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SYSK Selects: How Pollen Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, It's Saturday, and it's Chuck, and that means
0:04
Speaker 1: it's time for another Stuff you Should Know. Select we
0:07
Speaker 1: go all the way back to July to two to
0:11
Speaker 1: discuss pollen. I'm not sure when this is gonna come out,
0:14
Speaker 1: but if I'm timing it right, it should be sometime
0:17
Speaker 1: during pollen season. And that's why I picked it, because
0:20
Speaker 1: understanding the enemy is the first step toward defeating it.
0:24
Speaker 1: And so many people have bad problems with allergies and pollen,
0:28
Speaker 1: and UH, to understand how that really works in your body,
0:30
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool and it really helps. So I
0:33
Speaker 1: hope you don't have any problems with pollen. I hope
0:34
Speaker 1: you're doing okay, but learn all about how pollen works
0:37
Speaker 1: right here, right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
0:42
Speaker 1: Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:51
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
0:54
Speaker 1: that means it's time for Stuff you Should Know. But
0:56
Speaker 1: itchy screezy skiez scratchy addition, not scheezy. No, that's not
1:03
Speaker 1: itchy scratchy sneezy edition. That's what I meant. There you go.
1:07
Speaker 1: It's funny how you can mix words together come up
1:09
Speaker 1: with other words. You didn't mean to say, Jerry's eyes
1:13
Speaker 1: are at Itchen, Yeah, well we should say. We were
1:16
Speaker 1: just talking about the pollen count here in Atlanta. That's
1:18
Speaker 1: pretty much all we ever talked about. Ever when the
1:21
Speaker 1: cameras not on or the mics aren't recording that in
1:23
Speaker 1: Coca Cola. Oh you know how everyone comes to Atlanta
1:28
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, every street's named peach Tree. Let's
1:30
Speaker 1: go drink a coke because so it's the only two
1:32
Speaker 1: things we've ever had. Alright, sorry, that's fine. So you
1:37
Speaker 1: want to talk about Pollentin Moore, Yeah, it's low right
1:39
Speaker 1: now in Atlanta. Thirty nine that's moderate, Yeah, well low
1:43
Speaker 1: for us, right, but like according to the pollen scale
1:46
Speaker 1: they scale that they used to count pollen and then
1:49
Speaker 1: designated somewhere along the pollen spectrum, thirty nine is considered moderate,
1:53
Speaker 1: not even low moderate. When it's really bad here in Georgia,
1:58
Speaker 1: it gets to about nine thousand. Those are the few
2:02
Speaker 1: weeks that the the streets run yellow with when it
2:06
Speaker 1: rains with yellow water. Yeah, it looks like p yep.
2:10
Speaker 1: Your car is totally covered in it. You're covered in it.
2:12
Speaker 1: It's just everywhere, everywhere. Yeah, but now we're about to
2:16
Speaker 1: tell everybody we're basically going to turn everybody into a palenologist. Yeah,
2:20
Speaker 1: to an extent, should be a big fan after this
2:22
Speaker 1: an amateur palenologists. I think about a third of all
2:26
Speaker 1: the plants and vegetables and fruits and vegetables we eat
2:30
Speaker 1: are you know here thanks to pollen. So if you
2:32
Speaker 1: like eating food doesn't come in a box, thank you pollen.
2:37
Speaker 1: Is it just a third that pollinate or a third
2:40
Speaker 1: that are just angiosperms or gymnosperms, a third that that pollinate? Wow,
2:45
Speaker 1: what's up with the other two thirds? I don't know. Well,
2:48
Speaker 1: you know, bananas, they are clones of one another. There
2:52
Speaker 1: you go, there's like there's there's some one. There's like
2:55
Speaker 1: I think a thousand varieties of bananas. And thanks by
2:58
Speaker 1: the way to Dama interesting for this information him. But
3:01
Speaker 1: there's like a thousand varieties or species of bananas, but
3:04
Speaker 1: each one like if you eat like a type of
3:06
Speaker 1: just one of those species of bananas, you're eating an
3:09
Speaker 1: exact clone of every other banana in that species. Because
3:13
Speaker 1: many thousands of years ago, humans just stumbled upon the banana,
3:17
Speaker 1: which is the hybrid of two basically inedible fruits that
3:22
Speaker 1: came together to form the delicious banana, but made um sterile.
3:26
Speaker 1: All banana plants are sterile, and the only way that
3:28
Speaker 1: they're allowed to propagate is by human hand. Theous I
3:32
Speaker 1: did a don't be dumb about that? Yeah, well you
3:35
Speaker 1: just did it again. Yeah, you can check out Don't
3:37
Speaker 1: be dumbs on our website Stuff you should know dot com. Wow.
