Science Vs - A Seedy, Late-Night Adventure

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

Today, under cover of darkness, we're hunting buried treasure. This is a wild romp through one of the oldest science experiments in the world. And at first, everything was going to plan. Scientists had a secret map, headlamps, shovels … but then — out of nowhere — something got in the way. We go on this journey with plant biologists Professor Frank Telewski, Dr. Marjorie Weber, and Dr. David Lowry.   Check out the transcript here: https://bit.ly/3h4BKMv To see sweet photos of the dig head to our instagram: Science_Vs And if you want to help out Science Vs, listen to us on Spotify.   This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, with help from Rose Rimler, Nick DelRose, Taylor White, Meryl Horn, and Michelle Dang. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Extra recording from the amazing team at Michigan State University -- Kevin Epling, Greg Kohuth, and Jacob Templin-Fulton. And a big thanks to Kim Ward at MSU. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Marcus Bagala, Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. And special thanks to the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. On today's show, one of the world's longest-running experiments is put in jeopardy. It started in the late 1800s and has continued on now for well over a century. That was until something got in the way. For almost a year now, a group of scientists have been biting their nails to the nubs, and we've been following them through this saga, wondering if after all this time, is this experiment about to go down the gurgler? We first introduced you to this experiment around a year ago, but today we're taking you on the whole wild adventure. This is a tale of hunting buried treasure. Please be here, please be here.

I'm really excited. With a map where X marks the spot. You're like their god? I screwed up. Oh my gosh. It's a hunt for bottles filled with gold. Oh, wow. Well, scientific gold. Oh, wow.

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and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time?

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And this is... Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. Welcome back. Today, we're jumping headfirst into a tale about one of the longest running experiments in the world. And to tell us all about it, we need Frank Toulouski. He's a professor who studies plants at Michigan State University. We first talked to him about a year ago, in spring of 2020. And Frank loves seeds. He's been excited about them from when he was little. Literally since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. And I can remember in first grade,

we would get excited as kids about pumpkins. Let's go to the store or the pumpkin patch and get a pumpkin. And I was like, I can grow my own pumpkins, smarty pants. You know, it's like, you know, I have a seed. This is a pumpkin seed. I don't have to go to a store. I can grow my own pumpkin. And as a child, that was, you child, that was so neat to me. I thought seeds were just really fascinating. This little pumpkin grew up, and no surprises to anyone, went on to study plants at college. And it was there where he learned about this bizarre experiment that's at the center of our story today. It began more than 140 years ago, back in 1879. So picture it. In the US, Jesse James was robbing trains across the West.

Thomas Edison was still working out the kinks in the light bulb. Bustles and mutton chop whiskers were all the rage. And in a farming town in Michigan, a scientist called Professor William Beale had a very curious question about seeds. William Beale would watch farmers battling weeds in their fields, and it made him think about where those weeds came from. They must have grown from seeds that were patiently waiting in the soil, ready to pop up. So if you went out there every year and you weeded your fields, but every year weeds just kept coming up. So if you went out there every year and you weeded your fields, every year weeds just kept coming up. And basically, Professor Beale wanted to know,

how long are these seeds going to keep coming up? That is, surely a seed can't just live underground forever, right? Like ready to pop up when conditions are good. There has to be a cutoff point when the seed is well and truly dead. So to find out what that point is, in 1879, here's what Beale does. He takes 20 bottles. The bottles were kind of like old cough medicine bottles or maybe old whiskey flasks. He fills each bottle with around 1,000 seeds from some 20 different plant species, including some of the weeds that farmers were complaining about. There are plants that grow into grasses or little white or yellow flowers.

And Professor Beale wanted the seeds to be exposed to natural conditions under the ground, like the winter frost and rain, the summer heat. So he left the bottles open, filling them to the top with sand. And once they were all ready, Bill put the bottles into the ground at what's now Michigan State University. Buried them here on campus.

And so they're buried on the campus grounds. Is there like a sign that's like, do not let your dogs here? Yeah. We keep it fairly well, you know, disclosed. You know, we don't want anybody, you know, going around and, you know, doing anything to it. Oh, my God. So it really is like buried treasure on campus. Right.

Sort of. Yeah. So who knows? Now I want to, who knows where the bottles are? Oh, I know where the bottles are. It sounds really weird, but I'm the only living person to have seen the bottles and know where they are. That's pretty petty stuff.

