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The Fascinating History of Dandelions · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Puffball Chuck, and there's Blowball Jerry, and I like to
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: call me Monk's Head and this is stuff you should do.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Did you get those references?
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Uh? Sure?
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well we should probably explain them to everybody else
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: because they probably think it's an in joke, but it's
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: not at all. Number one, because we're about to share
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: it with you. Number two, it's not really a joke.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: And number three, those are alternate names for dandelions.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: That's right, and we're going to be exalting the dandelion
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: probably say a lot of times how great we think
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry if you hate dandelions.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how it's unfairly maligned. And we want to thank
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Sarah Andrews from Idaho because Sarah is a listener who's
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: sent this in.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Nice, very nice. Thanks a lot, Sarah. Every time I
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: hear Idaho, I'm reminded of that silly T shirt that
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: said Idaho Daho. Do you remember that one?
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: I never saw that one?
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: What was that one? There was a company called like
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Dangerous t Shirts or something like that. And they had like, man,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: they were killing it with the crazy T shirts for
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: a while in like the early two thousands.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Was that like instead of saying coch it would say
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: you know, poke or cocaine.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that kind of thing.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of sometimes more original than that, but yeah,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: they were coveted for a little bit among people who
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: liked incubus and stuff like that.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Uh. I couldn't name an Incuba's song, so that's not me.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, So let's get back to dandelions. I don't know
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: how we ever get off track. It's kind of strange,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: but it happens from time to time, and it just happened, chuck.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: So let's stop it from happening right now.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Right, because dandelions, as you will see, have had a long,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: rich history that we're going to talk about in depth
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: as a medicinal plant, as an edible plant, as a
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: wonderful pollinator, and it was recast as a villain as
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: a weed to get rid of. But you need only
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: look at the history of the dandelion, the fact that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: it was brought to North America by colonists to kind
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: of underscore the fact that we wanted the dandelion here.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Right, and it's important to say that they brought it
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: here on purpose. I saw somebody point out like this,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: it wasn't it didn't hit your ride. It was like
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: purposely brought here. And the idea that dandelions suck is
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: a really recent development, especially compared to how long people
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: valued and prized dandelions. I just find that fascinating for sure.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: This thing is about thirty million years old.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Native in sort of Atlantic Europe all the way to
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Siberia and in the northern Hemisphere. You're gonna know a
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: dandelion because between March and October, you're gonna see these
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: beautiful yellow flowers. You'll see some what's called a rosette,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: which are these very short level ground stems that grow
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: in a circular pattern, and then these little slender, green
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: hollow stalks, you know, two to twenty inches, but usually
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: at least around here the dandelions are i don't know,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: like eight inches.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems about right. That's my experience as well.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So one of the other really impressive things about the
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: dandelion is if you look really closely at the flower,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: each individual pedal has a little what becomes the part
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: of the puffball. When the flower seeds. It already is attached,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: and that thing is called the papas and at the
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: bottom of the PAPIs is the seed, and the papos
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: itself is like this like parachute essentially that keeps the
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: seed aloft. And research into I saw pepeye, but I
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: like papusas as the plural.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Oh I love peppy.
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  Speaker 2: So it's found that they're actually phenomenal at keeping the
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  Speaker 2: seeds aloft. Like they create a kind of vortex that,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: until it was seen when they started testing pappy was
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: thought to be impossible.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that vortex not only makes it, you know,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: travel up and out and away in such a way
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: that if it was shaped any differently it wouldn't do that.
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  Speaker 1: But if that little thing lands on water, that same
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  Speaker 1: vortex is going to form a little air bubble around
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  Speaker 1: it and protect it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. One of my prize possessions is this dandelion puffball
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  Speaker 2: in cased in resin, and it's like the real deal.
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  Speaker 2: And I've never understood how it worked, but it turns
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: out that if you actually take a dandelion puffball and
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: actually not just put water in a but submerge it
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  Speaker 2: in water, the puffball does not. It doesn't collapse. Isn't
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: that nuts?
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  Speaker 3: It's amazing.
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  Speaker 2: I think so too. So that's just one of the
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: many amazing things we're going to reveal today on stuff
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  Speaker 2: you should know.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Did I wander into the wrong show?
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Know?