3:41
Speaker 1: All right, anyway, Pollen, Yes, it's been around for a while. Um.
3:44
Speaker 1: I know in our b podcast we talked about how
3:46
Speaker 1: bees and and paulling kind of emerged side by side
3:49
Speaker 1: a hundred million years ago, but pollen actually goes further
3:55
Speaker 1: back than that. In this article, it says about three
3:57
Speaker 1: seventy five million years ago is when the plants started
4:01
Speaker 1: getting clever and spreading their seed literally using pollen different techniques.
4:07
Speaker 1: And I think that, um, the gymnot sperms were first,
4:10
Speaker 1: you think so, I believe so. Uh yeah, And the
4:13
Speaker 1: author of the article here points out that the reason
4:16
Speaker 1: why it evolved was so plants didn't have to be
4:20
Speaker 1: dumb and rely on water to carry their junk to
4:24
Speaker 1: fertilize other junk. You know, they're like, how about wind
4:27
Speaker 1: or how about that bat? Or about that beetle? Yeah,
4:30
Speaker 1: or how about that bird pooping it out? That's right? Yeah? Um,
4:35
Speaker 1: And like I said, I think pollen grains or plants
4:39
Speaker 1: spread their seed. Literally, plant pollen is what amounts to
4:43
Speaker 1: plant sperm. Yeah, it's like I always go to the
4:47
Speaker 1: kids science pages to research. First off, I mean they're good,
4:51
Speaker 1: they're they're colorful. Uh yeah, if we want to pollination
4:54
Speaker 1: very simply, you know, people reproduce. Animals reproduce. They need
4:58
Speaker 1: male and female parts. Plants and flower you are no different.
5:01
Speaker 1: They need male parts to connect with the female parts
5:05
Speaker 1: to make an egg. And in this case, pollination is
5:07
Speaker 1: how it's done. So basically, how that sperm the pollen
5:10
Speaker 1: reaches that egg, which is the ovule, right, and once
5:14
Speaker 1: they get together, magic happens. That's right. But let's talk
5:17
Speaker 1: about the way it looks first of all. Yeah, there's
5:20
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of different looks to pollen depending
5:23
Speaker 1: on the plant um and all of these variations. What
5:28
Speaker 1: it can be like a cone literally a pine cone. Yeah,
5:32
Speaker 1: and look at you know, just look up microscope pollen
5:34
Speaker 1: on Google images and you'll see all sorts of weird,
5:37
Speaker 1: colorful shapes and sizes. Yeah. Some look like blowfish. Yeah,
5:41
Speaker 1: others look like sputnick really yeah, I didn't see the spot.
5:45
Speaker 1: Some have ribbed edges for and all of these adaptations
5:52
Speaker 1: are um or mutations. I guess they became adaptations allow
5:56
Speaker 1: that pollen to kind of better ensure that it's going
5:59
Speaker 1: to be carried to where it needs to go. Yeah,
6:02
Speaker 1: it's it has a purpose. It's not just like, hey,
6:04
Speaker 1: this one would look neat if it looks like a
6:06
Speaker 1: starfish exactly. In the end. Some have wings kind of
6:10
Speaker 1: what amount of basically wings because they're carried on the wind.
6:15
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, like dandelion paulin, it's carried on the wind.
6:19
Speaker 1: True will dandelions self palling night too. We'll get to
6:22
Speaker 1: that though. Yeah. They're slippery little guys. Yeah they are.
6:25
Speaker 1: They're also high and phytonutrients as well. Dandelion greens are
6:31
Speaker 1: of the stems, No, the leaves, oh, the little leaves,
6:37
Speaker 1: the yellow part. So here here's the rule of thumb.
6:39
Speaker 1: There's a New York Times article that came out very
6:42
Speaker 1: recently about phyto nutrients and how we basically bred them
6:44
Speaker 1: out of our food and um. The rule of thumb
6:48
Speaker 1: is the the bitter, the bitterer or more bitter the plant,
6:53
Speaker 1: the higher it is in phytoonutrients. Phyto nutrients have kind
6:56
Speaker 1: of the bitterest, stringent taste, and we tend to don't
7:00
Speaker 1: really like that, so we stopped eating those things over time,
7:02
Speaker 1: replace them with sweet things that aren't necessarily good for us,
7:06
Speaker 1: like you know, potatoes and other starches. Yeah, well, bitter
7:10
Speaker 1: things can also kill you, that's probably why. So you know,
7:13
Speaker 1: that's that's a pretty good point. But bitter stuff that
7:16
Speaker 1: you know won't kill you. Dandelion leaves God and needs
7:20
Speaker 1: them right now. But back in the day, I bet
7:22
Speaker 1: people are like that tastes bad and it killed tuk tuk,
7:25
Speaker 1: So let's just not eat it right exactly alright, So
7:29
Speaker 1: should we talk about pollination. Talked a little bit about pollen.
