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Selects: Plant Migration · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's me Joshum. For this week's select, I've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: chosen our August twenty twenty three episode on plant migration.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: This one makes me a brainy boy, what with its
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: earth science and something that goes on under our noses
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: without us really realizing that it's happening. And we figure
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: out that there's a lot to learn about plants on
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the move, which makes it even sweeter. I hope you
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: love this one as much as I do.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: should know that we're all melting.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Addition, yeah, I'm just a migrating fern.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one to.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Be blowing through the forest looking for a new home. Sure,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I'm a spore.
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  Speaker 1: What happens when you get their spore?
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll probably grow into a beautiful new fern because
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: ferns are pretty party.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: That's awesome, And I'll bet you'll contribute to society and
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: all sorts of beneficial ways that ferns that were already
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: there couldn't necessarily do.
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  Speaker 2: I hope so there is fern stuff in here. And
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I have a wonderful fern scene at my camp on
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  Speaker 2: the other side of the feeder creek that goes into
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  Speaker 2: the main creek. I call it. I even have a son.
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  Speaker 2: This is fern forest, and it's a forest of ferns.
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  Speaker 2: It's quite lovely.
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  Speaker 1: God knows where they're from, because those things can travel
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  Speaker 1: quite a bit, as we'll see.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be from Alabama easily.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not kidding easily. Man. I've got a stat that's
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: gonna blow your mind in a second. Uh oh boy, Actually,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I'll just bust it out now you're ready.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, How far can a fern travel?
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  Speaker 1: A fern can travel. The Tasmanian tree fern in particular,
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  Speaker 1: can send it spores five hundred to eight hundred kilometers
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  Speaker 1: te hundred to five hundred miles from the mother plant.
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  Speaker 1: And get this, a single frond a fraud produces more
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  Speaker 1: than seven hundred and fifty million of those spores. Wow,
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  Speaker 1: So you can understand that ferns, I mean, you find
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: ferns everywhere. They're really hardy. They can actually survive cold,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: colder temperatures than you would think. They also thrive in
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the tropics. They're like a really great pioneer plant. They
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: usually are among the first large plants that show up
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: in like a newly cleared part of Earth. Right, this
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: all makes sense then, Okay, so what we're talking about then,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: is that those ferns that showed up in this new
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  Speaker 1: place and said, hey, let's get this, let's get this
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  Speaker 1: biosphere going again, let's get this biome back into shape
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: after this wildfire or something like that, or there's like
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: a stampede because there was a really great ice cream
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: truck that drove through one of those two. Those ferns
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  Speaker 1: have migrated. They came from Tasmania apparently all the way
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: to wherever the ice cream truck was. Right now they're there,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and so they actually moved in that sense, which is
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  Speaker 1: really surprising because plants are what are known as sessile organisms.
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  Speaker 1: They don't move from place to place individually as organisms,
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  Speaker 1: but as a species they can actually move around like
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  Speaker 1: inch forms. Pretty good.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I didn't really know much about this.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: We're talking about plant migration and the idea, well not idea,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: the very real fact that just like humans and animals,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: will go to more hospitable climbs as the climate may
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  Speaker 2: change or just I don't know, just to seek a
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: better place to be. Plants and trees and things on
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  Speaker 2: mass do the same thing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's all sorts of ways that they do
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  Speaker 1: that too. So they do it by dispersing their seeds
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  Speaker 1: or their spores in that case, fern spores or single
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  Speaker 1: cell organisms. They're not like a seed technically, but they
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: do the same thing. Right, They show up in a
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: place and set up shop and they start rocking out.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And ferns, you know, it depends and
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  Speaker 2: we'll get all into this stuff. But how fast this
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  Speaker 2: happens depends on different factors. How far these plants can
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  Speaker 2: migrate depends on different factors. Why this is happening is
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: generally climate change. Yeah, And plants are in trees and
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  Speaker 2: things are generally moving north or up in elevation if
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  Speaker 2: they hit mountains.
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  Speaker 1: Or south in the southern hemisphere exactly.
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  Speaker 2: So that's sort of the general pattern. And we mentioned
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  Speaker 2: ferns because, like you said, those spores can really haul.
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  Speaker 2: Ferns also mature very quickly, and you know, the wind
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  Speaker 2: can just that's why I got that's why I got
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  Speaker 2: a fern forest at my camp. Probably.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they check both of the boxes that you
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  Speaker 1: need to be a fat migrating plant species. They produce
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  Speaker 1: seeds or spores at a very young age, and their
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  Speaker 1: seed or spore can travel very far distances right right,
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  Speaker 1: so they can move around. And also it doesn't hurt that.