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Well, we should tell everybody it's ten am, and we
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: usually refer to this one. So I'm a much different
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: person at ten am.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You're a news anchor. Apparently, So I mentioned yellow. They're
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: not always yellow. They can be orange, they can be white,
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  Speaker 1: they can be kind of purply peach. They open in
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the morning and close in the evening, which is given
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: them the name the shepherd's clock, and they do that
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: to preserve pollen and keep that pollen safe for the
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: next day, which also makes it and this is one
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: of my favorite words at photo nasty.
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  Speaker 2: Oh that's a great word.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, plants open and close with the setting and rising
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: of the sun.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, felt photo nasty.
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  Speaker 2: Huh. I saw like a time lapse. I actually it
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: was in a video. It's just a series of photos
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: of the dandelion flower opening and closing over the course
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: of the day. I found I ran across a word
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: from researching this that I'd never heard before that I
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: absolutely love. Dandelions, like you said, are edible. They're used
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: in cooking their culinary plant, which makes them a pot herb.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: One word, a potterb. Is that awesome? What a great
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: homey little like. I just imagine you know, hobbits using
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: that word.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, hobbits. And my wife, Oh.
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  Speaker 2: Does she call it potterbs? You've heard that before?
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, she's I mean, that's a weird talking
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: about dandelions today. And she was just like, oh, are
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: you gonna talk about this?
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  Speaker 3: This, this, this, this, this.
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  Speaker 2: Right, She's like, oh, the famous potter.
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  Speaker 3: It's also another kind of clock.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 1: I already mentioned the shepherd's clock because of opening and
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  Speaker 1: closing it at the sunrise and sunset. But those little
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  Speaker 1: seed heads they're called dandelion clocks, and that is from
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  Speaker 1: the old you know, you make a wish when you
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: blow the dandelion and you scatter those seeds as sort
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  Speaker 1: of a long rich childhood tradition. But apparently the number
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  Speaker 1: of puffs it takes to empty that thing is what
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: time it is, so it can I haven't tested this out.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know this is rock solid science, but that's
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: a sort of a thing.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: It's pretty neat.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And one other thing about those papass and the seeds
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: that are attached to them, there's a longstanding, i guess,
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  Speaker 2: kind of urban legend or maybe rural legend that they
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: can travel up to one hundred kilometers sixty two miles,
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  Speaker 2: and that does not seem to be the case, even
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: though you'll see that stat absolutely everywhere, including some legitimate places.
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  Speaker 2: But Kyle helped us with this, our British buddy, and
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  Speaker 2: he found that a two thousand and three study, which
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: is the most recent you can find on this, is
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  Speaker 2: that just one in seven thousand papises travels more than
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  Speaker 2: one kilometer. So just leave one hundred kilometers out of
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  Speaker 2: the whole equation.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And Kyle told us that because he's from England.
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  Speaker 1: But for our North American listeners, we're talking three hundred
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  Speaker 1: and twenty something feet if it's one hundred kilometers in
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  Speaker 1: about three and a half feet for a meter.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And apparently ninety nine and a half percent of
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  Speaker 2: all papists land just within thirty feet of the parent plant,
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  Speaker 2: which is also ten meters. So yes, if you ever
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  Speaker 2: hear that a papist contain travel one hundred kilometers, you
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  Speaker 2: can be like, that's wrong. What you just said is wrong.
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  Speaker 1: I think like one did, and they framed that maybe
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  Speaker 1: that's the one you have in amber.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that first dollar bill you make as
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: a business, you put it into amber.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: There's also a cool adaptation where after they flower, that
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  Speaker 1: little hollow stalk that the flower sits upon goes limp
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  Speaker 1: on the ground and is just sort of hiding there
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  Speaker 1: away from birds and stuff, And when they ripen up,
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  Speaker 1: they jump back up again and they're like, here we are.
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  Speaker 2: That's pretty cool. I think so too. Do you want
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: to take a break and come back and talk about
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  Speaker 2: where they got their name? Let's do it, so chuck
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  Speaker 2: a dandelion. I've never stopped and considered why it was
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: called that, but it turns out that whole that lion
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  Speaker 2: at the end is actually a giveaway for where the
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  Speaker 2: name came from. Uh. It's French for lion's tooth dent
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  Speaker 2: de leon pretty neat.
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  Speaker 3: I love that.
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  Speaker 2: The reason they call it that is it's a reference
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  Speaker 2: to the deeply serrated jagged leaves. I guess somebody was like,
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  Speaker 2: that looks like a lion's tooth, and they lived in France,
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  Speaker 2: and that's where they got the name dandelion.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also if you look at the botanical name,
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  Speaker 1: it really gives a good indication of what it was
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  Speaker 1: being used for back then. The genus name is Taraxicum.
