Stuff You Should Know - Plant Migration

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

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

This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you and my new daily podcasts. ICT's Daily Game. In less than five minutes, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories that show them in action in my life. Listen to ICT's Daily Game every week day on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast and start your morning with me. On how rude Tanner Redos, the Full House Rewatch podcast, join characters Stephanie Tanner and Kimmy Ghibler, also known as actresses Jodie Sweeton and Andrea Barber as they relive every episode of your favorite Friday Night Comfort show. We spent our entire childhoods on a little show called Pull House. Playing

frenemies, but becoming besties whenever the cameras were drooling. And now 35 years later, it's our biggest adventure yet. Listen to How Rued Teneridos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and this is Stuff You Should Know, the We're All Melting Edition. Yeah, just a migrating fern.

Oh, that's a good one to be. Blowing through the forest, looking for a new home. Sure. I'm a spore. What happens when you get there, spore? Well, probably grow into a beautiful new fern, because ferns are pretty party. That's awesome.

And I'll bet you'll contribute to society in all sorts of beneficial ways that Furns that were already there couldn't necessarily do. I hope so. There is fern stuff in here and I have a wonderful fern scene at my camp On the other side of the feeder creek that goes into the main creek. I call it I even have a sign. This is fern forest Mm-hmm. And it's a forest of ferns. It's quite lovely God knows where they're from, because this thing can travel quite a bit as we'll see. Yeah, it could be from from from Alabama. Easily. I'm not kidding. Easily, man. I've got a stat that's going to blow your mind in a second. Oh, oh, boy. Actually, I'll just bust it out now. You ready?

Yeah. How far can a fern travel? A fern can travel the Tasmanian tree fern in particular. Consend its spores 500 to 800 kilometers. It's 300 to 500 miles from the mother plant. And get this, a single frond, a frond produces more than 750 million of those spores. Wow. So you can understand that ferns, I mean, you find ferns everywhere.

They're really hardy. They can actually survive colder temperatures than you would think. They also thrive in the tropics. They're like a really great pioneer plant. They usually are among the first large plants that show up in like a newly cleared part of earth, right? This all makes sense then. Okay, so what we're talking about then is that those ferns that showed up in this new place and said, hey, let's get this

Let's get this biosphere going again. Let's get this biome back into shape. Yeah after this wildfire or something like that Or there's like a stampede because there's a really great ice cream truck that drove through. One of those two. Those ferns have migrated. They came from Tasmania apparently all the way to wherever the ice cream truck was. And now they're there. And so they actually moved in that sense, which is really surprising because plants are what are known as sessile organisms. They don't move from place to place individually as organisms, but as a species, they can actually move around like inchworms pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I didn't really know much about this. We're talking about plant

migration and the idea, well, not idea, the very real fact that just like humans and animals will go to more hospitable climbs as the climate may change or just, I don't know, just to seek a better place to be, plants and trees and things on mass do the same thing. Yeah, and there's all sorts of ways that they do that too. So they do it by dispersing their seeds or their spores. In that case, fern spores are single-soul organisms. They're not not like a seed technically, but they do the same thing, right? They show up in a place and set up shop and they start rocking out.

Yeah, that's right. And ferns, you know, depends, and we'll get all into this stuff. But how fast this happens depends on different factors, how far these plants can migrate, depends on different factors, why this is happening is generally climate change. And plants, and trees and things are generally moving north or up in elevation if they hit mountains. Or south in the southern hemisphere. Exactly. So that's sort of the general pattern. And we mentioned ferns because like you said those spores can really haul ferns also mature very quickly. And you know the wind can just that's why I got a fern forest also mature very quickly. And the wind can just, that's why I got a fern forest at my camp, probably.

Yeah, so they check both of the boxes that you need to be a fast migrating plant species. They produce seeds or spores at a very young age and their seed or spore can travel very far distances, right? Right. So they can move around and also it doesn't hurt that like I said, ferns are adaptable. The trees and other plants don't move quite so fast,

but they move, especially if you look at the fossil record, a lot faster than they actually should. So if you pay attention to a single organism, say an oak, those acorns don't travel terribly far. They may get a little further away from the drip line if a squirrel happens to bury it somewhere in a new oak tree grows. Sure. I think it was Anders Sandberg who described acorns as solar powered factories for producing more oak trees. Whoa, whoa. Andy Sandberg said that? No, Anders Sandberg. Oh, okay.