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  Speaker 1: Like I said, ferns are adaptable. The trees and other
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  Speaker 1: plants still move quite so fast. But they move, especially
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: if you look at the fossil record, a lot faster
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: than they actually should. So if you pay attention to
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  Speaker 1: a single organism saying oak, those acorns don't travel terribly far.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: They may get a little further away from the drip
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  Speaker 1: line if a squirrel happens to bury it somewhere and
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  Speaker 1: a new oak tree grows.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: I think it was Ander Samberg who described acorns as
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: solar powered factories for producing more oak trees.
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  Speaker 2: Whoaa Andy Sandberg said that?
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: No, Anders Sandberg. Oh, okay, he's a philosopher at Oxford.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: That makes a lot more sense.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Andy Samberg. He ate his lime accidentally in
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: his Corona bottle. That's that's what he's got.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: You knew he's married to, uh, Patricia Arquette Nosanna Arquette.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: You've been guessing Patricia Arkette for a lot of things lately.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I feel like he's married to Yeah, I feel like
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: that's come up before recently. Maybe I don't know.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Her name just rolls off the tone.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: I know a big fan of hers. He is married
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: to what's her name, Joanna Newsom, the singer and harpist.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Oh neat And if you like, if you're.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Into architecture and homes, you should seek out I don't
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: know if his architectural digest or something, but someone did
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: a spread on their home and it is really something else.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's Andy Samberg Power.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that would just checked a quick detour.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Wait wait I wasn't done.
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  Speaker 2: Oh no, good, go ahead.
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  Speaker 1: So if you look in an individual tree, an oak tree,
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  Speaker 1: those acorns don't go particularly far away from the tree,
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  Speaker 1: as the old saying goes, But the fact that they
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  Speaker 1: do fall away from the tree moons that very slowly,
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  Speaker 1: some of those seedlings are going to grow up a
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  Speaker 1: little more northward or a little more southward than its
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  Speaker 1: mother plant, and very very slowly, the whole group of
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  Speaker 1: oaks can move southward or northward right.
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  Speaker 2: Over hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years
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  Speaker 2: so long.
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  Speaker 1: The thing is, if you look at the fossil record,
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  Speaker 1: they move way faster than that than they should. And
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  Speaker 1: there's actually a paradox that was named by a guy
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  Speaker 1: named Clement.
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  Speaker 2: Reid, right reads paradox.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got a great, great title for.
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  Speaker 2: It, of rapid plant migration. That's the full title.
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  Speaker 1: It sounds almost like snake oil from the nineteenth century.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of does.
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  Speaker 1: So what is it?
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, I didn't ever set me up. We're still
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: tight after all these years, for sure. So what he
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  Speaker 2: found from the fossil record, like you were talking about,
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  Speaker 2: and as we'll see that that one, like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: a pretty good way to study this stuff, especially pollen fossils.
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  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, because they're so hardy.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So he saw that trees were migrating a lot
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  Speaker 2: faster than like the rate that you would think, and
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  Speaker 2: so he like those oaks. I think was one example
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  Speaker 2: you gave on the British Isles after the last glacial period,
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  Speaker 2: over a span of like ten thousand years or so,
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  Speaker 2: they traveled about six hundred miles and it would normally
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  Speaker 2: take about a million years. The seeds if the seeds
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  Speaker 2: were just dispersed in a typical way. But what he
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  Speaker 2: figured was that what may be happening here is like
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  Speaker 2: some weird weather event happens that sent things much farther
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  Speaker 2: than usual, or like some deer or something eats something
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  Speaker 2: and then poops out something really far away from where
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  Speaker 2: it started, and so all of a sudden, this animal
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  Speaker 2: has spread it via their poopoo.
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  Speaker 1: Right, And this this is how like large scale migration happens,
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  Speaker 1: or I should say rapid migration over long distances, right right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's the it's the unusual, not just the acorn falling
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  Speaker 1: and hitting the ground. It's not just gravity assisted. It's
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  Speaker 1: animal assisted, which is called zoochorey, or it's wind assisted,
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  Speaker 1: which is called a nemo corey, or water assisted, which
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  Speaker 1: is called hydrochory. And that's just the way that some
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  Speaker 1: plants disperse their seeds. That's kind of on top of
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  Speaker 1: the normal way they disperse it, which is just dropping
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  Speaker 1: it from their leaves or the spores blowing on the wind,
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  Speaker 1: which I guess is one type of corey.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So like if a squirrel loaded up its mouthful
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  Speaker 2: of things m hm, and somehow found its way into
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: your camper. As you said, off for Arizona.
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  Speaker 1: That would be a freak event.
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  Speaker 2: Sure, it probably wouldn't be en mass, but you know,
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  Speaker 2: that's a way a dree could move.
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  Speaker 1: All it takes is that one that one oak to
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  Speaker 1: make it sure to just survive, and then it starts
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  Speaker 1: its own new part of the range.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And we Alsho should point out when when
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  Speaker 2: was redoing this. This is a while ago, like one
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  Speaker 2: hundred plus years ago, right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a geologist. I don't know if we said,
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  Speaker 1: but his reads Paradox of Rapid Plant Migration came out
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety nine and it was a smash hit.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so people, I mean, for at least that long,
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  Speaker 2: science has been sort of curious about this, this migration
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  Speaker 2: happening at a rate that they would not expect.
