November 14, 2024 • 42 mins
Dandelions are way more interesting than you think. Trust us and click play.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Puffball Chuck, and there's Blowball Jerry, and I like to
call me Monk's Head and this is stuff you should do.
Did you get those references?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Uh? Sure?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Okay, Well we should probably explain them to everybody else
because they probably think it's an in joke, but it's
not at all. Number one, because we're about to share
it with you. Number two, it's not really a joke.
And number three, those are alternate names for dandelions.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
That's right, and we're going to be exalting the dandelion
probably say a lot of times how great we think
it is.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, sorry if you hate dandelions.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, how it's unfairly maligned. And we want to thank
Sarah Andrews from Idaho because Sarah is a listener who's
sent this in.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Nice, very nice. Thanks a lot, Sarah. Every time I
hear Idaho, I'm reminded of that silly T shirt that
said Idaho Daho. Do you remember that one?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I never saw that one?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
What was that one? There was a company called like
Dangerous t Shirts or something like that. And they had like, man,
they were killing it with the crazy T shirts for
a while in like the early two thousands.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Was that like instead of saying coch it would say
you know, poke or cocaine.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, kind of sometimes more original than that, but yeah,
they were coveted for a little bit among people who
liked incubus and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Uh. I couldn't name an Incuba's song, so that's not me.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Okay, So let's get back to dandelions. I don't know
how we ever get off track. It's kind of strange,
but it happens from time to time, and it just happened, chuck.
So let's stop it from happening right now.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Right, because dandelions, as you will see, have had a long,
rich history that we're going to talk about in depth
as a medicinal plant, as an edible plant, as a
wonderful pollinator, and it was recast as a villain as
a weed to get rid of. But you need only
(02:21):
look at the history of the dandelion, the fact that
it was brought to North America by colonists to kind
of underscore the fact that we wanted the dandelion here.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Right, and it's important to say that they brought it
here on purpose. I saw somebody point out like this,
it wasn't it didn't hit your ride. It was like
purposely brought here. And the idea that dandelions suck is
a really recent development, especially compared to how long people
valued and prized dandelions. I just find that fascinating for sure.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
This thing is about thirty million years old.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Native in sort of Atlantic Europe all the way to
Siberia and in the northern Hemisphere. You're gonna know a
dandelion because between March and October, you're gonna see these
beautiful yellow flowers. You'll see some what's called a rosette,
which are these very short level ground stems that grow
(03:20):
in a circular pattern, and then these little slender, green
hollow stalks, you know, two to twenty inches, but usually
at least around here the dandelions are i don't know,
like eight inches.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, that seems about right. That's my experience as well.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
So one of the other really impressive things about the
dandelion is if you look really closely at the flower,
each individual pedal has a little what becomes the part
of the puffball. When the flower seeds. It already is attached,
and that thing is called the papas and at the
bottom of the PAPIs is the seed, and the papos
(03:58):
itself is like this like parachute essentially that keeps the
seed aloft. And research into I saw pepeye, but I
like papusas as the plural.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Oh I love peppy.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So it's found that they're actually phenomenal at keeping the
seeds aloft. Like they create a kind of vortex that,
until it was seen when they started testing pappy was
thought to be impossible.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, And that vortex not only makes it, you know,
travel up and out and away in such a way
that if it was shaped any differently it wouldn't do that.
But if that little thing lands on water, that same
vortex is going to form a little air bubble around
it and protect it.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah. One of my prize possessions is this dandelion puffball
in cased in resin, and it's like the real deal.
