June 20, 2017 • 51 mins
Since the advent of agriculture, humans have been storing seeds. But as sea levels rise and climates change around the world, our reasons for banking seeds have become more desperate.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Josh, my friend. If you are a listener of ours
and you live in Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Austin, Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Kansas,
or right here in Atlanta, you can come see us
on tour starting in August and finishing up in November.
Is that right? Yeah, that's right man. It's our two
thousand and seventeen North America Monsters of Podcasting Tour. That's
(00:21):
what I like the sounds of that. Eddie van Halen
is opening, Yeah he is, but not really, no, not really.
But you can find out all the information and all
the deats at s y s K live dot com
are Squarespace Live touring home on the web, and we
hope to see everyone out there. Welcome to Stuff you
should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
(00:49):
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, Jerry rolland this is us stuff you should know.
I'm just trying new stuff. I mean, we're coming up
on a thousand episodes. Man, you've got to keep it
fresh somehow. So I tried the A team. You've actually
done that like seventy six times, the same one. Kidding,
(01:11):
It's probably true. Though. Uh, if you were a seed,
what seed would you be? I would be a pumpkin seed.
Oh wow, because you know you won't get eaten. Oh
I don't know. I like pumpkin pie so well, and
people toast pumpkin seeds, so yeah, I'm way off base there. Yep,
what else you got, however? Mind no pumpkin seed? Bam.
(01:33):
I would be a watermelon seed because they remind me
of my grandfather. That's sweet. How do they grow those
seedless watermelons? Huh uh, you're a watermelon seed, you should know.
Or the square ones? Yeah, those are cool too. They
cost like sixty dollars in Japan. Really, yeah, they're really expensive.
(01:54):
I would have one just that have it. I would
like shell lack it so it would never die, right,
and just keep it in my fridge for a conversation piece.
It's not a bad idea, man. Or actually I took
that back. I'm gonna start marketing fake square watermelons as
conversation starters or refrigerator magnets shaped like square water mountains.
(02:14):
What about that? Hmm? All right, and they call that
running running something into the ground. Um, I've got something
for you. You in the food Fads episode, asked me
what my go to crock pot recipe was, and I
told you, and then I was like, okay, moving on,
(02:36):
and I upon listening to it because I don't know
if everybody knows this or not, but you and I
all listened to the episodes and Jerry before we release them, um,
and I was like, I didn't ask Chuck what his
crock pot recipe? What did you, Chuck? I didn't. What
is your go to crock pot recipe? Do you know
(02:58):
what it is? No? I don't. If it's not, um, no,
I'll tell you what it is. It is a a
turkey ghoulsh surprise. That sounds good. So just some ground
turkey and some onion and green pepper and red pepper
and uh all manner of spices. And you can also
(03:19):
throw in like eggplant or squash or you know kind
of any veg veggie like that and chunk it up.
That sounds good and just spice it up real good,
throw it in that crock pot. Uh, maybe add a
little chicken broth or something. Uh do they have turkey broth? Yeah?
They do? Okay, sure, Well, then don't be weird. I
don't check. I don't I don't think chicken broth would
(03:41):
clash with turkey too bad, but yeah, probably turkey broth
would be better. Well, you may not know something in
your mouth might be disturbing and you're just like, something's
not quite right. So what's the surprise that you're using
chicken broth in a turkey based dish? Is it like
a human thumb? The surprise? I tried the thumb, but
that's much of us twice twice, yeah, because they only
(04:05):
have two thumbs, got you? Now? I know? The surprises
is our lentils. Oh yeah, that's nice. So then you
dump a bunch of lentils in there. Um maybe, I
mean you could throw it all in there at the
beginning if you, but they'll get kind of really gushy,
but maybe towards the intoso lentils in there, and then
it all just cooks up to a big kind of
soupy mess and then you can eat it for a week. Well,
(04:28):
the next time there's a house Stuff Works weekly book
club meeting, you've got to bring that to the pot luck. Okay, right,
all right, because I want to try it done our
lentils seeds because that'd be a great segue. But I'm
almost a hundred percent sure that I would be wrong
in saying, well, lentils are seeds. I think it's a legum.
(04:48):
It is a lagoon, but it is a laguma seed. Well,
you didn't ask me that. I don't have any idea,
although they are protecting lagoons and seed banks, so okay, okay,
Well then they're probably not seeds, but they're pretty close,
so we'll use that as a seguay. How about that? Yeah,
And you know what's funny is we uh could have
sworn that we did this one, or at the very
(05:08):
least did the doomsday vault. And I think we covered
the doomsday vault in the video, but we we did
touch on it in Well the Moon Safe Humanity. Yeah,
that's a good one. But I went back this is
when we had transcripts, and it was a funny one
to read because we brought it up without researching it
off the top of our head, which always gets us
in trouble, and just sort of chatted a minute about
(05:29):
the doomsday vault and then said, you know, don't hold
us to anything because we this wasn't supposed to be
a part of the show, so we didn't really cover it. No,
and we certainly didn't do a whole episode on all right,
and we're not going to this time. Because even though
the Doomsday Vault better known as the small small Bard
Global Seed Bank, which is in small Bard, Norway, which
(05:54):
is close to Long Year Be in Norway, which is
the closest town to the North Pole, right, Um, this
seed bank is hands down the most famous seed bank
in the entire world. It's run by technocrats who really
know how to work the media, right, But it's far
(06:15):
from the only one. There are a lot of other
seed banks out there, and even the whole concept of
seed banking in general is pretty interesting. So it's fall
Bard will be the star. If we're a band, would
be seed Banks featuring the stylings of small Bard Global
seed Bank. That's probably that should be the title of
(06:35):
this episode. I thought you could say featuring the stylings
of small Bard Globalstein and that sounded like a like
a a small time magician that's great, or an accordion act.
Good stuff. Um, all right, well, let's get to it.
This one, by the way, it was written by my
friend Debbie. I noticed you remember Debbie, Debbie Ronka, my
(06:56):
buddy from New Jersey and uh so flemental material. You
found a really great article on the doomsday vault. What
was that from the Guardian or yeah, that was by
um Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian from May two fifteen. Yeah,
that's one of my favorite kinds of articles is when
they profile something and then it's set up as like,
(07:20):
you know, the sunrise is early in Norway and and
Schfinn gets out of his yurt and trudges across the
glacier and so it's sort of couched in this story
of the the dude who works there, one of the guys.
But then you get all the deats along the way.
It's very cool. Yeah, that's that's called a long read
or long form. Yeah. And actually there's two really great sites,
(07:44):
ones called long form and one's called long read once
a dot Common ones a dot Org. I can never
remember which, but if you like that kind of writing,
that's all those sites are, just page after page after
page of links to articles like that. Yes, and in fact,
to our buddy, uh Joshua Bearman, uh huh, great writer
(08:04):
of long form. He has his own little shingle called
Epic Magazine. If you're looking for like those really great. Basically,
people mind the that site to make movies. They're such
good stories. Yeah, yeah, well he he wrote the magazine
article that um uh far yeah, not Fargo. Argo, the
(08:24):
Ben Affleck movie was based on. Yeah, we would be cool.
The funny part about that slip up is the Coen
Brothers at the beginning of Fargo say like this is
based on a true story, which is not true at all. Right.
He also wrote a really great one um about California
surfer gang Um that smuggled pot out of like Coronado
(08:44):
Island in the seventies, and it is just begging to
be made into a movie. If it hasn't been yet,
I think it's optioned. Surely it is that right, Coronado
High yep. And I'm pretty sure Barman wrote that back
in like two says the internet. Yea, so put down
your streaming TV shows for God's saken, I would say,
(09:07):
read a book, but at the very least read a
long form article. Yeah. Can can I get on a
soapbox for a second, We'll talk about seeds eventually, everybody
just be quiet. So the whole concept of their being
TV everywhere and like you can take TV to the
beach now you don't have to talk to anybody. You
can like watch TV on the subway. That's That's that
(09:31):
bothers me. Chuck it bothers me, like to my core,
And I know that makes me very unpopular. I don't care.
I stand with Josh. You know, Emily and I have
been listening. We've been sitting around in a room at
night together in silence and listening to s town Oh Cool,
which I've I've forgotten how fun it is because I
(09:51):
usually listen to podcasts on my own, like in my car.
But just to sit around, like with your loved one
and listen to something that's kind of neat too, yeah,
you have somebody to look at and be like, oh
can you believe that? Man? All right, I'll bet everybody
thinks we sit around and listen to podcasts together. Can
you believe that? Alright? Alright? Seed banks? Sorry, So, Debbie
(10:13):
Ranka makes a really great point that you think of
seed banks as this probably something new from you know,
the environmental movement, probably something from the nineties, maybe as
far back as that, But she says, no, no, seed
banks are a concept as old as agriculture. Basically that
(10:33):
in the in the cradle of agriculture, Mesopotamia, which is
present day Iraq. They have found seed banks um as
old as eighties, seven hundred and fifty years. So, UM,
the seeds stores back then, we're protecting, uh, the seeds
from animals, from weather, that kind of stuff. Pretty basic stuff, right,
(10:56):
But the concepts the same. It's that that you need
seed from one harvest to create the next harvest. And
so even back then, there's evidence that it was highly
ritualized collecting seeds and then protecting them in important places. Yeah,
and UH, whether it is certainly something that we're still
guarding against uh to the extreme. That's one of the
(11:19):
reasons we we have seed banks today. But UM, one
of the main reasons is crop diversity. Um. If you
if you think that corn you're eating is just corn,
or rice you're eating is just rice, or even you
know bosmati rice or jasmine rice or did the Big
two or sushi rice. Uh, you'd be in for a
(11:42):
big surprise if you knew that there were thousands and
thousands of varieties of all of these crops, these staple crops.