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  Speaker 1: Right. The thing is is that's really hard when you
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: throw in that X factor to calculate how fast and
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  Speaker 1: actual species can migrate. And there's a few ways that
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  Speaker 1: you can study that kind of thing. One, as you said,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: is studying the fossil record, which is super helpful, but
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: it's not showing you what's going on contemporaneously or within
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  Speaker 1: the last couple decades. This is ten thousand, a million
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: years ago something like that, right.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So if you wanted to study something a little
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: closer to home timeline wise, you would maybe set up
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  Speaker 2: what's called a permanent vegetation plot, so just you would
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: mark off an area and you would go back there,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: you know, every so often, like every six months or
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: every year or so, and just sort of chart what's happening.
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  Speaker 2: That's one really good way. I think they've been doing
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: this for about one hundred years since in nineteen twenty,
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  Speaker 2: so we've got a pretty good data set there. Something
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: else you could do is go somewhere like let's say
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  Speaker 2: you dug up some cool scientific journal from a scientist
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: from you know, two hundred years ago that went and
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: explored some island, and while they may not have like
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: charted everything out exactly like you would in today's science,
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  Speaker 2: they may have a really nice diary about all the
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: plant life there and things that they saw there and
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  Speaker 2: where it might be, and you could go back to
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: that place and it's not quite as tight of a record,
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  Speaker 2: but you could still get a pretty good idea of
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  Speaker 2: what's happening.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, depending on whose journal you're working for, and back
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, a Danish team of scientists followed the
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  Speaker 1: record left by a nineteenth century geologist named Alexander von
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  Speaker 1: Humboldt from Germany, who was just an interesting dude in
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: and of himself. He called coffee concentrated sunbeams. So he's
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: that kind of guy.
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  Speaker 2: Oh man, that's great.
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  Speaker 1: They went back to Chimborazo Volcano in Ecuador, which Humboldt
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  Speaker 1: studied in detail, and not only did he study the
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: vegetation there and he classified all sorts of new plants
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: that Europeans didn't know about at that point, he also
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: noted exactly where they were on the mountain as far
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: as the elevation went.
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  Speaker 2: Super helpful, super helpful.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: So based on this information, the twenty twelve Danes were
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: able to go back and recreate his trip, and then
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: they were able to note what plants were where, and
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: they found that everything, all species, on average, had moved
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: up the mountain by about an average of about five
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  Speaker 1: hundred meters, which is significant and it's like almost a mile.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: It's like eight tenths of a mile.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the average. Yeah, there was a lot
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: of aeriation within that, but that's it's a long way
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: for sure, and what we found out and I guess
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: this comes up a little later, but a plant can
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: find more hospitable climbs going up five hundred meters than
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: they might by going let's just say north, like ninety
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: to one hundred miles. Yes, so like a much quicker
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: road to better climbs if you just go up that
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: mountain for sure.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of two ways they move is longitudinally, yeah,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: or altitudinally.
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  Speaker 2: You gotta be in shape, though, Oh, for sure you
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: can climb that mountain. Should we take a.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Break, I think we should. But just to wrap it
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: up real quick, there's a bunch of ways you can
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: study the movement of trees. But it's so slow and
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: it happens over such long timelines, longer than a human timeline,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: that it's harder to do than you'd think. But we
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: still have figured out some ways to do it.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: All right, we'll be right back and we'll talk about
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: all this stuff in more detail, right it For this
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: one other way we failed to mention. Probably would have
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: been better to just say that before the break, But again,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: still learning after sixteen years. Satellite images is another way
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: that you can study on the short term. You know,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: the fossil pollen is much longer, and those plant plots
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: and things like that, vegetation plots our shorter term. But
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: satellite images can also help.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want to catch like a venus fly
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: trap and the act of leapfrogging over some other planet,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: satellite image is going to help you with that. Fossil
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: record won't show that.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Here's the thing with all this though, It's not like
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: we're going to talk a lot about climate change, because
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: that's what's spurring a lot of the movement right now.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: But the Earth's climate has changed a lot over the
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: you know, over the years, and this is not some
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: new thing. There used to be periods of time where
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: the Sahara Desert was quite green and there was grasses
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: growing there and tropical plants growing there, and elephants roaming
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: the Sahara and wildlife living there. And they've learned that
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: this is actually one of the things that helped move
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: you know, humans around, Like humans could actually migrate through
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: the Sahara with much more ease than they could before
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: during these green Sahara periods.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so fascinating that you know, who knows when
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: we would have migrated out of Africa into Europe and
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the ages had the green Sahara not happened, didn't that
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: just nuts?