And I've never understood how it worked, but it turns
out that if you actually take a dandelion puffball and
actually not just put water in a but submerge it
in water, the puffball does not. It doesn't collapse. Isn't
(05:08):
that nuts?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I think so too. So that's just one of the
many amazing things we're going to reveal today on stuff
you should know.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Did I wander into the wrong show?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Know?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Well, we should tell everybody it's ten am, and we
usually refer to this one. So I'm a much different
person at ten am.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
You're a news anchor. Apparently, So I mentioned yellow. They're
not always yellow. They can be orange, they can be white,
they can be kind of purply peach. They open in
the morning and close in the evening, which is given
them the name the shepherd's clock, and they do that
to preserve pollen and keep that pollen safe for the
(05:49):
next day, which also makes it and this is one
of my favorite words at photo nasty.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Oh that's a great word.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, plants open and close with the setting and rising
of the sun.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, felt photo nasty.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Huh. I saw like a time lapse. I actually it
was in a video. It's just a series of photos
of the dandelion flower opening and closing over the course
of the day. I found I ran across a word
from researching this that I'd never heard before that I
absolutely love. Dandelions, like you said, are edible. They're used
in cooking their culinary plant, which makes them a pot herb.
(06:28):
One word, a potterb. Is that awesome? What a great
homey little like. I just imagine you know, hobbits using
that word.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, hobbits. And my wife, Oh.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Does she call it potterbs? You've heard that before?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, she's I mean, that's a weird talking
about dandelions today. And she was just like, oh, are
you gonna talk about this?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
This, this, this, this, this.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Right, She's like, oh, the famous potter.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
It's also another kind of clock.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I already mentioned the shepherd's clock because of opening and
closing it at the sunrise and sunset. But those little
seed heads they're called dandelion clocks, and that is from
the old you know, you make a wish when you
blow the dandelion and you scatter those seeds as sort
of a long rich childhood tradition. But apparently the number
of puffs it takes to empty that thing is what
(07:15):
time it is, so it can I haven't tested this out.
I don't know this is rock solid science, but that's
a sort of a thing.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And one other thing about those papass and the seeds
that are attached to them, there's a longstanding, i guess,
kind of urban legend or maybe rural legend that they
can travel up to one hundred kilometers sixty two miles,
and that does not seem to be the case, even
though you'll see that stat absolutely everywhere, including some legitimate places.
(07:51):
But Kyle helped us with this, our British buddy, and
he found that a two thousand and three study, which
is the most recent you can find on this, is
that just one in seven thousand papises travels more than
one kilometer. So just leave one hundred kilometers out of
the whole equation.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, And Kyle told us that because he's from England.
But for our North American listeners, we're talking three hundred
and twenty something feet if it's one hundred kilometers in
about three and a half feet for a meter.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, And apparently ninety nine and a half percent of
all papists land just within thirty feet of the parent plant,
which is also ten meters. So yes, if you ever
hear that a papist contain travel one hundred kilometers, you
can be like, that's wrong. What you just said is wrong.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I think like one did, and they framed that maybe
that's the one you have in amber.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, it's like that first dollar bill you make as
a business, you put it into amber.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
There's also a cool adaptation where after they flower, that
little hollow stalk that the flower sits upon goes limp
on the ground and is just sort of hiding there
away from birds and stuff, And when they ripen up,
they jump back up again and they're like, here we are.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
That's pretty cool. I think so too. Do you want
to take a break and come back and talk about
where they got their name? Let's do it, so chuck
(09:36):
a dandelion. I've never stopped and considered why it was
called that, but it turns out that whole that lion
at the end is actually a giveaway for where the
name came from. Uh. It's French for lion's tooth dent
de leon pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
The reason they call it that is it's a reference
to the deeply serrated jagged leaves. I guess somebody was like,
that looks like a lion's tooth, and they lived in France,
and that's where they got the name dandelion.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, and it's also if you look at the botanical name,
it really gives a good indication of what it was
being used for back then. The genus name is Taraxicum.
And there are a couple of explanations here. I kind
of like the second one. The first one is a
Greek word for disorder, which is a taxia.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
But it's also could.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Have come from Arabic for bitter herb, which is tarak chagogue.
And then when you combine bitter herb with the species name,
which is how would you say that aficion alle, that
is a word for monastery store room. So a bitter
herb in a monastery storeroom basically is telling you, hey,
(10:49):
we use this plant in a very productive way.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, the whole disorder thing is totally insensible if you
ask me.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So one of the other great things. Humans use dandelions,
as we'll see, in a lot of different ways and
have for a very long time. But our animal friends
love dandelions too. Those flowers, even though they look kind
of flimsy if you think about it, they're rich in
nectar packed with it. So bees, butterflies, basically any kind
(11:18):
of pollinators love dandelions, Like you said, the reason the
stalk falls to the ground after flowering and as the
seedheads are developing, that's because birds love the little dandelion seeds.
