Ologies with Alie Ward - Part 1: Dendrology (TREES) with Casey Clapp -- Encore

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Part 1 of a very special duo: Do trees have feelings? How do they talk? How old can they get? Are there any tree stories that will make me cry? Spoiler: YES. This episode aired in May 2018 and is worth a revisit, especially since Part 2 is a brand new 2020 interview with possibly the world's most enthusiastic tree expert, J. Casey Clapp. Learn about his many tree tattoos, new additions to those tattoos, how roots communicate to each other, "crown shyness,” social media shyness and the mental health benefits of tree proximity. Also: banana facts and Casey f*cking hates apples. Be sure to hear the fresh catch-up interview in Part 2 to learn what Casey’s been up to since this originally aired. He’s been busy. Follow Casey Clapp at Instagram.com/Clapp4Trees and his new podcast Instagram.com/arbortrarypod Sponsor links: www.alieward.com/ologies-sponsors A donation went to EcoTrust.org Listen to his podcast, Completely Arbortrary: https://linktr.ee/arbortrarypod/ Casey's tattoo artist, Shawn Hebrank at Blood Root: https://www.instagram.com/bloodroottattoo Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick Thorburn Support the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey. Okay, so it's me. I'm from the future. I'm from the final breaths of 2020, giving you not one, but two episodes this week. I told myself I would take a couple weeks off, and so instead of doing that, I just created a couple bonus episodes because I'm just very bad at resting and I like my job too much, so deal with it. Okay, so there's this one and a bonus update episode to the Dundrology episode that's coming out the same day. Okay, so listen to both. Here's the deal. This is a refreshed encore of a May 2018 interview that turned out to be just a runaway fan favorite. It's probably the most recommended allergies episode ever in the history of allergies, so listen again or for the first

time if you've never heard it, and then close out this year on a tree-huffing high note because I love this topic. I adore this allergies so much that your Q also has a bonus interview. I just did last week with Casey Clapp. It's so good. He's just pure joy. There are so many updates about his life, and by coincidence, he has a new podcast launching in a week I didn't even know about, and so I want you to hear all about it. So there's this one and then the bonus episode. Okay, let's go. Are you ready? Okay, here's the probably scenario. This is what I'm thinking is happening. You either fucking love trees and that's where you're here or you're like, good Lord podcast dad, what is this long ass episode about trees

even get a cover? I'm going to dive in, but only if it's full of infectious enthusiasm. This episode will make you so pumped about trees. You're going to be bummed about having skin and blood. You're going to be so jealous of bark and sap, and you'll have new scrabble words, and you'll start questioning if you should just string a hammock up in the backyard and live outside like a big ape squirrel. But first, let's get some business out of the way. I'll speak fast. Okay, it's important business like telling you you can be an oligite who proselytizes with an oligy shirt or pin or totes. If you wear totes at oligysmerch.com. Thank you all for buying and wearing merch. Patreon.com slash oligys is a portal through

which you can also ensure that this podcast exists. Patrons, I love you. I want to put you in the front pocket of some overalls and hug you so much. Also here in December 2020, is this week number two in the Science Podcasts. Number two. So rating and subscribing and reviewing this week, this week might just bump hidden brain out of the number one spot if only for a fleeting moment. And also I read all your reviews such as this fresh one from old Rat Wizard who said, I have been using Allie's mom's trick to fall asleep ever since the Sumnology episodes and it works like a charm. I appreciate how you learned big facts and small day-to-day tricks from this delightful host. Oh, Rat Wizard, stop.

Also, if you want to learn that fancy-nancy insomnia buster trick, listen to both Sumnology episodes. It will change your life. Thank you, mom. Okay, now on to dendrology. Okay, those trees. You ready for trees? Okay, so dendro comes from ye old Greek meaning tree. And if you're like that, why does that remind me of brain stuff? Well, that's because the dendrite is a part of a nerve cell that looks a lot like a tree. So dendro. There you go, trees. So you've got trees in the brain. You're going to have trees on the brain. After this, I'll tell you that much, you're going to be pining for more arborist facts. Okay. So the term dendrologist is a little funky. So technically, it's anyone who studies trees, which this human being I interviewed has done.

I have never met anyone with such a raw zeal or deep knowledge for and of trees. You will love him. He's been studying tree biology and dendrology since 2007. And he's currently a tree inspector for the city of Portland, Oregon. And he gives talks all over the world about trees. He teaches sold out classes. I was like, so, yeah, so you're a dendrologist, right? And he demurred at the title of dendrologist. I'm like, dude, this is like, when I was goth, I didn't realize I was a goth until I look back at pictures. And I was like, Oh, I was definitely a goth. You study trees, you're a damn dendrologist, accepted. But he was like, we'll get to that. So I was headed to Seattle for a day to shoot this show called Innovation Nation. That's one of my other jobs. And I thought,

I bet there's gotta be tree people up here. There's so many trees. So I did a little googling, and I saw there was a sold out tree workshop the day I was there led by this Portland based dude. And then I began very gingerly stalking him online to try to get in touch. The only social media I could find was a Facebook account. And after following like a few leads, I emailed his bosses and then presto. The next day I creepily invited him to hang out in my hotel room. I figured his bosses knew where he was. And I hoped he would not abuse his access to chainsaws. He did not. He was great. So we talked for literally two hours, which was very difficult to cut down. No tree pun intended. About so many burning curiosities. Do trees feel pain? How do they talk

to each other? What's up with crown shyness? Does he have a favorite tree? Will trees make you write your novel any faster? Does he get sad when he looks at wooden objects? What is tree porn? And are there any super sad stories about trees? Spoiler. Yes. And also great ones. Also yes. So I'm going to go out on a lamb and say, this is a great episode. So stick around for some really wonderful tree facts. Will you lumber up? I swear to God, that's going to be the last tree pun. Please trust me. For a person who is somewhat in denial about being a dendrologist, Casey Clap. Hey, I've never done anything like this before. Yay, that's going to be great. So this is your mic. You weren't the easiest person to gently stalk online. That's fantastic. I didn't know it could

be found. Yes, you could know anyone would ever look. I was like, I must at talk trees with him. Oh my God, this is so flattering. Thank you. Okay, so I have a question. Yes, go ahead. Arborist versus dendrologist. Yes. What's the difference? So an arborist specifically focuses on trees in the urban area, but most of the time an arborist is one who manages a tree in the urban area. So if they're going to cut a tree, remove a tree, plant trees, they're the ones who usually have something to do with it. But then a dendrologist is usually someone that's more on the research side of the world and they're like, okay, we're going to study this plant, its characteristics, or this tree more specifically, its characteristics and where it fits in with the rest of all the other

trees in the world. So dendrologists basically work on the back end of things, classifying all the different trees into certain organizational standards. So can you call, if you study and you love trees, can you call yourself a dendrologist? Yeah, I would say so. So Casey got his bachelor's of science in forest management with a focus on urban forestry. And then he went and got a master's focusing on arbor culture. So it seems that an arborist deals with trees, knows a lot about trees, and a dendrologist studies identifying trees specifically. So Casey studied dendrology, but is now an arborist. But you guys, anyone who knows this damn much about trees is a dendrologist in my book, okay? Let's just agree, there are bigger issues in the

world. Okay. This is what I'm saying, make sure to listen to today's bonus episode. It's an update to see if he has changed his stance on this. I mean, of course, I asked, when you were going about your education. Yes. So Casey's deciding to study trees. Yeah. Where do you start? Well, for me, it started with a just a tenacity of about nature. I like to go outside and I like to do things. I like to play in the mud and climb trees. And then I did, I built a pond in my backyard, and I was like, I love this. I'm going to do it forever. And then end up being that I hated landscape architecture. Like, I can't do this. This is so infunctional stuff. It's all, I can say frilly, but I don't think they give them enough credit. They do very good work. But I was very

much a person who needed to manage something and it needed to be active and it needed to have an amount of utility in the landscape. So I was like, I'm not really interested. So, but I was killing it at all the tree courses I was taking. I was just like, this is immensely fascinating. I want to learn more about trees for no other reason than learning it. So then I transferred over to Oregon State University and I did forestry, which was a way huge overcorrection, because they don't do trees for anything but making money for the most part. Like, hey, we're just going to grow these trees to cut them down to make pulp, make paper, make money, do whatever they're going to do. I didn't know that's what forestry was. I thought

forestry was like tree-hugging. Like, every tree has a name. I had no idea. Oh gosh. Oh, my, I wish. This is for the people who grew up on Ferngully, where we're just like, I love this so much. It's an industry like any other nowadays, where you go out to mostly clear cuts for all intents and purposes, which is they get a bad name, but they're not actually that bad in the grand scheme. All they would do is go out and say, okay, we have this many trees. They're growing this fast. We want to cut them down in 50 years and make a profit. How can we do that? So it's a really important thing. And, you know, we have tables and chairs and pencils and all these things that we use every single day. So it's a really important renewable resource. But unfortunately,

they are looking at it more or less for dollar signs, which is fun. I was wondering, is someone who clearly loves trees? Yeah. I got a lot of tattoos of trees. Do you really? Oh yeah. I got photosynthesis tattooed across my chest. You're a walking PowerPoint. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. So wait, you have photosynthesis on your chest. Yeah. What else do you have? I got a sugar maple on this arm. And then I have roots coming down off of this arm. And I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt, so obviously you can't see it. But your long sleeve shirt, by the way, has trees on it. Yes. Yeah, it has Don Redwood on the back. Yeah. So you're covered

in trees externally and then also from a dermatological perspective. Yes. Yeah, pretty much. Casey also has a pair of white bark pine cones tattooed on the inside of his right bicep. They're beautiful. The tattoo, I'm not making a comment about his bicep. Good job. Either way, that's your business. He has an acorn on his other bicep and he also has a dodo bird to represent the delicate balance between endangered plants and animals. So he's like a walking botanical garden pamphlet. Obviously, a very huge advocate for more trees in cities. And for me, I'm like an LA resident. So this part of the conversation made my heart choke with longing. I was like, do you have trees in your city? You lucky son of a bitch. So every tree in the urban area is

providing some amount of benefit to the city. Many times people have no idea. And it's a very subconscious sort of thing. But there are reasons why certain streets covered with trees or neighborhoods are more idealic. And other people live in other places that have no trees on their streets. And it's a much hotter place. It's more rigid, more sort of industrial. And everyone's like, yeah, it's a little more or more of an uncomfortable space. Yeah. So basically what I do now is say, here are all the characteristics of trees. Here's how they flow. Here's how they function. And here's how you can best use them on your side or in a city to accomplish all these great things that they do. Do you have a favorite tree? I do. Yeah. But it changes pretty constantly.