And UM diversity is the key because we've seen throughout
history when bad things happen when there's blight. Uh, with that,
there's a fungus. If there's um just anything that can
kill a crop. You want something that is diverse on
(12:04):
your hands so you can try something new. Right. Remember
in the famine episode where we talked about how one
of the reasons that Ireland suffered so tremendously was because
the potatoes they had were all basically the same throughout
the whole country. It was the same variety of potatoes, right,
So when that potato blight came, it was it was
a pathogen that all of the potatoes in Ireland were
(12:27):
susceptible to, where if they had had multiple varieties of potatoes,
sure a lot of the potato varieties would have been
wiped out, but there would have been some that survived
to right, Yeah, you know whose fault that was? Who's
the English? Well, they definitely didn't make anything easier on
them if I remember correctly. No, of course, but I'm
just spoken fun. But But the the idea that there
(12:49):
are just tons and tons of different varieties out there,
there certainly are. But if you take another order of
magnitude step back and look at the global food system,
there's really like thirty crops that make up basically all
of the food supply, right, and that's not too bad.
Thirties fine, we could survive on just one. Really, the
(13:10):
problem is if you go the opposite direction and zoom
in a little further, those crops are fairly homogenized these days.
And it's thanks to our buddy Norman Borlog. So he
fathered the green Revolution in large part, which was there
were a lot of predictions that the world's carrying capacity
(13:30):
was going to be reached by the nineteen sixties and
that a billion people were going to starve to death.
And that was because the agriculture that we had at
the time was capable of producing only so much crop yield.
So Norman Borlog took it upon himself to say, I'm
gonna save the world. And he came up with these
new techniques and new varieties of crops and said, here this,
(13:54):
this variety is going to get you way better yields.
It can survive flooding, it can survive drought, old plant.
This and his his varieties that he bred were so successful.
Number one, he won the Nobel Prize and it's widely
credited for saving possibly a billion lives with his work.
But secondly, it was so successful that it became basically
(14:18):
the only varieties of those crops that were planted. And
in the nineteen seventies here in the United States, we
came just running smack dab into what a problem that
can be when this corn blight hit. Yeah, there was
a big fungus in the seventies and Uh, I didn't
say what I wanted to say, and it cut the
(14:40):
corn yields in the United States in half. And luckily, UH,
we did have some more varieties at our disposal. We
had a relative of it was a wild corn was
just crazy paint and it was it was fungus for assistance.
So in that case we were able to uh save
the day UM, which is kind of the whole point
(15:02):
of crop diversity and seed banks is to have something
on hand in case the worst case scenario happens, so
all your your potatoes aren't in one basket, or all
your corn isn't in one basket. So literally with that
corn blake too, we learned the hard way. UM. Something
like one quarter to one half of the corn yields
(15:24):
in the United States were lost UM during the seventies,
and it was because something like I think of the
corn being grown in the US was identical in this way, Um,
that the corn blake could could manipulate and kill. So
we said, oh, well, we need to diversify a little more.
It was a hard lesson learned, but it was a
(15:45):
lesson learned. And since then this idea, like you said,
of of crop diversities become more and more important, and
people have said, well, we'll start banking seeds so we
can protect the genetic line and protect varieties from dying
out in the meantime. Yeah, and so that's um, you know,
diversity is a big deal. Climate change as another reason
(16:06):
we bank seeds because we're not too certain what's going
to happen in the future with the weather. Are actually
not with the weather with climate because it's two different things. Uh.
Nice natural disasters, um, like a tsunami or really kind
of any kind of natural disaster could cause great harm
to crop yield or disease, Yeah, which you would think
(16:30):
would be considered a natural disaster too. Well, now it's disease. Well, sure,
you gotta you gotta delineate here, you know, uh, man
made disaster. And the point uh, the example deb uses
here is um war, which yeah, you really think about war,
but there have been uh. And as you'll see even
with seed banks during times of war, especially in the
(16:52):
Middle East, a lot of the seed banks in the
Middle Ease have been looted and rated during war. So
that sort of compounds the problem well. Plus also one
of the other things that war does is um uproots populations. Right,
you have to move because there's a war going on
in your town and you can't live there anymore. So
if you're a farmer, UM, you may never go back
(17:14):
to farming anymore. And you may be one of the
few indigenous people who were farming a specific variety of
something and now that variety is lost forever because you
moved and stopped farming. Yeah, and there's there's that can
happen in more mundane pedestrian ways to where say a
family that's farming an indigenous variety of crop UM just
(17:35):
moves to the city for better work or something like that. Uh.
And then the final way that she lists is UM
that we might want us to seed bank is for
research in the future. Plant based medicine has always been
around UM. One and every six wild plants is used
for medicine, and we don't know, I mean, we we
know so very little still about the uses of plants
(17:57):
for medicine, So we don't want to wipe out some
thing that could be the cure for cancer one day,
you know, right, And that that's kind of like the
cornerstone of the idea of seed banks these days is
that we need to take the seeds from every plant
we can get our hands on today, every variety we
can get our hands on, and just store just basically
(18:18):
put them in suspended animation and the under the idea
that eventually, because of climate change or because of war,
or because we may figure something out in the future
and need those plants or need access to their genetic information.
And so if we have the the seeds stored away
(18:38):
in suspended animation dormant um, then we will say thank
you people a hundred years earlier for being so smart
as to create seed banks. That's right, thousands of years
earlier in fact, maybe maybe, But there's problems with seed banks,
as we'll talk about. You want to take a break, yeah,
let's do that, and we'll get to that alright. So
(19:31):
as far as what kind of seeds are chosen, it depends.
I mean they were there were more than four hundred
or right around fourteen hundred seed banks in the world,
So I know, uh smar Bald smar Bald, small Bard,
small Bard. I really think you can say it either way.
I know, I keep wanting to say key like it
just sounds like a dude from there. Oh it does.
(19:53):
Who's into like Viking metal? Yeah, he gets all the coverage.
Ball Bard got so wasted. There are lost all of
the seeds. Uh. There are about four seed banks though,
all over the place, and it depends on which one
you're talking about, really is to what kind of seeds
they're gonna preserve. Um. Smaller seed banks are probably going
(20:13):
to concentrate more on more local indigenous varieties. Uh. It
seems like in all cases any kind of the endangered
plant is probably looked after. Um first, Yeah, they tend
to take priority from what I understand, But there's a
great group called the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and their
whole jam is to concentrate on priority crops that are
(20:38):
that benefit everyone around the world the most. So those
are the people that runs Vollbard, And from what I understand,
they've kind of come in and said we we are,
we're going to be setting the standards for seed preservation
in the world. Now someone had to. Yeah, and there's
a guy that was inter jewed in the guardian Um.
(21:01):
He was one of the founders of this trust and
one of the I think he was the first director
of this wall Bard Global Seed Vault. The names Carrie
Fowlers from Tennessee. And he said, we didn't create this
seed bank to you know, prevent because we saw this
catastrophe coming with like climate change or whatever. The doomsday vault,
(21:21):
you know, right right it was. And and but again
I think that the media kind of last front of that.
He was saying the original intent with why they founded
this vall Bard Seed Vault was because the current seed
banks were doing such a terrible job keeping their their
seeds like alive or intact, that we were losing varieties
(21:42):
every day from ones that were stored at seed banks.
They were just going away. So he was basically like,
let me to it. He was like at the at
the I T guy, Yeah, well, it's kind of scary though,
Like when when he talked or when he was interviewed,
he was um to say, like, you know, new clear
war was in our biggest threat. It's underfunding and sloppy
(22:03):
work right or yeah, budget cuts, UM, malfunctions and the
equipment like badly maintained equipment. Uh, there's a lot of
stuff they can go wrong with the seed bank and
so so the point behind the small Guard seed Bank
is to serve as a backup repository to where yeah,
(22:24):
you keep your seeds there in your country and will
show you the best ways to manage your seed bank,
but also put a duplicate set with us and we're
just gonna keep it stored. We're not going to do
the science or anything like that. The whole point of
the small Guard seed Bank is to just keep it
stored under the right conditions so that when you need
it it will be here for you. That is correct.
(22:46):
So this Global Diversity Crop Trust, they work under a treaty.
It's called the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for
Food and Agriculture or PA and UH it was ratified
by in two thousand four by forty different governments. UM.
Imagine since then they're probably some more on board, right,
(23:07):
I believe, so, although I wonder how much UM that
has kind of fallen to the wayside since Crop Trust
created this small Bard seed vault. They seem to have
kind of taken over from what I understand. Well, I
mean I think this treaty is just it's part of
good practices too, you know. Yeah, So what they do
(23:28):
is they do permit access for these seeds for research
and stuff, not from small Bard because like we said,
that's that's the bank that doesn't allow withdrawal, um. But
it has to be a benefit to everyone. Basically, you
can't just go willy nilly on a whim and pull
seeds out and start experimenting. Right, Well, that's the that's
(23:50):
that's for the other seed banks. That's kind of like
the process where those are the ones that they're they're
keeping so that somebody can come and like grow some
stuff off and check out the genetic material of the
plants or whatever. With small Bard, it's like you put
it in, it stays there and you can't get it out.
But it's only you, the depositor that has access to us. Correct.
(24:12):
And so apparently that was they they agreed to that,
or they set up that rule that only the the
group or the country that put those seeds into the
small Barred vault can get them out because there's a
lot of worry when they were creating the Global Seed
Vault that the whole thing was basically just a ruse
for big agriculture to get their hands on heirloom seeds
(24:34):
from around the world, which I mean, I can kind
of understand that because from what I understand, the big
agriculture UM seed companies are fairly shady. Yeah, and we
should do an episode just on that, sure, love. Right,
So if you go to one of these banks and
(24:55):
again they're not They're all can be very different, but
they all have the same kind of concept at heart.
UH And I think the one Debbie used as an
example was UM the Department of Environment and Conservation UH
in Australia UM. But like I said, they kind of
all operate in a similar fashion. What you first need
to do is to decide how much room you have
(25:16):
and what seeds you want to collect to begin with, right,
and we mentioned priority goes to threaten plants obviously first
and foremost. But the again to his vol bar, their
whole mission is to to preserve every bit of the
um corrupt diversity of the global crop supply, which that
(25:37):
Carrie Fowler Dude says is about one point four million varieties,
and last I saw they were coming up on a million.