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like hundreds of miles. It says here that they
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: would find tropical plants growing where they shouldn't be growing
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: alongside the desert stuff that survived. So that was this weird,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: sort of mixed up biome for a time.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in the green Sahara period, there were a few
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: of them that had been documented, but they figured out
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that they happened about every twenty three thousand years. We're
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: due for one in about twelve thousand years something like that.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: And it's based on the tilt in Earth's axis. That's
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: neither here nor there. But the point is during these
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: periods where the Sahara was just a humid kind of
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: tropical forest, there was a mixture kind of what you
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: touched upon, of different like you said, a hybrid biome
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: of stuff that wouldn't necessarily live together under normal circumstances,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: but got along just famously in the couple thousand years
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: that the Sahara was green and those plants were growing together.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just amazing to think about.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: And then in North America we have another example too,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: after the Laurentide Glacier, which is way up in the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Arctic right now, down in Indiana and northern New Jersey. Yeah,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: and when it retreated, it took everything with it. It
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: took bowlers, it carved out lakes, it did all sorts
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: of neat stuff. But what it didn't leave behind was vegetation.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: So it left it was like a giant ice cream
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: truck basically. Yeah, it left nothing behind, and it was
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: just a great place for plants to pioneer and colon ice.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that's why you have pine trees in
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: New Jersey, right.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I would think so, yeah, or in the south because
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: they were too far they were trapped below or yeah,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: below the Laurentide Glacier down in the southeast, even though
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: they normally would have been growing in the north, right,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And as the glacier retreated, the climate changed in that area,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: and so the trees just moved on up. So that's
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: an example of migration as well.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh wait, I thought they but I thought they
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: were It was more hospitable in the south for these trees,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: and that migration sent them north. Yeah, that's what I said, right, Oh, okay, maybe. Yeah.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: The other thing we should talk about as far as
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: climate change goes, because, like I said, we're going to
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: mention that a lot is the rate of change of
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: the climate is increasing, as most people agree on, and
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: that is kind of where we are now in discussing
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: this is like, is the rate of climate increasing too
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: fast for the plant migration to catch up or in
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: some cases are the plants migrating ahead of that pace?
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: And that's really sort of you know, a lot of
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: this episode is about this rate of change. In the
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: two hundred years since the beginning of the Industrial Age,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: no coincidence, the temperature of the Earth has increased more
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: than one degree. And again, yeah we all know now
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: that you know, one degree is like a huge, huge deal.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: It's one point eight degrees fahrenheit.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, But er point three seven of that change
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: over the past two hundred years has come, it's twenty eleven.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: So it's people have you know, someone has stepped on
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: the gas here. Yeah, And it's happening much much faster
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: and seemingly in many cases, fasting faster than these plants
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: can catch up.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So plants are used to migrating like they've been
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: migrating through our Earth's history, but these conditions are different.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: It's not like it was before. Even when the Earth
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: was heating up after the last ice Age, I think,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: did you say that it took about an average of
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: fourteen hundred years to increase by one degree after the
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: last glacial period?
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: No, No, that was the setup. That would have been
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: very helpful.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Actually, I mean think about it. So we've achieved one
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: degree in two hundred years, and after the last glacial
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: period ended, the Earth heated one degree every fourteen hundred years.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's called a rapid increase.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like you said, somebody's put their foot on the gas,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and that's somebody is Western industrialized nations, right.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: So that's one thing that's really kind of putting the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: heat on plants literally is their southernmost ranges or their
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: northernmost ranges, depending on what I guess. They're equatorial pointing
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: ranges where it's hotter. Those are the ones that are
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: really at stake. So are those plants ranges big enough
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that they'll be able to survive that change in climate
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and just keep moving northward or are they going to
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: be outpaced by the movement of the climate because the
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: climate is racing towards the poles, just like the plants are, right,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: So who's faster. Well, it turns out if you talk
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: about New England's trees, they move something I think red
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: oaks is what it was that this University of Vermont
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: group was studying. They move something like a tenth to
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: three tenths of a mile a year. Right. The climate
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: is moving something like four to six miles a year.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: So the climate is really kind of showing up as
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: kind of the who's Usain Bolt of this race? And
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know the plants are like me racing Usain Bolt.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that lab group in Vermont, they all have t
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: shirts that just say you do the math exactly. It's
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: very smarty, but they get their point across for sure.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: There's another example of and you know, we've kind of
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: been talking about northern movement, which is generally the pattern
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: but not always. There's a researcher at Purdue name song
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Lend Fay. I think Fay or Fhi. I don't know Fi.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: I bet it's fine who studied eighty six species of
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: trees in the eastern US over about thirty years from
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: the mid eighties to twenty fifteen. And it depends on
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: what the tree is. Hardwoods, scarlet oaks, red maples, magnolia's
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: are moving west at about one and a half kilometers
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: a year because the Midwest is becoming more wet and
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the conditions are good for those trees to grow. Soft
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: woods shortlya pines, red pines, bald cypress. They're actually moving
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: north about a kilometer of the year, a kilometer a year.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: So.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Different plants and trees are moving in different directions at
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: different rates.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's very much akin to a neighborhood that's this
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: old settled in neighborhood with a bunch of mix of
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: people that's being gentrified. It's being pushed out and separated.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Not everybody, just the whole neighborhood doesn't just move. This
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: neighborhood breaks up and goes in different directions. Yeah, and
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: so to ecologists in arborous like this is very concerning
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: because for a long time we've looked at groups of
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: plants as communities. Like some some plants go with other plants,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: like I think, was it beach and hickory? Where is it?