What is it now? Right now, it would be the coast redwood, which is so stereotypical. I know. Why is it stereotypical? It's a majestic tree. I completely concur. But people have generally said like they come up with the first thing that comes to them. So a lot of times when I ask people, they're like, oh, willows. I'm like, cool. 80% people say willows or something like that. It's really strange. No one thinks about until you ask them the question. Do you know what your favorite tree is? I was like, do I have a favorite? Yes, I do. It's an oak. I have a favorite tree. I guess we all do. But coastal redwoods, Casey's favorite, they grow from southern Oregon, just down the central coast of California,

all the way down to about Santa Cruz. And they grow in this fog belt right near the shore because that fog helps get moisture to the top of these like 350 foot giant trees. And if you're needing to imagine a silhouette of one, you're like, what do they look like? You know the logo for Stanford? Okay. Well, that there is the image of El Palo Alto, one particularly famous local coastal redwood tree. It's also the unofficial mascot of Stanford. It's dubbed very creatively the tree. And according to Wikipedia, the tree, despite very heroically replacing a decidedly more shitty mascot, the tree has been called one of America's most bizarre and controversial college mascots. People hate it. It regularly appears at the top of the internet's

worst mascot lists, which apparently exist. But I'm going to very publicly beg to differ because once you have seen a gif of a dancing layered green tent with a very happy human being inside, your heart's going to be one. I love it. Anyway, coastal redwoods, Casey's favorite tree. So naturally, I get it all the time. So I had a lot of time to think. Okay. So specifically, they're just they're just the bomber trees. They are resistant. So almost no fungus is effective. They are insect resistant. So insects don't get into them. They don't eat the foliage. They don't get into the bark. Their bark is like literally feet thick, and it's fire resistant. So nothing can penetrate it. Fire doesn't burn it. Sometimes fire will actually hollow out the

inside of the tree, believe the bark alone. But then the trees actually survive because they can sprout from any place that still has functionality down to the roots. So not only are they also the tallest trees in the world, some of the longest lived, some of the biggest in terms of volume. So they've accomplished, you know, all these superlatives. Then on top of that, they basically can outlive anything. They don't have any more predators and they can sprout. Most conifers can't do that. If you cut them down at the base, they're done. They're ended. For a redwood, you cut it down at the base, and the roots just shoot up all these new sprouts. And you're just like, oh, the tree still lives. This is great.

The roots are like, I don't care. I'm going to go ahead. Exactly. Yeah. So they're just, the world is just most bomber trees. And if you haven't been there, you should go. There's nothing like in the world. Quick anatomy lesson of trees. What are we dealing with? And also true or false, the root system is kind of as big as the actual branches and canopy. Mediocrely both. Okay. So give me an anatomy lesson. Yeah. Sort of both. Okay. So real quick, there are four main organs of a tree. First off, what is a tree? A tree, by some definitions, is literally like this one guy

on a book I have. He describes it as a bush with a stick up the middle. Okay. That's literally, this was like, okay, this is a pretty dumb down version. So that's what we would define as a tree. 90% of the things that you know of as a tree are a tree. But then there's things like, say, Joshua tree. That's technically a yucca. It doesn't put on annual rings the same way the redwood or an oak wood. And then there is banana trees. Banana trees are actually just cells. There's no woodiness to them. You can go over and knock them over if you really want. Really? Not necessarily. It's probably not that easy. But they're just big, big cells and big, big things are basically just large herbs,

just like a hosta or anything else. Yeah. Weird. Yeah. So there's no actual woody parts in them. So when we still call them trees, where's the definition going? So if we have a tree and we say, okay, it's going to woody thing, let's just use a, let's use the Oregon white oak, for example. So the Oregon white oak, one usually has a single stem comes out, has this big, nice, beautiful globe-like crown. So there's four main organs. You have the roots, you have the stem and the branches, then you have the flowering parts and you have the leaves. Those are the four things that you would call organs in a tree, just for simplicity's sake,

four main organs. So the roots of a tree generally, at least in the Pacific Northwest and in our more temperate regions, this is going to blow so many minds, they're only in the top two to three feet of soil. What? That's it. That's it? Even the big guys? Yeah. So if you ever are looking at a tree, you go out to the woods and you see a tree that's toppled over and it's picked up its entire root ball, if you measure from the top of that down to the very lowest root, you're not going to get past four feet anywhere. That's crazy. I always thought they went way down. They go out. They go out. Why go down any further? If you can remain stable and you got all your nutrients and all your water and oxygen you need at the top,

there's no reason to go down. You got all the stuff you need. But basically, you have imagine a wine glass or a... Like an umbrella that has a base? Exactly. An umbrella sitting on a platter would be the best way to imagine it. And so that's why roots are so important. People are like, oh, it's not that. They go down. You're like, no, no, no, no. People think it's that mirror image and it's definitely not. Oh yeah, because I feel like you do see that kind of mirror image. Oh yeah. I got a friend who got a tattoo of that exact same thing. This is before I knew anything about it. But yeah, the roots go down and almost mirrors the exact same thing going up. And it's very romantic versions. Like, oh, that's great. Reflection of below and above. But it's completely

false. Oh my God. I have no idea. Okay. So that's the anatomy of a tree. Really? Well, there's one extra step. So this is the next most important thing. Trees are compartmentalizers. So if you cut off one of their branches, they will just close it off and keep moving, just like compartments in a ship. All you have to do is close it off and then everything else can go on as normal. So they have these two main things. You have cambium layer, which is the vascular system of the tree, just below the bark, just outside the wood. That's where the trees grow and put on their new rings. That is where they send nutrients and water from the ground up. And that's called the xylem. That's a good word if you play Scrabble. It's X Y L E M. You can fit that in on a triple

word score with that X. Man, you're killing it. You're really doing well. Oh man, one time I was also, I was making a joke. So I know a lot of Latin terms for things just because it's the scientific names of plants and their parts. And I was playing Scrabble with a friend at a coffee shop in Portland and this other guy came up and he's like, Hey, man, can I just play with you guys? And we're like, Yeah, yeah, totally cool. And I made, we made the joke. I was like, Yeah, well, we're only using Latin terms. And I swear to God, without even blinking an eye, the guy was just like, Okay. And we're like, What did we get ourselves into? He massacred us. Really nice guy. Oh my gosh. He knew how to play Scrabble. He destroyed us. What was his job? What was his deal? No idea.

I don't even remember. I didn't ask. It was just, we were stuck. We were shell shocked. Yeah. We had to leave that coffee shop and think to ourselves we're never playing Scrabble in public again. Certainly never with anybody else. It was Ken Jennings. It was just a Japanese champion. No, just wearing a fake mustache. Oh my God. Okay. So X Y L E M. Okay. Buckle up because this part's gonna get a little technical, but you're gonna learn a few new Scrabble words as promised and or names for your organic children. Cambium, phloem, photosynth and xylem, of course, which is Greek for wood. And yes, that is where the word xylophone comes from. So Scrabble, Jeopardy, you're prepped for anything. Okay, back to xylem takes all the nutrients and

water up to all the leaves. The leaves, they are doing the photosynthesis. So they're creating the energy from the sun. They start pulling all of their nutrients are all their photosynthate is what some people call it basically sugars and they pull those down and that goes to the phloem, which is the pipes that go down. And that's basically it. Tree roots pull things up through the stem and then puts things out to the leaves. The leaves are the factory. They create all the food. Then they put that down and distribute it out to the rest of the tree. Oh, are you ready for a hot tree scandal? Okay, sometimes a tree breaks up with its own limbs. This drama. Many times if there is competition, it actually cuts it off itself. If they are growing a limb out

directly to another tree, they get shaded out. They're like, yeah, there's too much energy I'm putting in and not getting enough back. So they just cut it off. That branch dies. The rest of the tree keeps growing. And that was what people call self shedding or self pruning trees. It's not really that the trees just like, okay, I'm done and then drops a branch. Some do, but that's a completely different story. This one is more where the trees no longer feed it, literally close the compartment off to that branch. That branch slowly dies, slowly dies. And then as soon as it falls off, maybe a crow lands on it and it's so decayed, just topples to the ground. Then the tree then seals over that wound. Trees don't heal. They seal. They specifically close it up and then continue

to grow like nothing ever happened. It's like ghosting your own arm. Exactly. You're just like shaking. You just ice it out. You're like, yeah. Listen, it's not me. It's definitely you. It's definitely you. I'm sorry. Not pulling your weight. Yeah. I'll send you a text. You're out. Yeah. But then the joke is, it's never getting that text. I have a gossipy question. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. How do you feel about the redwoods that they have carved an area where you can drive a car through? Oh, God, it's mutilation. Okay. That's what I thought. Yeah. It's not the worst. Obviously, the trees are still living. So what's the tree going through? Oh, it's going through hell. Absolutely. It went through hell. It's basically like you get a tunnel carved through