He's a philosopher at Oxford. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah. Yeah. Andy Sandberg, he ate his lime accidentally in his corona bottle. That's what he's got. You know who he's married to?

Patricia Arquette. No. No, that's not her cat. You've been guessing Patricia Arquette. No. No, no. You've been guessing Patricia Arquette for a lot of things lately. I feel like. Have I? He's married to, yeah, I feel like that's come up before her recently. Maybe, I don't know. Her name just rolls off the tongue.

I know. A big fan of hers. He is married to what's her name? Joanna Newsom, the singer and harpist. Oh, neat. If you're into architecture and homes, you should seek out, I don't know if it was architectural digest or something, but someone did a spread on their home and it is really something else. Okay, so that's Andy Sandberg hour.

Yeah, that would just check out. A quick detour. Wait, wait, I wasn't done. Oh, that would just check out the quick detour. Wait, wait, I wasn't done. Oh, no, good, good. So if you look at an individual tree, an oak tree, those acorns don't go particularly far away from the tree, as the old saying goes. But the fact that they do fall away from the tree means that very slowly, some of those seedlings are going to grow up a little more northward or a little more southward than its mother plant. And very, very slowly, the whole group of oaks can move southward or northward, right?

Over hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years. So long, the thing is, if you look at the fossil record, they move way faster than that. Then they should. you look at the fossil record, they move way faster than that. Then they should. And there's actually a paradox that was named by a guy named Clement Reed, right? Reed's paradox. Yeah, he's got a great, great title for it.

Of rapid plant migration, that's the full title. It sounds almost like snake oil from the 19th century. Yeah, kind of. So what is it? Oh, I was a kid, and he even send me out. We're still tight after all these years. So what he found from the fossil record, like you were talking about, and as we'll see, that's one like, you know, a pretty good way to study this stuff, especially pollen fossils, right? Yeah, because they're so hardy. Yeah, so he saw that trees were migrating

a lot faster than like the rate that you would think. And so he, like those oaks, I think, was one example you gave on the British Isles after the last glacial period over a span of like 10,000 years or so. They traveled about 600 miles, and it would normally take about a million years if the seeds were just dispersed in a typical way. But what he figured was that what may be happening here is like some weird weather event happens that sent things much farther than usual or like some deer or something eats eats something, and then poops out something, really far away from where it started. And so all of a sudden this animal has spread it via their poo poo.

Right. And this, this is how like large scale migration happens. Or I should say rapid migration over long distances, right? Right. Yeah. It's the unusual, not just the acorn falling and hitting the ground. It's not just gravity assisted. It's the unusual, not just the acorn falling and hitting the ground. It's not just gravity assisted. It's animal assisted, which is called zoo cori, or it's wind assisted, which is called the nemo cori, or water assisted, which is called hydro cori. And that's just the way that some plants disperse their seeds that's kind of on top of the normal way they disperse, which is just dropping it from from their leaves or the spores blowing on the wind, which I guess is one type of quarry.

Yeah. So like if a squirrel loaded up its mouth full of things and somehow found its way into your camper, as you set off for Arizona, Georgia. That would be a freak event, sure. And it probably wouldn't be on mass, but you know, that's a way a drink had moved. All it takes is that one oak to make it... Sure. So to just survive and then it starts its own new part of the range.

Yeah, absolutely. And we all should point out when was Reed doing this? This is a while ago, like 100 plus years ago, right? Yeah, he was a geologist, I don't know if we said, but his reeds, paradox of rapid plant migration came out in 1899 and it was a smash hit. Yeah, so people, I mean, for at least that long, science has been sort of curious about this migration

happening at a rate that they would not expect. Right. The thing is, is that it's really hard when you throw in that X factor to calculate how fast an actual species can migrate. And there's a few ways that you can study that kind of thing. One, as you said, is studying the fossil record, which is super helpful. But it's not showing you what's going on contemporaneously or within the last couple of decades. This is 10,000 a million years ago, something like that, right? Yeah. So if you wanted to study something a little closer to home, timeline-wise, you would