And one of the other things that's important about them
too is they they basically flower and seed almost around
(11:42):
the like the whole year, depending on where you live.
So at times where there's not a lot of food
sources for birds and pollinators, the dandelions there to kind
of keep them going through the same you know, late fall.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, yeah, and I think it's one of the first
guys to get going in the spring.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Too, right, I believe so. Yeah, So we're going to get.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
More in detail about you know, how it's been eaten, but.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Well, actually let's save all that.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Let's just tease it then and say it has long
been eaten as now being eaten again due to the
sort of foraging movement happening in the culinary world.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
It's a great time.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
I think that kind of kicked off in COVID when
people are like, well, I can't go to the store.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
What can I eat that's in my backyard.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I'll try dandelions. I've always wondered what it tastes like better.
So yeah, nice. So I think we said probably a
couple of times that people have been using dandelions for
all sorts of reasons, not just as potterbs, for a
long time. One of the earlier mentions we can find
was in the Arabic world. A couple of physicians named
(12:53):
Rozi's and Avicenna both wrote about some of the properties
of dandelions and dandelion roots in the tenth and eleventh centuries,
and most of what they were talking about was its
use as a diuretic and medicinally speaking, that's probably the
most famous property that dandelions have is they make you pee.
(13:16):
And in fact, there's a couple of names that refer
to that, depending on where you are for dandelions that
refer to the fact that they make you pee, right.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
In France, they're called the apparently more than they're called
the dentte leone, they're called the pison lit, which means
you know, pp in the night, and a folk name
in England is a pissipad for the same reason.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, and you.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Know, apparently it's all the potassium in there that's going
to stimulate your nation and you know. Because of that,
diuretics are used for a lot of things, and you know,
medicinally now and historically, if you want to work something
through your system and pee it out, dandelions is a
good way to make that happen.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, and very famously in the American Midwest they're called
peepee weeds. Oh, that's totally made up, I.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Should say, Oh, that's not true either.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
No, I just made it up.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Okay, I got you.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I got you back for the what was the lateral
gene transfer gospel group that you got me with?
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Oh, geez, I don't even remember now it was that.
But I've only gotten you once. The score is Josh
three thousand.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Oh man.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
There was a sixteenth century book too. What was the
name of that one?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
People call it Garden of Health, because the full title
of it is containing the sundry, rare and hidden virtues
of all kinds of simples and plants, together with the
manner of how they are used and applied in medicine
for the health of man's body against diverse diseases and
infirmities most common against men. Gathered by the long experience
(14:54):
and industry of William Langham, practitioner of physic that's the
actual title of that book, which is why there's like, yeah,
we're just going to call it Garden of Health.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I mean, Garden of Health really says what that says.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I know, he didn't need all that extra stuff. That's
like the introduction. I think he put the introduction in
the title.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah, this was a little did it say the end
at the end pretty much.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
This is from, like I said, the sixteenth century, and
it talked a lot about, you know, all kinds of
things they thought it could help back then, toothache, fever's depression,
even baldness. But they also talked about growing it alongside
other vegetables and herbs in the garden. And you duck
up this kind of cool fact. It's ethylene gas that
they release, So if you actually grow dandelions or have
(15:38):
dandelions growing near fruiting plants like tomatoes, they're going to
ripen faster.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, isn't that neat super cool? Yeah, we're going to
cover a lot of actually pretty cool little benefits I
guess that they provide. But let's keep going with the
tradition of using them medicinally, shall we. Sure there's a
guy named John Girard, who wrote a book in the
sixteen thirties, and he's like, hey, I want to contribute
to this too. I've found that dandelion strengthens the weak stomach,
(16:08):
and which is important because actually, if you use the
roots of a dandelion, it's a It contains a lot
of inulin, which is an important prebiotic for gut health.