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  Speaker 1: And there are a couple of explanations here. I kind
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  Speaker 1: of like the second one. The first one is a
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Greek word for disorder, which is a taxia.
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  Speaker 3: But it's also could.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Have come from Arabic for bitter herb, which is tarak chagogue.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: And then when you combine bitter herb with the species name,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: which is how would you say that aficion alle, that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: is a word for monastery store room. So a bitter
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  Speaker 1: herb in a monastery storeroom basically is telling you, hey,
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  Speaker 1: we use this plant in a very productive way.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole disorder thing is totally insensible if you
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  Speaker 2: ask me.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
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  Speaker 2: So one of the other great things. Humans use dandelions,
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: as we'll see, in a lot of different ways and
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: have for a very long time. But our animal friends
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: love dandelions too. Those flowers, even though they look kind
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: of flimsy if you think about it, they're rich in
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: nectar packed with it. So bees, butterflies, basically any kind
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  Speaker 2: of pollinators love dandelions, Like you said, the reason the
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: stalk falls to the ground after flowering and as the
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: seedheads are developing, that's because birds love the little dandelion seeds.
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  Speaker 2: And one of the other things that's important about them
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  Speaker 2: too is they they basically flower and seed almost around
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  Speaker 2: the like the whole year, depending on where you live.
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  Speaker 2: So at times where there's not a lot of food
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  Speaker 2: sources for birds and pollinators, the dandelions there to kind
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  Speaker 2: of keep them going through the same you know, late fall.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I think it's one of the first
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: guys to get going in the spring.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Too, right, I believe so. Yeah, So we're going to get.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: More in detail about you know, how it's been eaten, but.
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  Speaker 3: Well, actually let's save all that.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Let's just tease it then and say it has long
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: been eaten as now being eaten again due to the
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: sort of foraging movement happening in the culinary world.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: It's a great time.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I think that kind of kicked off in COVID when
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: people are like, well, I can't go to the store.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: What can I eat that's in my backyard.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: I'll try dandelions. I've always wondered what it tastes like better.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: So yeah, nice. So I think we said probably a
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: couple of times that people have been using dandelions for
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: all sorts of reasons, not just as potterbs, for a
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: long time. One of the earlier mentions we can find
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: was in the Arabic world. A couple of physicians named
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Rozi's and Avicenna both wrote about some of the properties
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: of dandelions and dandelion roots in the tenth and eleventh centuries,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: and most of what they were talking about was its
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: use as a diuretic and medicinally speaking, that's probably the
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: most famous property that dandelions have is they make you pee.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: And in fact, there's a couple of names that refer
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: to that, depending on where you are for dandelions that
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: refer to the fact that they make you pee, right.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
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  Speaker 1: In France, they're called the apparently more than they're called
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the dentte leone, they're called the pison lit, which means
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: you know, pp in the night, and a folk name
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: in England is a pissipad for the same reason.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Know, apparently it's all the potassium in there that's going
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: to stimulate your nation and you know. Because of that,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: diuretics are used for a lot of things, and you know,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: medicinally now and historically, if you want to work something
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: through your system and pee it out, dandelions is a
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: good way to make that happen.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and very famously in the American Midwest they're called
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: peepee weeds. Oh, that's totally made up, I.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Should say, Oh, that's not true either.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: No, I just made it up.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, I got you.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: I got you back for the what was the lateral
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: gene transfer gospel group that you got me with?
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Oh, geez, I don't even remember now it was that.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: But I've only gotten you once. The score is Josh
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: three thousand.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Oh man.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: There was a sixteenth century book too. What was the
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: name of that one?