maybe set up what's called a permanent vegetation plot. So you would just, you would mark off an area and you would go back there, you know, every so often, like every six months or every year or so and just sort of chart what's happening. That's one really good way. I think they've been doing this for about a hundred years since the 1920s. So we've got a pretty good data set there. Something else you could do is go somewhere, like let's say you dug up some cool scientific journal from a scientist from 200 years ago that went and explored some island. And while they may not have charted everything out exactly like you would in today's science, they may have a really nice diary

about all the plant life there and things that they saw there and where it might be. And you could go back to that place. And it's not quite as tight of a record, but you could still get a pretty good idea of what's happening. Yeah, depending on who's journal you're working from. And back in 2012, a Danish team of scientists followed the record left by a 19th century geologist named Alexander von Humboldt from Germany, who was just an interesting dude in and of himself.

He called coffee concentrated sunbeams, so he's a kind of guy. Oh man, that's great. They went back to Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador, which Humboldt studied in detail, and not only did he study the vegetation there, and he classified all sorts of new plants that Europeans didn't know about at that point. He also noted exactly where they were on the mountain as far as the elevation went. Super helpful. Super helpful.

So based on this information, the 2012 Danes were able to go back and recreate his trip, and then they were able to note what plants were where and they found that everything all species on average had moved up the mountain by about an average of about 500 meters which is significant it's like almost a mile it's like eight tenths of a mile. Yeah yeah that's the average yeah there was a lot of variation within that but that's yeah it's a long way for sure and what we found out and I guess this comes up a little later, but a plant can find more hospitable climbs going up 500 meters than they might by going, let's just say north like 90 to 100 miles.

Yes. So like a much quicker road to better climbs if you just go up that mountain. For sure. Yeah, that's kind of two ways they move is longitudinally or altitudinally. You gotta be in shape though. Oh, for sure. You're gonna climb that mountain. Should we take a break?

I think we should, but just to wrap it up real quick, there's a bunch of ways you can study the movement of trees, but it's so slow and it happens over such long timelines, longer than a human timeline, that it's harder to do than you'd think. But we still have figured out some ways to do it. All right, we'll be right back and we'll talk about all the stuff in more detail right after this. One other way we failed to mention probably would have been better to just say that before the break, but again, still learning after 16 years. Satellite images is another way that you can study on the short term.

You know, the fossil pollen is much longer than those plant plots and things like that. Vegetation plots are shorter term, but satellite images can also help. Yeah, if you wanted to catch like a Venus flytrap and the act of leapfrogging over some other planet, satellite images can help you with that. Fossil record won't show you that. Here's the thing with all this though. It's not like we're gonna talk a lot about climate change because that's what's spurring a lot of the movement right now.

But the Earth's climate has changed a lot over the years and this is not some new thing. There used to be periods of time where the Sahara Desert was quite green, and there was grasses growing there, and tropical plants growing there, and elephants roaming the Sahara and wildlife living there. And they've learned that this is actually one of the things that helped move humans around. Like humans could actually migrate through the Sahara

with much more ease than they could before during these green Sahara periods. Yeah, that's so fascinating that who knows when we would have migrated out of Africa into Europe and the ages had the green of hair and not happened. And that just nuts? Yeah, like hundreds of miles it says here that they would find tropical plants growing

where they shouldn't be growing alongside, you know, the desert stuff that survived. So that was this weird sort of mixed up biome for a time. Yeah, and the greens of hair period, there were a few of them that had been documented, but they figured out that they happen about every 23,000 years. Right.

We're due for one in about 12,000 years, something like that. And it's based on the tilt in Earth's axis. That's neither here nor there. But the point is, during these periods where the Sahara was just a humid kind of tropical forest, there was a mixture humid kind of tropical forest. There was a mixture, kind of what you touched upon, of different, like you said, a hybrid biome of stuff that wouldn't necessarily live together under normal circumstances, but got along just famously in the couple thousand years that the Sahara was green and those

plants were growing together. Yeah, it's just amazing to think about. And then in North America, we have another example too, after the Laurentide Glacier, which is way up in the Arctic right now, used to be down in Indiana and Northern New Jersey. Yeah. And when it retreated, it took everything with it. It took bowlers, it carved out lakes,