your stomach. But imagine that instead of like, we as humans, our bodies are just 100%, they're all connected to you things. So if you get your arm cut off, your body's like, well, okay, everything is messed up. Then you have to, you know, someone has to sew it up, blah, blah, you don't heal and grow a new arm. Trees are compartmentalizers. So if you cut a hole in their stomach, they're just going to block off everything around that hole and keep moving, like nothing ever happened, because everything else is going on around the tree itself and the wood is actually basically inert. It's just a physical structure holding the tree up. Okay. Remember the cambium layer from earlier? So as we recorded, we were both drinking tea

raided from my hotel mini bar and Casey had a visual metaphor for the cambium layer, which really helped. He said, if you're looking at a full coffee cup, the coffee inside would be the wood, the mug would be the cambium layer and the outside of the mug would be the bark. Does that make sense? So the cambium layer is like super important in terms of keeping a tree alive. So all you have to do is keep that cambium layer alive. So if you put a tunnel through one of those redwoods, then it's like, oh, shoot. Well, now there's a big hole in it. The tree doesn't like it, but it'll get through it, you know, just like anything else, just like if a fire came through and a fire burned a hole in one side and then burned out the other side as well. The tree will

be fine. Well, assuming the tree lives, it'll be fine. It'll just continually seal over those wounds and protect itself. I went to go look up which tree this was. And I found out there's tons of gutted tunnel trees in California. We have made an Indus tree. Indus tree. Oh God, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. The pun came out of nowhere. It was like a burp during a job interview. I'm sorry. Okay, but yes. So we've made quite a few park attractions out of tunneling out the trunks of these behemoth trees and just trying to drive cars through them. We're monsters. We're monsters. And we love road trips. We're just doing our best. But in researching this, I also found out about the Hercules tree, which an eccentric rancher dug out a 12 by 9 foot room

into and tried to live in it. God bless him. But the tree was just weeping sap onto his face at night too much. So they just were like, they just made it into a gift shop. But there are a good handful of tunneled out trees down the California coast. And two big ones have fallen. Most recently, this one called the pioneer cabin tree, which toppled and very dramatically shattered in early 2017 after some severe weather. The Calaveras big tree association remarked, quote, the storm was just too much for it. The storm was too much for it. The storm, you're going to blame the storm. That's like knifing someone with a machete and then saying that it's probably, probably a metal allergy killed them. Anyway, but this also sucks. You can't drive through it anymore. Unless you

have like a mini Cooper, because they did it way back with the mini teas or the model teas. And now we're driving like hummers and like, we'll make the whole bigger. It's the worst. Now, talk to me a little bit about how trees talk to each other, because I feel like there was some some research or something came out recently about how trees can talk to each other through their roots. And everyone was like, wow, trees looking at it, thinking the trees are watching them. Oh my God. I mean, it's also so cruel to think that that story made the newspapers, which are dead trees, which is horrifying. They cut down a tree and like this tree is not talking to you, but the ones that are still living are. Oh God. It is. So how do the roots communicate?

Do they share nutrients? Do they talk to each other? What's happening under the surface? This is so fascinating. So this, the book you're talking about is called The Hidden Life of Trees. Okay. I think not to be confused with the Hidden Life of Plants, the pseudoscience book from many years ago, which is absolutely interesting to read, but very silly. All right. I look this up and the weird one is actually called Secret Life of Plants. It's kind of like this woo woo 1973 volume about botanical sentience, the authors of which gave lie detector tests to house plants after trying to communicate through ESP. It's out there. They also postulated that their little green friends might originate in a super material

world of cosmic beings such as fairies, elves, gnomes, sylphs, and a host of other creatures, end quote. Okay. They made a movie about it, which is not to be confused with David Attenborough's Private Life of Plants documentary in which he tickles a Venus flytrap. Touch the hair and the trap is sprung. Anyway, so not Secret Life of Plants, not Private Life of Plants. Anyway, Casey's talking about the Hidden Life of Trees. And one author, the German Peter Holben describes that trees feed each other other sugars through their roots when one is sick or dying and they communicate to each other using chemical and electrical cues in response to stimulus, not unlike how humans use vocal cues to say, hey,

fools, there are donuts in the break room or how we type posts on secret Facebook message board saying, watch out, this hipster dude sucks. Do not lay with him. Girl, let's do that, by the way. So it's really comes down to when we communicate as people, I say something to you. There's no physical connection between us. I just say something and you hear and then you act on it. A tree, everything is a stimulus that comes from something. So all the roots, if it's the same species, their roots can graft together. What? Yeah, it's kind of mind blowing. But what's going on underneath the soil, which the soil is probably the most important thing that you can ever consider about a tree. Most people look up, but there is an entire underground system of things

that no one ever thinks about. So regardless, the way it works with the sort of the hidden life of plants is they have, they graft themselves together. So if you have really, really thin bark on those root hairs and those root hairs touch each other, and then they can basically start passing their, or their cambium layer sort of connects. So something comes out, takes a left and then goes into another root, could be from the same tree. But if it's the same species, then I'll actually connect together and you can get an entire forest of all these trees connected, which is fascinating. But it's not like one tree is connected to all the rest like a network. It's like, it's kind of like the internet where you have one computer, then another computer, then another

tree, then another tree, then another tree, that all may have or may not have these root hairs connected. But then there's a sub layer on that, which is mushrooms, mycelium. This is the new thing that really like blew up, like Radio Lab did a whole thing on it. And everyone's like, ah, mushrooms, what trees? There are a, an insane amount of mushrooms that are, we're actually, people have more genetic things in common with mushrooms than we do with trees and other plants. So that's crazy. It's crazy to think about. They're basically sentient things. That's not true. Strip that from the record. Right. We'll give them honorary, honorary sentience. Yes, we'll take it. So basically what they do is all these, all these fungus have this mutualistic relationships called symbiosis.

And what they do is a fungus has root hairs or mycelium that's microscopic, much smaller than the root hairs of a tree. So if you are a tree growing in a place like, let's say Southern Oregon, then you have a much drier condition. Tree roots are a certain size, maybe like the size of your finger for this instance. So you're like, oh man, I can only reach into a certain size crack where this water is, and the water is held up within these smaller pores in the soil. So if the trees can't physically get their roots into, grab it, then it's basically not available. So this fungus ends up getting this mutualistic relationship. The tree gives the fungus sugars that it produces up in the canopy. So the fungus gets some food. And then the fungus, if our fingers are the size

of root hairs, then our hair, our actual physical hair is something on the size of the, of the fungus. So the fungus can be like, oh yeah, I can go in and grab that water. And so the fungus goes in and basically creates like a whole second level of roots for this tree. And the way you can tell if a tree needs water, this is great. It's kind of like a straw, where on the very tippy top, you have evaporation, evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration is just literally the process of water going from the ground through a plant or a tree out to the air. Okay. So what they do are how the trees function. They grab the, they grab some water, do some photosynthesis or do whatever they do, and then some water escapes. So when that water is released into the atmosphere,

just like you're drinking out of a straw, one molecule pulls on the next, pulls on the next, pulls on the next using capillary action, all the way down the tubes of the tree to the soil, into the roots. And then all of a sudden that root is pulling up another little molecule of water. And you get this full cycle. So as soon as the trees have this, this pressure deficit where it's sucking more water into the air than it has in the ground, then the fungus will then be like, oh wow, there's a pressure deficit and water just osmosis over to that area. So it's not that everything is communicating like the tree's like, oh, I need water, fungus, give me water. It's more like there's all these scientific processes or these natural processes that are functioning in this

very specific system that then one little molecule gets pulled up, pulls on the next molecule, pulls on the next molecule, so on and so forth until the fungus gives it a molecule. And then there you go. Side note, I learned of this from a biology teacher years ago. And it's always stuck with me that this chain of water keeps the plants healthy. So to prolong the life of cut flowers, if anyone ever gives them to you, trim the ends about an inch underwater to prevent getting an air bubble in the stem and then the last longer. So there you go. Don't say I never surprise you with flower facts. And if it's been a while since anyone got you flowers, go get yourself some flowers for a few bucks at Trader Joe's or something. Just go pretend they're from your weird old pal

ward over here. You deserve it, kiddo. Just cut them underwater. That's all I ask. So do you dream about trees? Yeah. Yeah, but usually it's related to work in a negative way, where I'm just like, oh, I'm gonna have to have you cut down. Trees need a certain amount of space to grow because their roots are really what matters. They have to grow out to stabilize the tree to get new nutrients and all that sort of thing. So as soon as you have a situation where a tree is in conflict with development, most of the time, development's gonna win. So you go over and I told people all the time, so you measure diameter, you take a tape, you measure around the tree and it tells you the diameter of that tree. So you have to literally reach around the tree

and then grab the diameter tape and pull it around. So you're literally hugging a tree every single time. And so when I was up here in Seattle, these huge developments, you go into a forest and you're like, this is a beautiful forest. Oh my God, this is gorgeous. You hug every single tree, every single tree and then look up and say, okay, they're all healthy. They're good. You look back at the plans and there's a subdivision going in and you just put Xs over every single tree. Oh, the one that you hugged. I know. All of the ones, yeah, there's some big ones where you're just like, you are older than every single person alive right now. Oh my God. You know, as a city worker now, every time, every chance I get, not every chance, when it's appropriate

and allowed by code, I'm like, no, you may not cut down that tree. Nice. You have to do this to protect it. And then usually if you're working with good developers, which there are many, they're just like, okay, sweet, yeah, what should we do? How should we do this? And then we get it set and we save a tree and it's just so stellar. Because then when you get done, you have this building, like I was talking about with neighborhoods earlier, if you have an old house, an old building with these two huge trees in front of it, you get this sense of stateliness. But also like permanence, where it's like that house exists. It has existed there. The trees, they're there, they exist. And then it's like nothing is ephemeral. It's all that exists.

