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Short Stuff: Pollen Count · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And guess who's lurking
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: around with chains of doom rattling from him. That's Dave.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: He's here in spirit, is what I'm trying to say.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And that makes this Short Stuff the chew edition. Hold
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: on the edition.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: That's me man. As you know, I've been dealing with
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: this for two plus months. Allergies that never used to
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: get me are getting me now. My doctor said sometimes
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: that happens.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you grew into him. That's fantastic.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: It's great. We did a very robust episode on pollen
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: back in the day that was really popular because there
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: are so many allergy sufferers in the world and I
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: guess that listen to our show. But we want to
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: think how stuff works. And a PhD here Carrie Whitney
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: for this article. But we're not talking about just pollen.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We're talking about you. Hear pollen count all the time
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: and I never stopped to think, is someone counting polland like,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: how did they even get that number?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: The answer is absolutely yes. In that nuts it surprised me.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We'll get to that, but just a little brush up
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: on Paul and pollen is the gametophyte, the sperm essentially
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: of the plant. It comes from the anthers, which is
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the male part, and then it fertilizes the carpul the
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: female part. And pollen. I mean, especially you, Chuck. I'm
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  Speaker 1: sure you see it everywhere because it's affecting you. You
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: want to get away from it. Whole drifts of it
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  Speaker 1: just coat the cars in Georgia. Like seriously, everybody, if
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: you have never really experienced pallend, come to Georgia in
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the early to mid spring, and you will be like,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: what is going on? And why do people live here?
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  Speaker 1: It coats everything in these huge drifts. So you would
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: think that you could see pollen, but it turns out
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  Speaker 1: an individual grain of pollend is in every case microscopic,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: from ten micrometers to one hundred micrometers, very very small still,
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  Speaker 1: but they clump together, which is what produces those visible
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  Speaker 1: drifts of pollen.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know the other thing that pallen does here,
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  Speaker 2: and this is the really annoying thing. Like it's annoying
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: if you have allergies, obviously, but it will if you
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  Speaker 2: don't like take care of your car or your deck
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: or whatever, like it will bake into whatever it's on.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. Don't you have some pressure washing to do?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I've been doing pressure washing, but I have to
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  Speaker 2: pressure wash. Like I don't drive my pickup truck. It's
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: like a work truck. I don't drive it that much,
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  Speaker 2: so it sort of sits unused for you know, weeks
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  Speaker 2: and sometimes a month at a time. And this thing
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  Speaker 2: every single year is just has caked on, baked on
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  Speaker 2: pollen that you can't wash off. You have to get
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: a pressure washer on it.
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  Speaker 1: Plus that huge accumulation of pine straw that falls in
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  Speaker 1: between the hood and the windshield where the windshield wipers are,
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  Speaker 1: you just get stuck. Let's just talk about this for a.
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  Speaker 2: While, all right. So pollen gets places in a couple
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  Speaker 2: of ways, as everybody knows, it can either go by
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  Speaker 2: way of insect or the stuff that's really bad for
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: your allergies is the stuff that goes by the way
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  Speaker 2: of wind, right, and it gets airborne. And this is
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  Speaker 2: the stuff that they're measuring. They're not going out and
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  Speaker 2: sampling a bunch of bees and counting up the pollen
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  Speaker 2: drains on their cute little furry, fuzzy legs. They're trying
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  Speaker 2: to get to what's in the air, because that's the
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  Speaker 2: pollen count that counts.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And usually it's from less showy plants because
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  Speaker 1: they don't need to attract bees or birds or whatever.
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  Speaker 1: It's like grasses, trees, just you know, stuff that goes
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  Speaker 1: kind of unsung weeds, but they blow through the air
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  Speaker 1: and that's where it gets into your mucous membranes and
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: makes you sneeze a lot. And one of the things
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: that you have to know how to do if you're
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  Speaker 1: counting pollen is to know what each different type of pollen.
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  Speaker 2: Looks like.
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  Speaker 1: Grain. That's what I was after, Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Looks like yeah. So because when you watch the news,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: they'll say, like, pollen count is I And if they
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: really know what they're doing, they'll say, you know, look
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  Speaker 2: out today for ragweed or something like that exactly.
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  Speaker 1: And I say, we take a little break and we'll
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  Speaker 1: get into just precisely how they do that right after this.