it did all sorts of neat stuff, but what it didn't leave behind was vegetation. So it left, it was like a giant ice cream truck basically. It left nothing behind and it was just a great place for plants to pioneer and colonize. Yeah, I mean, that's why you have pine trees in New Jersey, right? I would think so, yeah, or in the south because they were too far, or in the south because they were too far, they were trapped below, yeah below the Laurentide glacier down in the southeast, even though they normally would have been growing in the north, right? And as the glacier retreated, the climate changed in that area, and so the trees just moved

on up. So that's an example of migration as well. Yeah. Oh, wait. I thought they, I thought they were, it was more hospitable in the south for these trees. And that migration sent them north. Yeah, that's what I said, right? Oh, okay. I'm maybe I heard you wrong. Yeah. The other thing we should talk about as far as climate change goes, because like I said, we're going to mention that a lot is the rate of change of the climate is increasing as most people

agree on. And that is kind of where we are now in discussing this is like, is the rate of climate increasing too fast for the plant migration to catch up or in some cases are the plants migrating ahead of that pace? And that's really sort of, you know, a lot of this episode is about this rate of change in the 200 years since the beginning of the industrial age, no coincidence. The temperature of the earth has increased more than one degree. So, again, yeah, we all know now that, you know, one degree is like a huge huge deal. It's 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit Yeah, exactly but 0.37 of that change over the past 200 years has come since 2011. Yes, so it's people have

You know Someone has stepped on the gas here. Yeah, and it's happening much much faster and seemingly in many cases fasting faster than these plants can catch up. Yeah, so plants are used to migrating, like they've been migrating through our Earth's history, but these conditions are different. It's not like it was before, even when the Earth was heating up after the last ice age.

I think did you say that it took about an average of 1,400 years to increase by one degree after the last glacial period? No, no, that was the setup that would have been very helpful actually. I mean, think about it. So we've achieved one degree in 200 years, and after the last glacial period ended, he did one degree every 1,400 years. Yeah, that's called a rapid increase. Yeah, like you said, somebody's put their foot on the gas and that somebody is Western industrialized nations, right? Yeah.

So that's one thing that's really kind of putting the heat on plants, literally, is their southernmost ranges or their northernmost ranges, depending on what, what, I guess their equatorial pointing ranges, the words hotter. Those are the ones that are really at stake. So are those plants ranges big enough that they'll be able to survive that change in climate

and just keep moving northward? Or are they going to be outpaced by the movement of the climate? Because the climate is racing toward the poles just like the plants are, right? So who's faster? Well, it turns out, if you talk about New England's trees, they move something like, I think red oaks is what it was,

that this University of Vermont group was studying, they move something like a 10th to 3th of a mile, a year, right? The climate is moving something like four to six mile a year, right? Yeah. The climate is moving something like four to six miles a year. So the climate is really kind of showing up as kind of the, you saying bolt of this race. And I don't know, the plants are like me racing you saying bolt. Yeah, that lab group in Vermont,

they all have t-shirts that just say you do the math. Exactly. It's very smart, but they get their point across. For sure. There's another example of, and we've been talking about Northern movement, which is generally the pattern, but not always. There's a researcher at Purdue named Songlin Fay. I think Fay or Faye?

I don't know. FBI, I bet it's Faye, who studied 86 species of trees in the eastern US over about 30 years from the mid-80s to 2015. And it depends on what the tree is. Hardwoods, scarlet oaks, red maples, magnolias are moving west at about one and a half kilometers a year because the Midwest is becoming more wet and the conditions are good for those trees to grow. Softwoods, short leaf pines, red pines, bald cypress, they're actually moving north about

a kilometer of the year, a kilometer a year. So different plants and trees are moving in different directions at different rates. Yeah, it's very much akin to a neighborhood that's this old settled-in neighborhood with a bunch of mix of people that's being gentrified, being pushed out and separated. Not everybody just, the whole neighborhood doesn't just move, this neighborhood breaks up and goes in different directions. Yeah. And so to ecologists in Arborist, like this is very concerning because for a long time,

we've looked at groups of plants as communities. Like some, some plants go with other plants. Like I think, what is it, beach and hickory? Where is it? I don't know. I like hickory though. We can't leave that in there. Oh yeah, hemlocks. I knew it was an H-H tree. Yeah. Beach and hemlocks go together like peanut butter and chocolate. So two do like furs and spruces, right? So when you find one of these, you usually find the other one and there's also a bunch of other plants that kind of interact and usually Some types of animals that hang out in those same types of forests