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I like hickory, though.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: We can't leave that in there. Oh Yeah, hemlock. I
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: knew it was an h H tree. Beach and hemlocks
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: go together like peanut butter and chocolate, so too do
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: like firs and spruces. Right, So when you find one
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of these, you usually find the other one. And there's
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: also a bunch of other plants that kind of interact,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and usually some types of animals that hang out in
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: those same types of forests. So if you've got the
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: hemlocks going north and the beach going west, who are
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the hemlocks going to mix with and who are the
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: beach going to mix with when they start to set
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: up these new communities. And that was really troubling to ecologists,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: but I think palinologists, these fossil pollen scientists have said
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: it's always been this way. Communities aren't permanent, they're kind
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: of instable. They just seem permanent to us because our
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: life years there are lifespans on the order of like
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: seventy eighty years, right, This is much it's a much
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: slower process, but it's a constantly changing turnover, so it's
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: not that big of a deal. But again, because of
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the pace of climate change, when these hemlocks get further
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: north and the beach get further west, they're going to
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: have far less time to develop new connections and networks
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: with the new plants that they set up communities with.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the other thing too. You know earlier when
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: I mentioned that a series of trees might move up
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: a mountain side because it's a way quicker way to
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: get to a more hospitable climate than moving that ninety
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: miles north. Yeah, when they and this happens in other
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: cases as well. It's not just like up a mountain side,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: but when they get to the place where they're going,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: it may be a better place, may be more hospitable
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: climate wise, but other things aren't so great. So if
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: you move up that mountain slope, let's say you have
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: shallower soil, and so those trees move up there because
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: the climate's better. But then they get there and the
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: soil isn't as great, so they get squeezed into where
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: they can grow, maybe into like a tiny little narrow
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: band that's you know, potential choking off the rest of
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: the forest.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've figured out it's kind of like hiding in
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: a closet during a house fire, Like you're gonna be
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: safe in the short term, but in the long term.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: It's not a great strategy, but it's not like the
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: trees have any choice. They can't go back down. It's
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: too hot there, they can't move further up. There's the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: soils inhospitable, so they're trapped and they're eventually going to
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: become a thinner and thinner band until they just pop
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: out of existence.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: That's right. And the other thing that can happen too when,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: like you said, when they get to a new place
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: and they don't have enough time to make new friends,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, that can open the window for
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: bad friends to show up.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and all of a.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Sudden, invasive species are there, and then you've got a
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: whole other set of problems.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the ones that wear like leather jackets with the
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: little silver studs on their shoulders, those are the ones
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you gotta watch out for. Those plants.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: If this all seems very kind of on too long
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: of a timeline for you to care, first of all,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: you probably don't care much about climate change, because that's
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: the whole name of the game there. But maple syrup
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: is a good example that Livia found Lyvia helped us out,
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: and she did a great job with this the maple tree,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: which the species is that the sugar maple is one
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: of the two main species that we use to get
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: that delicious maple syrup.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this isn't a side. Sugar maple are two
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: beautiful words that form an even more beautiful.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: You are right on the money, my friend. You know,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: sugar maple. It just sounds nice coming out of my mouth. Yeah.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: They have been migrating north into Canada, and you might say, well,
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: that's great. Canada is a fine place to live, and
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: I'm sure they love their maple syrup there too. But
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: in Quebec, the researchers have found that they're not gonna
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: go beyond their current range up there because they're boreal
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: forests up there, so the soil again, the climate might
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: be better, but then they get up there and the
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: soil pH and the microbe content and the soil is
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: is not what they're used to and not what they
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: work well with and grow well with. So they're not
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: doing well up there in the forest.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: No, no, And that's it's the exact same position as
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: the trees that are trying to go up the mountain
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: are running into. Eventually, these trees that are moving into
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the boreal forest areas. They're like they can't go any further,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: like they're not adapted to that.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Over a long enough timeline, yeah, maybe.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Those sugar maples could, like a few of them, could
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: land in the boreal forest and end up surviving in
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: that kind of soil and then they would be adapted
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: for and they'd start reproducing. And then as the boreal
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: forest moved closer to the Poles or the Arctic, those
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: trees would move where the boreal forests used to be. Right,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Totally not a problem over a long enough time span. Again,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: climate change has so drastically shortened that time span that
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: there's probably not going to be time for this, and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: those sugar maples will just run into that boreal soil
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: and just they they'll it'll be like hitting a brick
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: wall for their species.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, another issue that can happen. And I know this
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: all just seems like doomsday stuff, kind of is it?
