six packs of bottled soft drinks. I don’t cook so I don’t buy food. All I buy is soda 😂
Salmon is the most expensive food item I bought this week
6:23 another good point Peter! Everything here in Oz DOES cost more & transport is a big part of it
I never even thought about US waterways giving it such a big advantage in transporting goods. Canada was born because our East West, North South, water ways were extensive but few allowed distance travel of large vessels. I mean canoe's and York boats aren't in the league of Mississippi water vessels and barges. Add the fact that most Canadian waterways are frozen ice half the year means rail and roads are much more important, and costly to build and maintain. So once again Miss Diane teaches me stuff I never thought about.
The price of all foods have skyrocketed, but meat has risen the most. So I got to pay attention not to burn my food so bad that I can eat it, cause I'm watching a Diane Jennings TH-cam video or Twitch stream. Dam good content affects my diet.
Me too 😂
Canada appears to have enough lakes that they could give one lake to each citizen and still have many left over.
@@edschultheis9537 According to the experts ( so I'm just going with that statement) Canada has more lake than the rest of the world combined. Many are not easily accessible road. Yep, we got a lot of them.
@@jimross7648
Many of them don't even have names.
Fascinating video. Thank you. Oh, and really good expensive tequila.
I'm not usually this early. Leg of lamb would be the most expensive which is why I didn't get one for Easter. Ground lamb instead.
❤ Diane, the most expensive food item I buy is wild caught Argentine Red Shrimp 🦐🦐❤ Thanks for asking, m'dear! Slainte! 🇮🇪
Hi Diane, this is the earliest I've been able to see your latest post. I enjoy all your content. Thanks for the positive and weird environment.
I tend to buy in bulk, so there are a number of expensive grocery items. The most expensive tend to be meats though. Luckily they last a while.
Since I have your attention, I would like to suggest a few bands and comedians for your journey.
Comedians:
Brian Regan
John Pinette
Kathleen Madigan
Bands:
Three Dog Night
Steppenwolf
Deep Purple
Janis Joplin
Thanks again for your work.
😊 thank you
yes, i know about the length of the freight trains. i used to live right next to one of those blasted railroads and it would wake me up at night and keep me awake for too long.
I had friends who took a canoe trip from Olean NY to New Orleans. They started near the beginning of the Allegany River (that's how it's spelled in NY) to the Ohio in Pittsburgh, then on to the Mississippi to Louisiana. They had a great time!
Beef, without a doubt is the most expensive grocery item.
I love your educational videos.
I built entire power plants that were delivered in large parts by river in the US. They built it in shops and we put it together in one fifth the time of building it one piece at a time.
peter zeihan has his own channel and has written a lot of books.
My most expensive grocery item is.......All of them 🙃
Oh and great reaction😊
😂
I think my most expensive grocery item I purchase is Saffron for paella or It is either that or prime rib for special meals
Glad to see you again on here, I haven’t seen you in a while, hope all is well
Thanks Diane.
Hi Diane! I think the most expensive grocery store items for me are meat and beer. A good video. Another plus is being located between Europe and Asia.
Hope you and Chewie are doing well, give him a hug for me and I love you, goodbye for now!
The bays on Lake Erie in Monroe County, Michigan were instrumental for rum runners during Prohibition. And there were major routes linking the area to both Detroit and Chicago. A help to the local economy, as Monroe County was pretty much just a farming area at the time. (It was a major source of beef and butchery during the 1800s, but had died down by the 1920s. Prohibition also was why the governor had to pull the Monroe County sheriff for corruption in 1923... ) It's how an area that was known as Frenchtown became a Little Italy still today. 😂
As far a geography go's the United States is absolutely the best place on earth, from the deserts of Death Valley to the junglue like Everglades, from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains, from frezzing in Wisconsin to sweating in Alabama in a couple days drive, the great lakes, Grand Canyon and thousand+ miles long rivers and coastlines, from tropical islands to permafrost frozen tundra, from sea to sea to shining sea, we have basically EVERYTHING here🇺🇲💯
Rivers are very key to the trade of the United States, amazing and it has been this way for centuries. Many major cities grew near rivers
I had lunch at Hamburger Depot. Had chopped steak, side salad and grilled veggies.
Happy Monday! Thanks for sharing this. The most expensive grocery item would have to be any cut of meat or snack chips which are as expensive as steak.
‘Murica! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 ❤️🫵🏻☘️🇮🇪🇺🇸
Murica!!