So John Gerard wasn't just whistling dixie.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
No, not at all.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
It turns out they have more vitamin A than spinach,
more vitamin C than tomatoes. They've got a ton we
already mentioned potassium, but also a lot of calcium, a
lot of iron, and then a lot of words that
I can barely pronounce that you found that it's packed with,
starting with flavonoids, that's the only one I had heard of.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
It has triterpenes, sesquiterpenes, phenolic acids, sterols, and cumerants, and
they bestow things like antibacterial, antioxidant, anti inflammatory, hepatoprotective, and
anti tumor properties. And you dug up all ways that
they actually help health.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Right, Yeah, So I mean we can talk all day
about like the ways that people thought it would help
you back in the sixteenth century, but people might poo
poo something like that. But there have been modern studies.
I'll just give you a few examples. There was a
study from twenty fifteen in Canada that reported that dandelion
extract can block ultraviolet UVB radiations. Crazy when applied to
(17:25):
the skin, it can also irritate the skin. So don't
necessarily just like take dandelions and like start rubbing them
all over yourself at the pool. There was a tw
twenty sixteen review of studies from a university in Denmark
that suggests that dandelion extracts actually stimulates pancreatic cells to
produce insulin, so it could potentially help control blood sugar. Right,
(17:49):
and what about there was one on the liver too, Right.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, I said it was hypato protective, which means it
helps deliver And actually it goes in and like just
kicks butt in your liver. It slows the progression of fibrosis,
which is scarring of the liver, and the extract actually
inactivates the cells that cause fibrosis in the liver and
essentially your liver. As everybody knows, it can regenerate itself
(18:16):
once the dandelion extract has gone in and stopped the fibrosis,
the liver can heal, So it's incredibly helpful with protecting
the liver from damage. I mean, that's nuts. It's almost
like it was designed to do that.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
For the liver.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
It's that effective.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I do want to mention the cancer one because Emily
had a very funny, very Emily line. There was a
twenty twenty man, why do I do that lately? Twenty twelve,
I did that.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I did do that a lot. Yeah, what is happening?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
It's a study from the University of Windsor in Canada
about dandelion root extract can induce apoptosis, which is cell
death in pancreatic and prostate cancer and test tube in
their cells in the test tubes, potentially preventing their spread.
So this is something Emily new and this morning she
(19:06):
was like, yeah, it's so like modern American at the
very least, to take something that could actually help fight
cancer and spray chemicals on it to kill it. It
caused cancer, right, yeah, and she stormed out of the room.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Sometimes we have to learn the hard way, but it
is it is reassuring that things seem to be coming
full circle, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, I feel like people are getting a little more
eyes open to stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah, they're getting on board the dandelion train. So one
thing about those studies that you said, like, they're essentially
confirming to our modern tastes what the Chinese knew all
the way back in six point fifty nine CE, people
like Nicholas Culpepper knew in the eighteenth century. All these
(19:51):
people wrote about this stuff and just how effective it was.
And then now science is going in and saying these
people were right, and here's how it is effective. I
think that's pretty cool, and in part because of that,
the dandelion is being rehabilitated. But first I think we
need to mention you said that it came by North America.
(20:12):
I piped up on purpose. I think more than once
even I was so excited about that. And it's possible
it was actually on the Mayflower. It arrived that early.
And they think that because of plant migration, as we
talked about before, the dandelion may have spread ahead of
Europeans as they entered further and further into the North
(20:33):
American continent, and so Native Americans that they encountered may
have already been using dandelions in some of their medicines.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Oh yeah, absolutely. They were drinking it in tonics. They
were boiling it with fatty meats, which sounds disgusting.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It does it, really, unless you're talking about something like
collards with like hamhocks or something that sounds okay. But
in this case, I imagine a pot of boiling water
with a skin of fat just bubbling at the top
and some dandelion leaves floating around in it.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
And we'll talk about, you know, more ways you can
eat it, but it's long been used in like cordials
and beers like the dandelion root. You can you know,
grind it up and use it as like a coffee substitute,
kind of like chickory. So you know, people were using
it for medicine. They were using it for old kinds
of folk remedies and foods and things, largely because again
it was everywhere it grows in not very good soil.