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Kind of it though, Let's say, like the Amazon episode
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: that we talked about, when trees are moving out there,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: they might be replaced by something and it may not
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: be an invasive species, but it may just be weeds
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: or grasses or something. Those aren't as good at capturing
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: carbon as those trees were, so then that accelerates the
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: problem even more.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Right, And then there's another if you want to keep
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: talking about doom state scenarios, those boreal forests, they actually
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: are if you look at a map or if you
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: look at planet Earth from outer space. Uh, they're dark,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: which means that they absorb more sunlight, more heat, more
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: UV radiation. Then the polar caps the ice that reflects
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: it back into space. So as those boreal forests advance
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: further and further north, toward toward the Arctic or the
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: North Pole, and there's less and less ice to reflect that,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: there's more and more heat for them to trap, which
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: is just going to heat the Earth that much faster.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a positive feedback loop that's super duper negative.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very negative. Maybe we should cover tropical things moving
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: north and then take a break.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I got some good stuff on that, man,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I'm super exciting.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it goes both ways. So you can
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: have like tropical plants and tropical zones like Florida where
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: you know, the Earth is warming, so they can move
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: further and further north, and all of a sudden, these
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: plants that are native to tropical zones are ending up
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: in areas where it's you know, not necessarily a tropical zone.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: I can't remember which zone.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Atlanta, Atlanta's seven B and aight a seven.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I love that, you know that stuff. But the point is,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: like these these like kill kill frosts that you might
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: get that happen to I love that name kill frost,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: like it'll get really cold and frost over and like
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: kill things. Maybe that shouldn't be there if that's happening
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: less and less and there's even less in the way
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: of those tropical plants moving northward.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Right, and so I guess climatologists are expecting that by
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the end of the century, which seems like a long
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: way away. But buddy, that's like less than that's like
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: eight decades, seventy something years, maybe even seventy seven, you
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: could say to be exact, But in seventy seven years,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: climatologists expect all of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: and California, guessing the southern half to be tropical. Those
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: are subtropical.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: If you want an example of what a tropical country is.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Go to Ecuador, go to Guatemala. Those are tropical, and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Alabama and Arizona are going to be like Guatemala by
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: the end of the century. Yeah, that's insane.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I know, it's really uh, and it's happening. It's not
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: like like they've they've shown that it's currently happening.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, and it's happening because, like you were saying, those
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: extreme cold events are becoming rarer and they're becoming warmer,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: so the coldest day of the year is not as
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: cold as it used to be.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: In other words, I think the scientific term is kill frost.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: I love that. That is definitely a band name.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Oh for sure. Like what are they though, kill?
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Oh? I don't know.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: It's heavy or something, right, I don't know.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Remember Destroyer they were great, They didn't really destroy They
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: had like kind of like a belying name, you know
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: what I mean.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: No, that's true, so it could be like that. I
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: think he named the band that uh for that reason
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: is a bit of a tongue in cheek thing.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe I knew I liked that, Kay.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Behart is who we're talking about, not joy Tony.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: I know it's a dan I think right.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I just know a couple of destroyer songs.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: I don't I want to know the guy's life story,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: do I well?
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Settled down? No, I wanted to look it up because
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: he is. He's also a part time member of maybe
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: my favorite all time band, the New Pornographers, like modern band.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, he's on most of their albums, but
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: hasn't done the past few.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Who was the singer for New Pornographers? Was it Nico case.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Well, she sings and Carl Newman sings, and also the
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: great Catherine Calder who is the stuff you should know listener?
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Oh neat Oh wow, Yeah.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: I found that out and I was like, oh, I
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: got to get in touch with her, and I did,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: and now we are email buddies. And on the last
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: New Pornographers show in Atlanta, she's kind enough to meet
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: me behind the bus as they say, in the back
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: parking lot, and we chatted for a while and she's
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: just wonderful. And she also gonna plug her other band
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: because she has put out a great album last year
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: with her band Front Person, So get front Person. If
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: you like synthy goodness and like a beautiful angelic voice,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: then get front Person.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Speaking of cynthy goodness. That's so funny you bring that up.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Just today I discovered an entirely new genre of music
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: called dungeon synth. Have you heard of it?
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: What? No?