I think they had like about nine hundred and forty
thousand varieties in their in their care correct. So once
you've decided what you need in your in your little
local seed vault seed bank, you collect seeds um. It
(25:59):
seems like the most of these places start uh, and
when when vegetables and fruits are ripe is probably the
best time to collect and store these seeds UM. As
fruits they release their seeds when they ripe, so that
usually works out pretty well. But then you know, it
kind of depends on the plants. Some plants don't give
up their seeds so readily so UM, which can be
(26:21):
a good thing and a bad thing. Maybe to have
a longer time to retain their seeds which allows for
longer collection time. UM. But you know, if you're in
that position, you know when the best time is to
get the seed from each plant. Sure, and then when
you're collecting it, you're also making notes of the um
soil quality and type, the growing conditions UM, the the ecosystem,
(26:46):
like what kind of ecosystem is growing in. That's like
the most important part, almost besides the seed it's extremely important.
We read this one article. Let you see the one
from um Berry Bay very point, you know, the one
Importland very botanic garden. I wanted to add something extra,
but they basically had a rundown of how they do it,
(27:09):
um and and they were saying important record keeping is
about as important as having the seed itself, because if
you don't have the information you need, including what kind
of seed is where, it's just basically useless as far
as the seed bank is concerned. Yeah, well I wouldn't
say useless, but you would certainly have to grow it
and take those records and kind of start over. And
(27:30):
then this be like what is this? It talks? Uh,
So you recorded all this information. Um, they're gonna assign
it a sample number, very um specific number obviously for
that seed. So everything is, you know, it's the record
keeping is a huge, huge part of it. So you
know what everything is. You don't want to get stuff
(27:51):
mixed up in case of, you know, a nuclear apocalypse
that sucks so bad. You're like, wait a minute, wait
a minute. I had the wheat in my left hand right,
I think I just stink or we thought we were
growing corn, but we're growing papaya and we're having a party. Actually,
(28:11):
that wouldn't be so bad. That's why you have a party,
because you'd be like, oh, I thought this is gonna
be corn, and it's a papaya. What a treat, Thank
you God. All right, So you've got these seeds, You've
got all the data recorded, everything super organized. You've washed
your hands very important part. And then you also want
to wash You want to clean these seeds. You can't
just take a wet watermelon seed and throw it in
(28:35):
a tiny Manila envelope and contest to see who can
get it in the manilla envelope. No, you have to
clean everything. You've got to make sure it's of really
high quality. Um. Some of this is done by hand.
Some of this is done by machine these days. Uh.
And then you want to get the moisture out of it.
(28:55):
Like I said, Uh, moist not only is a gross word,
but it's not good for storing seeds. No, it's really not,
because they will start to germinate, which is not what
you want going on in your seed bank. Only for
storing seeds. Moisture is really good for seeds, sure, yeah, yeah,
for storing seeds, it's not good um or they can
(29:16):
search a rot to depending on the conditions. So you
want to dry them. And apparently there's a rule of
thumb when you're preparing seeds for long term cold storage,
where you dry them at about fifteen degrees celsius at
about fifteen degrees relative humidity or fifteen percent relative humidity.
It's so easy a child could remember it, that's right.
(29:38):
So you're you dry them out like that, usually in
the presence of like a desk tant or something like that,
like what is it um and and once they're dry,
you you put them into cold storage and that's where
they stay. And in cold storage, I think you get
it down to zero point four degrees fahreh height, which
is negative eighteen degrees celsius and um. They can stay
(30:02):
there for decades, sometimes depending on the seeds sent a century.
And but we should say a chuck. These are specific
types of seeds. There's basically two kinds of seeds in
the world as far as categorizing seeds goes. One is
the orthodox seed, which can undergo the process we just described,
and which if you go to a seed bank, those
(30:24):
are the kind of seeds that are there. It's what
most people think of as seeds. Right, then there's something
called recalcitrant seeds, which are things like um a tuber
or acorns or a lot of the fruit out there
in the world, typically tropical plants the way that they seed.
You can't do what we just said to recalcitrant seed.
(30:46):
It will destroy it and it won't be viable. So
seed banks don't typically tend to store recalcitrant seeds unless
that's their specialty. Yeah, and in that case, you can't
use all these uh, you gotta gotta go low fi. Yeah,
it seems like a more old world method of storing
a seed if you're working with the racalcitrants. Um. I
(31:09):
was just thinking of a Twilight Zone episode or something
like you break into the doomsday vault because everything has
been lost, and like, at least we got these seeds,
like the guy with the the library and he sits
on his glasses. I love that when that was Burgess Meredith. Yeah,
but in this case they would find that, uh, they
had all gotten moist and grown and died. So the
(31:32):
seed vault is just full of dead plants. That'd be
the worst. That'd be pretty sad. Man. Why am I
such a downer. I don't know. Uh, did you talk
about cryo preservation yet? No, No, that that's actually I
was gonna say, with recalcitrant seeds, you you might want
to use cryo preservation, which is where you take the
(31:52):
living tissue of the plant, like say a banana, and
actually like freeze the banana and liquid nitrogen. Well that yeah,
that's in vitro storage. Okay, that's not cryo preserve preservation.
It's it's using cryo preservation for in vitro storage, Is
that right, Yeah, because that's like in the case of
a banana, like you said, there is no seed, so
(32:13):
you just gotta you gotta get a piece of that
bad boy, right in vitro style. Right. Because so there's
this really great, damn interesting article from years ago that
is about how bananas are all clones of one another,
that they're all a sexual and like every banana in
the world is related to other bananas. Yeah, we've talked
(32:36):
about that before, but um, I feel like we have.
I think I'm worried about bananas and other people are too,
about how they're not actually healthy. Yeah, I mean there's
a banana problem, right, is there? I think so what's
the problem for some reason, I think there's a shortage,
or maybe I'm just making that up. I think they
do that from time and times just gild people pay
like an extra fifty cents or something, you know what
(32:56):
I mean. Alright, So with these seed banks, UM, they store,
like I said, each of them stores different things. But
you might think they wouldn't store things like, um, poisonous
plants or base of species. But you can kind of
find a home for any seed that exists somewhere because
(33:17):
you just never know. Um katzoo was an example. Debbie
used that, Um, you know, it's a very famous invasive
plant species here in the South. But now and you
know it was always just like nothing but a problem,
but now there are moves to maybe try and turn
it into a biofuel. So it's just trying to not
be so shortsighted things that you think, um, you can't
(33:38):
use now because you never know what it's gonna be
like in five years. It turns out they also um
have marijuana seeds and seed banks as well. Yeah, dog,
because who's who's to judge? You know, well, plus it's
medicine and UM, they're there trying to you know, all
(34:00):
kinds of plant based medicines. So they're not going to
discriminate against marijuana. You kid me. It probably has its
own little room with beaded doorways and it's all black light.
Macromay owls on the wall. Man, Macromay owls are the best,
So chuck. Once you have all your seeds in the
bank and everything, you just leave them for decades, right,
and then then that's it. Maybe they'll stay forever. No,
(34:23):
you got to manage, and you gotta have a caretaker.
You do. There's a there's a few things you need
to do. One thing is that when you um, when
you let seeds go for a while, like their dormant
little package waiting to become a plant. Right, But they
can die, like even though they're basically they're they're in
a state of suspended animation, especially at zero degrees fahrenheight,
(34:47):
they can still go bad. They can still die. They
can still age out of being able to produce crops.
So every once in a while you want to come in,
grab your seeds, take them, plant them, grow more seeds,
and and rebank the seeds from the plants you just
grew from the seeds you had banked Originally it's kind
of a it's kind of pain really if you think
(35:08):
about it. But seeds are seeds are worth it, you know, Yeah,
that's what they have on their front door. And then
so when you're also doing it, when you're doing that,
you're also you want to test the plants DNA. You
wanna eventually apparently they don't really do this very much,
which I was kind of surprised. You want to basically
scan the genome of the plant and maybe store that information.
(35:33):
You want to create a database so that all of
that genetic information can be can be accessed, so you
know what genes are in what plants, and where those
plants are, and what seed bank. And apparently that's the
steps that small bards taking, but they're they're nowhere near
that now. And I was really surprised to hear it's
really supposedly pretty low tech that the seed banks in
(35:55):
the world are just tasked with keeping seeds alive and
and aren't doing terribly much else unless it's like a
research station that that their seed bank is attached to. Well, yeah,
I mean, out of i'd say the vast minority of
the murder these super high tech organizations. You know. Yeah. Um, alright,
well let's take another break and we'll come back and
(36:17):
we'll talk a little bit more about small Bard and
his black metal band, as well as the fact that
could there be anything wrong with this plan? So check
(36:59):
that was that was quite a teaser. Should go ahead
and talk about that then? Yeah, well yeah, I mean,
like you think, what could possibly be wrong with seed banks?
What's your problem? Just let small Bard have his seeds, right, Yeah,
And I kind of was surprised to know that there
was any downside, but um, there is a school of
thought that is very much um from people that like
(37:22):
our hands on with farmers themselves, where they say, like,
you know, it's it's great that you're doing this, but um,
in a thousand years, those seeds might be worthless. Right.
It was like I was saying, you have to come
in and and plant those seeds and get new seeds
from those plants, right, You can't just leave them, correct, right,
(37:45):
but they could also be worthless, chucking that when you
take seeds out of the world and bank them put
them in suspended animation, you're halting evolution as well. Well yeah,
I mean that's kind of the point, Like plants are
are well, they're literally growing things, but they're also evolving things.
And like these farmers are saying, you know, they day
(38:07):
to day and year to year and crop to crop,
they see changes. So these seeds that you've got for
decades and decades may end up not being anything like
the seeds that you're growing or that you may lose.