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: People call it Garden of Health, because the full title
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: of it is containing the sundry, rare and hidden virtues
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: of all kinds of simples and plants, together with the
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: manner of how they are used and applied in medicine
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: for the health of man's body against diverse diseases and
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: infirmities most common against men. Gathered by the long experience
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: and industry of William Langham, practitioner of physic that's the
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: actual title of that book, which is why there's like, yeah,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: we're just going to call it Garden of Health.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, Garden of Health really says what that says.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: I know, he didn't need all that extra stuff. That's
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: like the introduction. I think he put the introduction in
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: the title.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this was a little did it say the end
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: at the end pretty much.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: This is from, like I said, the sixteenth century, and
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: it talked a lot about, you know, all kinds of
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: things they thought it could help back then, toothache, fever's depression,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: even baldness. But they also talked about growing it alongside
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: other vegetables and herbs in the garden. And you duck
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: up this kind of cool fact. It's ethylene gas that
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: they release, So if you actually grow dandelions or have
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: dandelions growing near fruiting plants like tomatoes, they're going to
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: ripen faster.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that neat super cool? Yeah, we're going to
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: cover a lot of actually pretty cool little benefits I
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: guess that they provide. But let's keep going with the
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: tradition of using them medicinally, shall we. Sure there's a
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: guy named John Girard, who wrote a book in the
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: sixteen thirties, and he's like, hey, I want to contribute
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: to this too. I've found that dandelion strengthens the weak stomach,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: and which is important because actually, if you use the
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: roots of a dandelion, it's a It contains a lot
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: of inulin, which is an important prebiotic for gut health.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: So John Gerard wasn't just whistling dixie.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: No, not at all.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: It turns out they have more vitamin A than spinach,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: more vitamin C than tomatoes. They've got a ton we
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: already mentioned potassium, but also a lot of calcium, a
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: lot of iron, and then a lot of words that
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: I can barely pronounce that you found that it's packed with,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: starting with flavonoids, that's the only one I had heard of.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: It has triterpenes, sesquiterpenes, phenolic acids, sterols, and cumerants, and
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: they bestow things like antibacterial, antioxidant, anti inflammatory, hepatoprotective, and
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: anti tumor properties. And you dug up all ways that
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: they actually help health.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So I mean we can talk all day
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: about like the ways that people thought it would help
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you back in the sixteenth century, but people might poo
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: poo something like that. But there have been modern studies.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: I'll just give you a few examples. There was a
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: study from twenty fifteen in Canada that reported that dandelion
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: extract can block ultraviolet UVB radiations. Crazy when applied to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the skin, it can also irritate the skin. So don't
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: necessarily just like take dandelions and like start rubbing them
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: all over yourself at the pool. There was a tw
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen review of studies from a university in Denmark
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: that suggests that dandelion extracts actually stimulates pancreatic cells to
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: produce insulin, so it could potentially help control blood sugar. Right,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and what about there was one on the liver too, Right.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I said it was hypato protective, which means it
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: helps deliver And actually it goes in and like just
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: kicks butt in your liver. It slows the progression of fibrosis,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: which is scarring of the liver, and the extract actually
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: inactivates the cells that cause fibrosis in the liver and
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: essentially your liver. As everybody knows, it can regenerate itself
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: once the dandelion extract has gone in and stopped the fibrosis,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: the liver can heal, So it's incredibly helpful with protecting
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: the liver from damage. I mean, that's nuts. It's almost
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: like it was designed to do that.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: For the liver.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: It's that effective.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I do want to mention the cancer one because Emily
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: had a very funny, very Emily line. There was a
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty man, why do I do that lately? Twenty twelve,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I did that.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: I did do that a lot. Yeah, what is happening?
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: It's a study from the University of Windsor in Canada
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: about dandelion root extract can induce apoptosis, which is cell
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: death in pancreatic and prostate cancer and test tube in
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: their cells in the test tubes, potentially preventing their spread.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: So this is something Emily new and this morning she
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: was like, yeah, it's so like modern American at the
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: very least, to take something that could actually help fight
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: cancer and spray chemicals on it to kill it. It
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: caused cancer, right, yeah, and she stormed out of the room.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we have to learn the hard way, but it
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: is it is reassuring that things seem to be coming
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: full circle, you know what I mean.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like people are getting a little more
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: eyes open to stuff like that.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're getting on board the dandelion train. So one
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: thing about those studies that you said, like, they're essentially
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: confirming to our modern tastes what the Chinese knew all
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: the way back in six point fifty nine CE, people
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: like Nicholas Culpepper knew in the eighteenth century. All these
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: people wrote about this stuff and just how effective it was.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: And then now science is going in and saying these
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: people were right, and here's how it is effective. I
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: think that's pretty cool, and in part because of that,
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: the dandelion is being rehabilitated. But first I think we
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: need to mention you said that it came by North America.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: I piped up on purpose. I think more than once
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: even I was so excited about that. And it's possible
