The Rainmaker
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The Rainmaker
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About this listen
How One Man Drowned San Diego.
What if someone promised to make it rain—and you believed them?
In the early 1900s, Charles Hatfield went from selling sewing machines door to door to pitching American cities on an impossible idea: that he could manufacture rainfall using a secret chemical process. Farmers hired him. Towns paid him. And rain seemed to follow wherever he went.
Then San Diego made a deal.
Facing an extreme drought and mounting pressure as it prepared for a major world exposition, city leaders took a gamble on Hatfield’s “no rain, no pay” promise. What followed was not relief—but chaos. Rain fell. Then more rain. Then flooding, collapsing infrastructure, and a disaster that would permanently change the city.
In this episode, Jody walks Shea through:
- How Hatfield built his reputation as The Rainmaker
- Why early 20th-century America was primed to believe him
- The thin line between innovation, coincidence, and catastrophe
- And the legal and moral fallout that lasted more than 20 years
Did Hatfield actually make it rain?
Or was he simply very good at predicting when nature was already about to unleash itself?
The answer isn’t as simple—or as comforting—as you might think.
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