7:34
Speaker 1: Now we need to talk about how plants make little
7:36
Speaker 1: baby plants, right, And it's it's pretty simple, Like I said,
7:39
Speaker 1: the male part and have you uh, It really helps
7:43
Speaker 1: to follow along if you go to a handy dandy
7:46
Speaker 1: little visual aid I found, because they really break down
7:50
Speaker 1: the male parts and the female parts. The female is
7:53
Speaker 1: the has the pistol and that's p I S T
7:56
Speaker 1: I l and within that you have the over, which
8:00
Speaker 1: you know sits down low in the plant, and the style,
8:03
Speaker 1: which is a long, ah thin h appendage. I guess
8:09
Speaker 1: that contains pollen tubes. And then at the top you
8:12
Speaker 1: have your stigma, which is going to catch the pollen. Yeah,
8:14
Speaker 1: and that's the female part, right, that's the lady. Don't
8:17
Speaker 1: be confused because it is phallic in nature. Yeah, true,
8:21
Speaker 1: but it's still the female part. And the male has
8:23
Speaker 1: to filament, which is a long stem, and then the
8:25
Speaker 1: anther at the top which holds all the pollen. And
8:29
Speaker 1: that's pretty much the long and short of the parts.
8:32
Speaker 1: And is that just angiosperms that you're describing or is
8:35
Speaker 1: that all all pollinating? I think these are just the angiosperms. Well,
8:39
Speaker 1: we should say quite explicitly that there's basically two ways
8:42
Speaker 1: that plants compollinate. There's gymnas sperms and angiosperms. And the
8:46
Speaker 1: big difference between the two is that gymnasperms literally that
8:51
Speaker 1: means naked seed, which, by the way, gymnasium is means
8:55
Speaker 1: place to be naked canasium and German did you know that, Yeah,
8:59
Speaker 1: this so gymnasperms naked seed. There's nothing protecting the seed
9:03
Speaker 1: once it's once it's produced, and a seed is just
9:06
Speaker 1: a germ, a fertilized ovum or ovule, right yeah, um,
9:10
Speaker 1: and just sperms produce something to protect that seed, whether
9:13
Speaker 1: it's a shell like a nut or fruit like an
9:17
Speaker 1: apple with the seeds inside, right, because an apple is
9:19
Speaker 1: just a an enlarged ovule ovary and the seeds are
9:25
Speaker 1: the fertilized though. Yes, Well, you can also pollinate, across
9:29
Speaker 1: pollinate or self pollinate, right, those are the other two differences.
9:33
Speaker 1: So you were saying, what what dandelions self pollinate, Well,
9:37
Speaker 1: they can do both, um, But they do have a
9:39
Speaker 1: little a cool little feature. They basically grow up. You know,
9:42
Speaker 1: this is when there's still the little yellow flower. They
9:45
Speaker 1: have these little florets that grow up and if you look,
9:48
Speaker 1: well you probably can't see if you look really really close.
9:50
Speaker 1: So these little florets that grow up, and as it grows,
9:54
Speaker 1: it carries uh the pollen on its little stem and
9:58
Speaker 1: then eventually gets to a point where it doesn't start
10:01
Speaker 1: grow growing up anymore, and it splits and then starts
10:04
Speaker 1: curling back on itself to uh, you know, no way.
10:11
Speaker 1: It picks up its own pollen from its own style.
10:13
Speaker 1: But it's self pollination. It's not gross or like perverted.
10:16
Speaker 1: There's a there's a lot of them. There's a lot
10:20
Speaker 1: of plants out there, though, that have mechanisms to prevent
10:24
Speaker 1: them from self pollinating. It couldn't can't be good or bad.