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay. It's a really well named genre. But it
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: is synth, super like cynthy synth, like eighties kind of synth.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: But the kind of synth that you would find is
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: like the score to a seventies Hobbit, like cartoon movie,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: animated movie. It's super wizardy and fantasy. It just evokes
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. It does such a good job of it.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: But I've only heard one album. I can't remember whose
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: it was. But check out Frost. Checkout Dungeon Synth. Yeah,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Kill Frost is a Dungeon synth band.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Nice work, all right, Dungeon Synth and the front Person
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: album their most recent Parade.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Is great, very nice. I think time for a break.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be back with more
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: album reviews right after.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: This, So Chuck. One thing you can say about humans
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: is that we are action oriented. Sure, in a lot
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: of ways, I will give you that. We sit around
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: in bicker and complain and moan and undermine one another.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: But when the chips are down, we can invent our
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: way out of a lot of problems. And invention doesn't
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: have to necessarily mean that we, you know, put some
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: metal on metal and made it go on its own.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: It can be something like inventing new areas for species
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: that are in danger of being lost to climate change
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: to settle and make another part of their range out of.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Well, sir, it sounds like you were talking about forest
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: assisted migration by God, I am. That's right, and that
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: is basically and we'll talk about the good, the bad,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: and the ugly of this. That is human being scientists
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: getting involved in the ecosystem and nature and spreading seed
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: and sort of getting ahead of the pace if the
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: pace isn't where it should be to keep up with
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: climate change, saying well, let me give you a little
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: little help forward. And this can be kind of thorny
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: because it's it's humans, like I said, getting involved in
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: the ecosystem in ways that science has long said, let
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: nature work it out, and that's the best way to
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: do it, because you don't know what can happen once
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: you start messing around.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like nature finds a way, it does these guys
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: are saying. The people who are in favor of this
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: are saying that made sense before July twenty twenty three,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: which is probably the hottest month in Earth's history, at
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: least as far as since it cooled basically, and that
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: followed the hottest June ever, right sore. These ecologists that
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: are like, no, we need to take much more of
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: an active hand in this, are saying like it's our
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: obligation to do something. Not doing anything is going to
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: be more destructive. It's like saying like, yeah, we shouldn't
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: move these people out of this house that's being bulldozed
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: over because we don't know what they're going to do
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: in their new neighborhood, so we're just gonna stand there
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and watch them die as the bulldozer crushes them inside
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: of their house. That's the That's a pretty good analogy.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: If I do congratulate myself here, it's very much akin
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: to that. And so those ecologies have a pretty good point,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Like it's like, yeah, it's not a great, perfect solution,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: but it's way better than doing nothing.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: And they're not doing it willy nilly though they're very
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: aware of the potential pitfalls, like you know, spreading disease
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: and introducing something to an area that could be really
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: bad for other things in that area. So they're not
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: just out there, you know, with a seed cannon blasting
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: stuff all over the place, like like tall lungern or something.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Wearing bike coat shorts.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: There's a couple of different kinds though. There's there's forest
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: assisted migration. The one that's really sort of thorny is
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: assisted rains range expansion. So like if you're if you're
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: spreading something within the zone where it might still normally
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: grow in like two hundred years, that's one thing. If
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: you're moving something completely out of that range, Like you know,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: they do forecasting and stuff, and they're like, what might
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: this area look like one hundred miles from here one
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: hundred years from now. If they're moving something completely out
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: of a range that it would even potentially grow, that
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: gets way way tricky. And I think there's less of
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: that happening, right.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, for sure, Like, but you hit it on the head.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: They're saying, like, Okay, by twenty one hundred, what is
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: this area going to be, Like is it going to
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: be like where these red oaks like to live now?
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, and if so, maybe we can
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: give them a head start and hope that some of
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: them will survive and adapt and start colonizing there. Right, Yeah,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: it's even pricklier than assisted range expansion. There's another, even
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: more radical one called species rescue or assisted species migration,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: and that is where you take a plant completely out
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: of its normal range, out of what you would even
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: predict would be its normal range, and just move it somewhere.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: It would never be right.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: This is considered the riskiest of the three by ecologists
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: because you can easily take something that's totally innocuous and
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: benign under normal circumstances and make it into an invasive
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: species when you move it. And the critics of this
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: typical point to the monterey Pine as a good example.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. It's endangered in California. It is native
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: to California, but they have introduced it in Australia and
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: it's it's I don't know about wreaking habit, but but
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: it's damaging the it's an invasive species on Australia.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. They consider it a weed and when
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: they see it they pluck it. They do not like
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: those in New South Wales. And Victoria. I believe states.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Now that's a weed, right, I don't know.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: No, I'm gonna have to agree with you on that.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: I think you just you just came up with a
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: brand new type of accent. Frankly, yeah, can we hear
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: it again? No, okay, I'm just gonna go back and
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: replay it.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: You know. It's funny, though, is I use the lady
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: on my phone that talks to me. What's it called
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: on Apples? I don't use Siri, but I still have
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: a voice for maps and stuff, and I use a
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: I usually go between an Irish woman and a Kiwi
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: A New Zealander. Oh yeah, and the New Zealander says
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: ry and it always cracks me up.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: That sound like Matthew McConaughey.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: It does. At the next street, take a rye.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: I gotta hear that. Yeah, I didn't know you could
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: do something that. Gee whiz to an Apple iPhone make it.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Talk about okay, some some regular old thing.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I don't do. I'd like sounds. Digital sounds are one
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: of those. Like I don't have mesophonia, but if I do,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: it's for digital sounds. Like when I get a new computer,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: the first thing I do is turn off all sounds
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: on it, like anything have to go. Like I have
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: to change my text sound every month or so because
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I'll just get like anxiety from it. I can't stand
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: text sounds, so I have to come up with a
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: new one. I do not like them.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Well, do you know what I do? Is I record?