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: it was actually on the Mayflower. It arrived that early.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: And they think that because of plant migration, as we
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: talked about before, the dandelion may have spread ahead of
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Europeans as they entered further and further into the North
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: American continent, and so Native Americans that they encountered may
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: have already been using dandelions in some of their medicines.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. They were drinking it in tonics. They
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: were boiling it with fatty meats, which sounds disgusting.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: It does it, really, unless you're talking about something like
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: collards with like hamhocks or something that sounds okay. But
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: in this case, I imagine a pot of boiling water
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: with a skin of fat just bubbling at the top
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: and some dandelion leaves floating around in it.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk about, you know, more ways you can
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: eat it, but it's long been used in like cordials
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: and beers like the dandelion root. You can you know,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: grind it up and use it as like a coffee substitute,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: kind of like chickory. So you know, people were using
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: it for medicine. They were using it for old kinds
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of folk remedies and foods and things, largely because again
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: it was everywhere it grows in not very good soil.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: They can it's considered a perennial because they can live
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: well because like you said, they're kind of growing year round,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: but they can live for more than ten years, and
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: you don't mess with them and kill them.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty cool too. One of
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the other things I saw, there's a book called The
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Economical Housewife from the eighteen fifties that it might be
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: the first recipe for dandelion wine, and people still make
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: that today, and it's actually super easy. You just take
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: some dandelion flowers, some water. Eventually you had some sugar
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: and some lemon, let it sit for a couple of weeks,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: strain it out, and then let it sit for another
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: week in age, and you've got yourself some dandelion wine.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And it sounds deliciously easy or maybe easily delicious, one
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: of the two. But I'd love to try. Have you
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: ever had dandelion wine or dandelion beer or anything like that?
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely a thing.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Ray Bradbury had a novel called Dandelion Wine from nineteen
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: fifty seven, so it's something that's.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Been enjoyed all over the world. In France they.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Use it sometimes they'll take the leaves and blanch them
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and spread them with bread and butter like it sounds
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: like if there's not a Brooklyn restaurant serving dandelion toast
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: at this point, yeah, then what is happening in.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Our I don't know. It sounds like fairy toast like
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the Australians love, but with dandelion leaves instead.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also, you know, just a salad, a salad
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: green component, and like we said, it is very bitter.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: But it's using all kinds of salads. Sometimes it's the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: only kind of leaf using a salad. Sometimes it can
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: be mixed in with other things. But in France they
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: have one called the salad de pisson lits from that
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: original name, that's got bacon in it and dandelion leaves.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: It just you know, sounds pretty good to me.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently that was a common dish during the depression
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: in America too, because it was just cheap, you know. Yeah,
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: and it sounds delicious too. I say, we take a
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: break and we come back and talk about another surprising
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: use of dandelion that I hadn't heard of until this,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: but you probably did because of Emily.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: No. I delighted her with that fact as well, So
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: we'll be right back, all right. So Josh said that
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: he hadn't heard of this cool fact. I hadn't heard
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: of it. Emily hadn't heard of it. And I think
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: it may be the fact of the podcast, but dandelions
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: are a source of natural rubber.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Pretty cool, I would I would take issue with that.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: I think it has to do with the vortices over
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: the pappy or the fact that they're potterbs. All right,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: this one's good. It's up there. Maybe they're all tied
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: for first I don't know, but hey.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: That means we've got a good topic if there are several,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: right competitors.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so not just any dandelion produces rubber or
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: latex that can be turned into rubber. A specific type
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: of dandelion they figured out the Kazakh dandelion, which is
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: native to the Eurasian steps. How'd you like that? It's
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: also called the Russian dandelion here in the United States.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: That specific one puts out enough latex that it gave
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: rubber trees a run for their money. During World War Two,
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: which we've talked about many times, America and Britain were like,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: we need more rubber for the war effort, and the
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Japanese control essentially all of the rubber supply were at
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: war with the Japanese, so we better come up with
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: something else quick.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So they literally started screening like thousands and thousands
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: of plants, and then I guess they're like, hey, if
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the rubber tree can grow rubber, there's got to be
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: something else out there. The Soviets are the ones who said,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: try this Kazakh dandelion, and because of shortages during the wars,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: they said, here, here's a bunch of seeds, and they
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: sent a bunch of those Kazakh seeds the Soviet allies
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: at the time in the nineteen forties, and ultimately we
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: use some of it. Russians, Americans and Germans did produce
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: rub from dandelions. It's very hearty. It can be susceptible
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to disease, though, depending what kind of disease, but also
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: grows everywhere and serves as a pollinator and it doesn't
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: deforce things. So the big problem though, and I nowhereone's like,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: oh my god, it's just the miracle we've all been
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: hoping for with rubber. It just doesn't yield as much
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: as the Russian said it did, and so it's not
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: economically viable as long as the real rubber tree is around.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: They released some paper that overstated how much rubber can