I had to give up the snack chips and lots of meat. Sometimes I can find a pack of chicken or turkey for about $4-4.50
The Real Life Lore channel did a video a few months back that this sounded like it simply summarized. He went fruther into the coastal ports and the Great Lakes being connected via canals and such, compared the US's agricultural belt to the river network, showing how they overlap to great extent, and so on. It's a much longer video, at about 30 minutes, though, so much harder to do a reaction to, sadly.
That's because both videos are taken largely from Peter Zeihan's book, The Accidental Superpower. THIS video itself is just an excerpt from the audiobook narrated by Peter himself that someone else put together. RealLifeLore's video actually lists Peter's book as a source material for the video.
Hi Diane! My most expensive grocery item recently was the nice bottle of red wine I bought that had been imported from Italy. 🙂 I've said this before, but you are ALWAYS welcome here in the USA (and so is Chewie)! You can even bring ED. 🙂
I like how he mentions Michigan cars, but shows one built in Kentucky
PZ is a smart dude. (No, he's definitely not from Vancouver or anywhere else in Canada.)
Teas, cheese, and/or the occasional OTC drugs (usually allergy or vitamins) definitely top my grocery bill. Cheers Diane! 💚
💊 🎉
Peter Zeihan is from Iowa
5:23 "Michigan cars" uh....
Yay ZY-an. Next time find one of Zeihan's video's of him giving a speech. These things are over-processed.
Peter is from Iowa. His expertise is global production and demographics. While he makes some errors and is more long view than short, his book "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" is worth a read (or listen) as it lays out how civilizations were created and how the moderm world came about, and how it is getting ready to come apart. In it he breaks down the world's resources, supply chains, inderdependancies and vulnerabilities which gives you an idea of what the world looks like today. He does it so as not to be boring. Young people, you have much more too worry about than global warming.
I once "measured" a freight train by driving past it when it was stopped on a track. It was just over 3/4 of a mile long.
My most expensive grocery item: The Walmart brand of Raw Honey. $10.97/32 ounce bottle. Next up after that is milk at $5.38/half gallon, followed by Kerry Gold @ $4.16 for 2 sticks.
Don't know if you count dog food as part of groceries, but that would def be my most expensive item. 😋
I shop pretty cheap so my most expensive food item is probably maple syrup 😅
The good stuff can be pricy
Some of those great big trains that you mention will soon be moving without a person on board. The companies are pushing to have unmanned trains. There are already some trains doing that in Canada and there are caravans of over-the-road-trucks with only a single driver in the lead and the rest of the trucks playing follow the leader.
Pittsburgh became the engine to build American is steel. This is because The Allegheny River and Monongahela River Meet at Pittsburgh and converge to form the Ohio River that empties into the Mississippi River that runs to New Orleans into the Golf Of Mexico. So you can go near Lake Eire and into New York wildly snake threw Pennsylvania, Up from West Virginia into Ohio down the Mississippi River that cut the nation in half. Pittsburgh River system is called a confluence. When they made the Eire Canal it opened the east to the Upper Middle West cut threw the county and out to the Golf. Yes confusing and impossible to explain without a map. But this is how the Nation was built.
It's common around these parts to turn your car off, and dig out some food (if you have any) if you come to a RR crossing and a train's going by.
I just heard an interesting report today, saying that trains in the US are becoming a problem.
In order to offset inflation, and the declined "supply chain", railroads are using longer and longer trains.
This is making for longer stops to other traffic at railroad-street intersections, and actually becoming a negative for productivity and safety, as more people try to "beat the train", or get to work late more often due to getting caught by trains.
Hi Diane! My most pricy grocery item is Beyond Sausage. But it's worth it. And did you know?! Monsters are bad at math unless you Count Dracula 🧛♂️
Happy Monday!
😂😂
7:57 BRICS nations, is a relatively new term. The origin I believe comes from the Georgia Guidestones (sometimes referred to as America’s Stonehenge). The Guidestones where erected in 1980 and were destroyed last July (2022).
Brazil
Russia
India
China
South Africa
Good info
I think it actually came from a NY Times or Wall St Journal writer. A reporter for some major newspaper.
Yep Yep Yep......good good stuff Diane!!!!! most expensive thing in the Grocery........Hamburgers......Cheers from a Texan in Mississippi
Kansas City rail yard second biggest hub in United States. Live on missouri river in KC. Midwest is interesting.
Nice!
My most expensive grocery item by weight is Golden Saffron at $186 an ounce. Of course I don't buy it by the ounce, so my most expensive single item is usually Leg of Lamb or Tenderloin Steak, about $25-30.
My most expensive grocery item? Rye whiskey. Yes, I buy it at the grocery store, so it qualifies.