So people, I'm like, hey, when you get done with your building, it's going to look like it was here for the last 50 years. And people are going to walk out there, see these beautiful limbs in front of their house, in front of their patio, or not even patio, like your deck, if you're in an apartment building or something. And you can just chill out there and there's going to be birds hanging around. It's going to be 10 degrees cooler on your deck rather than the deck where they cut down and planted the little tiny trees. So, you know, there's always rotations, things are always coming and going, but it's really nice if we can keep the big ones that are really like outstanding trees. You're a tree advocate. Oh my God. Yes, I am. You're friends with trees. Yeah. Yeah.

I do want to go back and ask about, I realize I should have asked you this question next. I've been seeing a lot of information on the internet about crown shyness, canopy shyness, where at the very top of a tree, the tops of the trees tend not to touch each other. So if you haven't seen pictures of what I think is very coily dubbed crown shyness, it's also known as canopy disengagement, which sounds like you're talking about divorced lovers as far as vibes. But it looks like if you looked up at a tree canopy and all of the trees stopped just short of touching, it looks like super wicked mosaic art or maybe like a huge leafy puzzle. And your brain is like, whoa, what? Plants must have minds or maybe nothing is real

and I'm on drugs. That's so pretty and crazy. I fact checked Casey's following explanation and dude's on the money. It's almost as if he knows a shit ton about trees. Okay. Yeah. What's the deal with that? Honestly, I've never really given it a second thought. The only thing that I can think of, which happens in trees nowadays, and this may be completely conjecture. So we'll just put a little dot next to that. Okay. If you look up the whole canopy of the trees swaying and moving back and forth, if there are other trees next to it, they're swaying back and forth into each other. So a lot of times trees will hit each other and actually break off limbs. And basically, you know, it's it's competition at its highest or highest where they're actually

literally, you know, putting in punches towards each other. So it's less like a mystical tango and it's more just like a windy mosh pit. But other than that, I really can't think of a good reason aside from the like getting light, you know, you want to if they aren't touching, then they're not shading each other out. Yeah. So they can just stay right there. It's like no one's asked me that before. I think it's something that just came out on the internet. Oh, did it? Okay, nice. I'm very bad on the internet. I'm the worst millennial in the world. Yeah, you're hard to find. Nice. That's great. Because you were outside, not looking at a screen. Exactly. What about the Lorax? Did you read the Lorax as a kid? Yeah, I do actually have a truffle tree planted on or tattooed

on my arm as well. Hell yeah, you do. Yeah. So Casey showed me the underside of his left arm, where he has a little truffle tree from the Lorax, which is this Dr. Seuss ecological epic kids book about a dude who cuts down a bunch of fluffy, beautiful trees to make pajamas. And he destroys the environment, leaving a smoggy, apocalyptic wasteland. So in the book and on Casey's skin, the word unless appears etched into kind of a rocky pulpit. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better. It's not. It's pretty damn depressing. P.S. after the Lorax was released, a logging company got super P.O.D. and published a competing pro logging book called The True Axe. And people were like, logging company, can you just fucking not?

Anyway, a good reminder not to burn the earth because of pajamas. Okay, let's talk about old ass trees. Speaking of this dendro chronology. Oh my God. Let's talk about aging trees and tree rings. Yep. How can you tell the age of a tree looking at rings and what are some of the oldest trees? And does it hurt the tree when you're boring into them to get a core sample? Oh yeah. Let's talk about tree rings. Oh, this is so great. So basically, dendro chronology is the strictly the study of tree rings. So tree rings, every, it's pretty well known, at least in the temperate regions. Every tree grows for a certain amount of year, then it goes dormant. Then it grows for a certain amount of year, then it goes dormant. So each time it grows,

it puts on a new ring of wood on every single surface. So on the trunk, on all the branches, on the roots, that is just an annual count. For us, we treat it like a count. For the tree, it's actually the tree getting stronger every single year. So sometimes it'll put more wood on if it's a really good year. Sometimes it'll put less wood on if it's a shorter year or a shorter growing season or harsher growing season. So the rings, if the rings vary in width, it usually means maybe there was better conditions, better water, and it grows more that year. And then maybe there's a drought and the rings get closer together. Precisely. Yeah, exactly. So in California, which is where the oldest trees grow, thank you very much, we got bristle cone

pines and foxtail pines. And in the central mountain area, the oldest ones grow. They look like alive driftwood. They're craggy and dense and ancient. And they look like it's just been a slow motion struggle to get out of the rocky, dry earth around them. The oldest specimens have been found in the White Mountains in Inyo National Forest, which is in eastern central California, kind of borders on Nevada. I don't think there's a lot going on there other than a bunch of old trees. But if you have a tree that is, say, 2,400 years old, then you have a climactic record for 2,400 years of what was going on, like, oh, in year AD 2, there was not very much wood. That was a bad year in the mountains of central California. So what they can do,

or what they've done with dendrochronology is you can look back specifically in these trees, the bristle cone pines, and what they do is they basically say, okay, let's find a living tree. Let's find the oldest one. The oldest one, I believe, is called Methuselah. No one knows exactly where it's at. There's another super sad story about the oldest oldest tree. It was so sad. What happened? Oh man, this is the worst story. Oh, tell it to me. I can handle it. So you got to feel bad for the guy who did it. It's not his fault. He's a victim just as much as a tree. Oh God. People are going to go crazy if they hear me say that. But I'm going to stick to my narrative here. So Casey's talking about this tree named Prometheus. And in 1964,

a geography grad student by the name of Donald Rusk Curry was poking into trees to find out more info about the little ice age. And he was using this thin increment borer to take what should have been just like a harmless core sample about the diameter of a pencil. So dendrochronologists use them all the time, not a biggie. He just had some of these borers. And these borers, the increment borers, what you're talking about, where you drill into the tree to measure the rings. So he had one of those. Most of the nice ones are made over in Switzerland. And if you want to, if you break it, then it's like several thousand dollars. You have to get a new one or have them fix yours, that sort of thing. So these trees, because they grow so slowly and

have such dense rings, their wood is really, really hard to get into. So as soon as you drill in and you pull out this core, it's really difficult sometimes to get the actual increment borer back out of the tree without breaking the increment borer. So he drilled into the tree with one increment borer and it got stuck. So he drilled in with another one and it got stuck. So he's like, okay, well, both of my increment borers are now stuck in this tree. What am I going to do? So then the guy went over to the Forest Service and said, hey, can I just cut this tree down? You know, I'll count the rings and all these things, you know, it's for science. Like he had all the permits, everything was on the up and up. And there was one tree that he

happened to be working on of all the thousands and hundreds that were around him. He just sort of walked up and was like, you, I'm going to measure you. So he did it, cut it down. And the USDA Forest Service, whoever's up there was just like, yeah, go ahead, sounds good. There's 100 different of them. That's fine. This tree for all intents and purposes is not special, other than the fact that it's innately special because it's a really cool kind of tree. Now protected, I believe, in California. So cut it down, started to count the rings. Oh God. One, two, three, six, thousand, four thousand. It was like 4,700 years old. The oldest recorded living thing on the planet. I know. And it was, it was so tragic. Like the collective shock in that world, because apparently

they were not environmentalists, but there are certain intrepid people who had known about this tree. But the people who study trees and find the superlative trees, the biggest, the fattest of this, other than General Sherman, the biggest giant sequoia in the world, all the other trees are very hidden. Like the tallest redwood, I think it might be the stratosphere giant. There's a couple that are named. Oh my God. No one knows exactly where it is. Very few people because they don't want this thing to happen. They don't want people to go and like, I'm just going to take one cone. And then all the cones are gone and stamp all the way around the soil and cause the tree to die. They're like protected celebrities. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They're so protected. And so it's like, oh

no, are you kidding me? The one tree. So everyone got super mad at him. It was like, you cut down the oldest tree and you have to see this guy's researchers studying these trees, doing dendro chronology. So it's not that he was just like, we're going to log it and turn it into a table. He's just like, no, I, I wasn't. And then for the rest of his life, he was just absolutely vilified. Oh my God. I'm literally crying. It's so sad. I know. I know. And you look back on it and you're like, I can't believe like, literally 2000, you have to, or 4,700 years. When you conceive of that, like the pyramids were built like 6,000 years ago. So when, let's see, 2000 years before Christ was born, these trees were already growing. When Christ was

born, they were already ancient trees by our standards. They were already 2000 years old, 2700 maybe. So it was one of these things are just like, how can I just, oh my God, what did the guy conceptualize? Dude, did he go into the witness protection program? I know he should have. He just kind of disappeared. I think he had changed careers, stopped doing anything and he had just sort of settled out. But he ended up this one person remembered his name and he was doing something and someone brought it up and he's like, hey, aren't you the guy that killed the world's oldest tree? And he was just like, oh, don't open up that wound again. And yeah, so it's a really sad story. But the guy didn't do

it on purpose. It's just, hey, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong tree. I mean, if you're up there, boring trees, you love trees. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it was, it's mind blowing. But so I got so sad for the tree and also because this guy probably ended up living under a bridge and his family probably never talked to him again. Probably couldn't get a job, had to eat out of the garbage, give up all of his science dreams for one mistake. And I looked into it and it turns out he did just fine. He had a successful career in academia. He was a geography professor, nothing to do with trees. He didn't even have to change his name or wear a wig or shave his eyebrows. So no one recognized him. You guys, I once got fired from a job in college

for defrosting the mini fridge wrong and breaking it. This guy just sailed through life killing the world's oldest thing. Prometheus at 4,862 years old was considered to be the oldest living thing in the world until 2012 when a newer oldest one was discovered. It was a tree that was 5,062 years old. And you're like, well, what's that one's name? If the other one was named Prometheus. Good question. The new oldest one is unnamed. No one's ever named it. Frankly, that really bothers me. It's like the oldest alive thing on earth. Call it Jeff or Yvonne, fucking anything. Anyway, I got to calm down. I got to calm down. I got to take a breather. Okay. I have an update about this tree's name in, yes, the update bonus episode. Get on it. So those are the oldest trees.