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: be gotten from the dandelion because they wanted to sound
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: like big shots.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: So the reason why we didn't just keep going with
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: dandelion rubber research in trying to figure out how to
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: increase yields is because in the meantime, people figured out
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: we could make synthetic rubber from petroleum. It was almost
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: as good as natural rubber, and it certainly was a
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: good enough substitute, and we could just make batch after
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: batch after batch rather than have to try to yield
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: it from dandelion. So that fell to the wayside. And
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: then by the time World War two ended, we had
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: access to natural rubber supplies from the from the southeast
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Southeast Asia, i should say, and so all that kind
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: of put dandelion rubber on the back shelf. But in
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: the what eighty almost one hundred years geez, since World
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: War Two, I remember when that was like just like
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: that was firmly like forty to fifty years in the past,
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: and it just keeps getting further and further away. It's
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: really awful. But we've kind of figured out in the
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: interim that synthetic rubber it's useful, but there's nothing that
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: can match natural rubber for like grip, heat, dissipation, all
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: sorts of other properties. So we're starting to go back
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: to look at sources for natural rubber, including ones that
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: are more sustainable than the rubber trees, which require you
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: basically DeForest and then plant the rubber trees to create
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: a plantation with dandelions. You don't have to do that stuff.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Now you got a big field, you can have dandelions,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: and like I said, it grows and it doesn't have
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: to be great soil. You can grow it hydroponically, without
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: soil at all. You can grow it in the air,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: which is aeroponically. It's pretty amazing. And I think it's
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: one of those things where like anytime you have a
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: monoculture plant like that, like the rubber tree, it makes
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: people a little bit nervous besides a deporestation, like if
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: anything ever happened, like some kind of weird blight, and
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: the rubber trees were just, you know, not a candidate anymore.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: You got dandelions kind of waiting on deck with their
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: bat right.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of surprising that it went from this
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: really prized plant in so many ways to a hated weed,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: especially in Europe and the United States. And you hit
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: upon why it became a hitted weed. You use the
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: word monoculture, and the largest monoculture here in the United
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: States are people's lawns. And for part of the etacho
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: of the lawn, you cannot have dandelions breaking up that
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: perfect unbroken sea of green grass. You got a dandelion
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: popping up, the whole thing's ruined. Basically, that's the way
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: people think of dandelions and lawns these days, or have
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: since about the fifties.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Essentially, that beautiful yellow flower, stop it right, dig it up.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that's what happened.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And we've gone over this before, but just sort of
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: as a quick overview, this is the kind of thing
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: that came over from England. Starting in the seventeenth century
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: is when British aristocracy really started to get into these
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: perfect sort of croquet croquet playing.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: Lawns, I guess is what you would call them.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: And then in America it was post World War Two
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: when suburbanization really took hold, lawnmowers really came into their own.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Everyone was like, hey, we've got these great new chemicals
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: that'll kill everything except and make.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: The grass grow really really well.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: And it's it's just modern and tidy and good looking,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and that really kind of transformed the United States, you know, like,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: keep up that lawn, make a perfect green lawn if
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you want to keep your property value up.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Anybody a big one. And Kyle also dug up another
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: reason too that once the Cold War rolled around, conformity
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: was equated with safety. So if you weren't keeping your
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: lawn trimmed like everybody else, what's going on with you?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: You're making me feel a little bit nervous because you're
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: not conforming. You must be a red spy hiding out
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: in suburbia basically, right. And I think that's a really
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: important kind of overlooked driver for things like perfectly manicured
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: lawns and everybody having the same kind of thing.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And speaking of driver, the other I don't think
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: we've ever mentioned contributor to this nice was in the
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifties.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: Golf started being televised.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty seven, you got golf on television for
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the first time, and people look at Augusta National and
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: these golf courses that were beautifully manicured and esthetically pleasing
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: to the eye, and they're like, hey, I need to
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: get some of that in my front yard. Maybe I
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: can practice chipping some balls around in my front yard.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, if you're sitting there thinking like, wow, I
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: really love hearing these guys talk about grass, but I'd
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: love to hear them have a dispute over it, you
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: should go listen to How Our Grass Works episode. It's
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: actually a pretty good one. It's a classic stuff you
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: should know episode.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: It totally is.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: But anyway, all that preamble about you know us poopa
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and lawns and why America did that brought us to this,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: which is weeds became enemy number one and dandelions were
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: maybe even near the.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: Top of that list.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why. For all the
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: reasons that they're valuable the pollinators and other kinds of plants,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: and that they can grow in marginal lands and basically everywhere,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: is it makes them an enemy as a weed if
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: you're trying to create a monoculture lawn, right, so, they
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: can regenerate from like a one inch section of root,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: which means that if you cut a dandelion off at
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: the even below ground level, it's like good, you know, good,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: try pal, but it just sprouts right back up. You