So if you've got the hemlocks going north and the beach going west Who are the hemlocks going to mix with and who are the beach going to mix with when they start to set up these new communities? And that was really troubling to a college, but I think paleonologists, these fossil, pollen scientists, have said, it's always been this way. Communities aren't permanent. They're kind of unstable. They just seem permanent to us because our life spans on the order of like 70, 80 years, right? It's a much slower process, but it's a constantly changing turnover. So it's not that big of a deal. But again, because of the pace of climate change,

when these hemlocks get further north and the beach get further west, they're gonna have far less time to develop new connections and networks with the new plants that they set up communities with. Yeah, and the other thing too, you know, earlier when I mentioned that a series of trees might move up a mountain side, because it's a way, quicker way to get to a more hospitable climate than moving that 90 miles north. Yeah. When they, and this happens in other cases as well, it's not just up a mountain side, but when they

get to the place where they're going, it may be a better place, maybe more hospitable climate-wise, but other things aren't so great. So if you move up that mountain slope, let's say you have a shallower soil, and so those trees move up there because the climate's better, but then they get there and the soil is in as great, so they get squeezed into where they can grow, maybe into like a tiny little narrow band that's potentially choking off the rest of the forest. Yeah, I figured out it's kind of like hiding

in the closet during a house fire. Like you're gonna be safe in the short term, but in the long term, it's not a great strategy, but it's not like the trees have any choice. They can't go back down. It's too hot there. They can't move further up. There's the soil's inhospitable. So they're trapped, and they're eventually going to become a thinner and thinner band until they just pop out of existence. That's right. And the other thing that can happen too, like you said, when they get to a new place, and they don't have enough time to make new friends, all of a sudden that can open the window for

bad friends to show up. Yeah. And all of a sudden invasive species are there and then you've got a whole other set of problems. Yeah. The ones that were like leather jackets with the little silver studs on their shoulders. Those are the ones you got to watch out for those plants. If this all seems very kind of on too long of a timeline for you to care, first of all, you probably don't care much about climate change because that's the whole name of the

game there. Sure. But MapleSurf is a good example that Livia found. Livia helped us out. She did a great job with this. The Maple tree, which the species is, the sugar maple is one of the two main species that we use to get the delicious maple syrup. I'm sorry, this is an aside.

Sugar maple are two beautiful words that form an even more beautiful comment. You are right on the money, my friend. You know? Sugar maple. It just sounds nice coming out of my mouth. Yeah. They have been migrating north into Canada and you might say, well, that's great. Canada is a fine place to live and I'm sure they love their maple syrup there too. But in Quebec, the researchers have found that they're not going to go

beyond their current range up there because their're boreal far as up there. So the soil, again, the climate might be better, but then they get up there and the soil pH and the microbe content of the soil is not what they're used to and not what they work well with and grow well with. So they're not doing well up there in the forest. No, no. And it's the exact same position as the trees that are trying to go up the mountain are running into.

Eventually, these trees that are moving into the boreal forest areas, they can't go any further. They're not adapted to that. Over a long enough timeline, those sugar maples could like a few of them could land in the boreal forest and end up surviving in that kind of soil. Then they would be adept before and they'd start reproducing. And then as the boreal forest moved closer to the poles or the Arctic, those trees would move where the boreal forests used to be, right? Totally not

a problem over a long enough time span. Again, climate change has so drastically shortened that time span that there's probably not going to be time for this and those sugar maples We'll just run into that boreal soil and just they they'll it'll be like hitting a brick wall for their species Yeah Another issue that can happen and I know this all just seems like doomsday stuff kind of is it kind of this though Let's say like the Amazon episode that we talked about when trees are moving out there, they might be replaced by something and it may not be an invasive species, but it may just be weeds or grasses or something.