I mean, I guess as long as you're keeping it
up though, I mean I side with the seed vaulters
for sure. Yeah, yeah, well, okay, so there's two there's
(38:28):
two schools of thought. One is banking seeds, right and
just protecting the genetic information of every variety of plants
you possibly can, right, it can't be for future use, right.
The other school of thought is, no, we need to
be working with farmers out in the field to protect
protect crop diversity and like like protected by making sure
(38:51):
that those varieties are still being farmed and that there's
a bunch of different varieties and that these farmers stay
farming that they can you know, make their living you know,
doing this this farming, and and that's the way to
protect bio diversities to keep evolution going, not take the
seeds and ultimately the plants out of evolution for a
(39:12):
while and maybe do both, you would think so, But
as far as um, as Suzanne Goldenberg says in that
that Guardian article, there's just not the funding to do both.
So there's a big division in in crop sciences, in
in botany and in biology about which route do you take.
And svall Bard has been getting a lot of the
(39:32):
money lately. So the seed banking way is kind of
the way that people have been going. But there's a
there's a lot of people are saying, I don't know
if that's such a good idea after all, maybe we
should be protecting crops in situ in the fields and
in supporting indigenous farmers um instead. So there's a big
debate about which way to go. Still, yeah, I mean,
(39:53):
and then like you said at the very beginning, uh,
seed banks, and of course the one in Norway is
very um it's kind of a it's about the sexiest
seeds can get sure as far as the media goes,
especially when you have backers like Bill and Melinda Gates
and these you know, very wealthy philanthropists kind of backing
(40:14):
the idea of these seed banks. Um. You know, I
think hopefully that doesn't divert so much funding from the
other that it's you know, a wash. You know, well,
that's part of the problem. It is very much. So
it's diverting a ton of funding away from the stuff,
the campaigns that are carrying out in the field. And
I think part of the reason is is because there
(40:36):
this division has become pronounced, you know, it's one or
the other. Some people are saying, Okay, well I'll choose
this side over this side or something. I don't like
a black and white line of thinking. I don't either,
And it does seem like this is important enough to
try both approaches. But I guess the will is not there.
The finances aren't really right. So um, there there's it's
(40:57):
becoming a battle. Um. But I'm with you, man. I
think I think seed banking is good. I also think
working with farmers is good. Um, so let's try both,
is my thing? Agreed? Um. The other The other thing
that I'm starting to kind of see about the Crop
Trust and small Bard is that they're, like I said,
they're coming in. They're saying, here's the standards for seed preservation,
(41:20):
and they're kind of carrying out this some social Darwinistic
mission where it's like, if you're not up to snuff
to our standards we're making, you're you're not getting any
fun anymore. You're gonna wither and die. And we're just
going to support the ones that we that we feel
are up to snuff, the seed banks around the world,
(41:41):
which is fine, but it's also um like, I mean
I get it on the one hand, right where you're
just kind of like, um, this works. These standards work,
But it's the same thing as saying like this, this
um strip mall works. You put an old navy here
at t J Max here in a grocery store in
the middle that works, builded everywhere. Do you lose something
(42:05):
in the irony of it is that we're trying to
protect crop diversity by standardizing the way that they're protected,
and it just seems like one point is missing the
other in that sense. You know, yeah, yeah, I get it.
Um so small Bard gets all the headlines, but there
are some other fairly high profile seed banks around the world.
(42:25):
Um one uh at Q Gardens in London. Well it's
a little south London, a few a couple of hours south.
I think, No, I've been there, buddy, Is it really
on the map. It looks like it's pretty pretty far south. Well,
I mean it's it's South London. Well, London is huge, Yeah,
I mean we Emily and I went and it was
(42:48):
the Royal Tanical Gardens. It's just one of the loveliest,
uh loveliest gardens I've ever seen. I posted pictures on
the stuff you should know while I was just so
blown away. But there they have the Millennium Seed Bank Project. Um.
And their goal there is to obviously, um store plants
for the United Kingdom, but they really want to protect
(43:08):
the twenty four thousand global species as well. UM. And
I think right now they have all the native plant
population covered. It was pretty amazing. England, oh, just of England,
not the UK as a whole. Maybe it is the
UK as a whole. It probably is the UK as
a whole. Careful yeah really. Um. There's one in Russia
(43:31):
which I believe is the oldest seed bank. Yeah. So
that one is the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry. It
was established in St. Petersburg, right and St. Petersburg was
known as Lennon Grad for a while while Stalin was
in power. Um, and if you'll remember correctly, there was
a siege on Lennon Grad that lasted like three years,
(43:53):
I think, and plant the plant scientists, like apparently large
number of the plant scientists who worked at this Institute
of Plant Industry starved to death, died of starvation rather
than grow these seeds into food because they were so
bent on protecting it. And the guy that they that
(44:15):
they named the place after he was he was a
great seed banker as well, very smart guy, um who
figured out that the genetic diversity was of paramount importance
as far as crops go. Um. He died of starvation
as well because Stalin made an escapegoat when his collectivists
policies caused a famine. So imagine being a seed a
(44:39):
guy who's banking seeds to protect against famine and then
dying of starvation as a result. No good, No, that's
no good. So you've got anything else? No, I say,
hats off to seed vaulters and um good farmers. Yeah
they got them all. Oh man, we almost left out
(45:00):
the big, the big thing, the big news about sval Bard.
What happened? Well back in May there are reports that
there is this um that due to climate change, the
perma frost melted and small Bard became flooded and the
sea bank was threatened. Well, it turns out that that
was wildly overblown. That the um there's water intrusion just
(45:22):
about every year in small Bard, but it's so cold
that the water makes it, you know, a couple of
meters down towards the vault, which is a hundred meters long,
the tunnel is and then freezes solid. And the world
found out about this and they said, no, you need
to do something about that. So apparently they're waterproofing it.
(45:42):
But it wasn't necessary climate change, it wasn't part. But
it was the fact that they built the seed vault
into the perma frost. And when you cut into perma
frost you allow for heat intrusion, which keeps the perma
apart from becoming well being permanent. So it's not all
he's frozen. It will freeze in thaw. So by creating
(46:03):
the seed vault, they messed up the perma frost. But
it's not It wasn't flooded, the seeds weren't an issue,
and it's all under control. It's basically just the media
finding something ironic and running with it. I do have
one more interesting little tidbit. I don't think we covered that.
This is about small bard. Uh. It is such a
(46:23):
serious deal there that like there's there's no one person
with like the key, like you have to It only
opens for deposits three times a year, and it's sort
of like war games, like you have to there. There
are multiple people that have to be there to even
access this thing. You have to beat it at tic
tac toe before it we'll let you in. Pretty neat, man,
(46:46):
it is. It's very neat, and the idea behind it's
pretty awesome too. I I say, do it all, do
everything we can to protect crop diversity. Uh. If you
want a more about seed banks, you can type those
words in the search bar how stuff works dot com.
And while you're at it, go read the Doomsday Vault
colon the seeds that could save a post apocalyptic world
(47:07):
in the Guardian. That was a good article as well. Uh.
And since I said as well, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna preface this email with an offer to you
to revise your statement on the magnificence of the Aurora borealis. Man.
(47:27):
I I want to say, I want to preface that
with I'm never going to read the Independent again. Certainly
I won't mention anything I read in the Independent again.
So it turns out I read the one, the one
article about how the Aurora borealis actually stinks. And it
turns out that something around nineties seven percent of our
(47:50):
listeners have seen the Aurora borealis and all of them
can tell you that it does not, in fact stink
in real life. That this is just the one article
on the entire Internet that says that, yes, you are
well intended, but boy did we hear about it. This one,
This one ranks up there with emails that we've gotten
in the past. Uh. So I'm gonna read this one
(48:13):
example from Maya Uruk and Maya is uh in Minnesota,
in Minneapolis in fact? All right, so maybe may and
her husband can come to our show there. I hope
they will. In fact, Maya write us an email and
I'll put you on the list. How about that? Yeah?
You like that? Whoa sand is coming to town? All right?
(48:34):
I feel like we've all been friends for years, guys.
After joining your episodes every week, we shared so much together.
It was definitely time to share something with you. My
husband and I are in our twenties. Forget it, nothing
free for you kidding? Living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He's a
band teacher and he plays in a funky rock band
called the Confused Brothers Band. That's a great name. The
(48:55):
bass and the guitar players are brothers. The brothers, I
guess so. Uh. The brothers parents have a large tract
of wild land, A huge tract of land in central
Minnesota where each year, over Memorial Day, the brothers invite
three hundred of their closest musician friends camp out in
the woods put on a music festival. Boy, I want
to play in this festival. Yeah, man, that sounds great. Uh.
(49:18):
This year, they were walking from the tent to the
main stage and a couple of people um asked us
to look up and said, do you see those flickering lights?
Or are we just tripping too hard? Uh? Sure enough,
the northern lights were dancing across the sky the wilderness
with no large towns nearby. The Aurora borealis is moving
in sharp relief. Imagine a laser show, but a little
more alien and way more breathtaking, mesmerizing moment that made
(49:41):
me really be glad to be alive in this amazing world.
Your episode on Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis left me
so sad that you believe Julia Buckley's experience to be generalizable?
Is that a word it is? Now? She may have
had a poor experiencing the Northern lights, but that doesn't
mean they always appear as a aggie shadow here to
(50:01):
attest that the site could be powerful reminder just how
beautiful this planet could be. Thanks for all the knowledge
and last you give me over the past few years.
Maya Yurick, Uh So, Maya, it's in me an email.
Just respond to say I want to go to your
show for free. That is quite an offer, ski Ulrich
take him up on it. If you want to get
(50:22):
in touch with us, like Maya Skeet did, you can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. I'm
at josh um Clark also on Twitter. You can add
with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or
Stuff you Should Know. Uh. You can send us an
email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff works dot com
and be sure to say hi to Jerry too because
they go to her as well, and then, as always,
(50:45):
hang out with us at our luxurious home on the
Web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is It How stuff Works?