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: have to dig them up, and even after you dig
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: them up, you might not get them because one of
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: the things that I didn't know about dandelions is I
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: knew they grew from a tap root. You have to
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: get that tap root up or else it's just feudile. Yeah,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: but that tap root can grow, depending on the age
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: of the dandelion, over a dozen feet meters four meters
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: into the ground meters. Yeah, and that makes it really
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: hard to get rid of. And so if you're like
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: a grounds keeper for a golf course or something like that,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: you have to really keep up with the dandelions because
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: they'll spread really fast and they're really hard to get
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: rid of once you do start trying to get rid
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: of them.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: And I got to say this last fact from Kyle
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: because it goes back to the lawns, but this really
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: kind of drives at home of about how not great
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: a perfect green lawn is for our society. There's a
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: study in two thousand and five residential lawns in the
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: United States make up two percent of the land but
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: require more irrigation than any domestic agricultural crop.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I've got one to piggyback on that. Let's see The
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: US Fish and Wildlife Service says that homeowners use up
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: to ten times more pesticides per acre then farmers use
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: on their crops. So we're using this stuff over using it,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: and we're using it on stuff that's not productive land,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: just to keep up with the Joneses. So they don't
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: think we're communist spies.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I walk Gibson in the mornings and
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: there are the only lawns that he ever like rubs
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: his face in are the most perfect green ones. And
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I know that it's because they have recently been sprayed
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: and he's smell it and it is trying to rub
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: all in that stuff, and it drives me bonkers.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a like I would love to just
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: let my lawn and you me too, just go to
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: like wildflowers, go to weeds, you know, just mow it,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: you keep it mode, but at a higher height. But yeah,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: you just let this stuff grow, and we would be
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: completely We would stick out like a sore throam from
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: the rest of the neighborhood, so much of their neighbors
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: would be mad at us. That's how entrenched the idea
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: of having a perfect lawn is still in the United states,
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: depending on where you live.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and like no one around there even
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: does like permaculture and you know other options besides just
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: letting it grow wild and crazy.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: No, it's it's nuts. So we definitely draw a line.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: So we're like, Okay, we'll keep up with the lawn,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: but don't touch the you know, the shrubbery, the perennials,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: the garden essentially, right, But people will hire the same
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: company to like treat their lawn with chemicals, to spray
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: their bushes and spray their gardens with chemicals to kill
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: off the bugs, and then they have to go in
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: and try to recreate the stuff that the bugs are
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: doing for free, the services they're providing because you've killed
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: off the bugs. It's it's insane to me. So we
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: definitely don't don't. We don't cot into that.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was speaking of bugs.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: It was a scientific review in twenty nineteen that found
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: that the global massive insects is falling at a rate
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: of about two and a half percent per year, and
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: dandelions is a high high on the list of pollinators.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Caterpillars love munching on them, moths loves munching on them,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: and all those bees and butterflies love.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: Doing their thing on them.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: So even you know, I'm not trying to shame people,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: but let's say you do like your lawn and everything,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: even waiting in the spring like longer to cut it,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: even cutting it higher, letting the dandelions grow up a
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: little bit before you start whacking them down. Then that
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: minimal amount will help out a little bit.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: What's interesting is a non chemical way I saw to
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: treat your turf grass for dandelions is to let your
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: grass grow longer than you have been like cutting it
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: at a high or mower height. Yeah, because as we
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: talked about, dandelion leaves are so low growing that the
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: grass will shade out and out compete the dandelions. So
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: if you really do want to get rid of dandelions
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: but you don't want to use chemicals, that's a pretty
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: good way to do it from what I've seen.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Some states have actual programs or just one in Minnesota
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: called Lawns Two Legumes, which is a great title. They
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: launched that in twenty nineteen where they just basically incentive
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: incentivized people to say, get rid of that lawn. Put
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: in flowering plants, put in beds. You can have a
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: rebate if you have a pollinator friendly native wildflower scene
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: at your house.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't look up the amount, but I would
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: guess at a minimum, the rebate is worth a million dollars, right,
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: that'd be my guess, you think. So, there's a couple
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: other things that I found that dandelions, I don't know
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: if you looked at it or not, that they kind
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: of provide surfaces to the plants growing around them, including grass. Yeah,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: because as we mentioned, those tap roots, they grow really deep,
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: and as they're growing deep, they're actually accessing nutrients that
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: other plants around them, again, including grass, the roots of
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: those plants can't reach because it's too deep, and it
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: brings those nutrients up towards the surface, and as the
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: dandelion dies off, the other plants get to get to
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: eat those nutrients that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: And those same roots also airrate in loose and compacted
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: dirt too, which makes it easier for the plants around
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: the dandelions to grow.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Amazing.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Is there anything dandelions can't do?