Those aren't as good at capturing carbon as those trees were, so then that accelerates the problem even more. Right. And then there's another, if you wanna keep talking about, do you say scenarios, those boreal forests, they actually are, if you look at a map, or if you look at planet Earth from outer space, they're dark, which means that they absorb more sunlight,

more heat, more UV radiation, then the polar caps, the ice, that reflects it back into space. So as those boreal forests advance further and further north toward the Arctic, or the North Pole, and there's less and less ice to reflect that there's more and more heat for them to trap, which is just going to heat the Earth that much faster. It's a positive feedback loop that's super duper negative. Yeah,per negative. Yeah, very negative. Maybe we should cover tropical things moving north and then take a break. Yeah, because I got some good stuff on that, man. I'm super excited.

Yeah, I mean, it goes both ways. So you can have like tropical plants and tropical zones like Florida, where, you know, the earth is warming so they can move further and further north and all of a sudden these plants that are native to tropical zones are ending up in areas where it's you know not necessarily a tropical zone. I can't remember which zone it land to it. It land is 7B and 8A. 7 I love that you know that stuff. 7B and 8A. 7? I love that you know that stuff. But the point is, these like kill frost that you might get that happen to, I love that name, kill frost.

Like it'll get really cold and frost over and like kill things, maybe there shouldn't be there. If that's happening less and less and there's even less in the way of those tropical plants moving northward. Right. And so the, I guess climatologists are expecting that by the end of the century, which seems like a long way away, but buddy, that's like less than, that's like eight decades, 70 something years.

Maybe even 77, you could say to be exact. But in 77 years climatologists expect all of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, I'm guessing the southern half to be tropical. Those are sub-tropical now. If you want an example of what a tropical country is, go to Ecuador, country is go to Ecuador, go to Guatemala. Those are tropical and Alabama and Arizona are going to be like Guatemala by the end of the century. Yeah. That's insane. I know. It's really, and it's happening. It's not like, like they've shown that it's currently happening. Yes, and it's happening because like you were saying, those extreme cold events are becoming rare and they're becoming warmer so the coldest day of the year is not as

cold as it used to be in other words I think the scientific term is kill frost love that that is definitely a band name oh for sure like what are they though kill oh I don't know like a some kind of heavy or something right I don't know, like, it's all kind of heavy or something, right? I don't know. Remember destroyer? They were great. They didn't really have like kind of like a belying name. You know what I mean? No, that's true. So it could be like that. I think he named the band that for that reason is a bit of a tongue and cheek thing, maybe. I knew I liked that guy. Yeah. Bayharr has who we're talking about, not Joy. Tony. Tony Bayhara.

Todd knows. It's Dan, I think, right? I don't know. I just know a couple of destroyer songs. I don't know the guy's life story, do I? Well, settle down. No, I wanted to look it up because he is, he's also a part-time member of maybe my favorite all-time band, the new

pornographers, like modern bands. Oh yeah. Yeah, he's on most of their albums but hasn't done the past few. Who was the singer for new pornographers? Was it Nico Case? Well, she sings and Carl Newman sings. And also the great Catherine Calder, who is the stuff you should know, listen. Oh, neat.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I found that out and I was like, oh, I gotta get in touch with her. And I did and now we are email buddies. And on the last new pornographer, she's showing Atlanta, she's kind enough to meet me behind the bus, as they say. In the back parking lot,

and we chatted for a while, and she's just wonderful. And she also, I'm gonna plug her other band, in the back parking lot and we chatted for a while and she's just wonderful and She also gonna plug her other band because she has put out a great album last year with her band front person. Mm-hmm. So get front person if you like Synthy goodness Mm-hmm and like a beautiful angelic voice Then get front person speaking of Synthy goodness. That's so funny. Bring that up Just today I discovered an entirely new genre music called dungeon since have you heard of it what no okay okay it's the really well-named genre but it is synth super like synthy synth like 80s kinda synth i love it But the kind of synth that you would find is like the score to a 70s

hobbit like cartoon movie, animated movie. It's super wizardy and fantasy. It just evokes all that stuff and does such a good job of it. I've only heard one out, I can't remember who it was, but check out Dungeon's Synth. Yeah, Kill Frost is a Dungeon synth, be a nice work. Alright, Dungeon's Synth and the front person album, their most recent one, Parade is great. Very nice. I think it's full stop. Time for a break.

