#1682 How Do Rivers Work?

Listening to America

History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

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Summary

Clay talks with Professor Ellen Wohl of Colorado State University about the magical ways of rivers. Professor Wohl is the author of a new book, Following the Bend: How to Read a River and Understand Its Nature. Where does the water come from, and where does it wind up? Why do rivers meander and form S-curves? Does a river have a single source or many capillary feeder streams? As global climate change becomes a central problem of our era, what will happen to the 40 million people who depend on the Colorado for their livelihoods, lifestyles, and survival? How does the United States Geological Survey decide where to pinpoint the source of a river like the Missouri or the Mississippi? Should we expect serious breaches of major dams during our lifetime? Do rivers have legal standing? Finally, do rivers have consciousness and intentionality? This episode was recorded on October 27, 2025.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone and welcome to this introduction to this week's podcast, Ellen Wool,
0:04.3	Professor of Geomorphology, how rivers operate on the landscape at Colorado State.
0:11.0	Her newest book, How to Read a River and Understand Its Nature, Following the Bend.
0:15.0	I loved it.
0:15.7	I urge you to read it.
0:17.5	Rivers are incredibly complex, and we tend to think of them as resources for extraction,
0:24.4	hydropower, jet skis, municipal water, water to irrigate the fields. That's how we've looked at rivers
0:31.2	from the beginning. Of course, at the beginning, they were systems of transport. Rivers were
0:36.5	roads and roads were rivers through Jefferson's lifetime.
0:39.6	And really all the way up until the railroad, with the coming of the railroad,
0:44.4	rivers almost immediately diminished as navigational channels,
0:49.8	although we still do keep them open on the Mississippi and on the state Columbia and the lower Arkansas
0:57.2	and so on.
0:58.0	But also on the Missouri from St. Charles at the mouth of the Missouri all the way up to Sioux City.
1:05.1	And maintaining that navigation channel on the Missouri to Sioux City is a very expensive,
1:14.8	quixotic, foolish prospect of diminishing returns.
1:15.5	There's less navigation of barges now because there's an interstate highway right alongside the river,
1:21.5	and there is a railroad that is right alongside the river.
1:25.3	Rivers are utterly fascinating to me.
1:27.6	I identify with the Little Missouri River.
1:30.4	I've walked it twice from Devil's Tower and then from Marmuth through its course in North
1:35.9	Dakota.
	...

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