(21:31):
They can it's considered a perennial because they can live
well because like you said, they're kind of growing year round,
but they can live for more than ten years, and
you don't mess with them and kill them.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty cool too. One of
the other things I saw, there's a book called The
Economical Housewife from the eighteen fifties that it might be
the first recipe for dandelion wine, and people still make
that today, and it's actually super easy. You just take
some dandelion flowers, some water. Eventually you had some sugar
and some lemon, let it sit for a couple of weeks,
(22:03):
strain it out, and then let it sit for another
week in age, and you've got yourself some dandelion wine.
And it sounds deliciously easy or maybe easily delicious, one
of the two. But I'd love to try. Have you
ever had dandelion wine or dandelion beer or anything like that?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely a thing.
Ray Bradbury had a novel called Dandelion Wine from nineteen
fifty seven, so it's something that's.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Been enjoyed all over the world. In France they.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Use it sometimes they'll take the leaves and blanch them
and spread them with bread and butter like it sounds
like if there's not a Brooklyn restaurant serving dandelion toast
at this point, yeah, then what is happening in.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Our I don't know. It sounds like fairy toast like
the Australians love, but with dandelion leaves instead.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, it's also, you know, just a salad, a salad
green component, and like we said, it is very bitter.
But it's using all kinds of salads. Sometimes it's the
only kind of leaf using a salad. Sometimes it can
be mixed in with other things. But in France they
have one called the salad de pisson lits from that
original name, that's got bacon in it and dandelion leaves.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
It just you know, sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Yeah. Apparently that was a common dish during the depression
in America too, because it was just cheap, you know. Yeah,
and it sounds delicious too. I say, we take a
break and we come back and talk about another surprising
use of dandelion that I hadn't heard of until this,
but you probably did because of Emily.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
No. I delighted her with that fact as well, So
we'll be right back, all right. So Josh said that
(24:08):
he hadn't heard of this cool fact. I hadn't heard
of it. Emily hadn't heard of it. And I think
it may be the fact of the podcast, but dandelions
are a source of natural rubber.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Pretty cool, I would I would take issue with that.
I think it has to do with the vortices over
the pappy or the fact that they're potterbs. All right,
this one's good. It's up there. Maybe they're all tied
for first I don't know, but hey.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
That means we've got a good topic if there are several,
right competitors.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, and so not just any dandelion produces rubber or
latex that can be turned into rubber. A specific type
of dandelion they figured out the Kazakh dandelion, which is
native to the Eurasian steps. How'd you like that? It's
also called the Russian dandelion here in the United States.
(25:03):
That specific one puts out enough latex that it gave
rubber trees a run for their money. During World War Two,
which we've talked about many times, America and Britain were like,
we need more rubber for the war effort, and the
Japanese control essentially all of the rubber supply were at
war with the Japanese, so we better come up with
(25:24):
something else quick.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, So they literally started screening like thousands and thousands
of plants, and then I guess they're like, hey, if
the rubber tree can grow rubber, there's got to be
something else out there. The Soviets are the ones who said,
try this Kazakh dandelion, and because of shortages during the wars,
they said, here, here's a bunch of seeds, and they
(25:50):
sent a bunch of those Kazakh seeds the Soviet allies
at the time in the nineteen forties, and ultimately we
use some of it. Russians, Americans and Germans did produce
rub from dandelions. It's very hearty. It can be susceptible
to disease, though, depending what kind of disease, but also
grows everywhere and serves as a pollinator and it doesn't
(26:12):