Dot com
Josh, my friend. If you are a listener of ours
and you live in Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Austin, Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Kansas,
or right here in Atlanta, you can come see us
on tour starting in August and finishing up in November.
Is that right? Yeah, that's right man. It's our two
thousand and seventeen North America Monsters of Podcasting Tour. That's
(00:21):
what I like the sounds of that. Eddie van Halen
is opening, Yeah he is, but not really, no, not really.
But you can find out all the information and all
the deats at s y s K live dot com
are Squarespace Live touring home on the web, and we
hope to see everyone out there. Welcome to Stuff you
should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
(00:49):
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, Jerry rolland this is us stuff you should know.
I'm just trying new stuff. I mean, we're coming up
on a thousand episodes. Man, you've got to keep it
fresh somehow. So I tried the A team. You've actually
done that like seventy six times, the same one. Kidding,
(01:11):
It's probably true. Though. Uh, if you were a seed,
what seed would you be? I would be a pumpkin seed.
Oh wow, because you know you won't get eaten. Oh
I don't know. I like pumpkin pie so well, and
people toast pumpkin seeds, so yeah, I'm way off base there. Yep,
what else you got, however? Mind no pumpkin seed? Bam.
(01:33):
I would be a watermelon seed because they remind me
of my grandfather. That's sweet. How do they grow those
seedless watermelons? Huh uh, you're a watermelon seed, you should know.
Or the square ones? Yeah, those are cool too. They
cost like sixty dollars in Japan. Really, yeah, they're really expensive.
(01:54):
I would have one just that have it. I would
like shell lack it so it would never die, right,
and just keep it in my fridge for a conversation piece.
It's not a bad idea, man. Or actually I took
that back. I'm gonna start marketing fake square watermelons as
conversation starters or refrigerator magnets shaped like square water mountains.
(02:14):
What about that? Hmm? All right, and they call that
running running something into the ground. Um, I've got something
for you. You in the food Fads episode, asked me
what my go to crock pot recipe was, and I
told you, and then I was like, okay, moving on,
(02:36):
and I upon listening to it because I don't know
if everybody knows this or not, but you and I
all listened to the episodes and Jerry before we release them, um,
and I was like, I didn't ask Chuck what his
crock pot recipe? What did you, Chuck? I didn't. What
is your go to crock pot recipe? Do you know
(02:58):
what it is? No? I don't. If it's not, um, no,
I'll tell you what it is. It is a a
turkey ghoulsh surprise. That sounds good. So just some ground
turkey and some onion and green pepper and red pepper
and uh all manner of spices. And you can also
(03:19):
throw in like eggplant or squash or you know kind
of any veg veggie like that and chunk it up.
That sounds good and just spice it up real good,
throw it in that crock pot. Uh, maybe add a
little chicken broth or something. Uh do they have turkey broth? Yeah?
They do? Okay, sure, Well, then don't be weird. I
don't check. I don't I don't think chicken broth would
(03:41):
clash with turkey too bad, but yeah, probably turkey broth
would be better. Well, you may not know something in
your mouth might be disturbing and you're just like, something's
not quite right. So what's the surprise that you're using
chicken broth in a turkey based dish? Is it like
a human thumb? The surprise? I tried the thumb, but
that's much of us twice twice, yeah, because they only
(04:05):
have two thumbs, got you? Now? I know? The surprises
is our lentils. Oh yeah, that's nice. So then you
dump a bunch of lentils in there. Um maybe, I
mean you could throw it all in there at the
beginning if you, but they'll get kind of really gushy,
but maybe towards the intoso lentils in there, and then
it all just cooks up to a big kind of
soupy mess and then you can eat it for a week. Well,
(04:28):
the next time there's a house Stuff Works weekly book
club meeting, you've got to bring that to the pot luck. Okay, right,
all right, because I want to try it done our
lentils seeds because that'd be a great segue. But I'm
almost a hundred percent sure that I would be wrong
in saying, well, lentils are seeds. I think it's a legum.
(04:48):
It is a lagoon, but it is a laguma seed. Well,
you didn't ask me that. I don't have any idea,
although they are protecting lagoons and seed banks, so okay, okay,
Well then they're probably not seeds, but they're pretty close,
so we'll use that as a seguay. How about that? Yeah,
And you know what's funny is we uh could have
sworn that we did this one, or at the very
(05:08):
least did the doomsday vault. And I think we covered
the doomsday vault in the video, but we we did
touch on it in Well the Moon Safe Humanity. Yeah,
that's a good one. But I went back this is
when we had transcripts, and it was a funny one
to read because we brought it up without researching it
off the top of our head, which always gets us
in trouble, and just sort of chatted a minute about
(05:29):
the doomsday vault and then said, you know, don't hold
us to anything because we this wasn't supposed to be
a part of the show, so we didn't really cover it. No,
and we certainly didn't do a whole episode on all right,
and we're not going to this time. Because even though
the Doomsday Vault better known as the small small Bard
Global Seed Bank, which is in small Bard, Norway, which
(05:54):
is close to Long Year Be in Norway, which is
the closest town to the North Pole, right, Um, this
seed bank is hands down the most famous seed bank
in the entire world. It's run by technocrats who really
know how to work the media, right, But it's far
(06:15):
from the only one. There are a lot of other
seed banks out there, and even the whole concept of
seed banking in general is pretty interesting. So it's fall
Bard will be the star. If we're a band, would
be seed Banks featuring the stylings of small Bard Global
seed Bank. That's probably that should be the title of
(06:35):
this episode. I thought you could say featuring the stylings
of small Bard Globalstein and that sounded like a like
a a small time magician that's great, or an accordion act.
Good stuff. Um, all right, well, let's get to it.
This one, by the way, it was written by my
friend Debbie. I noticed you remember Debbie, Debbie Ronka, my
(06:56):
buddy from New Jersey and uh so flemental material. You
found a really great article on the doomsday vault. What
was that from the Guardian or yeah, that was by
um Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian from May two fifteen. Yeah,
that's one of my favorite kinds of articles is when
they profile something and then it's set up as like,
(07:20):
you know, the sunrise is early in Norway and and
Schfinn gets out of his yurt and trudges across the
glacier and so it's sort of couched in this story
of the the dude who works there, one of the guys.
But then you get all the deats along the way.
It's very cool. Yeah, that's that's called a long read
or long form. Yeah. And actually there's two really great sites,
(07:44):
ones called long form and one's called long read once
a dot Common ones a dot Org. I can never
remember which, but if you like that kind of writing,
that's all those sites are, just page after page after
page of links to articles like that. Yes, and in fact,
to our buddy, uh Joshua Bearman, uh huh, great writer
(08:04):
of long form. He has his own little shingle called
Epic Magazine. If you're looking for like those really great. Basically,
people mind the that site to make movies. They're such
good stories. Yeah, yeah, well he he wrote the magazine
article that um uh far yeah, not Fargo. Argo, the
(08:24):
Ben Affleck movie was based on. Yeah, we would be cool.
The funny part about that slip up is the Coen
Brothers at the beginning of Fargo say like this is
based on a true story, which is not true at all. Right.
He also wrote a really great one um about California
surfer gang Um that smuggled pot out of like Coronado
(08:44):
Island in the seventies, and it is just begging to
be made into a movie. If it hasn't been yet,
I think it's optioned. Surely it is that right, Coronado
High yep. And I'm pretty sure Barman wrote that back
in like two says the internet. Yea, so put down
your streaming TV shows for God's saken, I would say,
(09:07):
read a book, but at the very least read a
long form article. Yeah. Can can I get on a
soapbox for a second, We'll talk about seeds eventually, everybody
just be quiet. So the whole concept of their being
TV everywhere and like you can take TV to the
beach now you don't have to talk to anybody. You
can like watch TV on the subway. That's That's that
(09:31):
bothers me. Chuck it bothers me, like to my core,
And I know that makes me very unpopular. I don't care.
I stand with Josh. You know, Emily and I have
been listening. We've been sitting around in a room at
night together in silence and listening to s town Oh Cool,
which I've I've forgotten how fun it is because I
(09:51):
usually listen to podcasts on my own, like in my car.
But just to sit around, like with your loved one
and listen to something that's kind of neat too, yeah,
you have somebody to look at and be like, oh
can you believe that? Man? All right, I'll bet everybody
thinks we sit around and listen to podcasts together. Can
you believe that? Alright? Alright? Seed banks? Sorry, So, Debbie
(10:13):
Ranka makes a really great point that you think of
seed banks as this probably something new from you know,
the environmental movement, probably something from the nineties, maybe as
far back as that, But she says, no, no, seed
banks are a concept as old as agriculture. Basically that
(10:33):
in the in the cradle of agriculture, Mesopotamia, which is
present day Iraq. They have found seed banks um as
old as eighties, seven hundred and fifty years. So, UM,
the seeds stores back then, we're protecting, uh, the seeds
from animals, from weather, that kind of stuff. Pretty basic stuff, right,
(10:56):
But the concepts the same. It's that that you need
seed from one harvest to create the next harvest. And
so even back then, there's evidence that it was highly
ritualized collecting seeds and then protecting them in important places. Yeah,
and UH, whether it is certainly something that we're still
guarding against uh to the extreme. That's one of the
(11:19):
reasons we we have seed banks today. But UM, one
of the main reasons is crop diversity. Um. If you
if you think that corn you're eating is just corn,
or rice you're eating is just rice, or even you
know bosmati rice or jasmine rice or did the Big
two or sushi rice. Uh, you'd be in for a
(11:42):
big surprise if you knew that there were thousands and
thousands of varieties of all of these crops, these staple crops.