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: I record my own text and phone rings and stuff.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I record my voice. Like when my
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: phone rings, I never have my ringer on, but if
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: it ever does, it's me going ring, ring, ring ring,
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: that's all. And if I get a text, it's me
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: going text. Man, that's great. Yeah, I get strange looks,
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: but who cares?
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Can I just use yours?
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll set them to you if you want, thank you, yeah,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: or you can, like you can make one specific for
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: you me, which is like maybe just your sweet voice
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: saying hell, hello, my love.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I used to have a ring tone with her singing
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: that part from What's Love Got to Do with It?
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: That?
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, But she just kept saying that over and
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: over again. It's pretty great.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: I'd love to hear that. It's also kind of maddening.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it never was. Actually I never got sick
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: of that one. I think that says a lot.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: But it's better than delu doo de lu doo doo.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, you just stressed me out. Sorry you got
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: anything else?
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: Uh? Now, I had a joke about your dislike of
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: digital sounds, but your love of craft work flies in
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: the face of that. But I won't even say it.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: That's more a statement than a joke.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it is true.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: It's quite accurate. I think that's it, Chuck.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing else. This is this is a good one.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Look out, you know, if you're in if you're in
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: New Mexico and you see a palm tree growing, then
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: watch out.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: That's right. It means that you've gone tropical and you're
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: in trouble now.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not in a good way.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more about plant migration, there's
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of interesting stuff out there on the internet
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: to read and go do that and maybe go become
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: an ecologist and figure out how to save the planet.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Please I agree.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Since Chucks had agreed, it's time for a listener mail.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: This is from William Lloyd. We did a shorty on
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: the NATO phonetic alphabet and what we didn't consider was this, Hey, guys,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: being a pilot and prior Air Force. I was glad
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: that you did one on this topic. It's not a correction.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: You guys did a good job, but you miss what
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I think is the best part. The numbers. The NATO
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: alphabet is kind of a misnomber because it actually also
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: includes number zero through nine, but you can't really make
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: a word starting from a number, so it's purely pronunciation.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Most numbers are the same, with a notable exception of niner.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: We use niner instead of nine because over garbled radio
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: it sounds like five, but mainly because NATO countries speak
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: German nine no. In German, three is pronounced tree to
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: not be confused with the antiquated prefix three s r
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: I four is two syllable syllables rhymes with lower, so
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: you would say four sounds kind of funny to differentiate
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: it from you know, fo r and five is five
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: to keep the word fire distinct in some dialects. Huh,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: this is good stuff. I feel dumb that we miss that.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: That's all interesting, but you're probably thinking, does anyone actually
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: say it like that? It depends. Niner is pretty universal.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: Plus we think it makes it sound cool, which it does.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Of course. The rest are much less common, but ending
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: where you are in the world and what dialects are involved,
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: they're useful from time to time. Signed Tailwinds Decker.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: That's awesome and also what a great nickname too. I
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: hope that's your nickname and your parents didn't actually name
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: you tail Wings.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: Well, no, no, no, Decker is the name. Tailwinds was the
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: Oh the sign?
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the cheers are the one love exactly. So Decker's
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the first name.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know it just a decker. Decker may
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: be a call sign.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Actually, right, Well I love that. Thanks a lot, Decker,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: much appreciated. I say niner whenever the occasion arises, you know,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: I like that.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: You know, our our good friend, Joe Randazzo, formerly of
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: The Onion and at Midnight Fame, our our comedy writer friend.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: He signs his emails yours with a comma Joe Joe Endezer.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: That's very I think yours is. It's very very warn
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: as is Joe.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Sure it's perfect for him.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: And as always high to the kids. Yeah, Joe's kids,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: sou Yeah.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: The Randazzos, they're listening family, the Flying Randazzos. They're trepeze artists.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Family just waiting to happen.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: They should be.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll see a lot's gonna happen by the end
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: of the century apparently, so who knows.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Well, if you want to get in touch with this
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: like Decker did and confuse me with your sign off,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: I'd appreciate it. So with Chuck too, he loves that
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. You can wrap it up, spend it
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: You Know, Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.