deforce things. So the big problem though, and I nowhereone's like,
oh my god, it's just the miracle we've all been
hoping for with rubber. It just doesn't yield as much
as the Russian said it did, and so it's not
economically viable as long as the real rubber tree is around.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
They released some paper that overstated how much rubber can
be gotten from the dandelion because they wanted to sound
like big shots.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
So the reason why we didn't just keep going with
dandelion rubber research in trying to figure out how to
increase yields is because in the meantime, people figured out
we could make synthetic rubber from petroleum. It was almost
as good as natural rubber, and it certainly was a
good enough substitute, and we could just make batch after
batch after batch rather than have to try to yield
(27:01):
it from dandelion. So that fell to the wayside. And
then by the time World War two ended, we had
access to natural rubber supplies from the from the southeast
Southeast Asia, i should say, and so all that kind
of put dandelion rubber on the back shelf. But in
the what eighty almost one hundred years geez, since World
(27:23):
War Two, I remember when that was like just like
that was firmly like forty to fifty years in the past,
and it just keeps getting further and further away. It's
really awful. But we've kind of figured out in the
interim that synthetic rubber it's useful, but there's nothing that
can match natural rubber for like grip, heat, dissipation, all
(27:46):
sorts of other properties. So we're starting to go back
to look at sources for natural rubber, including ones that
are more sustainable than the rubber trees, which require you
basically DeForest and then plant the rubber trees to create
a plantation with dandelions. You don't have to do that stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Now you got a big field, you can have dandelions,
and like I said, it grows and it doesn't have
to be great soil. You can grow it hydroponically, without
soil at all. You can grow it in the air,
which is aeroponically. It's pretty amazing. And I think it's
one of those things where like anytime you have a
monoculture plant like that, like the rubber tree, it makes
(28:25):
people a little bit nervous besides a deporestation, like if
anything ever happened, like some kind of weird blight, and
the rubber trees were just, you know, not a candidate anymore.
You got dandelions kind of waiting on deck with their
bat right.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
So it's kind of surprising that it went from this
really prized plant in so many ways to a hated weed,
especially in Europe and the United States. And you hit
upon why it became a hitted weed. You use the
word monoculture, and the largest monoculture here in the United
States are people's lawns. And for part of the etacho
(29:00):
of the lawn, you cannot have dandelions breaking up that
perfect unbroken sea of green grass. You got a dandelion
popping up, the whole thing's ruined. Basically, that's the way
people think of dandelions and lawns these days, or have
since about the fifties.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Essentially, that beautiful yellow flower, stop it right, dig it up.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
But yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
And we've gone over this before, but just sort of
as a quick overview, this is the kind of thing
that came over from England. Starting in the seventeenth century
is when British aristocracy really started to get into these
perfect sort of croquet croquet playing.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Lawns, I guess is what you would call them.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
And then in America it was post World War Two
when suburbanization really took hold, lawnmowers really came into their own.
Everyone was like, hey, we've got these great new chemicals
that'll kill everything except and make.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
The grass grow really really well.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And it's it's just modern and tidy and good looking,
and that really kind of transformed the United States, you know, like,
keep up that lawn, make a perfect green lawn if
you want to keep your property value up.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Anybody a big one. And Kyle also dug up another
reason too that once the Cold War rolled around, conformity
was equated with safety. So if you weren't keeping your
lawn trimmed like everybody else, what's going on with you?
