# Selects: Plant Migration

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 25 Jul 2026, 46 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/2f29c2a4-c007-4948-9ed6-b491016e4434/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Climate change is having sweeping effects on our climate and this is changing the world, not just for humans and other animals, but plants too. Will the Earth’s flora manage to find safe refuge in time? Josh and Chuck run down the odds in this classic episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[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.
[0:59] 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.
[1:16] 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
[1:23] Speaker 2: the other side of the feeder creek that goes into
[1:26] Speaker 2: the main creek. I call it. I even have a son.
[1:27] Speaker 2: This is fern forest, and it's a forest of ferns.
[1:31] Speaker 2: It's quite lovely.
[1:32] Speaker 1: God knows where they're from, because those things can travel
[1:34] Speaker 1: quite a bit, as we'll see.
[1:35] 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.
[1:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, How far can a fern travel?
[1:51] Speaker 1: A fern can travel. The Tasmanian tree fern in particular,
[1:55] Speaker 1: can send it spores five hundred to eight hundred kilometers
[2:00] Speaker 1: te hundred to five hundred miles from the mother plant.
[2:03] Speaker 1: And get this, a single frond a fraud produces more
[2:09] Speaker 1: than seven hundred and fifty million of those spores. Wow,
[2:13] 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
[2:40] Speaker 1: place and said, hey, let's get this, let's get this
[2:43] 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
[2:58] 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
[3:10] Speaker 1: really surprising because plants are what are known as sessile organisms.
[3:14] Speaker 1: They don't move from place to place individually as organisms,
[3:19] Speaker 1: but as a species they can actually move around like
[3:21] 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
[3:41] 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
[3:48] Speaker 2: mass do the same thing.
[3:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's all sorts of ways that they do
[3:53] Speaker 1: that too. So they do it by dispersing their seeds
[3:56] Speaker 1: or their spores in that case, fern spores or single
[3:59] 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.
[4:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And ferns, you know, it depends and
[4:12] Speaker 2: we'll get all into this stuff. But how fast this
[4:15] Speaker 2: happens depends on different factors. How far these plants can
[4:20] 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
[4:31] Speaker 2: things are generally moving north or up in elevation if
[4:36] Speaker 2: they hit mountains.
[4:37] Speaker 1: Or south in the southern hemisphere exactly.
[4:41] Speaker 2: So that's sort of the general pattern. And we mentioned
[4:44] Speaker 2: ferns because, like you said, those spores can really haul.
[4:48] Speaker 2: Ferns also mature very quickly, and you know, the wind
[4:51] Speaker 2: can just that's why I got that's why I got
[4:54] Speaker 2: a fern forest at my camp. Probably.
[4:56] Speaker 1: Yeah, so they check both of the boxes that you
[4:59] Speaker 1: need to be a fat migrating plant species. They produce
[5:03] Speaker 1: seeds or spores at a very young age, and their
[5:07] Speaker 1: seed or spore can travel very far distances right right,
[5:11] Speaker 1: so they can move around. And also it doesn't hurt that.
[5:13] Speaker 1: Like I said, ferns are adaptable. The trees and other
[5:16] 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
[5:26] 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
[5:35] Speaker 1: line if a squirrel happens to bury it somewhere and
[5:38] 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.
[5:49] 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.
[6:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, that would just checked a quick detour.
[6:53] Speaker 1: Wait wait I wasn't done.
[6:54] Speaker 2: Oh no, good, go ahead.
[6:55] Speaker 1: So if you look in an individual tree, an oak tree,
[6:58] Speaker 1: those acorns don't go particularly far away from the tree,
[7:02] Speaker 1: as the old saying goes, But the fact that they
[7:04] Speaker 1: do fall away from the tree moons that very slowly,
[7:08] Speaker 1: some of those seedlings are going to grow up a
[7:10] Speaker 1: little more northward or a little more southward than its
[7:14] Speaker 1: mother plant, and very very slowly, the whole group of
[7:17] Speaker 1: oaks can move southward or northward right.
[7:21] Speaker 2: Over hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years
[7:24] Speaker 2: so long.
[7:25] Speaker 1: The thing is, if you look at the fossil record,
[7:29] Speaker 1: they move way faster than that than they should. And
[7:33] Speaker 1: there's actually a paradox that was named by a guy
[7:35] Speaker 1: named Clement.