The secret of these bottles had to be protected because the original plan was that a scientist would dig up one bottle every five years for 100 years. They'd pour out the seeds, pop them in soil, give them some water and light, and then see if anything would grow. So five years on, in 1884, right on schedule, Professor Beale dug up a bottle and planted the seeds, and hundreds of them sprouted from 13 different species. Five years later, Beale digs up another bottle and so on and so on. And after two decades, over 100 seeds still grow.

And Beale was thinking, Huh, this is interesting. Time goes on. World War I. And great men of war swing into battle. The 1918 pandemic hits. An influenza epidemic swept through our own nation. Six years later, William Beale dies.

But by now, the experiment has been passed on to another professor, who eventually passes it on to another professor and another professor, and for decades and decades, bottles are dug up and seeds keep growing. Holy mackerel. Now, because only 20 bottles were originally put in the ground, these boffins quickly realized that if they kept digging them up every five years, they'd run out of seeds before they had their answer, knowing the cutoff point. As long as seeds were still growing, they wanted to keep digging up bottles. And so several decades ago, the nerds at Michigan State said, Let's really stretch this out. Let's go to 20 years. So the next bottle would be excavated in 20 years.

And this takes us to the year 2000. We've survived the Y2K bug and the music stylings of Hanson. It's time to dig up the seeds. When I first spoke to Frank, this was the last time that anyone had dug up these bottles, and he was actually the one to do it. And even though this happened 20 years ago, Frank remembers it like it was yesterday. I got up like about two or three o'clock in the morning. He drives out to the secret site, meets his colleague, and they both get down on the ground.

It's sort of like an archaeological excavation. You're down on your hands and knees with a paintbrush, you know, and then we found the bottles. He picks one up, fills the hole with dirt, hiding his tracks, and then takes the bottle back to the lab. And Frank and his colleague spread the seeds on a tray with soil. They water them. And then you just wait.

And the waiting is the hardest part, right? A little lyrics there. The waiting is the hardest part. And the curiosity is like, come on, come on. But, you know, as scientists who work with seeds, we knew that you shouldn't expect to see something for at least a week to 10 days. But that didn't stop me from going down and still peeking in and saying, wakey, wakey. Come on, guys.

After 10 days, he saw a little plant. When the very first one germinated, I mean, it wells up inside of you. It's like, yes they're gonna make it then the question just becomes how many and and who but you know that you know when you see that very first one break the surface of the soil those tiny little green plant that's coming up these two tiny little leaves yeah you're like wow you're part of your part part of, now it's really real. You're standing on the shoulders of your giants. After 120 years of being stuck in a bottle, out of some 20 types of seeds, two still grow.

A plant called verbascum, which has these little yellow flowers, and another little tacker called Malva rotundifolia. The common name is Cheeses. It's called Cheeses because when the plant makes its seeds, they look like a cheese wheel. Oh, I thought maybe it was something like Jesus because it has risen again after 100 years. The resurrection plan. Frank couldn't believe it. So that was in the spring of 2000,

and it would be another 20 years before he got to see what would happen next, which takes us to last year, 2020. Are you getting excited about opening this bottle? Very excited about opening the bottle. He's in his mid-60s, and he'll be retiring soon. And Frank reckons this might be his last dig. So he pulled together a team of younger scientists, including Dr. Marjorie Weber, a plant biologist at Michigan State University. And she remembers when she got invited to join the crew. Oh yeah. So I was in my office and Frank came in and he said, we want you to be part of the BL seed experiment.

And I was really excited about, you know, the idea of being part of it and getting to go out at night. But it's not just the fun of going out at night. The question of this experiment, how long can seeds last in the soil for? It's actually still a mystery to scientists today, even with all our fancy technology. And here's why it's important to know the answer. So around the world, there are all these deluxe seed banks, like one you might have heard of that's in Svalbard in the Arctic. And there, they store seeds in these cold and dry vaults. And we know that seeds can last a very long time in those conditions, in very dry, very cold conditions. However, most of the seeds in the world are not in those conditions. They are in the ground. And we don't have an idea of how long seeds grow in those sort of conditions,

which are not ideal. And so if we found out that some seeds could survive for ages in regular old conditions in the soil, that suggests that there might be secret seed banks all over the world, natural ones, left over after we've built on top of them. And if given a chance, maybe those seeds would grow. And so in the spring of 2020, Marjorie and Frank were raring to go, ready to dig up the seeds and continue on this experiment that's more than 140 years in the making. But then something got in the way, the same thing that got in the way of a lot of our plans last year.