What he was studying dendrochronology and answer your question. Yes, when you drill in, it does cause a wound in a tree, but just like that big tunnel, it's just a smaller wound. The tree will compartmentalize over it and you just have to go halfway through. So yeah, if you can hit that pit, pull it out, then you boom, there you go. You got all the rings of that tree as long as the tree was living that entire section. But they're so close together, you have to actually get a microscope and a tiny little pin to like actually count them out because you can't see it with the naked eye many times. It just looks like this black sort of thing. You have three or 4,000 rings, 4,000 individual lines in the span of maybe three feet, four feet. Oh my God, that's nuts.

And so this guy, so dendrochronology, what he was studying, this is so fascinating. Basically, the way it works is you drill into the tree, you have a living tree. You can measure, okay, that tree is 4,000 years old. Cool. Now you look next to it and you see a dead tree. That dead tree likely was living before the tree that was alive that you just measured. So you can say, okay, I can measure and drill into that tree, pull out this ring, and then match up those rings, because remember, each one's growing in the same place. So its rings are going to have the same thickness and the same chemical compounds. So for instance, carbon, which is where the story is going to go, it's going to get great. Okay. So what they do is they said, okay, let's match up this

living tree with this dead tree. And then all of a sudden they realized, wow, this dead tree was alive a thousand years previous. So I get now an extra thousand years to add on to it once you match up those overlapping parts of their lives. Then you find another tree that is even older, that's a dead standing snag that you're just like, oh man, that tree's been gone for hundreds of years, but it's still standing there because there's no decay that's up there. This is like 11, 12,000 feet of elevation. There's nothing up there that's affecting these trees, at least not historically. So now you find an even older dead tree and you're like, okay, cool, this older dead tree, now I can match up with that other dead tree and you just keep on getting

these overlapping things. They just find all these trees, match up all of their different rings together, then boom, you can count back as long as you are 100% sure that all those rings are from the same year. So they can match all these rings together and by now they've amassed something like 10,500 years of records for climate and carbon in the atmosphere. Now what's very cool is they can use that record as a reference to the amount of C4 or carbon in the trees and they can compare it to how we carbon date artifacts for certain civilizations. So it's like a dendro chronologist getting featured on an anthropologist mixtape. So what they did is they recalibrated all the machines, or at least some machines, retested these things and found that they were

completely off where they're like, wow, so we actually had to redo what we thought about European history, for example, because we redid our carbon dating and realized, wow, we've been kind of off. So trees are a paper trail in every way. Yes, pun intended. Okay, I have a question about how do trees grow around benches and bicycles and fences? Like, you know, you see those pictures where a tree is eating a bicycle? What is life? What's happening? How did that happen? Oh, it's great. And I've seen exactly the one you're talking about. In fact, it's like an old like, banana seat bike, like up in a tree. Yes. And the caption that I read underneath it was like, oh, someone left this bike against this tree in 1930. And it grew up.

Hey, that tree was like probably 40 years old. So it's not really 1930. It's just an old bike. But trees aren't like grass where if you cut grass, the growing part of that grass is at the base. It's at the head of that. What is it? The crown of the plant right at the soil level. So it comes out and then moves up trees. They once they grow to a certain point, that's it. That will be there forever. If they put out a branch at one foot, that branch will always be at one foot. It'll probably die at some point or get cut off and then the tree will grow around it and don't have to worry about it. But basically, that bike was put 20 feet up in that tree 100%. That's how they grow. So they can't lift anything in that regard. Oh, God. Okay, quick aside on the backstory of this

bike. Oh, so it went viral with this caption. A boy left his bike chained to a tree and then he went away to war in 1914 and his parents left it there as a memorial. But yeah, like Casey says, bullshit. Okay, so first off, the US did not go to war in 1914. Secondly, the real owner of the bike didn't have parents. In the 1950s on Vashon Island in Washington, this kid named Don Putz lost his dad in a house fire, which is so sad. And a bunch of locals donated items to the family. It was a mom with five kids. And so he got a bike and he hated the bike. It sucked. So one day he just ditched it in a swamp and someone must have found it, hung it in a tree. The tree grew around it. So he had no idea until 40 years later. He's grown up. He's a sheriff. He visited this tree

landmark on a vacation back in his hometown and he was like, well, hot damn, that's my bike. And it sucks. And he says it just belongs to the tree now, which I'm guessing from the way it was wedged into the tree's crotch. And it had to grow into its flesh that the tree hates the bike too. But what they can do is grow around things. So trees grow and they react to different forces around them. So if there is a, oh, there's actually a great picture I have. Oh my gosh. It's a tree in the Sierra Nevada. It's a common juniper. And there is this big like horizontal stack of granite just growing out. The tree was growing right just right next to it. So as the tree got bigger and bigger, all of a sudden it kept starting to push on that rock. The rock wasn't

budging. So then it can't push out anymore, but it's still going to put on these rings. So the tree ends up growing out above and below it. So the rock just stays right where it is. And the tree just keeps pushing out over the top, pushing out over the bottom and literally starts to encompass that physical rock. So it got to the point where it looked almost like the tree had been pouring over the rock. And so it like came down and then just like poured off the side of it. But it was just the wackiest picture. I wish I could find it. I have more questions. I hope you're not, are you late for anything? No, I literally have nothing. I told a friend I would grab a beer and that's it. Okay, good. Because people have questions. Hold on. People have questions? I guess.

This is so exciting. I know. Okay, wait. I could do this all night. Warning. Weird question. Bear with me. Okay, do you think that certain trees have certain personalities? Like, I know that that sounds like a very weird, magical question. But do you see a tree? Maybe this is just because I have a little bit of synesthesia where like numbers and letters have different personalities. But do you ever feel like different vibes from different trees? I would say so. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. It's definitely not in a specific sense where I'd be like, what's up? That's my bro. That's my tree. We've been hanging out for years. And then I look over a tree and I'm like, uh, birches. I can't. They just look at me wrong all the time. It's not quite

that explicit. But my view is colored by what the tree is doing, like the characteristics of it. So like, if I see one tree, I'm like, ah, you are over planted, you fall apart all the time, you put out flowers and they stink and you pulled the sidewalk. You are just not a good tree. I don't want anything to do with you. It's not how I feel. It's not, it's like, oh, I hate you. But then you're like, well, you know, you want to hang out later. That's cool. It's kind of like what it is. Like when I was a kid, we had this tree growing up that had a bend in it. You could sit in it like a chair and we nailed the table up there so you could perch up there, sip a soda in the woods. This tree always seemed just so benign. Kind of like a cool grandpa that's just like, sure,

you can nail a table into my flesh and put a diet Pepsi on it. You little brat, I love you. What do you think about the giving tree book? Does it make you cry a lot? Oh, it does. I have it. It's on the, I built these shelves and it's on the shelf up above my bed. I love that tree or that book. Wait, did you build the shelves out of wood? I did. Oh, I did. But I reused it. It was a palette and I turned it into these cool shelves and I filled it up with cones and tree books and like certifications. I think one of my degrees is up there or something like that. So are you ready for some questions from patrons? Yeah, that's so exciting. I had no idea. There's so many questions I had to cut them off.

I don't think I've ever gotten this many questions. Holy heck. On my Patreon, patrons get to ask questions to the geologists. So, oh my gosh. Okay. All right. So when this episode first aired in 2018, we did not have a single sponsor yet. We just had wonderful folks at patreon.com slash allergies who have kept this show afloat since day one. But now that we do have some ads, we can donate to a cause of the all-interest choosing. And this week, I don't know who KC chose because I forgot to ask him and I texted him a few hours ago, but he has not come back to me because he's probably wearing a parka in a forest. These ads are going to run and then next week, I'll let you know who the donation went to.

And I'm going to update the link in the show notes as soon as I know, but I'm sure it will be cool and leafy and deserving. So money going to a charity TBA. Thanks to the following sponsors. Okay. Let's bark up his tree with some question. I'm going to just run through. It's a rapid fire round. Answer as quickly as you can. We'll get through as many as we can. Sounds good. Sounds good. You got it? I think I can do it. Is there a chime at the end when I run out of time? No, I should have a whistle. Yeah, I should. Okay. Here we go.

Beth Frosto wants to know, do trees feel pain when we trim them? They do, but not in a strict sense. So this also goes back to the hidden life of trees where whenever we personify a tree and we give it sort of a humanistic thing, we're always sort of selling it short a little bit because it's like, oh, well, you really don't want to say that the tree feels because then everyone's going to be really sad when they're cutting down trees. Actually, maybe that might be a good thing. Yeah, I might take this back. Regardless, usually scientists try not to do it, except for this one instance with the friend or the hidden life of trees.