10:27
Speaker 1: That's what I couldn't figure out. Well, the plants somewhere
10:29
Speaker 1: along the way figured out like, hey, the wider the
10:31
Speaker 1: gene pool, the better off we are, because the more
10:34
Speaker 1: room there is for adaptation, mutations and than adaptations. Right. Yeah,
10:38
Speaker 1: But in here the author said ideally it cross pollinates,
10:42
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's the case always. Well, it's
10:45
Speaker 1: not ideal, it's just some doing some don't write. I mean,
10:47
Speaker 1: if you look at it like from just an animalistic
10:51
Speaker 1: or an organism viewpoint, right, like with us, if you
10:56
Speaker 1: just get a bunch of Mennonites together and they just
10:59
Speaker 1: reproduce with one other, there's going to be defects that
11:02
Speaker 1: just are propagated throughout this this little gene pool. But
11:05
Speaker 1: if the Mennonites spread out into the you know, larger
11:08
Speaker 1: country as a whole, those defects are going to you know,
11:14
Speaker 1: I guess be kind of watered down by the size
11:16
Speaker 1: of the gene pool. I think it's the same thing
11:18
Speaker 1: with self pollinating and cross pollinating. Yeah, because it's interesting
11:22
Speaker 1: because things like peanuts or self pollinators and that's why
11:25
Speaker 1: they thrive. But corn has a mechanism to not allow
11:30
Speaker 1: itself to self pollinate. Like there, I think the sperm
11:35
Speaker 1: is ready at a different time than the ovule is
11:39
Speaker 1: ready to accept it, So it's it's a timing thing.
11:42
Speaker 1: The thing is, peanuts would probably be able to talk
11:44
Speaker 1: if they didn't self pollinate, and they sound like Jimmy
11:46
Speaker 1: carter um. So there's a lot of mechanisms that plants
11:51
Speaker 1: have to prevent themselves from self pollinating. UM. Some or
11:56
Speaker 1: some might have either just male plants and just female ants.
12:01
Speaker 1: UM some maybe uh where the male part if the
12:05
Speaker 1: plant has both male and female flowers, for example, yes,
12:11
Speaker 1: they they the the male flower might come out before
12:14
Speaker 1: the female flower on the same plant, so that they're
12:18
Speaker 1: not the timing is off a little bit. Um. And
12:20
Speaker 1: then there's some they're just like they'll they'll signal a
12:23
Speaker 1: biochemical marker. If pollen from the same plant gets near
12:26
Speaker 1: the ovule, it'll just basically turn barren. So it just
12:31
Speaker 1: is incapable of fertilizing itself, or like corn where the
12:34
Speaker 1: timing is thrown off, so they rely on cross pollination, right,
12:38
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. So let's let's get explicit again here,
12:56
Speaker 1: gymnasperms naked seed. How does the happened? Like, We'll use
13:01
Speaker 1: the example of a pine, a lob lolly pine. It's
13:05
Speaker 1: fun to say, um, but that's a conifer kind of
13:08
Speaker 1: furs are ancient. I believe they were the first pollinating plant. Yeah,
13:13
Speaker 1: I think so. Nice. So let's talk about it. Well,
13:16
Speaker 1: the pine cones, they're they're little male pine cones, a
13:18
Speaker 1: little female pine cones. You might not realize that you've
13:21
Speaker 1: got quite a show going on in your backyard at
13:24
Speaker 1: certain times of the year, right, Um. And basically, if
13:27
Speaker 1: once you get the two together, you get a male
13:29
Speaker 1: pine cone and a female pine cone together. The male
13:33
Speaker 1: pine cone fertilized, well, the pollen comes in contact with
13:38
Speaker 1: an ovule, and the pollen starts to go to town.
13:41
Speaker 1: It absorbs a bunch of water. Well, the female pine
13:43
Speaker 1: comes little sticky too. That helps, by the way, it does,
13:45
Speaker 1: helps collect the pollen. Um. So the female or the
13:49
Speaker 1: the pollen, the male, the male part of the pine
13:51
Speaker 1: cone germinates and it starts growing. It's called a pollen tube,
13:56
Speaker 1: which basically allows this pollen to directly for lies the ovule.
14:01
Speaker 1: Once that happens, the ovule basically becomes a seed and
14:05
Speaker 1: the seed is released from the pine cone. They go
14:08
Speaker 1: everywhere and then they're eaten by birds and pooped out elsewhere,
14:13
Speaker 1: carried along in the there trampled by a rhinoceros who
14:17
Speaker 1: knows which just got loose from the zoo. But then
14:20
Speaker 1: that seed is carried along, but it's not protected by anything.
14:23
Speaker 1: It's just a seed and hence a naked seed. Hence gymnasperms.