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, they're not super fragrant.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: No, that's true. They're pretty much useless in that.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: But they can grant a child to wish.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: They sure can, Man, they sure can. I remember doing
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: that so many times. I keep trying to do that
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: with my dandelion puffhead in Resin and it's not working.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: I don't have anything else, so I'm kind of looking
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: over the list here.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I know we were kind of all over the place,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: but it's just sort of one of those episodes where
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, here's a list of one hundred amazing things,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: and so sometimes those are a little tougher to organize.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but they can be pretty fun too. I had
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: fun at least. How about you and that rubber thing?
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Are you kidding? Since neither one of us has anything
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: else about dandelions, and we're gonna call it quits on
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: this episode, which means we've just activated listener mail.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: You know, no listener mail today, because what we're gonna
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: do is something we haven't done in a while, is
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: help support and bring some attention to a great cause,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: our friends from the Cooperative for Education aka co ED,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: whose mission it is to break the cycle of poverty
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: and Guatemala through education, and we've been working with them
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: for fifteen years and we got a new thing coming
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: up with them, right.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, we do. So first, let me just explain over
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: one point three million dollars and contributions have been made
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: to co ED thanks to our partnership with them, that
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: stuff you should know for fifteen years. That's that's really
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: good if you ask me, that's incredible, which means that
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty kids have been given like a
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: huge leg up to escape poverty and create like break
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: intergenerational poverty and create literally like a new life for
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: their entire family from that point on.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: You know, we went down there, I guess fifteen years
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: ago when they invited us very early on, and stuff
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: you should know is canon, yeah, in our history, And
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: we went down to Guatemala and those shows, we did
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: some shows on that trip and that visit we get
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: to actually hear Jerry speak, which is pretty exciting. Yeah,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: And they're just great that we've been working with them
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: ever since. And the fact that the stuff you should
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: army has raised one point three million bucks for them
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: over the past fifteen years is going to be a
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: real proud part of our legacy. But we have a
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: call to action, right.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, so you can joined. We're starting a drive essentially
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: right now, that's right. You can join the cooperative, which
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: is a program of THEIRS, for twenty dollars a month,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: and you'll collectively sponsor a bunch of students in the
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Rise Youth Development program, right, that's right, And so it's
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: going to get spread out. You're going to be helping
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: a bunch of kids at once, so you can feel
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: good like five times over with each each monthly donation.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: And then in twenty twenty five, more than eleven hundred
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: students will be able to start school in World Guatemala,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: which will be their biggest class ever. They need help
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: to make that happen, which is why we're saying join
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: the cooperative.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: And as an incentive, if this is for you, if
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: you set up your gift by Tuesday, December third, then
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: you are signed up for a chance to do a
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: virtual hangout with Josh and I. We do this every
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: year around the same time. It's always a lot of fun.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: We hang out with I don't know if six or
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: eight people all over the country and they get to
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: just you know, ask us questions and tell us that
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: we're cool or dumb or whatever. It's your chance to
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: really hand it to us if that's what you're after, right.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully don't do that, but sure, I mean, I
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: guess if you've given to co ED and you deserve
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: to do whatever.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: You want to us, that's right.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: So just go to Cooperative for Education dot org. That's
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: the word cooperative f O R education dot org slash
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: s y s k and start giving.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: Now. A little bit goes a long way down there.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, And in the meantime, while you're looking up Cooperative
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: for Education dot org slash s y s k, you
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: can also send us an email. Send it off to
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.