That was probably the single greatest thing to happen to science about trees, because some guy brought it down to a relatable level for the rest of humanity. And all of a sudden, people are like, wow, trees, they do feel, they do think, they do this. And then scientists are like, I'm just going to say yes, just because that means that we're on the same page now. It's good for branding. Exactly, it's great. So they do feel pain, but the pain isn't so much that they are like, ow, they're more because they're compartmentalizers. So all that does is create a reaction that says, ooh, I need to protect myself,

something may get in. Y'all do this with dating. Hey. Oh, yeah. Either it's going to get an insect that is going to come in, or it's going to be a fungus, or both, or a multitude of other things. So as soon as you prune a tree, it will get a wound. It's not that the tree is feeling hurt, but the tree will then respond to that. So they'll respond immediately, especially by the next year. And they will just put on new wood to cover over it. So it just puts in these three walls of chemical protection, then grows a fourth wall of wood over the top to seal over that wound. And then it never happened. Exactly. It's like it never happened. So it's not that they feel pain, but they react to the wound in a way that is best protecting them

from any other pathogen or insect or something that's going to come in and get them. So anytime you cut a tree, and then it just starts pushing out sap. Hey, it's kind of like bleeding, especially if you cut it during the growing season, where it's just pushing out as much energy and sugars as it can to its leaves to grow big and strong. You cut that off. All of a sudden, there's a bunch of pressure inside the tree, literally pushing all this sap out. But that sap is also covering over that wound and making it an impenetrable place for all these other insects and things to get in. So it's actually literally sealing itself. Right. It's like a varnish kind of. Yeah, exactly.

Delicious varnish. That actually leads me to my next question. Dustin Mills wants to know how many different kind of trees can you get syrup from? Oh, man. Does that hurt the tree? Oh, so it does. It hurts it just like anything else, but it kind of hurts it in the same way that if you give blood, you're hurting yourself. So they have plenty of stored nutrients and stored sugars and all these things. So you can get syrup from almost any kind of tree. It just depends on if it's delicious or if it's so, so diluted to where it just takes way too much effort to actually get it. So there's a tree called a sweet gum for all you nerds that is liquid amber cirrassiflua.

Wonderful, wonderful tree. Also, one of those trees, it's like, I wish you weren't planted so much in the urban area because they just tear up sidewalks. But some of the best fall color you're ever going to get in a tree. They're beautiful from orange to yellow to purple to red. It's just, it's wonderful. But what they do is you used to tap them. That's why they call it sweet gum because they would tap them in the south and then they would grow or collect all of the tree sap. You boil it down to get all the water out and you get this sugar. Some taste really good. Some have other chemicals in it. They make them less tasty. People have used them on birch trees and on other different maples, all bunch of different species of maple.

But the reason we use sugar maple right now is just because it has the highest concentration of sugar per amount of sap. This still takes hours and hours to boil it off to create the actual thing of which there's no recipe. Every bit you get, they're just looking at it. They're like, eh, looks done. Really? Yeah. There's no actual like boil it for 10 minutes. It's boil it until it looks right. That's so analog. So side note confession, little FYI. I always thought that maple syrup just kind of dripped out of trees as is. Like you could just wander in the forest with a pocket full of waffles and just get a little smear here or there. But the sap actually comes out clear, kind of like water. And it takes 40 gallons of it to boil down and make

one gallon of maple syrup, which seems like a lot of tree tears, but they tap a bunch of them. They get just a little bit from everyone. So don't, don't be too sad. You can continue to brunch unencumbered by guilt. Zach Scharble wants to know what's the science behind tree grafting and budding because a lot of fruit trees are just grafted. Yeah, almost. Oh, this is so great. Every banana you've had has been a literal clone of every other banana you've ever had. What the hell's up with that? So this is true. I just looked it up. This is crazy. So wild bananas are kind of short and squat. They're full of a bunch of pebbly seeds. Nobody loves them. And so we have cultivated this seedless sterile one from a single specimen way back. So all the

bananas that we eat now, all of them of the Cavendish variety come from one single banana plant way back. We just keep splicing. So just think this, if you're in love with Michael B. Jordan, say, or Francis McDormand, and you have both eaten a banana, you have the same bananas, genes in your colon as them at one point. Isn't that exciting? So Cavendish got popular in the 1950s because all the bananas we used to eat, also clones, they were called Fat Mitchell's or Gross Michel's, they were wiped out by a fungus. So apparently, you know, the banana flavor we taste that tastes like fake banana, we're like, is this what a banana tastes like? Those taste like the old timey phased out Gross Michel bananas, which all died. Is this weird to you? It's so weird to me.

Same thing with apples. All the apples that are sweet, delicious or going delicious or whatever it is, they all came from one single tree. That's weird. It's great. So what they do is it is it's really weird. And it's really it's, oh man, it's, it kind of makes you feel like now when you look at those trees, maybe this is a personality where it's like this weird Igor tree that's like, oh my gosh, you're Frankenstein, like you just have all these different parts growing on to you. And it's just like, oh, you look so grizzled and worn and it's like you're just mishmash of parts from other trees. Anyway, I didn't even know that was a thing until very recently. Oh my gosh. Oh, yeah, it's it's it's hidden knowledge. I guess what they do is they find the ones that have the best root

stock and they said, okay, this one's really good, but it just gets these tiny little crab apples that are not very delicious. They're just like, oh, these are sour. So you cut that. And if you can find another tree that happened to have this one crazy apple that's huge and delicious and sweet and whatever, you cut that apple or that bit off one of those, those limbs. And then as long as it's the same size, you just literally put it together with a little bit of tape around it and some I forgot the compound, but there's like a sort of compound that they put on there that encourages all you have to or encourages the cambium layer to come back together. So literally all you're doing is matching up those cambium layers. So as long as the stem is the same size,

you can match up both cambium layers around cover that with tape and then it literally just graphs itself into it. And it says if the tree has a now whole functioning system again, that's it's crazy. It's just like organ transplant. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But more successful. But having said that, apples are just completely pointless. And I'm just going to say this right now. So side note, how does Casey like them apples? Well, he does not. He launched into an impassioned four minute anti apple rant, which I'm just going to recap. They were sold as health food via propaganda after the prohibition because all these cider apples could no longer be sold to make hooch. You see, so I looked into this checks out. So now apples are in Casey's eyes

forced on us as snacks. He does not like them. I love him for this. She's like, ah, like everyone who buys apples and like, I'm going to eat it as a snack. I'm like, you're just going to get hungry. Should bring cheese. You should at least get cheese and some peanut butter. I'm not going to eat it, but I've never heard someone who was such an apple foe. And the reason that I know that that's not good for the apple trees that it's like not happening is because these apples get so laden with these or these trees get so laden with apples to where they're literally breaking their own branches because of the weight. And it's just like, you guys are turning these into like monsters. Like this tree can't even support itself and

it's ripping apart. I'm telling you, dude hates apples. Also, Casey, I'm so sorry. I was literally eating an apple as I was writing music sites. Life is just complicated. Rodka Vakarya has a question. Why do some trees lose their leaves in the winter and others don't? I love this question. So this comes down to a specific, basically strategy. So if you think of trees as having a budget, one part of their budget goes towards making a growing tall and competition, you know, physically getting to be a big size growth, then another part of that budget would be towards reproduction because there's no point in growing unless you can reproduce. The third part, third big part would go towards protection. So you can do any amount of energy put into any three

or any one of those three categories. Obviously, there's a couple more categories. It's very simplified in this instance. You have a tree growing and it gets too cold. And so it's not that it actually gets too cold for the leaf itself. It's that wind continually rips through and damages that leaf. So what some trees have opted to do or what has worked for them is instead of having just these dinky little leaves that just get completely destroyed during the winter time, or the water gets too, the water freezes in the ground so the trees can't pull it up, or it gets too cold up in the air and ice crystals actually form in the leaf itself and rip it apart. Yeah, it's really bad when leaves and tissues like that freeze. Just the same as if we

our fingers froze. The reason that we get frostbite is because it actually, the ice crystals in our fingers expand out just because we know ice expands and it rips apart the cells. It's just terrible. PS, that's the noise I make when my butthole clenches in sympathy pain. So you're welcome. Okay. And is that how frostbite really works? It is. I never knew. Casey is just a font of knowledge. He's more like a tap of sweet fact sap for our brains to boil down. So for some trees, what they decide to do or what, you know, work for them is they made their leaves just a little bit tougher. So they put more of their energy into making that leaf really strong, making it waterproof, making it less edible, making it so adding more lignin and more things

that make it less more distasteful to different animals. Some trees put a lot of energy into their leaves because they put a lot of energy into their leaves, they now can hold them, but they don't want to just let them drop because that was so much energy. You can't just drop that onto the ground and then regrow it again the next year. So really tough leaves, they can withstand the conditions. So as soon as spring comes, if you get an early spring, the trees that are evergreen are already ready to go. They are photosynthesizing, spring comes, boom, they're right off the bat. They would be able to compete better in that instance, whereas the deciduous trees are still dormant. They have not been growing over this entire season. They've dropped their leaves,

but because they haven't put so much effort and energy into those leaves, they can put it into something else, i.e. into growing really fast or putting out a lot of fruit. You get a tree that is deciduous, drops its leaves, goes dormant, and then as soon as spring has some conditions get really good, they shoot up by like two or three feet sometimes. And so while you have these other trees, they have put a lot of energy into their leaves, they have less energy to put into growing tall, less energy into defense. So it's just more of a balance of which is more functionable for this tree at the right time. Sometimes deciduous doesn't make any sense because the conditions are so good where you're like, well, why get rid of my leaves? There's no good reason.

