Welcome to Gook Tales, episode 68, Husham and the underwater forest of Siberia.

I'm Maria Kalinchini, and I'm the author of Gook Tales.

And today, we are going to take a trip to Siberia, a place that I have

never been, but would not mind going after I did my research for this story. I looked at so many

pictures of Siberia, and it's got this reputation of being very cold and it is very cold but not all the

time. It's so beautiful when you go look at all the lakes and the mountains and the surroundings.

There's really, really beautiful countryside in Siberia. I have to say that. And during my research, I found the most

incredible photos of a frozen lake, Lake Backel. And inside of it, it looks like these crazy frozen rods

of like a tree forest. It's so beautiful. I can't even describe how, oh gosh, how it looks

because you have to see it for yourself. There'll be pictures on Instagram and on Pushham's

goop page. But what I discovered is this lake gets frozen over and that there's methane bubbles trapped beneath it during the winter.

So all the little bubbles, they form like these long rods and they attach together.

And there's methane, which is gas inside of them.

So it looks like this crazy, gorgeous ice sculpture from above.

And inside is this really powerful gas. And then I got sucked down this rabbit hole on YouTube while I was researching it. And I watched as these scientists

went out into the lake. They pulled out one of the gas bubbles, one of the methane bubbles,

like a whole rod of it. And they pierced it. They made a hole in it, and you could hear the gas coming out. And then they set a match to it. They lit it on fire. And it was crazy. It was so huge. The flames just went everywhere because there was so much gas. So it inspired me in this story, in this story that

Pushham's in. So I'll let you hear the rest in the story. But speaking of Pushham, let me give

credit where credit is due. So Joshua and Oliver wrote in and suggested the name Pusham. So I took it. So thank you, Joshua and Oliver.

And I do have to give a little credit here to Alicia, who wrote in the name Pusher. So I use the name

Pusham, but I think Pusher probably does the same thing as Pusham. So thank you to all three of you

for thinking of this great Goop name. So before we get

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