14:28
Speaker 1: So angiosperms they have kind of like a similar process
14:33
Speaker 1: whereas there's a pollen tube that's grown and the male
14:36
Speaker 1: pollen has to come in contact with the female pollen
14:38
Speaker 1: and all that. And we're talking about flowers in most
14:40
Speaker 1: cases here with andrew sperms, they're the only ones that
14:43
Speaker 1: flower and produce fruit. So when you think about your
14:46
Speaker 1: garden with the honey bee and all, that's angiosperm, right,
14:50
Speaker 1: So that's a non naked seed and that's the that's
14:54
Speaker 1: where the fruit comes in or the shell comes and
14:56
Speaker 1: there's area sperms have developed a met achanism to protect
15:00
Speaker 1: the seed, to better ensure its survival, and if you
15:04
Speaker 1: think about it, to entice the things that transport these
15:08
Speaker 1: seeds to go ahead and do their thing. Yeah, there's
15:12
Speaker 1: like every flower has some sort of cool shape or
15:16
Speaker 1: scent or color or something that matches with some little
15:22
Speaker 1: insect or bird or bat that's gonna be enticed. Like
15:25
Speaker 1: the bumble bee in the fox glove, they go hand
15:27
Speaker 1: in hand because it fits up there just perfect, and
15:30
Speaker 1: it has a little colorful landing strip on the bottom
15:33
Speaker 1: pedal to guide the bumble bee in and it's just
15:36
Speaker 1: like nature's it's just like harmonious. Yes, there's that one
15:40
Speaker 1: orchid that I believe Darwin predicted the existence of a
15:45
Speaker 1: type of hummingbird that had a very long curled beak
15:48
Speaker 1: right that it co evolves with it and he was
15:50
Speaker 1: absolutely correct. Remembers in that movie adaptation. Yeah, that's a
15:54
Speaker 1: great movie. Um, and then, uh, you can learn a
15:57
Speaker 1: lot from that movie. Yeah, yeah, anything that what's his name,
16:01
Speaker 1: Charlie Kaufman writes, Yeah, well researched agreed. Um. The fruit
16:06
Speaker 1: is another thing too. Animals love to eat fruit. The
16:10
Speaker 1: fruit is basically once the fruit piece of fruit drops
16:13
Speaker 1: to the ground. That means those seeds are ready to go.
16:16
Speaker 1: They're ready to become seedlings. But first they need a
16:18
Speaker 1: fox to eat the apple carried in its stomach over
16:22
Speaker 1: you know, several meters or miles or whatever, and then
16:25
Speaker 1: poop it out. And then you have seeds that are
16:29
Speaker 1: basically just planted. That's amazing. They take purchase and a
16:33
Speaker 1: new tree begins where his seed her insides where a
16:38
Speaker 1: rocky place where seed you could find no purchase. So
16:42
Speaker 1: pollen grains um are actually created. I guess we should
16:45
Speaker 1: step back a second and talk about myosis. That's the
16:49
Speaker 1: cells are dividing and growing. Eventually you get a little pollen. Uh.
16:53
Speaker 1: It looks like a little dust speck to our eyeball,
16:56
Speaker 1: but it's contains the sperm is not actually the sperm.
16:59
Speaker 1: It contains into the sperm therein and uh, the pollen
17:04
Speaker 1: is in pollen sacks at the end of the stamen,
17:06
Speaker 1: which we talked about, and that little two loabed ant
17:09
Speaker 1: uh almost aid antler antherer. And then eventually it'll find
17:14
Speaker 1: its way to the stigma and travel down to the ovary.
