Hello and welcome to this day in Esoter political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, the second week of July 1936, deadly heat is spreading across the Great Lakes region.

It would hit well above 100 degrees in cities like Green Bay, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota, it would continue for days, weeks.

There were parts of the Dakotas that hit over 120 degrees that summer.

Because of the extreme temperatures and the fact that it was in a part of the country not used to such high heat,

the heat wave of 1936 is largely considered the most destructive heat wave in modern US history.

But of course, that all seems to be changing year by year, summer

by summer as the heat map of the US and the world is getting rewritten in real time

due to the effects of climate change so maybe there is something to be learned by

traveling back to that scorching hot summer of 1936. Here as always Nicole

Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Welsley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey

there. Nicky you're a resident Midwesterner. Can you tell us what your hometown of Indiana?

Which by the way I looked at the record heat numbers in Indiana and they are from this summer of

1936.

But this part of the region not really equipped.

I don't know if anyone's equipped for 150 or 20 but this

this region of the country. Well in the places that get up to 115 that's that's

the dry heat and the Midwest is very much a wet heat.

It does get hot and humid in the summers.

But growing up in southern Indiana, it was very rare to see something that was in the triple digits much less you know

oh I I 110 is not something that we would have seen and so this is this is an area

...