Yeah, let's take a break, we'll be back with more album reviews right after this. So Chuck one thing you can say about humans is that we are action oriented. Sure. In a lot of ways. I will give you that. We sit around and bicker and complain and moan and undermine one another. But when the chips are down, we can invent our way out of a lot of problems. And invention doesn't have to necessarily mean that we, you know, put some metal on metal and made it go on its own. It can be something like inventing new areas for species that are in danger of being lost to climate change

to settle and make another part of their range out of. Well, sir, it sounds like you were talking about forest-assisted migration. By God, I am. That's right, and that is basically, and we'll talk about the bad and the ugly of this, that is human being, scientists getting involved in the ecosystem and nature,

and spreading seed, and sort of getting ahead of the pace if the pace isn't where it should be to keep up with climate change, saying, well, let me give you a little help forward. And this can be kind of thorny because it's humans, like I said, getting involved in the ecosystem in ways that science

as long said, let nature work it out. And that's the best way to do it, because you don't know what can happen once you start messing around. Yeah. Like nature finds a way. It does. These guys are saying the people who are in favor of this are saying that made sense before July 2023, which is probably the hottest month in Earth's history, at least as far as since it cooled, basically.

And that followed the hottest June ever, right? So these ecologists that are like, no, we need to take much more of an active hand in this, are saying like it's our obligation to do something, not doing anything is going to be more destructive. It's like saying like, yeah, we shouldn't move these people out of this house that's being bulldozed over because we don't know what they're going to do in their new neighborhood.

So we're just going to stand there and watch them die as the bulldozer crushes them inside of their house. That's the, that's a pretty good analogy if I do congratulate myself here. It's very much akin to that. And so those ecologists have a pretty good point. It's like, yeah, it's not a great, perfect solution, but it's way better than doing nothing. Yeah, and they're not doing it willy-nilly, though. They're very aware of the potential pitfalls, like spreading disease and introducing something

to an area that could be really bad for other things in that area. So, they're not just out there with a seed cannon, blast and stuff all over the place, like Dolph Lungren or something. Wearing bike coat shorts. There's a couple of different kinds, though. There's a forest-assisted migration. The one that's really sort of thorny is assisted range expansion. So if you're spreading something within the zone where it might still normally grow in like 200 years, that's one thing.

If you're moving something completely out of that range, they do forecasting and stuff and they're like, what might this area look like? 100 miles from here, 100 years from now. If they're moving something completely out of a range that it would even potentially grow, that gets way, way trickier. And I think there's less of that happening, right? Yes, for sure. But you hit it on the head.

They're saying, like, okay, by 2100, what is this area gonna be like? Is it gonna be like where these red oaks like to live now in 2023? And if so, maybe we can give them a head start and hope that some of them will survive and adapt and start colonizing there, right? It gets even priclier than assisted range expansion. There's another even more radical one called species rescue

or assisted species migration. And that is where you take a plant completely out of its normal range, out of what you would even predict would be its normal range, and just move it somewhere it would never be. Right. This is considered the riskiest of the three by ecologists, because you can easily take something that's totally innocuous and benign under normal circumstances and make it into an invasive species when you move it.

And the critics of this typically point to the Monterey Pine as a good example. Yeah, that's right. It's endangered in California. It is native to California. But they have introduced it in Australia. And it's, it's, I don't know about wreaking havoc, but it's damaging the, it's an invasive species on Australia. Yeah, for sure they consider it a weed. And when they see it, they pluck it. They do not like those in New South Wales

and Victoria, I believe, states. Now that's a weed. Right. I don't know. That's okay. It was on my best. No, I'm't know. That's okay. It was my best. No. I'm going to have to agree with you on that.

I think you just came up with a brand new type of accent, frankly. Yeah. Can we hear it again? No. Okay. I'm just going to go back and replay it. You know, it's funny, though, as I use the lady on my phone that talks to me, what's a call on Apple?

Siri. Siri, I guess. I don't use Siri, but I still have a voice for maps and stuff. And I usually go between an Irish woman and a Kiwi, a New Zealander. And the New Zealander says, right, and it always cracks me up.

That sounds like Matthew McConaughey. It does. At the next street, take a ride. I gotta hear that. I didn't know you could do something that G Wiz to an Apple iPhone. Make it talk to you. Oh, okay. Some regular old thing. I don't do like sounds, digital sounds are one of those, like I don't have mesophonia, but if I do, it's for digital sounds. Like when I get a new computer, the first thing I do is turn off all sounds on it.