17:18
Speaker 1: And and in the case of angiosperms, there are two
17:22
Speaker 1: sperm that are used. I don't think we said in
17:24
Speaker 1: the case of gymnosperms, it's only one of the sperm
17:27
Speaker 1: is used, right, Yeah, in a in a pollen sect,
17:29
Speaker 1: there's two sperm, but you just need one for the
17:31
Speaker 1: gymna sperm for the antio sperm unit to Yeah, because
17:34
Speaker 1: one is actually fertilizing the egg and the other is
17:37
Speaker 1: developing into endo sperm together alongside and what will eventually
17:42
Speaker 1: be the seed. And if you think that sounds gross,
17:45
Speaker 1: like the gymnos sperm, I'm sorry. The endosperm is like
17:49
Speaker 1: a protein basically to keep it all alive. Yeah, that
17:52
Speaker 1: keeps the seedling happy. So when you're eating corn, you're
17:57
Speaker 1: actually eating the endo sperm. Each corn kernel is actually
18:00
Speaker 1: you know, it's like that starchy indos form, which the
18:03
Speaker 1: seed loves to eat itself. And that's true. Um. So
18:08
Speaker 1: we talked about bees, we talked about birds, foxes, mentioned
18:13
Speaker 1: poopa a couple of times. Yeah, and you were saying
18:17
Speaker 1: that like basically every every flowering plant, especially has some
18:21
Speaker 1: sort of mechanism to attract at least one kind of
18:25
Speaker 1: um bug or animal that's been proven to help pollinate,
18:30
Speaker 1: transport this pollen and so I mean for the most part,
18:33
Speaker 1: we enjoy them, like you like the scent of you know,
18:37
Speaker 1: a good flower, right, sure, but you might not like
18:42
Speaker 1: the Devil's Tongue, yeah, which is a sumatran plant that
18:47
Speaker 1: apparently reaks so badly it smells like a decomposing flash. Basically, basically,
18:53
Speaker 1: did you see this thing? I've seen it before. You
18:55
Speaker 1: actually remarkable like two feet and it's like it it
19:00
Speaker 1: basically um flowers or blooms like once every like ten
19:03
Speaker 1: years or twenty years something like that. Right, I'm not
19:06
Speaker 1: sure if it's the same one. I'm thinking of things.
19:08
Speaker 1: But it's stinky, right, And the reason why it's stinky
19:11
Speaker 1: is because it pollinates with the help of a type
19:14
Speaker 1: of carrion beetle that's attracted to decomposing flesh. So the
19:18
Speaker 1: plant attracts this beetle that likes to eat decomposing flesh
19:22
Speaker 1: by putting out the smell of decomposing flesh. That's so gross, yeah,
19:27
Speaker 1: but it's pretty spectacular, it is, you know. Yeah, in
19:30
Speaker 1: the philodendron, something you might have in your house. It
19:32
Speaker 1: actually does the same thing, but it doesn't stink always. Um.
19:36
Speaker 1: There's actual chemical reaction that takes place and heats it
19:39
Speaker 1: up to omit this odor that the beetle is attracted to,
19:42
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty gross too, but it all works, and
19:46
Speaker 1: I would google that um the sumatra and devil's tongue.
19:49
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool looking. Like the flower itself is two
19:52
Speaker 1: feet It's not like, oh, what a long stem, It's
19:55
Speaker 1: just this huge flower. It's amazing. And then you're also
19:57
Speaker 1: saying like, was it fox glove that provided a landing
20:01
Speaker 1: strip for bumblebees? Yeah, So flowers in general typically have
20:06
Speaker 1: certain types of um like their color will be based
20:09
Speaker 1: on the kind of creature that um that that helps
20:13
Speaker 1: pollinate it, whether it's diurnal meaning it it's awake during
20:17
Speaker 1: the day or nocturnal meaning it's awake at night. Right, right,
20:20
Speaker 1: I guess that's in case of like bats and stuff
20:22
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, and then our old friend nectar is
20:25
Speaker 1: a big lure and basically nectar is around right, just
20:30
Speaker 1: because it tastes delicious and is enticing from what. Yeah,
20:34
Speaker 1: it's basically like a little enticement like you said, for
20:37
Speaker 1: like a bee or something or a bird. Yeah, come
20:40
Speaker 1: get it. Because it's placed by the stamen that's right,
20:45
Speaker 1: or the way that the the anthers are situated just
20:48
Speaker 1: the way they're placed in the flower. If it gave
20:50
Speaker 1: it an advantage to bump up against that bee, then
20:53
Speaker 1: it's gonna be successful in the long run and live
20:56
Speaker 1: out as a species as nice stuff that is pretty good. So, chuck,
21:00
Speaker 1: we've reached a point where, um, I mean, ever since
21:03
Speaker 1: we started selectively breeding plants, domesticating crops like hey, that's
21:07
Speaker 1: pretty right, or hey I like this banana um or
21:11
Speaker 1: that's hardy and it grows in my awful hot area
21:15
Speaker 1: that I live in, many reasons to do so, right, Um,
21:20
Speaker 1: you know, we we wanted to keep plants, we wanted
21:24
Speaker 1: to keep the bad stuff out, keep the good ones
21:27
Speaker 1: we wanted in. But it never became more crucial, um
21:30
Speaker 1: until we started genetically modifying crops. And now all of
21:35
Speaker 1: a sudden, not only are the corporations saying like, hey man,
21:38
Speaker 1: you can't cross pollinate with our stuff for else that's
21:41
Speaker 1: patent infringement, and nearby farmers says, I'm not using your
21:45
Speaker 1: seeds as the bees, you can't blame me, and the
21:48
Speaker 1: farmers who don't want GMO stuff in their crops say,
21:52
Speaker 1: hey man, you need to keep your crops over there
21:55
Speaker 1: because I don't want your GMO creud in here. I
21:58
Speaker 1: have an organic farm exactly, and you're just blowing by
22:02
Speaker 1: the wind. It's a touchy subject. We should do that
22:05
Speaker 1: as the GMOs. I agree. The idea of like patenting
22:08
Speaker 1: jeans in general and alone like crops is it's really interesting. Um,
22:13
Speaker 1: but there's been some pretty clever, simple ways of getting
22:17
Speaker 1: around this problem. It's posed by pollination of GMO crops
22:21
Speaker 1: with non GMO crops. Yeah. Well, distance is obviously one thing.