You're making me feel a little bit nervous because you're
not conforming. You must be a red spy hiding out
in suburbia basically, right. And I think that's a really
(30:38):
important kind of overlooked driver for things like perfectly manicured
lawns and everybody having the same kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, And speaking of driver, the other I don't think
we've ever mentioned contributor to this nice was in the
nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Golf started being televised.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
In nineteen fifty seven, you got golf on television for
the first time, and people look at Augusta National and
these golf courses that were beautifully manicured and esthetically pleasing
to the eye, and they're like, hey, I need to
get some of that in my front yard. Maybe I
can practice chipping some balls around in my front yard.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah. Also, if you're sitting there thinking like, wow, I
really love hearing these guys talk about grass, but I'd
love to hear them have a dispute over it, you
should go listen to How Our Grass Works episode. It's
actually a pretty good one. It's a classic stuff you
should know episode.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
It totally is.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
But anyway, all that preamble about you know us poopa
and lawns and why America did that brought us to this,
which is weeds became enemy number one and dandelions were
maybe even near the.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Top of that list.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why. For all the
reasons that they're valuable the pollinators and other kinds of plants,
and that they can grow in marginal lands and basically everywhere,
is it makes them an enemy as a weed if
you're trying to create a monoculture lawn, right, so, they
can regenerate from like a one inch section of root,
(32:07):
which means that if you cut a dandelion off at
the even below ground level, it's like good, you know, good,
try pal, but it just sprouts right back up. You
have to dig them up, and even after you dig
them up, you might not get them because one of
the things that I didn't know about dandelions is I
knew they grew from a tap root. You have to
get that tap root up or else it's just feudile. Yeah,
(32:30):
but that tap root can grow, depending on the age
of the dandelion, over a dozen feet meters four meters
into the ground meters. Yeah, and that makes it really
hard to get rid of. And so if you're like
a grounds keeper for a golf course or something like that,
you have to really keep up with the dandelions because
they'll spread really fast and they're really hard to get
(32:52):
rid of once you do start trying to get rid
of them.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
And I got to say this last fact from Kyle
because it goes back to the lawns, but this really
kind of drives at home of about how not great
a perfect green lawn is for our society. There's a
study in two thousand and five residential lawns in the
United States make up two percent of the land but
require more irrigation than any domestic agricultural crop.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I've got one to piggyback on that. Let's see The
US Fish and Wildlife Service says that homeowners use up
to ten times more pesticides per acre then farmers use
on their crops. So we're using this stuff over using it,
and we're using it on stuff that's not productive land,
just to keep up with the Joneses. So they don't
(33:40):
think we're communist spies.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, you know, I walk Gibson in the mornings and
there are the only lawns that he ever like rubs
his face in are the most perfect green ones. And
I know that it's because they have recently been sprayed
and he's smell it and it is trying to rub
all in that stuff, and it drives me bonkers.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, it's it's a like I would love to just
let my lawn and you me too, just go to
like wildflowers, go to weeds, you know, just mow it,
you keep it mode, but at a higher height. But yeah,
you just let this stuff grow, and we would be
completely We would stick out like a sore throam from
the rest of the neighborhood, so much of their neighbors
(34:25):
would be mad at us. That's how entrenched the idea
of having a perfect lawn is still in the United states,
depending on where you live.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, for sure, and like no one around there even
does like permaculture and you know other options besides just
letting it grow wild and crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
No, it's it's nuts. So we definitely draw a line.
So we're like, Okay, we'll keep up with the lawn,
but don't touch the you know, the shrubbery, the perennials,
the garden essentially, right, But people will hire the same
company to like treat their lawn with chemicals, to spray
their bushes and spray their gardens with chemicals to kill
off the bugs, and then they have to go in
(35:05):
and try to recreate the stuff that the bugs are
doing for free, the services they're providing because you've killed
off the bugs. It's it's insane to me. So we
definitely don't don't. We don't cot into that.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Yeah, there was speaking of bugs.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
It was a scientific review in twenty nineteen that found
that the global massive insects is falling at a rate
of about two and a half percent per year, and
dandelions is a high high on the list of pollinators.
Caterpillars love munching on them, moths loves munching on them,
and all those bees and butterflies love.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Doing their thing on them.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
So even you know, I'm not trying to shame people,
but let's say you do like your lawn and everything,
even waiting in the spring like longer to cut it,
even cutting it higher, letting the dandelions grow up a
little bit before you start whacking them down. Then that
minimal amount will help out a little bit.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
What's interesting is a non chemical way I saw to
treat your turf grass for dandelions is to let your
grass grow longer than you have been like cutting it
at a high or mower height. Yeah, because as we
talked about, dandelion leaves are so low growing that the
grass will shade out and out compete the dandelions. So
if you really do want to get rid of dandelions
(36:24):
but you don't want to use chemicals, that's a pretty
good way to do it from what I've seen.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Some states have actual programs or just one in Minnesota
called Lawns Two Legumes, which is a great title. They
launched that in twenty nineteen where they just basically incentive
incentivized people to say, get rid of that lawn. Put
in flowering plants, put in beds. You can have a
rebate if you have a pollinator friendly native wildflower scene
(36:52):
at your house.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah. I didn't look up the amount, but I would
guess at a minimum, the rebate is worth a million dollars, right,
that'd be my guess, you think. So, there's a couple
other things that I found that dandelions, I don't know
if you looked at it or not, that they kind
of provide surfaces to the plants growing around them, including grass. Yeah,
(37:18):
because as we mentioned, those tap roots, they grow really deep,
and as they're growing deep, they're actually accessing nutrients that
other plants around them, again, including grass, the roots of
those plants can't reach because it's too deep, and it
brings those nutrients up towards the surface, and as the
dandelion dies off, the other plants get to get to
(37:40):
eat those nutrients that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to.