Like any bands and bongs have to go. Like I have to change my text sound every month or so because I'll just get like anxiety from it. I can't stand text sounds, so I have to come up with a new one. I do not like them. Well, you know what I do is I record, I record my own text and phone rings and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I record my voice. Like when my phone rings, I never have my ringer on, but if it ever does, it's me going ring, ring, ring, ring. That's awesome. And if I get a text, it's me going, text, man.

That's great. Yeah, I think it's strange. Looks, but who cares? Can I just use yours? Yeah, I'll send it to you if you want. Thank you. Yeah, or you can make one specific for you me, which is like maybe just her sweet boy saying hello, my love. I used to have a ring tone with her

singing that part from what's love got to do with it that exactly. But she just kept saying that over and over again. That's pretty great. It's also kind of maddening. Yeah, no, it would never was actually. I never got sick of that one. I think that says a lot. But it's better than, do do do do do do do. Yeah. Man, you just stressed me out. Sorry. You got anything else? Uh, no, I had a joke about your dislike of digital sounds, but your love of craftwork flies in the face of that, but I won't even say it. That's more a statement than a joke. Yeah, I true. But it is true, it's quite accurate. I think that's it, Chuck.

Yeah, I got nothing else. This is a good one. Look out, if you're in New Mexico and you see a palm tree growing, then watch out. That's right. It means that you've gone tropical. And you're in trouble now. Yeah, not in a good way. If you want to know more about plant migration, there's a lot of interesting stuff out there

on the internet to read and go do that. And maybe go become an ecologist and figure out how to save the planet, please. Since Chuck's had agreed, it's time for Listener Mail. This is from William Lloyd, we did a shorty on the NATO phonetic alphabet. And what we didn't consider was this. Hey guys, being a pilot and prior air force, I was glad that you did one on this topic, it's not a correction, you'd got to say a good job, but you missed what I think is the best part. The numbers. The NATO alphabet is kind of a misnomer,

because it actually also includes number zero through nine, but you can't really make a word starting from a number, so it's purely pronunciation. Most numbers are the same with a notable exception of nine. We use nine instead of nine, because over Garbled Radio it sounds like 5 but mainly because NATO countries speak German 9 and no in German. 3 is pronounced tree to not be confused with the antiquated prefix 3SRI. 4 is 2 syllables rhymes with, so you'd say 4.

Sounds kind of funny. To differentiate it from, you know, FOR. And 5 is 5 to keep the word fire distinct in some dialects. Huh. This is good stuff. I feel dumb that we missed that. That's all interesting, but you're probably thinking does anyone actually say it like that? It depends. Nine is pretty universal, plus we think it makes us sound cool, which it does, of course.

The rest are much less common, but depending where you are in the world and what dialects are involved, they're useful from time to time. Signed Tailwinds Decker. That's awesome. I'm also what a great nickname to. I hope that's your nickname and your parents didn't actually name you Tailwinds. Well no, no, no. Decker's the name. Tailwinds was the... Oh, the sign off? Yeah.

The cheers are the one love. Exactly. So Decker's the first thing. Well, I don't know. It's just a Decker. Decker may be a call sign actually. Right. Well, I love that.

Thanks a lot, Decker. Much appreciated. I say nine or whenever the occasion arises sign actually. Well I love that, thanks a lot Dekker, much appreciated. I say Niner whenever the occasion arises, you know. I like that. You know our good friend Joe Randazo, formerly of the onion and at Midnight fame, our comedy writer friend, he signs his emails, yours with a comma, Joe, Joe Randazo. That's great. I think yours is, yeah, it's very, very warm, as is Joe. Dezzo. That's great. That's very rare.

I think yours is. Yeah, it's very, very rare. As is Joe. Sure. It's perfect for him. And as always, high to the kids. Yeah. Joe's kids too.

Listen. Yeah, the Randezos. They're listening family. The flying Randezos, they're trapeze artists' family, just waiting to happen. They should be. Well, we'll see. A lot's going to happen by the end of the century, apparently.

So who knows? That's right. Well, if you want to A lot's going to happen by the end of the century, apparently. So who knows? That's right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Decker did and confuse me with your sign off, I'd appreciate it. So would Chuck, too. He loves that kind of thing. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes.

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