And UM diversity is the key because we've seen throughout
history when bad things happen when there's blight. Uh, with that,
there's a fungus. If there's um just anything that can
kill a crop. You want something that is diverse on
(12:04):
your hands so you can try something new. Right. Remember
in the famine episode where we talked about how one
of the reasons that Ireland suffered so tremendously was because
the potatoes they had were all basically the same throughout
the whole country. It was the same variety of potatoes, right,
So when that potato blight came, it was it was
a pathogen that all of the potatoes in Ireland were
(12:27):
susceptible to, where if they had had multiple varieties of potatoes,
sure a lot of the potato varieties would have been
wiped out, but there would have been some that survived
to right, Yeah, you know whose fault that was? Who's
the English? Well, they definitely didn't make anything easier on
them if I remember correctly. No, of course, but I'm
just spoken fun. But But the the idea that there
(12:49):
are just tons and tons of different varieties out there,
there certainly are. But if you take another order of
magnitude step back and look at the global food system,
there's really like thirty crops that make up basically all
of the food supply, right, and that's not too bad.
Thirties fine, we could survive on just one. Really, the
(13:10):
problem is if you go the opposite direction and zoom
in a little further, those crops are fairly homogenized these days.
And it's thanks to our buddy Norman Borlog. So he
fathered the green Revolution in large part, which was there
were a lot of predictions that the world's carrying capacity
(13:30):
was going to be reached by the nineteen sixties and
that a billion people were going to starve to death.
And that was because the agriculture that we had at
the time was capable of producing only so much crop yield.
So Norman Borlog took it upon himself to say, I'm
gonna save the world. And he came up with these
new techniques and new varieties of crops and said, here this,
(13:54):
this variety is going to get you way better yields.
It can survive flooding, it can survive drought, old plant.
This and his his varieties that he bred were so successful.
Number one, he won the Nobel Prize and it's widely
credited for saving possibly a billion lives with his work.
But secondly, it was so successful that it became basically
(14:18):
the only varieties of those crops that were planted. And
in the nineteen seventies here in the United States, we
came just running smack dab into what a problem that
can be when this corn blight hit. Yeah, there was
a big fungus in the seventies and Uh, I didn't
say what I wanted to say, and it cut the
(14:40):
corn yields in the United States in half. And luckily, UH,
we did have some more varieties at our disposal. We
had a relative of it was a wild corn was
just crazy paint and it was it was fungus for assistance.
So in that case we were able to uh save
the day UM, which is kind of the whole point
(15:02):
of crop diversity and seed banks is to have something
on hand in case the worst case scenario happens, so
all your your potatoes aren't in one basket, or all
your corn isn't in one basket. So literally with that
corn blake too, we learned the hard way. UM. Something
like one quarter to one half of the corn yields
(15:24):
in the United States were lost UM during the seventies,
and it was because something like I think of the
corn being grown in the US was identical in this way, Um,
that the corn blake could could manipulate and kill. So
we said, oh, well, we need to diversify a little more.
It was a hard lesson learned, but it was a
(15:45):
lesson learned. And since then this idea, like you said,
of of crop diversities become more and more important, and
people have said, well, we'll start banking seeds so we
can protect the genetic line and protect varieties from dying
out in the meantime. Yeah, and so that's um, you know,
diversity is a big deal. Climate change as another reason
(16:06):
we bank seeds because we're not too certain what's going
to happen in the future with the weather. Are actually
not with the weather with climate because it's two different things. Uh.
Nice natural disasters, um, like a tsunami or really kind
of any kind of natural disaster could cause great harm
to crop yield or disease, Yeah, which you would think
(16:30):
would be considered a natural disaster too. Well, now it's disease. Well, sure,
you gotta you gotta delineate here, you know, uh, man
made disaster. And the point uh, the example deb uses
here is um war, which yeah, you really think about war,
but there have been uh. And as you'll see even
with seed banks during times of war, especially in the
(16:52):
Middle East, a lot of the seed banks in the
Middle Ease have been looted and rated during war. So
that sort of compounds the problem well. Plus also one
of the other things that war does is um uproots populations. Right,
you have to move because there's a war going on
in your town and you can't live there anymore. So
if you're a farmer, UM, you may never go back
(17:14):
to farming anymore. And you may be one of the
few indigenous people who were farming a specific variety of
something and now that variety is lost forever because you
moved and stopped farming. Yeah, and there's there's that can
happen in more mundane pedestrian ways to where say a
family that's farming an indigenous variety of crop UM just
(17:35):
moves to the city for better work or something like that. Uh.
And then the final way that she lists is UM
that we might want us to seed bank is for
research in the future. Plant based medicine has always been
around UM. One and every six wild plants is used
for medicine, and we don't know, I mean, we we
know so very little still about the uses of plants
(17:57):
for medicine, So we don't want to wipe out some
thing that could be the cure for cancer one day,
you know, right, And that that's kind of like the
cornerstone of the idea of seed banks these days is
that we need to take the seeds from every plant
we can get our hands on today, every variety we
can get our hands on, and just store just basically
(18:18):
put them in suspended animation and the under the idea
that eventually, because of climate change or because of war,
or because we may figure something out in the future
and need those plants or need access to their genetic information.
And so if we have the the seeds stored away
(18:38):
in suspended animation dormant um, then we will say thank
you people a hundred years earlier for being so smart
as to create seed banks. That's right, thousands of years
earlier in fact, maybe maybe, But there's problems with seed banks,
as we'll talk about. You want to take a break, yeah,
let's do that, and we'll get to that alright. So
(19:31):
as far as what kind of seeds are chosen, it depends.
I mean they were there were more than four hundred
or right around fourteen hundred seed banks in the world,
So I know, uh smar Bald smar Bald, small Bard,
small Bard. I really think you can say it either way.
I know, I keep wanting to say key like it
just sounds like a dude from there. Oh it does.
(19:53):
Who's into like Viking metal? Yeah, he gets all the coverage.
Ball Bard got so wasted. There are lost all of
the seeds. Uh. There are about four seed banks though,
all over the place, and it depends on which one
you're talking about, really is to what kind of seeds
they're gonna preserve. Um. Smaller seed banks are probably going
(20:13):
to concentrate more on more local indigenous varieties. Uh. It
seems like in all cases any kind of the endangered
plant is probably looked after. Um first, Yeah, they tend
to take priority from what I understand, But there's a
great group called the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and their
whole jam is to concentrate on priority crops that are
(20:38):
that benefit everyone around the world the most. So those
are the people that runs Vollbard, And from what I understand,
they've kind of come in and said we we are,
we're going to be setting the standards for seed preservation
in the world. Now someone had to. Yeah, and there's
a guy that was inter jewed in the guardian Um.
(21:01):
He was one of the founders of this trust and
one of the I think he was the first director
of this wall Bard Global Seed Vault. The names Carrie
Fowlers from Tennessee. And he said, we didn't create this
seed bank to you know, prevent because we saw this
catastrophe coming with like climate change or whatever. The doomsday vault,
(21:21):
you know, right right it was. And and but again
I think that the media kind of last front of that.
He was saying the original intent with why they founded
this vall Bard Seed Vault was because the current seed
banks were doing such a terrible job keeping their their
seeds like alive or intact, that we were losing varieties
(21:42):
every day from ones that were stored at seed banks.
They were just going away. So he was basically like,
let me to it. He was like at the at
the I T guy, Yeah, well, it's kind of scary though,
Like when when he talked or when he was interviewed,
he was um to say, like, you know, new clear
war was in our biggest threat. It's underfunding and sloppy
(22:03):
work right or yeah, budget cuts, UM, malfunctions and the
equipment like badly maintained equipment. Uh, there's a lot of
stuff they can go wrong with the seed bank and
so so the point behind the small Guard seed Bank
is to serve as a backup repository to where yeah,
(22:24):
you keep your seeds there in your country and will
show you the best ways to manage your seed bank,
but also put a duplicate set with us and we're
just gonna keep it stored. We're not going to do
the science or anything like that. The whole point of
the small Guard seed Bank is to just keep it
stored under the right conditions so that when you need
it it will be here for you. That is correct.
(22:46):
So this Global Diversity Crop Trust, they work under a treaty.
It's called the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for
Food and Agriculture or PA and UH it was ratified
by in two thousand four by forty different governments. UM.
Imagine since then they're probably some more on board, right,
(23:07):
I believe, so, although I wonder how much UM that
has kind of fallen to the wayside since Crop Trust
created this small Bard seed vault. They seem to have
kind of taken over from what I understand. Well, I
mean I think this treaty is just it's part of
good practices too, you know. Yeah, So what they do
(23:28):
is they do permit access for these seeds for research
and stuff, not from small Bard because like we said,
that's that's the bank that doesn't allow withdrawal, um. But
it has to be a benefit to everyone. Basically, you
can't just go willy nilly on a whim and pull
seeds out and start experimenting. Right, Well, that's the that's
(23:50):
that's for the other seed banks. That's kind of like
the process where those are the ones that they're they're
keeping so that somebody can come and like grow some
stuff off and check out the genetic material of the
plants or whatever. With small Bard, it's like you put
it in, it stays there and you can't get it out.
But it's only you, the depositor that has access to us. Correct.
(24:12):
And so apparently that was they they agreed to that,
or they set up that rule that only the the
group or the country that put those seeds into the
small Barred vault can get them out because there's a
lot of worry when they were creating the Global Seed
Vault that the whole thing was basically just a ruse
for big agriculture to get their hands on heirloom seeds
(24:34):
from around the world, which I mean, I can kind
of understand that because from what I understand, the big
agriculture UM seed companies are fairly shady. Yeah, and we
should do an episode just on that, sure, love. Right,
So if you go to one of these banks and
(24:55):
again they're not They're all can be very different, but
they all have the same kind of concept at heart.
UH And I think the one Debbie used as an
example was UM the Department of Environment and Conservation UH
in Australia UM. But like I said, they kind of
all operate in a similar fashion. What you first need
to do is to decide how much room you have
(25:16):
and what seeds you want to collect to begin with, right,
and we mentioned priority goes to threaten plants obviously first
and foremost. But the again to his vol bar, their
whole mission is to to preserve every bit of the
um corrupt diversity of the global crop supply, which that
(25:37):
Carrie Fowler Dude says is about one point four million varieties,
and last I saw they were coming up on a million.