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  Speaker 2: Let's do it. Well, now we're on the road driving
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  Speaker 2: in your truck. I want to learn a thing or
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  Speaker 2: two from Josh.
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  Speaker 1: Chuck.
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  Speaker 2: It's stuff you should know.
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  Speaker 1: Should all right, okay, Chuck, So we were talking about
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  Speaker 1: people actually counting pollen, and that pollen grains are microscopic,
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  Speaker 1: but that they all have kind of a different morphology,
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  Speaker 1: a different shape, and if you put all those things
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  Speaker 1: together you get pollen count.
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  Speaker 2: That's right. Specifically, a pollen count is the number of
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  Speaker 2: pollen grains and a cubic meter of air over one day,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: over a twenty four hour period. And I guess carry
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  Speaker 2: got in touch with someone when this article was written
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  Speaker 2: from Atlanta, because because one Katie Walls was interviewed a
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  Speaker 2: meteorologist and I believe she was certified from the Atlanta
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Allergy and Asthma. Well, I was gonna say association. It
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: seems like an association, but that's it from Atlanta Allergy
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: and Asthma to be able to do this. And as
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  Speaker 2: we'll see, there are other ways you can get accredited
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  Speaker 2: through the National Allergy Bureau or the American Academy of Allergy,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Asthma and Immunology to be like as certified. Hey, they
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  Speaker 2: know what they're doing, pollen counter.
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  Speaker 1: So what Katie Walls, the meteorologist explained is that in
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: that cubic meter of air that they're sampling over a
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  Speaker 1: twenty four hour period, they're actually like attracting pollen in
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  Speaker 1: a number of different ways. There's a couple of different
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  Speaker 1: instruments that you can use, and each one is called
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  Speaker 1: the volumetric air sampling instrument. So there's a known measure
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  Speaker 1: of air. Again, a cubic meter of air is typically
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  Speaker 1: what's sampled, and again it's usually over twenty four hours.
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  Speaker 1: And there's two types, like I was saying, one's a
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  Speaker 1: rotating arm impactor, and the second is a hearst type
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  Speaker 1: spore trap, and they both are exactly what they sound like.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have some brand names here. We're happy to
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  Speaker 2: buzzmarket the rotating arm sampler. I'm sorry, impactor. It seems
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  Speaker 2: like the most common one is the rotor rode, and
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: then of the hearst variety of the burchard sampler. Sure,
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  Speaker 2: and I look both these up, as I'm sure you did.
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  Speaker 2: But if you look at a picture, the rotor ride
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  Speaker 2: looks like like just a little spinny contraption on a
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  Speaker 2: big tripod. The burchard looks to me like a little
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  Speaker 2: bit like a camp stove or something. And they operate,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: or at least the first one, the rotor ride, is
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  Speaker 2: fairly intuitive. It does rotate, it starts spinning around really fast,
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  Speaker 2: about twenty four hundred revolutions per minute, and these two
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  Speaker 2: little grease rods drop down and they literally just capture pollen.
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  Speaker 2: Those little grease rods pick up these pollen spores, and
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  Speaker 2: then those rods are placed in a microscope adapter and
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  Speaker 2: then they look at those and they get their pollen count.
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  Speaker 1: Right, that's one way. The other way, the hearst type
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  Speaker 1: that the Burchard is an example of. It actually sucks
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  Speaker 1: in air over twenty four hours, and in that air,
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  Speaker 1: it sucks in all the particles too. And rather than
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  Speaker 1: a greased rod, they have a greased microscope slide, and
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  Speaker 1: so that the pollen and the spores are attracted to
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  Speaker 1: that microscope slide. And then what's neat is the slide
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  Speaker 1: moves inward at a specific rate two millimeters an hour,
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  Speaker 1: so you can actually see hour by hour which paullen
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: was highest at what time, And like you said, in
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  Speaker 1: exactly the same way, they put it under a microscope
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  Speaker 1: and they study it. And the people that study it
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  Speaker 1: are called actual palinologists. Palanologist studies pollen and actual palinologist
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  Speaker 1: studies live pollen. They're the ones who actually do the
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  Speaker 1: pollen count, and they actually count the pollen spores in
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  Speaker 1: their sample.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So if you, like me, thought that a pollen
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  Speaker 2: count was just some like random sample or like a
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  Speaker 2: statistical analysis of what it's usually like, or just somebody
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  Speaker 2: making up a number, none of that is true. It
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  Speaker 2: is an actual count. Depending on where you are and
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  Speaker 2: what resources you have, it's going to work a little differently.
