Most of the lettuce, broccoli and bagged salad Americans eat comes from one fault-bounded trough on California's Central Coast, cooled by fog off Monterey Bay and watered by a river that runs upside down — dry on top, flowing underground. It wasn't discovered; it was built, layer on layer: Ohlone, Esselen and Salinan homelands, mission cattle and the hide-and-tallow ships, Mexican ranchos, Gold Rush wheat and the Southern Pacific, Swiss-Italian dairies and Castroville artichokes, Claus Spreckels' sugar factory and the first deep wells, iceberg lettuce packed in mountains of ice, the market machinery a Stanford economist named William O. Jones made a textbook case, the hands that cut it, the 1936 shed strike, vacuum cooling and salad in a bag. Fourteen episodes on how the Salinas Valley became the Salad Bowl of the World — and why the aquifers that made it possible are now overdrafted, salted by the Pacific, and squeezed by a rising sea and a warming climate. Anchored by Salinas-born historian Burton Anderson and hosted by a physician who has lived and practiced in the valley since 1988 and studied under Professor Jones at Stanford. Episodes: Episode 1: The Upside-Down River Episode 2: The First Ten Thousand Years Episode 3: Missions and Cattle Episode 4: Ranchos Episode 5: Wheat and the Iron Horse Episode 6: Swiss-Italian, Portuguese, and the Families Episode 7: The Sugar King's Town Episode 8: Ice Episode 9: Making the Market Episode 10: The Hands Episode 11: 1936: Sixty-One Days Episode 12: From the Cool Chain to the Bag Episode 13: The Underground River Runs Out Episode 14: The Bowl at 2026 ▶ Full ReThink History catalogue: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO5kaj6ez482qZlSA4ZiGjE… 🔔 Subscribe: youtube.com/@LetsRethinkHistory?sub_confirmation=1 🎙 Narration is AI-generated (Google NotebookLM) from a researched, sourced dossier. 👍 Like and Subscribe, it really helps the channel reach others. #History #SaladBowl #ReThinkHistory