[7:36] Speaker 2: Reid, right reads paradox.
[7:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got a great, great title for.
[7:41] Speaker 2: It, of rapid plant migration. That's the full title.
[7:43] Speaker 1: It sounds almost like snake oil from the nineteenth century.
[7:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of does.
[7:49] 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
[7:56] Speaker 2: found from the fossil record, like you were talking about,
[7:59] Speaker 2: and as we'll see that that one, like, you know,
[8:00] Speaker 2: a pretty good way to study this stuff, especially pollen fossils.
[8:04] Speaker 1: Right, yeah, because they're so hardy.
[8:06] Speaker 2: Yeah. So he saw that trees were migrating a lot
[8:09] Speaker 2: faster than like the rate that you would think, and
[8:13] Speaker 2: so he like those oaks. I think was one example
[8:16] Speaker 2: you gave on the British Isles after the last glacial period,
[8:20] Speaker 2: over a span of like ten thousand years or so,
[8:24] Speaker 2: they traveled about six hundred miles and it would normally
[8:28] Speaker 2: take about a million years. The seeds if the seeds
[8:31] Speaker 2: were just dispersed in a typical way. But what he
[8:34] Speaker 2: figured was that what may be happening here is like
[8:40] Speaker 2: some weird weather event happens that sent things much farther
[8:43] Speaker 2: than usual, or like some deer or something eats something
[8:51] Speaker 2: and then poops out something really far away from where
[8:54] Speaker 2: it started, and so all of a sudden, this animal
[8:57] Speaker 2: has spread it via their poopoo.
[8:59] Speaker 1: Right, And this this is how like large scale migration happens,
[9:05] Speaker 1: or I should say rapid migration over long distances, right right, Yeah,
[9:08] Speaker 1: it's the it's the unusual, not just the acorn falling
[9:11] Speaker 1: and hitting the ground. It's not just gravity assisted. It's
[9:14] Speaker 1: animal assisted, which is called zoochorey, or it's wind assisted,
[9:18] Speaker 1: which is called a nemo corey, or water assisted, which
[9:21] Speaker 1: is called hydrochory. And that's just the way that some
[9:25] Speaker 1: plants disperse their seeds. That's kind of on top of
[9:29] Speaker 1: the normal way they disperse it, which is just dropping
[9:31] Speaker 1: it from their leaves or the spores blowing on the wind,
[9:35] Speaker 1: which I guess is one type of corey.
[9:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, So like if a squirrel loaded up its mouthful
[9:40] Speaker 2: of things m hm, and somehow found its way into
[9:42] Speaker 2: your camper. As you said, off for Arizona.
[9:45] Speaker 1: That would be a freak event.
[9:46] Speaker 2: Sure, it probably wouldn't be en mass, but you know,
[9:51] Speaker 2: that's a way a dree could move.
[9:53] Speaker 1: All it takes is that one that one oak to
[9:55] Speaker 1: make it sure to just survive, and then it starts
[9:59] Speaker 1: its own new part of the range.
[10:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And we Alsho should point out when when
[10:06] Speaker 2: was redoing this. This is a while ago, like one
[10:08] Speaker 2: hundred plus years ago, right.
[10:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a geologist. I don't know if we said,
[10:12] Speaker 1: but his reads Paradox of Rapid Plant Migration came out
[10:16] Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety nine and it was a smash hit.
[10:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, so people, I mean, for at least that long,
[10:22] Speaker 2: science has been sort of curious about this, this migration
[10:27] Speaker 2: happening at a rate that they would not expect.
[10:29] 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
[10:37] Speaker 1: actual species can migrate. And there's a few ways that
[10:41] 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
[10:53] 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
[11:05] 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.
[11:17] 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,
[11:24] 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
[11:31] 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,
[11:45] 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
[11:49] 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,
[11:55] Speaker 2: but you could still get a pretty good idea of
[11:57] Speaker 2: what's happening.
[11:57] 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
[12:04] Speaker 1: record left by a nineteenth century geologist named Alexander von
[12:09] 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.
[12:18] Speaker 2: Oh man, that's great.
[12:19] Speaker 1: They went back to Chimborazo Volcano in Ecuador, which Humboldt
[12:24] 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.
[12:38] 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
[12:57] 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.
[13:04] 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.
[13:41] 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.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.