I think they had like about nine hundred and forty
thousand varieties in their in their care correct. So once
you've decided what you need in your in your little
local seed vault seed bank, you collect seeds um. It
(25:59):
seems like the most of these places start uh, and
when when vegetables and fruits are ripe is probably the
best time to collect and store these seeds UM. As
fruits they release their seeds when they ripe, so that
usually works out pretty well. But then you know, it
kind of depends on the plants. Some plants don't give
up their seeds so readily so UM, which can be
(26:21):
a good thing and a bad thing. Maybe to have
a longer time to retain their seeds which allows for
longer collection time. UM. But you know, if you're in
that position, you know when the best time is to
get the seed from each plant. Sure, and then when
you're collecting it, you're also making notes of the um
soil quality and type, the growing conditions UM, the the ecosystem,
(26:46):
like what kind of ecosystem is growing in. That's like
the most important part, almost besides the seed it's extremely important.
We read this one article. Let you see the one
from um Berry Bay very point, you know, the one
Importland very botanic garden. I wanted to add something extra,
but they basically had a rundown of how they do it,
(27:09):
um and and they were saying important record keeping is
about as important as having the seed itself, because if
you don't have the information you need, including what kind
of seed is where, it's just basically useless as far
as the seed bank is concerned. Yeah, well I wouldn't
say useless, but you would certainly have to grow it
and take those records and kind of start over. And
(27:30):
then this be like what is this? It talks? Uh,
So you recorded all this information. Um, they're gonna assign
it a sample number, very um specific number obviously for
that seed. So everything is, you know, it's the record
keeping is a huge, huge part of it. So you
know what everything is. You don't want to get stuff
(27:51):
mixed up in case of, you know, a nuclear apocalypse
that sucks so bad. You're like, wait a minute, wait
a minute. I had the wheat in my left hand right,
I think I just stink or we thought we were
growing corn, but we're growing papaya and we're having a party. Actually,
(28:11):
that wouldn't be so bad. That's why you have a party,
because you'd be like, oh, I thought this is gonna
be corn, and it's a papaya. What a treat, Thank
you God. All right, So you've got these seeds, You've
got all the data recorded, everything super organized. You've washed
your hands very important part. And then you also want
to wash You want to clean these seeds. You can't
just take a wet watermelon seed and throw it in
(28:35):
a tiny Manila envelope and contest to see who can
get it in the manilla envelope. No, you have to
clean everything. You've got to make sure it's of really
high quality. Um. Some of this is done by hand.
Some of this is done by machine these days. Uh.
And then you want to get the moisture out of it.
(28:55):
Like I said, Uh, moist not only is a gross word,
but it's not good for storing seeds. No, it's really not,
because they will start to germinate, which is not what
you want going on in your seed bank. Only for
storing seeds. Moisture is really good for seeds, sure, yeah, yeah,
for storing seeds, it's not good um or they can
(29:16):
search a rot to depending on the conditions. So you
want to dry them. And apparently there's a rule of
thumb when you're preparing seeds for long term cold storage,
where you dry them at about fifteen degrees celsius at
about fifteen degrees relative humidity or fifteen percent relative humidity.
It's so easy a child could remember it, that's right.
(29:38):
So you're you dry them out like that, usually in
the presence of like a desk tant or something like that,
like what is it um and and once they're dry,
you you put them into cold storage and that's where
they stay. And in cold storage, I think you get
it down to zero point four degrees fahreh height, which
is negative eighteen degrees celsius and um. They can stay
(30:02):
there for decades, sometimes depending on the seeds sent a century.
And but we should say a chuck. These are specific
types of seeds. There's basically two kinds of seeds in
the world as far as categorizing seeds goes. One is
the orthodox seed, which can undergo the process we just described,
and which if you go to a seed bank, those
(30:24):
are the kind of seeds that are there. It's what
most people think of as seeds. Right, then there's something
called recalcitrant seeds, which are things like um a tuber
or acorns or a lot of the fruit out there
in the world, typically tropical plants the way that they seed.
You can't do what we just said to recalcitrant seed.
(30:46):
It will destroy it and it won't be viable. So
seed banks don't typically tend to store recalcitrant seeds unless
that's their specialty. Yeah, and in that case, you can't
use all these uh, you gotta gotta go low fi. Yeah,
it seems like a more old world method of storing
a seed if you're working with the racalcitrants. Um. I
(31:09):
was just thinking of a Twilight Zone episode or something
like you break into the doomsday vault because everything has
been lost, and like, at least we got these seeds,
like the guy with the the library and he sits
on his glasses. I love that when that was Burgess Meredith. Yeah,
but in this case they would find that, uh, they
had all gotten moist and grown and died. So the
(31:32):
seed vault is just full of dead plants. That'd be
the worst. That'd be pretty sad. Man. Why am I
such a downer. I don't know. Uh, did you talk
about cryo preservation yet? No, No, that that's actually I
was gonna say, with recalcitrant seeds, you you might want
to use cryo preservation, which is where you take the
(31:52):
living tissue of the plant, like say a banana, and
actually like freeze the banana and liquid nitrogen. Well that yeah,
that's in vitro storage. Okay, that's not cryo preserve preservation.
It's it's using cryo preservation for in vitro storage, Is
that right, Yeah, because that's like in the case of
a banana, like you said, there is no seed, so
(32:13):
you just gotta you gotta get a piece of that
bad boy, right in vitro style. Right. Because so there's
this really great, damn interesting article from years ago that
is about how bananas are all clones of one another,
that they're all a sexual and like every banana in
the world is related to other bananas. Yeah, we've talked
(32:36):
about that before, but um, I feel like we have.
I think I'm worried about bananas and other people are too,
about how they're not actually healthy. Yeah, I mean there's
a banana problem, right, is there? I think so what's
the problem for some reason, I think there's a shortage,
or maybe I'm just making that up. I think they
do that from time and times just gild people pay
like an extra fifty cents or something, you know what
(32:56):
I mean. Alright, So with these seed banks, UM, they store,
like I said, each of them stores different things. But
you might think they wouldn't store things like, um, poisonous
plants or base of species. But you can kind of
find a home for any seed that exists somewhere because
(33:17):
you just never know. Um katzoo was an example. Debbie
used that, Um, you know, it's a very famous invasive
plant species here in the South. But now and you
know it was always just like nothing but a problem,
but now there are moves to maybe try and turn
it into a biofuel. So it's just trying to not
be so shortsighted things that you think, um, you can't
(33:38):
use now because you never know what it's gonna be
like in five years. It turns out they also um
have marijuana seeds and seed banks as well. Yeah, dog,
because who's who's to judge? You know, well, plus it's
medicine and UM, they're there trying to you know, all
(34:00):
kinds of plant based medicines. So they're not going to
discriminate against marijuana. You kid me. It probably has its
own little room with beaded doorways and it's all black light.
Macromay owls on the wall. Man, Macromay owls are the best,
So chuck. Once you have all your seeds in the
bank and everything, you just leave them for decades, right,
and then then that's it. Maybe they'll stay forever. No,
(34:23):
you got to manage, and you gotta have a caretaker.
You do. There's a there's a few things you need
to do. One thing is that when you um, when
you let seeds go for a while, like their dormant
little package waiting to become a plant. Right, But they
can die, like even though they're basically they're they're in
a state of suspended animation, especially at zero degrees fahrenheight,
(34:47):
they can still go bad. They can still die. They
can still age out of being able to produce crops.
So every once in a while you want to come in,
grab your seeds, take them, plant them, grow more seeds,
and and rebank the seeds from the plants you just
grew from the seeds you had banked Originally it's kind
of a it's kind of pain really if you think
(35:08):
about it. But seeds are seeds are worth it, you know, Yeah,
that's what they have on their front door. And then
so when you're also doing it, when you're doing that,
you're also you want to test the plants DNA. You
wanna eventually apparently they don't really do this very much,
which I was kind of surprised. You want to basically
scan the genome of the plant and maybe store that information.
(35:33):
You want to create a database so that all of
that genetic information can be can be accessed, so you
know what genes are in what plants, and where those
plants are, and what seed bank. And apparently that's the
steps that small bards taking, but they're they're nowhere near
that now. And I was really surprised to hear it's
really supposedly pretty low tech that the seed banks in
(35:55):
the world are just tasked with keeping seeds alive and
and aren't doing terribly much else unless it's like a
research station that that their seed bank is attached to. Well, yeah,
I mean, out of i'd say the vast minority of
the murder these super high tech organizations. You know. Yeah. Um, alright,
well let's take another break and we'll come back and
(36:17):
we'll talk a little bit more about small Bard and
his black metal band, as well as the fact that
could there be anything wrong with this plan? So check
(36:59):
that was that was quite a teaser. Should go ahead
and talk about that then? Yeah, well yeah, I mean,
like you think, what could possibly be wrong with seed banks?
What's your problem? Just let small Bard have his seeds, right, Yeah,
And I kind of was surprised to know that there
was any downside, but um, there is a school of
thought that is very much um from people that like
(37:22):
our hands on with farmers themselves, where they say, like,
you know, it's it's great that you're doing this, but um,
in a thousand years, those seeds might be worthless. Right.
It was like I was saying, you have to come
in and and plant those seeds and get new seeds
from those plants, right, You can't just leave them, correct, right,
(37:45):
but they could also be worthless, chucking that when you
take seeds out of the world and bank them put
them in suspended animation, you're halting evolution as well. Well yeah,
I mean that's kind of the point, Like plants are
are well, they're literally growing things, but they're also evolving things.
And like these farmers are saying, you know, they day
(38:07):
to day and year to year and crop to crop,
they see changes. So these seeds that you've got for
decades and decades may end up not being anything like
the seeds that you're growing or that you may lose.