So up here, it's usually water is the limiting factor. So their leaves start to desiccate, lose all their water, then they drop them, then they just wait. So it's more just about favorable conditions than it is about climate. It really depends on what's best for the tree. Yeah, most of the time. And obviously, climate has something to do with it. We have evergreen trees here because why lose your leaves? If you can just photosynthesize for 80% of the year, just go for it. And then in the meantime, they're living off of stored sugars. Exactly. Yeah. So they're always respiring 100% of the year. You know, trees are the only things or rather certain plants are the only things that can produce their own food and then respire to use it. So we're respiring every

physical or every living thing uses respiration to breathe. And that's why we breathe out carbon dioxide and water. Trees do the exact opposite. They say take carbon dioxide and water, turn it into oxygen and a simple sugar or a long chain of sugars. So all they do is just store it, store it, store it, and then just sort of sit there and then just eat sugar all year round until they can start growing again. Just snacking. Yeah, it's really nice. It's delicious. I wish I could do it. Do you think that planting more trees will save the environment? Um, yes. Okay. I'm just going to say blatant. Yes. We'll just leave it a yes and move on. Yeah. Always plant more trees. There's so many good reasons that we could do a thousand more

hours of talking about. Do you think there are certain trees that Josh Bruce wants to know? Are there certain trees that are better for the environment than others? Yeah, I would say so. But really, it's not necessarily better for the environment. It's better for maybe the micro environment. So small trees that don't cast a lot of shade over a bunch of cement, not really doing a lot. A big, huge, large tree that shades over a bunch of cement and lowers the heat island effect in a city, which is just the fact that in the cities, it's warmer temperatures than in the associated cropland or forest land. It's just cooler out there and warmer in here. And that's because we have so many impervious services that are

taking in heat and then bouncing it back out. So if we have a big tree that's growing over the top of that, then we're shading out that area. If we do that over the scale of the entire United States, then all of a sudden, we're losing millions of tons of carbon just by having one tree shade in our house during the hottest time of the day. So in that instance, yes, some are better at accomplishing our objectives in terms of helping out the environment. But for the most part, yeah, plant a tree. It's always going to be great. Okay, a couple more questions from... I got so many questions. There's no way I could possibly answer all of these. This would be a seven-hour episode. Who listens to hardcore history here? Okay, yeah, I'm ready. Let's do it.

Mark James has a great question. Are bonsai trees actually trees? Are they shrubs with pretension? Oh man, can I say both? Sure. I'm going to say both then. They do have a certain amount of pretension, but it was given and forced upon them. So Casey compares bonsai cultivation with traditions like corsets and footbinding. And if I may add my two cents, I'd say let's lump in modern day high heels, which we're going to look back with just horror. Please mark my words. Your grandkids are going to look back at probably like a holographic photo album of present-day women in evening gowns just grimacing and carrying strappy stilettos at the end of a party and ask grandma, what in turds name were you thinking? This is a nightmare.

How did you live? Why did you not stab people with your shoes? And we will say it was just it was just what you did. Now lather up my stumps. Will you child? Same exact thing where they're completely torturing these trees in every way. So they are beautiful. They're pretentious and it's so bonsai tree is technically a tree, but literally bonsai means a tree in a pot. So that's all it is. They just really take it seriously sometimes. And I wish I could do it. It's actually so hard to do. People are like, I could do that. You'll kill your tree. I guarantee those trees are so well taken care of. It's obscene. They're like show docs. They are. Oh my gosh, that's the best way to look at it. Yeah, you can almost see him prancing around and all these things.

And looking this up, I learned that it's actually pronounced bonsai, which you can say if you're feeling pretentious. So that being said, recently, a centuries old pine bonsai sold for $1.3 million for a single bonsai. That's a lot of money for a bonsai. I got this information on a bonsai website called BonsaiEmpire.com, which has a lot of information about bonsais. And so what they do is you have this small tree. It's a regular tree. If you take a bonsai redwood tree, you pull it out of the ground or pull out of its pot and you put it in the ground, you give it a thousand years, it will be 300 feet tall. No, swear to God, they are exactly the same trees as every other species that exists. Every bonsai is the same tree as the regular

species that grows out and gets huge. So blackpines, Japanese blackpines are a great example. They get huge. They're really nice, beautiful trees. They will use those as bonsai trees more often than not. No way. Yeah. All they do is you pull them out during the dormant season, you clip the roots a little bit and you put them back in, you add a little bit of fertilizer or something, just sort of keep them going sometimes. And then you prune the top and you sort of shape the tree exactly. But every time you do that, when you cut off any amount of roots, A, you're taking away a food source for the tree or a nutrient and water source. So it's like, okay, well, now I have to regrow that root. So they're putting a lot more effort into constantly regrowing. And you're

also cutting off that stored starch in that area. You're cutting off a root, you're taking away a certain amount of stored energy and lessening the ability for that tree to get nutrients and energy later. So all you're doing is torturing that tree. Literally, if you could hear screams during the wintertime, you would just hear these little tiny like, ah, as in they cut off all the roots and then they put them back down and they shape them. So that's why the trees, they stay small is because they're literally bound in this pot the same way that feet would stay small if you bound them in shoes, which you shouldn't do. It's an atrocious thing. So I just went down a real rabbit hole about foot binding, which is now illegal. But for centuries, it involved breaking

young girls' toes and then soaking them in animal blood and then wrapping them into deformity. And about how that was just like accepted, kind of like our modern stilettos, because it just, it made the legs look muscular and it was an erotic treasure for men. The girl's hobbled gait was supposed to tighten their vaginas. Let's just say I'm making that noise again. At least for the feet. The bonsai trees, like I said, they don't feel pain, but they certainly will respond to it. So you're basically keeping that tree in a very stressed state its entire life. Oh, it's like munchausen's by proxy where it's like, it's your kid and you're like, I'm gonna stunt your girl so you never leave. Oh, God, that's exactly what it is. It's terrifying.

Okay, one last question. Okay. Jillian Page Jefferson wants to know, hi, just curious. Are there any certain types of trees that produce more oxygen than other trees? I don't know. I don't know either. I do know that, you know, it's a chemical equation. So it's literally for X amount of carbon and sugar used, you get an X amount of oxygen. So it wouldn't be necessarily that one tree just produces more oxygen. It's that one would respire or would make more photosynthesis. So some trees just pump it out and then store the, store the energy so you can like cut them down and they'll just keep growing back. So those might be ones that probably produce more, but it's just because they're working overtime. It's not that they're actually producing

more with less. They're same amount, same equation. It's just one plus two equals three every single time. So yeah, probably. So if you want to plant trees, you should probably consult like a local arborist and say, hey, what's the best kind of plant? Yes, I completely concur. We touched on this a little bit, but the last two questions I always ask are, what is your least favorite thing about what you do? What is the hardest part? What is the most annoying part? What's your least favorite? Yeah, I would say the hardest part is convincing people, and this is more hard, like a challenge, is convincing people to understand trees. I don't want to say the way I understand trees, but to at least give them a better appreciation of how the trees affect them. So a lot of people

are like, oh, I got to cut down this tree or all this tree is dangerous. And I'm like, well, no, it's not. And here's why. And then explain it through. And most of the time, I get people who are just like, oh, okay, cool. I never knew that or I never thought about it that way. But then I try to explain the benefits of trees. And I'm like, hey, when you go to work and you look out your window and you see this, you know, landscape with trees, maybe a pond, grass, that sort of thing. And then you compare it. They've done studies on this. This is I can confirm. So I went and fact-checked this later. And it's true. There are a bunch of studies done in different situations, all pretty much same outcome.

On the other side of the building, where it's just a brick wall that they're looking at, if you guys are doing the same job, you're getting paid the same, the person with the view of the landscape of the trees will have more production, they will be more productive, less stress and will be more satisfied with their job. Really? Person on the other side will have less of those things all across the board. And they've done all these studies and they say, well, you know, if you are sitting in a hospital bed and you're recovering and you look out the window,

you see trees, those people use less pain medication and recover faster than the same exact person, same exact situation without that view. Oh my God. There's this well-known short story about two men in a hospital. One is blind. The other describes the scenes out the window to him. Turns out the window was just overlooking a brick wall, but his roommate made up these beautiful scenes to help the other guy. I tried to look up the original author for this and it can only be traced to a guy named Harry Bushman. Harry Bushman. Bushman, super appropriate for a nature episode. Or perhaps Harry Bushman was a name adopted in the wild and crazy Harry 1960s Harry Bushman.

So I'm trying to convince people, my, hey, listen, you don't understand. You cut down this tree. I can tell you there's going to be physical effects. It's going to cost money. First off, second off, if you don't hire someone who knows what they're doing, they could drop some part on your house or your car. So pay for good work. Number three, you're going to have maybe more suns going to hit it. You're going to have more rain. You're going to have no drainage problems because you don't have this huge thing pulling up water from the ground all the time. But then on top of that, you're going to have maybe less privacy. You're going to have less or more stress because things are going to be a little bit

hotter. You can see more pavement. There's going to be more direct lines that are harsh. So there's all these like small micro things that really add up. So the hardest part, I think for me, is to try and come out. It's not necessarily hard for me. It depends on the audience is to convince someone, no, you don't want to cut down the tree. And here's why. Here's why it's doing a lot more good that you may not even know about. But when you do the, when you do the before and after, you're going to be like, man, man, I'm really stressed right now. Have you been staring at pavement or you've been looking at a tree? Oh, I forgot to ask one question. Well, how do you feel about Christmas trees? Christmas trees are fun. They're great. I'll always have a real

Christmas tree. You don't mind that they're getting cut. No, I'm not really, no, not in that regard. Okay. Cause they're, they're small. And you know, if you're really comparing them, you can just regrow another one in like five or eight years. Like doesn't take that long. I was going to go 50, 50. I was like, Casey's either going to hate Christmas trees or he's going to love them. I did not know which side of the line you were going to end up on. That was a surprise to me. I was like, I was like, easily you could have been like Christmas trees are an abomination. Everyone should have like a tumbleweed with some lights on it. I don't know. Okay. It seems reasonable. Yeah. But yeah, I like it. And also if you think about all the other

things, you know, it's a rural or side of the world that grows Christmas trees. So you're supporting that economy buying a, you know, $25 noble fur or something like that. They try to make them perfect. I hate that. Just let a tree grow, cut it down, put it in your house. You got a tree. You don't need to worry about making it perfect. Like, you know, peer middle shaped thing, you know, share it to within an inch of its life. Ugly trees, fine trees. Yeah. Ugly trees are fine trees. I just love, in fact, some of the coolest trees. If any, if you ever look up the bristle cone pines, those old, old trees, they are so gnarly. Like you're like, how are you even a thing? I'm going to go deep into some tree porn later and let's start looking up. I'm just going to

start Pinterest boarding a whole tree thing. I actually have a book I call tree porn because it has a like long picture. It's called tree, I think is on it. This is very fancy. And it has this like literally like center folds of like tall redwoods. And so I'm like leaning back like, oh, yeah, that is, that is a huge tree. It is like, oh my gosh, Casey, get a room. I'm like, no, I'm doing this right here on the couch. I'm looking at this tree. It's hilarious. But Casey, it's planted on a dead tree. I know. The irony is so thick. I know. But I had to say it's a renewable resource. I saw this like that. It's a renewable resource.