March coronavirus shows up in, you know, gangbusters on our shore. So by the time we got to April, you know, our governor in the state had pretty much, you know, issued a stay-at-home order. That order basically, you know, shut the university down. It's like, you know, oh, geez, come on. It's been 140 years and this has to happen now. It's really a big deal to postpone this experiment that we've been waiting 20 years to do and that is on this clock. And we were really pushing to still do it. We were thinking, we can still do this.

I was all gangbusters that no, come hell or high water, we're going to sit there and excavate a bottle and do this experiment by God. He was like, we're going to do it no matter what, like the show must go on. And it just got to the point where, no, we can't, we, you know, we're shut down. It's just too much of a risk to do this. We have to postpone it. We can't be going into the go to the greenhouse together we can't be doing all this oh and then what was do you remember the moment where it was like nope we're postponing it yeah it was like very somber we were all very sad we were very sad and so so why not just like sneak in there in there in the, you know, in the cover of night with a little shovel?

I mean, no one would know. The world, the scientific world would know because you have to report when you excavated the bottle and how you did it. Oh, and then everyone know that you broke the rules. And so they postponed the experiment. The only other time that this has happened was about 100 years ago in 1919. And we're not exactly sure why, but it's possibly because there was this unexpected hard frost that meant the scientists literally couldn't dig out the bottles. When I spoke to Frank last spring,

he was hoping that maybe the pandemic would be a little more settled so he could dig up a bottle in fall. That would be just a few months away. So I called him up again in November. So what's going on? Tell me what's happening. Not much. Well, you know, I mean, seriously. The moment we started chatting, it was clear that things weren't good.

COVID-19 cases in Michigan and across the U.S. were starting to climb again. And listening back to this interview now, it's so clear how Frank's attitude had changed. At first, like a lot of us, he seemed so hopeful that things would end soon. But now, it was different. Now we're three times where we were back in the spring with COVID-19 and the pandemic. And so we collectively decided to postpone the study again. I have some pre-existing conditions. I think comorbidity, I think, as Dr. Fauci would call it, my heart condition and some other issues. I'm not being 65. I'm not eager to catch this virus. Hopefully, things settle down. We got some good news yesterday from the pharmaceutical companies. One company announced that there was a 90% effectiveness rate for a vaccine.

So we'll see. Time will tell. Time will tell. Time will tell. Well, I might check in again in February. How does that sound? Just to see how maybe we'll have a vaccine by then. Ooh, I'm looking for the future.

Ooh. Well, good luck as we head into winter. Stay safe. You too. Stay healthy. Stay safe. Stay away from the virus. And fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed. Eyes crossed. Legs crossed. Fingers crossed. Eyes crossed. Legs crossed. Winter's coming. We've got a long way to go. The last leaves are falling from the trees. But after the break, spring is finally here. Are you a parent looking for a podcast for your kids that you would enjoy too? Try Tumble, a science podcast for kids.

I'm Lindsay. And I'm Marshall. And we're the hosts of Tumble, the show that explores stories of science discovery with the help of kids and scientists. It's fun, it's educational, and we've got over 100 episodes about everything from animals, dinosaurs, brains, and poop. Even if your kids feel iffy about science, they'll love these science stories.

Find Tumble Science Podcasts for Kids wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome back. Frank Toulouski has now patiently waited 21 years to excavate a bottle hidden in a secret location at Michigan State University. His team has been anxious to see if any seeds are still going to grow after being stuck in a bottle for more than 140 years.

Just a few weeks ago, in April of this year, I called up Frank to see if it would finally happen. Hello, Lolo? Hello. Good to see you again. While COVID cases in Michigan still weren't looking good, as we all know, some things are different. And I've been vaccinated, so I'm completely, you know. So you got your Fauci ouchies.