22:28
Speaker 1: Don't put my farm near your farm. But they have
22:30
Speaker 1: to do all kinds of studies to see how the
22:32
Speaker 1: wind reacts and how like how far does that be fly? Yeah,
22:35
Speaker 1: and they found in uh, in certain parts of Africa,
22:38
Speaker 1: these will go about four miles three kilometers. That's their
22:42
Speaker 1: range for food. That's you know, that's a lot. Yeah.
22:45
Speaker 1: But I mean just using that kind of thinking with
22:48
Speaker 1: all process though, like okay, well this you know, there's
22:51
Speaker 1: this guy's growing this over here, so I can't grow
22:53
Speaker 1: this here, right, That will prevent that kind of pollination though. Yeah.
22:58
Speaker 1: Another thing they can do is uh, sort of like
23:00
Speaker 1: with the corn, they can time their crop rotation to
23:03
Speaker 1: time out so where they're flowering at different times and
23:06
Speaker 1: not interfering with one another. But um, it's a touchy subject.
23:10
Speaker 1: Like from what I understand, there's a lot a lot
23:12
Speaker 1: more going on then you know, is preferred by like
23:17
Speaker 1: the organic farmers of the world, and in't the GMOs.
23:22
Speaker 1: They can then say that you're infringing just because they
23:26
Speaker 1: cross pollinated to their crop, even though you didn't buy
23:30
Speaker 1: their seeds or even want their seeds. If a bee
23:34
Speaker 1: carries there, it's there's seeds, there's crops falling over to
23:39
Speaker 1: your crops. And you start to develop plants that have
23:42
Speaker 1: the GMO characteristics that's patented. According to the corporations, you're
23:47
Speaker 1: infringing on their pat It's very tricky ground, there isn't it.
23:50
Speaker 1: I don't think it's tricky ground. If you ask me,
23:53
Speaker 1: you should not be allowed to have a patent on
23:55
Speaker 1: any living organism. Oh well, yeah, you know what I mean, though,
23:58
Speaker 1: that's my opinion. It gets tricky, uh in courts and
24:01
Speaker 1: studies and corporations and the course to tend to side
24:05
Speaker 1: on the corporation's side. Typically. Let's do that one though
24:11
Speaker 1: soon g MS. Yeah all right, Um, so let's say
24:14
Speaker 1: for Paullen, if you're interested in how pollen causes allergies
24:18
Speaker 1: and you should listen to our how Allergies Work episode
24:20
Speaker 1: That was pretty good. Yeah, I was gonna recommend that.
24:22
Speaker 1: Nice work. Um, thanks man. So, uh, if you want
24:26
Speaker 1: to learn more about pollen in the meantime, you can
24:28
Speaker 1: type that word in the search bar how stuff works
24:30
Speaker 1: dot com. Since I said search bar, it's time, of
24:32
Speaker 1: course for a message break. And now how about some
24:56
Speaker 1: listener mail. Yeah, we have correction. It's been blowing up lately.
25:02
Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm sorry. You know it's crazy. Is that's
25:05
Speaker 1: the second time I've done that and a podcast on
25:08
Speaker 1: that same same thing. I don't remember what the other
25:11
Speaker 1: podcast was, but I've mentioned it before and we've gotten
25:13
Speaker 1: tons of corrections about it and I didn't learn my lesson. Well,
25:16
Speaker 1: this guy was really nice about it, so I'm gonna
25:19
Speaker 1: read his. And it's an important correction because anytime you're
25:22
Speaker 1: talking about drugs, so to recap in the PTSD podcast,
25:26
Speaker 1: we got the two drugs beta blocker called propan and
25:30
Speaker 1: all which helps with PTSD, confused with propofol, which is
25:35
Speaker 1: what killed Michael Jackson. And so this is from Chris.