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  Speaker 2: Sometimes they collect this stuff every day for a year.
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  Speaker 2: Sometimes they just do it on weekdays. Sometimes it's a
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  Speaker 2: couple of days a week. Sometimes sometimes it's the county
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  Speaker 2: health department doing it. Sometimes it's an allergist that maybe
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  Speaker 2: is contracted by the news station. So it really depends
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  Speaker 2: on where you are and probably like how big of
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  Speaker 2: a city and maybe how much pollen you have in
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  Speaker 2: general as to how this goes down.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could see city government having to be fairly
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: flushed to invest in a Pallen counting station.
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  Speaker 2: You think, how much are they?
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it's more of a show
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  Speaker 1: off thing than anything, you know what I mean? Okay,
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  Speaker 1: Like you want to show off, you want to show
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  Speaker 1: up Shelbyville, so you get your Pallen counting station. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I gotcha, And then Chuck, we talked about how the
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  Speaker 1: volume of air is usually about a cubic meter, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so that's three feet by three feet by three feet roughly,
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  Speaker 1: and if you just kind of make that shape around yourself,
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  Speaker 1: it's not that big. And what they're saying is, if
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  Speaker 1: there's like a like we're at three thousand level, which
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  Speaker 1: is extremely high, there are three thousand grains of pallen
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  Speaker 1: in that cubic meter over the course of twenty four
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  Speaker 1: hours or at any given point in that twenty four hours,
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  Speaker 1: which means that you're sucking all that in. So it
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: really kind of drives home like what those numbers mean.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, three thousand sounds way higher than say
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  Speaker 1: two hundred or fifty or whatever. But when you put
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: it in that perspective, it's almost it almost makes you choke.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder if any place places these in different
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: places to compare those numbers, probably like a really rich city,
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  Speaker 2: like I mean, it would I mean maybe Atlantic city maybe,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: but it would it would seem to make sense that
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: there's more pollen you know, on the edge of a
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: forest than there would be, you know, in the mall
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  Speaker 2: parking lot. Right, sure, you'd think so it's airborne, but
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  Speaker 2: I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: No, No, it definitely because it's gonna spread out from
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: that forest, you know, so yeah, it would be denser there.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: I wonder where they put these things in.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but you're probably you're not getting an
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  Speaker 1: accurate count when you put it right at the edge
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  Speaker 1: of a forest. But also you're making way more work
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: for yourself too, because you got to count all that, buddy.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: That's right, you got to get to that forest. So
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: there's a.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Couple of other things that this House Stuff Works article
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  Speaker 1: included about paulin that I found gratifying that they were saying, like, yes,
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  Speaker 1: paulind makes you sneeze and it can give you terrible allergies,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: but it's also useful in other ways. And the actual
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: palinologiststudy live pollen, but there's other kinds of palinologists that
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: study fossilized pollen or they use it for crime fighting.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because that could be your alibi if there's pollen
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: on the scene and they say that that you were there,
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: and you're like, that's not my pollen, because my pollen
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: is ragweed and that pollen is some other kind of weed. Yeah, hickory.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: That could get you out of a murder rap totally.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: That's forensic palinology. And then just regular palinologists are the
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: ones that study fossil pollen and you can do everything
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  Speaker 1: from figure out what plants ancient societies worked with to
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  Speaker 1: what the climate of like an incredibly old spot on
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  Speaker 1: Earth was just by finding pollen grades. And the reason
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  Speaker 1: why is because when when a plant evolves, it's pollen morphology.
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  Speaker 1: It doesn't change even over millions and millions of years.
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  Speaker 1: So if you found a piece of rag, we'd paullen
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: fossilize into you know, a strata that's sixty million years old,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: you know that there was actually ragweed growing there because
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: it matches the ragweed morphology today.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: You got anything else?
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I've got nothing else, just snotty nose.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, good luck with that, Chuck, And since I
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: wish Chuck good luck. Short Stuff is out.
• 12:25
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• 12:28
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