That's right, Fauci ouchies. And the big news. So we are planning on going out and doing the excavation. We are going to dig up the seeds. That's Dr Marjorie Weber again. And about a month ago, to prepare for the big moment, Frank showed Marjorie the secret location of where the bottles are. I was like, wow, here? I had some guesses, you know, like I walk around campus all the time. I'm a professor on this

campus. And I think like, where would William Beale, where would he have put it? And I had all these guesses and they were all completely wrong, you know? So I was like, oh, here. So you guys might, you might go tonight. Maybe. Still so much secrecy. Come on, Marjorie. Yes. I'm really excited. Okay. So, so walk me through what's going to happen tonight. I'm going to get up at three. I'm going to sneak out. I have a four-year-old. I have a six-month-old.

I'm going to try and sneak out without waking them up. You know, my husband is here, so they won't be. Anything for the seeds. That's right. My, you know, little germinants will be fine. So then I'll sneak out. I'll drive to campus. We have headlamps with green filters over them. This is to stop any bright light hitting the seeds in the other bottles, which could trigger them to start growing. So we have these green headlamps. We're going to walk. We're going to take this old map that we have to go to the right location. Then we're going to pull out the bottle. We're all going to be

really excited. We're going to look at it and hold it and feel feelings about history. And I'm kind of talking to the people in the past being like, I got this, I'm going to dig it up, I'm going to do the experiment, I'm going to pass it on. With all the hush hush and because of the pandemic, I'm not allowed to go with them. But Frank, Marjorie and the team at Michigan State promised to record themselves at the dig and call me straight after. Yeah, so we're planning to call you, we're going to do the dig, we're going to get the bottle, we're going to take it back to the lab and then we're planning to call you we're going to do the dig we're going to get the bottle we're going to take it back to the lab and then we're going to call you from the lab i'm guessing that'll probably be around five so i set my alarm bright and early and waited for the call Hello, hello, hello. Okay. It is around 5.16 AM. Oh, I can hear birds outside.

I'll open the window so you can too. So I looked up the weather in Michigan right now and it's snowing. I think snow showers. So I guess they're out there in the snow. What is happening? What is happening? Okay, it's 7 a.m. now. 6.58 to be precise. Hi.

Hi, Wendy. Sorry about the delay. No, no, no, no. So what's going on? What happened? It was a dark and snowy night. How appropriate, snowing. Under cover of the snow.

Yeah, it was cold and dark. We met at 4 a.m. Okay. We followed the snow. Yeah, it was cold and dark. We met at 4 a.m. Okay. We followed the map. You know where we're headed? Yep. Okay, good. You know, we triangulated to figure out where we were based on some landmarks.

Bring it this way. Are we good? Yep. Mark that spot. And we dug a hole. Ta-da! So that should be where the bottles are. Can we please be here?

Please be here. Couldn't find them. Shoot. 20 years was a long time ago. We're cold and muddy. Good God. And so then. Let's triangulate one more time.

So, Frank, so I think the vault's actually going that way, right? I had the map. The map is very accurate if you read the map right. And I just got turned around on the map. And so... You know what? You're right. What did we do?

I screwed up. I mean, I was a little concerned that we might have to pack it all up and come back the next morning. So we weren't working it. So we'd run out at night, you know. We dug another hole and after, you know, a lot of digging and a lot of measuring, we hit a tree root.

You hit a much thicker root? And then- Oh! What's that? I think I found it. Wait, maybe not. Yeah, really. We lost Marjorie!

It was a rock. You're shitting me. Oh! Are you serious? Yeah, really. We lost Marjorie! It was a rock. You're serious? Yeah, I'm serious. I'm sorry. That was a mean psycho. Oh, yeah. So I was going very slowly, and I actually felt it with my hands first, and it was just this very smooth surface.

And then I didn't say anything at first because I didn't want it to be another false alarm, like another rock. And then when I was really sure that it was the neck of a bottle, I said. Okay, now I for real found it. You did? Yeah. Yeah, I definitely did. There's a glass jar there? There's a glass jar. Oh my goodness. I really found it. Look at that. Then everyone started cheering. We've seen the bottle of the soil once Marjorie said, I think I've got it. And I stuck my nose into the hole and there it was. And I touched it.

And it's like, you know, like old friends. Wow. Yeah. Oh, wow. Hello, bottles. It's been 21 years since I was, you know, saw that bottle last. So... We got a bottle. We got a bottle.

We found it. We got a bottle. Woo! Tell me what happens next. We're going to put them in the soil today. And then in 10 to 14 days, we'll know if there's germination. Okay. Chat to you guys then.