Yeah. If it's done correctly, logging is absolutely going to save the world. We're doing things right now with trees. It's called cross laminated timber, CLT. It is going to be the future. And I'm absolutely sure of this. They're doing it in Germany. We're just now in Oregon getting a couple of mills on board to start doing it, but basically think really thick plywood, where you have boards going left and right, then you have them turn 90 degrees and they're going that direction. I mean, you're just doing this over and over and over till you get this big, like six inch thick piece of panel. And then you can cut that into whatever shape you want and put it together like Legos. Like literally there, they said, if you hear like hammers and

nails on one of these sites where they're building this, you know, structure, then something went wrong because they just sort of fit in together. And then they're less fire resistance. This is the funniest thing. It's wood. Wait, more fire resistance. Yes. Sorry. More fire resistance. Sorry. So this new type of lumber is too dense to burn, which is also a really good self deprecating way of deflecting an insult. Too dense to burn. Now it's also what's called a carbon sink because it traps carbon dioxide and keeps it there, which helps counter climate change and global warming, which is necessary if we don't want to be swallowed by boiling oceans. So it should be the future. I'm really looking forward to it. That's ideally that's really

optimistic because I wasn't sure what the future was going to be. And this is good to know. Oh, I hope it is. I hope it is because if we can get it to the extent where almost all of our buildings are now timber framed again, we can make sure that all of our trees are grown properly and under certain conditions. Wood is naturally good at moving so you don't have to worry about the tensile strength. Everything's already built into the fiber itself. And on top of that, it's nicer to look at wood than it is cement. So it's kind of like this is so much more pleasant than anything else. Oh, I would so much rather have a wooden table than a glass one. Absolutely. It's so comfortable. They're just so much nicer. It's just something warm. Yes, homey about it. Yeah,

it's like going into an old wood paneled cabin or something. It's like, ah, this is home. So cozy. Yeah, I can do this. Where's my pipe? It's like a big wooden womb. Yeah. Just love it. Exactly. That was delightful. Now to end on a happy note, what is your very, very favorite thing about what you do? I know this is going to be hard for you. This is, oh man, but really it's looking at trees almost every single day. And most of them are all different trees or different situations of trees. So I go out and I see a dogwood one day and I get to protect it from a development. I'm like, nope, you have to retain this treats an awesome tree. You did it. That makes me go home so happy. But then because of what I do and because of sort of who I am, it's not necessarily part of my job,

just part of my being, I guess, where I can go out and find these trees like, you know what, today I'm going to go out to this part of the world or this part of Oregon and I'm going to find these trees and drive out. And this is a huge long adventure. Then you plop out in this little grove and there's this, these stunningly massive trees around you that have been completely untouched and protected from logging. So you're just like, oh, I'm like, you're incredulous in how incredible these trees are. So that's not quite a part of my day to day job. But that's my favorite thing where I get to go out and like find these cones and find these trees and be like, yes, I've been there. I've seen it. They're incredible. I know how they grow. I've seen them like fall and die

and grow up again. So that is probably the really nicest part. The other nice part that I really like is actually just telling people about trees. Like if I can just sit down, I can do something like this. And someone's like, tell me about trees. I'm just like, where to begin. And then I can just do it for hours. So I think my favorite part is when someone's actively and interestingly is listening to me. That's when I'm just like, they're taking this in. They like it. Okay, they're still here. All right. One more hour, one more slide. Let's just keep going. When you found an ear to treetails, yeah, it's a happy day. This is a happy day. Yeah. And if I can convince someone that they don't want to cut down their tree, if I can change that mind, trees are

incredible things and humans are way too hubristic in the idea. I'm not even sure if that's a word but I hear it often. Sure it is. Yes. They think, we think that we know better than the trees or better than the ecosystem that's been developed over millions of years. When someone's like, oh, what should I do to make this tree healthy? Like my answer is like, let it grow. The only reason that we prune trees is because of us. Trees don't need help. Yeah, trees know what's up. Oh, exactly. Trees are like, excuse me. Yeah. If I've been evolving for millions of years. Yes. It's like, who dare you? How long have you been here, kiddo? So then this is one of my old bosses said all the time. He's like, there's no reason to prune a tree other than human reasons to prune a tree.

They will do it themselves if they have to or they will fall apart and die and then another tree is going to take its place. That's called the circle of life. That's how it goes. Speaking of circle of life, one more morbid question. Let's go for it. When you died, do you want to be planted in one of those tree pods? Oh yeah, totally. I don't know anything about it but the answer is yes. I would love that. I would love a natural burial where they don't involve me or don't put me in like a box or anything like that. They do make it like a alder box so it decays in like 30 seconds. Okay. Put me in the ground and then plant a tree right on top so that I can at some point, everyone else in the world will be like, Casey, became that tree. Oh, you're going to become

a tree one day. I love that. I mean, hopefully not any time soon like in another like long time. Fingers crossed. Long time, please. Outlive all the trees I planted in my life. Please, please. But yeah, that would be so nice to, you know, obviously I wouldn't be thinking about it then. But to know that my, you know, individual cells, my molecules have literally been transformed into something else. Yep. I don't think that I've ever met anyone as enthusiastic about trees. Yes. That's perfect. That's perfect. So far I haven't met anyone either. Maybe a couple people. But yeah, at least I can give them a good run for their money. So thank you. I'm happy to hear that. Thank you so much for doing that. Yeah, of course. Yeah, thanks for having me. This is wonderful.

This world. To continue to bask in Casey's infectious tree enthusiasm, you can see his brand new seedling of an Instagram account, which I have encouraged and have just straight up pressured him to start. He said he was going to start it anyway. And I just said, listen, dude, do it before Tuesday. You can follow him on Instagram at clap4trees, C-L-A-P-P, four, the number four, trees. It's a brand new account. It's so exciting. So you can find them there. I'll also put a link in the show notes. Do I need to say it again? I'm going to listen to the update episode to hear what is up with Casey and how his Instagram is doing. It's so worth it. It's so good. So oligies is on Instagram and Twitter at oligies. And I'm on both at Ali Ward with 1L.

And there's a group full of very warm, curious folks at oligies podcast on Facebook. Thank you, Aaron Talbert for admitting. You can also obtain oligies objects at oligiesmerch.com. There are pins. There are dad hats, shirts, totes. So we've got phone cases. We got it. Sales support, the making of the podcast. Thanks, Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Dutch for helping run that. You guys rule. And thank you always to Stephen Ray Morris for editing. This was a beast of an episode. I usually have between 14 to 25 asides. And this one had 40. And he charges me by the hour. So thank you to all the patrons at patreon.com for essentially paying him and for submitting such great questions. Asking smart people dumb questions is literally the only way anyone learns

anything in life. And if you think your question is dumb, I guarantee like 12 other people want to ask it and they're going to be thankful that you did. You can become a patron for as little as a dollar a month and that supports the show. So if it's worth the price of a sandwich per year or whatever, consider it. You get to ask your questions and see behind the scenes, pictures and videos and such. Now the music was written by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands, which is a very nice band. And now if you stick it out to the very end, you know, I tell you a secret. And this week, it's that I never learned how to type. Even though I have been a professional writer for like the decade, I skipped that elective in high school. So my hands when I write just

hover in weird places on the keyboard, sometimes just a pointer finger. And I'm pretty fast, but I make a ton of typos. I make so many mistakes. And I get so embarrassed when Stephen Ramirez is working in the same Google transcript document. And there's just so many red underlines. It's just like red lasagna noodles all over it. It wasn't until a year ago that I learned why keyboards have those weird knobs on the F and the J keys. I just thought they were like weird mistakes on all keyboards. So I downloaded a learn to type program. I only got a few lessons in and I need to dedicate some time to it because I type like a T-Rex trying to operate a spaceship. All right, there are more updates in the update episode, including a bonus secret for this week.

But I do, I want you to know it's been two years and I still type like absolute garbage. And I don't know what I'm waiting for because it would improve my life every single day. If I did learn to type, I guess I'm just holding out for a brain implant or a spell or a miracle, whatever is less farfetched. Okay, again, I'm working over the holiday because I love this show. So do listen to the bonus episode because it's so fun and it's full of really great happy news, including Casey launching his own tree podcast. Okay, bye. Until the bonus episode, which is already up. So get it. Hackadermatology. What makes wood warping?