25:39
Speaker 1: He's a big fan. He's listened to every episode on
25:42
Speaker 1: his commute in southern California, which we know stinks. So
25:47
Speaker 1: he said what we just said about the getting the
25:49
Speaker 1: drugs confused, He seconds, see how you guys can mix
25:51
Speaker 1: it up because the names are very similar, but they're
25:53
Speaker 1: significantly different. Obviously, propan and all is relatively mild and um,
26:00
Speaker 1: I'm only prescribed and very little potential for overdose, while
26:03
Speaker 1: a propofile is a very powerful drug, extremely high potential
26:06
Speaker 1: for overdose, and rarely administrated outside of strictly monitored medical settings.
26:11
Speaker 1: It is actually a hypnotic agent that must be administered
26:14
Speaker 1: intravenously because we talked about Michael Jackson's drip, and is
26:18
Speaker 1: often used in conjunction with general anesthetics. Like most general anesthetics,
26:22
Speaker 1: it's steep dose response curve significantly increases the risk of overdose,
26:27
Speaker 1: where the effective dose is only slightly below a lethal dose.
26:31
Speaker 1: That's kind of scary, Yeah, it really is. I mean,
26:33
Speaker 1: like when you're when you're on that, like you're right
26:36
Speaker 1: along the border. Yeah. Well, he says, Michael Jackson's case
26:39
Speaker 1: is extremely rare, as he was essentially exposing himself to
26:42
Speaker 1: risk similar to those associated with general anesthetics used during
26:46
Speaker 1: surgery with a higher potential for overdose and death on
26:49
Speaker 1: a daily basis for a relatively trivial purposes, which were
26:54
Speaker 1: in this case is insomnia. Yeah, but from what I understand,
26:58
Speaker 1: he had like years long insomnia. Like this guy was
27:01
Speaker 1: not sleeping at all, Like they would they wouldn't, They
27:05
Speaker 1: would give him everything first, and then they try that
27:07
Speaker 1: last resort and like sometimes it's still wouldn't work. Really, Yeah,
27:13
Speaker 1: he was really in bad shape at the end. Well,
27:15
Speaker 1: he probably had a resistance to certain ship things like that.
27:19
Speaker 1: So Chris goes on to say, I'm not certain about
27:21
Speaker 1: the exact amount of risk posed by propofile administration, but
27:25
Speaker 1: I believe the risk of death is something on the
27:26
Speaker 1: order of tenths of a percent, meaning he would have
27:30
Speaker 1: died according to the statistical model, within a couple of
27:33
Speaker 1: years of daily use, like British guaranteed. Frankly, he would
27:36
Speaker 1: have been better off using heroin that whole time, in
27:39
Speaker 1: spite of his ironically strict yet poorly informed anti drug stance.
27:44
Speaker 1: So that's from Chris. Thanks Chris. I was a genuinely
27:47
Speaker 1: awesome email. That was good, um, and I'm sorry everybody
27:50
Speaker 1: freaking so wrong. Well, I mean the names are just confusing. Yeah,
27:53
Speaker 1: but I mean one's like a blood pressure medicine. The
27:55
Speaker 1: other one's like pretty much a general anesthetic. I know.
27:58
Speaker 1: But what gets me is that half of the emails
28:01
Speaker 1: were like, well, yeah, they just sound alike, so you
28:04
Speaker 1: goofed it in. Half of them were like those drugs
28:06
Speaker 1: couldn't be anymore different, like you really thought of it,
28:09
Speaker 1: you know. It's just it's like a verbal TYPEO. Thank you, chuck. Yeah,
28:13
Speaker 1: thanks for letting me off anyway. Uh, if you have
28:16
Speaker 1: a correction for us, we really do like to get those.
28:20
Speaker 1: We like to know what we're talking about. Sometimes we
28:22
Speaker 1: get we get things wrong. Sometimes I get things wrong,
28:26
Speaker 1: but we do want to be corrected. Happens in the
28:29
Speaker 1: nicest way possible, because that's usually who gets their letter
28:32
Speaker 1: read right exactly. Yeah. You can tweet to us at
28:36
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
28:38
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know if you
28:40
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at how
28:42
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com, and you can join us at
28:46
Speaker 1: our home on the web, the greatest website in the
28:48
Speaker 1: history of humanity, Stuff you Should Know All One word
28:54
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
29:03
Speaker 1: Visit how stuff Works dot com, m