Sounds like a plan. Before the dig, I talked to Frank about what it would mean if the seeds did grow after everything that's happened this past year. It would be such a beautiful moment of symbolism if they did regrow. It does mean that, you know, wow, there will be spring again. That hope springs eternal,

or springs hopes eternal. I always like to do that little flip around on that. But thank God the earth still goes around the sun, that, you know, the tilt of the earth gives us our seasons, that, you know, plants come back, that, you know, the tilt of the earth gives us our seasons. You know, plants come back. You know, the birds come back. You know, our crops come back.

We're able to cultivate and eat. And it's that whole, you know, it's that circle of life. After a few days, Marjorie went in to take a look at the little seeds. They kept in what's called a growth chamber. It looks a bit like a fridge, but it's kind of like a plant nursery with the right conditions of warmth and light. I'm very excited. Okay. There you go.

I'm in the growth chamber room. Okay, I'm in. I'm putting my head in the growth chamber. It's very bright. Okay. Nothing's growing yet. Nothing, I'm in. I'm putting my head in the girl's chamber. It's very bright. Okay. Nothing's growing yet. Nothing yet. Nothing yet. Over and out. On day eight, another scientist on the team, Dr. David Lowry, went in to check on the seeds. It was a little nerve-wracking that nothing had grown just yet. But then...

Oh my God. There it was. Two little leaves. This is fantastic. Popping out of the soil. Almost 142 years. There's something germinating in the Beale seed experiment. This is... Oh, my gosh.

I'm going to let everybody know about this. I was at my house. I was working. You know, it was like, you know, the beginning of the afternoon, you're kind of like starting to drag and then bam, this email comes in. I think we all started responding like in all caps, like woo. We were all really super excited. And then I was just eager to get over there and look at them.

And so what does it look like now? They're just like your standard little baby plants. I think that's one of the most incredible things about these, like thinking about the awe and the wonder, is that like the seeds are 142 years old, but the plant that's growing is just like a baby plant. They were the cutest little seeds I ever saw. That's Frank, by the way.

Are they the cutest little? They are the cutest little seeds. Since David saw that one little plant growing, eight more have grown. They think they're berbascums, the plant with the little yellow flower that popped up back in the year 2000. Frank says more plants still might grow in the coming month. But just this is really special. To see something germinate and knowing it's been after 120, 141, 100 and how many years. And I think it's a difficult time going through the pandemic.

And, you know, this is a great story of resilience. I mean, you know, all that time in the dark, all that time underground, and given the right conditions, you can thrive. You can germinate, you can grow. It's just kind of, you know, puts everything into perspective in a way. You know, hopefully everybody can embrace that at some point in their yearly traverse around the sun. You know, and it's the joy of being alive that, you know, wow, look at this. I mean, life is persistent. Life is amazing.

There's just four bottles left in the ground now. And if all goes to plan, this experiment that was launched way back in 1879 will finish in 2100. And to inspire those future diggers, Frank has a little song. Hello, bottles, my old friends. I've come to dig you up again. Because a question slowly growing regarding seeds that require sowing. And the study that was started by Professor Beale still remains within the sands of campus.

In the restless nights I dream alone, across the campus on my own. Beneath the halo of a street lamp, turn the soil up that was cold and damp, when my eyes observe the flash of a bottle top that made me stop and ponder on this power of science. That's Science Verses. Hello. Hello. Nick Delrose, producer at Science Versus. Hello, hello.

How many citations in this week's episode? There are 66 citations. 66 seed-filled citations. And if people want to see these citations, where should they go? They can follow the link in our show notes to our transcripts. Yes. And on Instagram this week, we got some really, really great photos. Okay, first up, David Lowry just today sent me a photo

of the cute little seedlings. They're so cute. The little planties. Just popping up. But also Derek Turner, who's at Michigan State University, took a bunch of photos of the dig, including the bottle filled with sand. And you could see a photo of Frank tenderly holding it as if it was his own child. There's going to be a bunch of photos from the dig.

So go to science underscore VS to check out all that stuff. Thanks, Nick. Bye. This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Rose Rimler, Nick Delrose, Taylor White, Meryl Horn and Michelle Dang. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Extra recording help from the amazing team at Michigan State University, Kevin Epling, Greg Cahuth

and Jacob Templin-Fulton. And a big thanks to Kim Ward over at MSU as well. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard, mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka, music written by Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Marcus Begala, Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord. A special thanks to the Zuckerman family

and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.