I mean, I guess as long as you're keeping it
up though, I mean I side with the seed vaulters
for sure. Yeah, yeah, well, okay, so there's two there's
(38:28):
two schools of thought. One is banking seeds, right and
just protecting the genetic information of every variety of plants
you possibly can, right, it can't be for future use, right.
The other school of thought is, no, we need to
be working with farmers out in the field to protect
protect crop diversity and like like protected by making sure
(38:51):
that those varieties are still being farmed and that there's
a bunch of different varieties and that these farmers stay
farming that they can you know, make their living you know,
doing this this farming, and and that's the way to
protect bio diversities to keep evolution going, not take the
seeds and ultimately the plants out of evolution for a
(39:12):
while and maybe do both, you would think so, But
as far as um, as Suzanne Goldenberg says in that
that Guardian article, there's just not the funding to do both.
So there's a big division in in crop sciences, in
in botany and in biology about which route do you take.
And svall Bard has been getting a lot of the
(39:32):
money lately. So the seed banking way is kind of
the way that people have been going. But there's a
there's a lot of people are saying, I don't know
if that's such a good idea after all, maybe we
should be protecting crops in situ in the fields and
in supporting indigenous farmers um instead. So there's a big
debate about which way to go. Still, yeah, I mean,
(39:53):
and then like you said at the very beginning, uh,
seed banks, and of course the one in Norway is
very um it's kind of a it's about the sexiest
seeds can get sure as far as the media goes,
especially when you have backers like Bill and Melinda Gates
and these you know, very wealthy philanthropists kind of backing
(40:14):
the idea of these seed banks. Um. You know, I
think hopefully that doesn't divert so much funding from the
other that it's you know, a wash. You know, well,
that's part of the problem. It is very much. So
it's diverting a ton of funding away from the stuff,
the campaigns that are carrying out in the field. And
I think part of the reason is is because there
(40:36):
this division has become pronounced, you know, it's one or
the other. Some people are saying, Okay, well I'll choose
this side over this side or something. I don't like
a black and white line of thinking. I don't either,
And it does seem like this is important enough to
try both approaches. But I guess the will is not there.
The finances aren't really right. So um, there there's it's
(40:57):
becoming a battle. Um. But I'm with you, man. I
think I think seed banking is good. I also think
working with farmers is good. Um, so let's try both,
is my thing? Agreed? Um. The other The other thing
that I'm starting to kind of see about the Crop
Trust and small Bard is that they're, like I said,
they're coming in. They're saying, here's the standards for seed preservation,
(41:20):
and they're kind of carrying out this some social Darwinistic
mission where it's like, if you're not up to snuff
to our standards we're making, you're you're not getting any
fun anymore. You're gonna wither and die. And we're just
going to support the ones that we that we feel
are up to snuff, the seed banks around the world,
(41:41):
which is fine, but it's also um like, I mean
I get it on the one hand, right where you're
just kind of like, um, this works. These standards work,
But it's the same thing as saying like this, this
um strip mall works. You put an old navy here
at t J Max here in a grocery store in
the middle that works, builded everywhere. Do you lose something
(42:05):
in the irony of it is that we're trying to
protect crop diversity by standardizing the way that they're protected,
and it just seems like one point is missing the
other in that sense. You know, yeah, yeah, I get it.
Um so small Bard gets all the headlines, but there
are some other fairly high profile seed banks around the world.
(42:25):
Um one uh at Q Gardens in London. Well it's
a little south London, a few a couple of hours south.
I think, No, I've been there, buddy, Is it really
on the map. It looks like it's pretty pretty far south. Well,
I mean it's it's South London. Well, London is huge, Yeah,
I mean we Emily and I went and it was
(42:48):
the Royal Tanical Gardens. It's just one of the loveliest,
uh loveliest gardens I've ever seen. I posted pictures on
the stuff you should know while I was just so
blown away. But there they have the Millennium Seed Bank Project. Um.
And their goal there is to obviously, um store plants
for the United Kingdom, but they really want to protect
(43:08):
the twenty four thousand global species as well. UM. And
I think right now they have all the native plant
population covered. It was pretty amazing. England, oh, just of England,
not the UK as a whole. Maybe it is the
UK as a whole. It probably is the UK as
a whole. Careful yeah really. Um. There's one in Russia
(43:31):
which I believe is the oldest seed bank. Yeah. So
that one is the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry. It
was established in St. Petersburg, right and St. Petersburg was
known as Lennon Grad for a while while Stalin was
in power. Um, and if you'll remember correctly, there was
a siege on Lennon Grad that lasted like three years,
(43:53):
I think, and plant the plant scientists, like apparently large
number of the plant scientists who worked at this Institute
of Plant Industry starved to death, died of starvation rather
than grow these seeds into food because they were so
bent on protecting it. And the guy that they that
(44:15):
they named the place after he was he was a
great seed banker as well, very smart guy, um who
figured out that the genetic diversity was of paramount importance
as far as crops go. Um. He died of starvation
as well because Stalin made an escapegoat when his collectivists
policies caused a famine. So imagine being a seed a
(44:39):
guy who's banking seeds to protect against famine and then
dying of starvation as a result. No good, No, that's
no good. So you've got anything else? No, I say,
hats off to seed vaulters and um good farmers. Yeah
they got them all. Oh man, we almost left out
(45:00):
the big, the big thing, the big news about sval Bard.
What happened? Well back in May there are reports that
there is this um that due to climate change, the
perma frost melted and small Bard became flooded and the
sea bank was threatened. Well, it turns out that that
was wildly overblown. That the um there's water intrusion just
(45:22):
about every year in small Bard, but it's so cold
that the water makes it, you know, a couple of
meters down towards the vault, which is a hundred meters long,
the tunnel is and then freezes solid. And the world
found out about this and they said, no, you need
to do something about that. So apparently they're waterproofing it.
(45:42):
But it wasn't necessary climate change, it wasn't part. But
it was the fact that they built the seed vault
into the perma frost. And when you cut into perma
frost you allow for heat intrusion, which keeps the perma
apart from becoming well being permanent. So it's not all
he's frozen. It will freeze in thaw. So by creating
(46:03):
the seed vault, they messed up the perma frost. But
it's not It wasn't flooded, the seeds weren't an issue,
and it's all under control. It's basically just the media
finding something ironic and running with it. I do have
one more interesting little tidbit. I don't think we covered that.
This is about small bard. Uh. It is such a
(46:23):
serious deal there that like there's there's no one person
with like the key, like you have to It only
opens for deposits three times a year, and it's sort
of like war games, like you have to there. There
are multiple people that have to be there to even
access this thing. You have to beat it at tic
tac toe before it we'll let you in. Pretty neat, man,
(46:46):
it is. It's very neat, and the idea behind it's
pretty awesome too. I I say, do it all, do
everything we can to protect crop diversity. Uh. If you
want a more about seed banks, you can type those
words in the search bar how stuff works dot com.
And while you're at it, go read the Doomsday Vault
colon the seeds that could save a post apocalyptic world
(47:07):
in the Guardian. That was a good article as well. Uh.
And since I said as well, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna preface this email with an offer to you
to revise your statement on the magnificence of the Aurora borealis. Man.
(47:27):
I I want to say, I want to preface that
with I'm never going to read the Independent again. Certainly
I won't mention anything I read in the Independent again.
So it turns out I read the one, the one
article about how the Aurora borealis actually stinks. And it
turns out that something around nineties seven percent of our
(47:50):
listeners have seen the Aurora borealis and all of them
can tell you that it does not, in fact stink
in real life. That this is just the one article
on the entire Internet that says that, yes, you are
well intended, but boy did we hear about it. This one,
This one ranks up there with emails that we've gotten
in the past. Uh. So I'm gonna read this one
(48:13):
example from Maya Uruk and Maya is uh in Minnesota,
in Minneapolis in fact? All right, so maybe may and
her husband can come to our show there. I hope
they will. In fact, Maya write us an email and
I'll put you on the list. How about that? Yeah?
You like that? Whoa sand is coming to town? All right?
(48:34):
I feel like we've all been friends for years, guys.
After joining your episodes every week, we shared so much together.
It was definitely time to share something with you. My
husband and I are in our twenties. Forget it, nothing
free for you kidding? Living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He's a
band teacher and he plays in a funky rock band
called the Confused Brothers Band. That's a great name. The
(48:55):
bass and the guitar players are brothers. The brothers, I
guess so. Uh. The brothers parents have a large tract
of wild land, A huge tract of land in central
Minnesota where each year, over Memorial Day, the brothers invite
three hundred of their closest musician friends camp out in
the woods put on a music festival. Boy, I want
to play in this festival. Yeah, man, that sounds great. Uh.
(49:18):
This year, they were walking from the tent to the
main stage and a couple of people um asked us
to look up and said, do you see those flickering lights?
Or are we just tripping too hard? Uh? Sure enough,
the northern lights were dancing across the sky the wilderness
with no large towns nearby. The Aurora borealis is moving
in sharp relief. Imagine a laser show, but a little
more alien and way more breathtaking, mesmerizing moment that made
(49:41):
me really be glad to be alive in this amazing world.
Your episode on Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis left me
so sad that you believe Julia Buckley's experience to be generalizable?
Is that a word it is? Now? She may have
had a poor experiencing the Northern lights, but that doesn't
mean they always appear as a aggie shadow here to
(50:01):
attest that the site could be powerful reminder just how
beautiful this planet could be. Thanks for all the knowledge
and last you give me over the past few years.
Maya Yurick, Uh So, Maya, it's in me an email.
Just respond to say I want to go to your
show for free. That is quite an offer, ski Ulrich
take him up on it. If you want to get
(50:22):
in touch with us, like Maya Skeet did, you can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. I'm
at josh um Clark also on Twitter. You can add
with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or
Stuff you Should Know. Uh. You can send us an
email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff works dot com
and be sure to say hi to Jerry too because
they go to her as well, and then, as always,
(50:45):
hang out with us at our luxurious home on the
Web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is It How stuff Works?
Dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.