And those same roots also airrate in loose and compacted
dirt too, which makes it easier for the plants around
the dandelions to grow.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Is there anything dandelions can't do?
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I don't know. I mean, they're not super fragrant.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
No, that's true. They're pretty much useless in that.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
But they can grant a child to wish.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
They sure can, Man, they sure can. I remember doing
that so many times. I keep trying to do that
with my dandelion puffhead in Resin and it's not working.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
I don't have anything else, so I'm kind of looking
over the list here.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I know we were kind of all over the place,
but it's just sort of one of those episodes where
it's like, well, here's a list of one hundred amazing things,
and so sometimes those are a little tougher to organize.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, but they can be pretty fun too. I had
fun at least. How about you and that rubber thing?
Are you kidding? Since neither one of us has anything
else about dandelions, and we're gonna call it quits on
this episode, which means we've just activated listener mail.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
You know, no listener mail today, because what we're gonna
do is something we haven't done in a while, is
help support and bring some attention to a great cause,
our friends from the Cooperative for Education aka co ED,
whose mission it is to break the cycle of poverty
and Guatemala through education, and we've been working with them
for fifteen years and we got a new thing coming
up with them, right.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yes, we do. So first, let me just explain over
one point three million dollars and contributions have been made
to co ED thanks to our partnership with them, that
stuff you should know for fifteen years. That's that's really
good if you ask me, that's incredible, which means that
one hundred and sixty kids have been given like a
huge leg up to escape poverty and create like break
(39:31):
intergenerational poverty and create literally like a new life for
their entire family from that point on.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
You know, we went down there, I guess fifteen years
ago when they invited us very early on, and stuff
you should know is canon, yeah, in our history, And
we went down to Guatemala and those shows, we did
some shows on that trip and that visit we get
to actually hear Jerry speak, which is pretty exciting. Yeah,
And they're just great that we've been working with them
ever since. And the fact that the stuff you should
(40:01):
army has raised one point three million bucks for them
over the past fifteen years is going to be a
real proud part of our legacy. But we have a
call to action, right.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yes, so you can joined. We're starting a drive essentially
right now, that's right. You can join the cooperative, which
is a program of THEIRS, for twenty dollars a month,
and you'll collectively sponsor a bunch of students in the
Rise Youth Development program, right, that's right, And so it's
going to get spread out. You're going to be helping
a bunch of kids at once, so you can feel
(40:30):
good like five times over with each each monthly donation.
And then in twenty twenty five, more than eleven hundred
students will be able to start school in World Guatemala,
which will be their biggest class ever. They need help
to make that happen, which is why we're saying join
the cooperative.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And as an incentive, if this is for you, if
you set up your gift by Tuesday, December third, then
you are signed up for a chance to do a
virtual hangout with Josh and I. We do this every
year around the same time. It's always a lot of fun.
We hang out with I don't know if six or
eight people all over the country and they get to
just you know, ask us questions and tell us that
we're cool or dumb or whatever. It's your chance to
(41:11):
really hand it to us if that's what you're after, right.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, hopefully don't do that, but sure, I mean, I
guess if you've given to co ED and you deserve
to do whatever.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
You want to us, that's right.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
So just go to Cooperative for Education dot org. That's
the word cooperative f O R education dot org slash
s y s k and start giving.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Now. A little bit goes a long way down there.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yes, And in the meantime, while you're looking up Cooperative
for Education dot org slash s y s k, you
can also send us an email. Send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Puffball Chuck, and there's Blowball Jerry, and I like to
call me Monk's Head and this is stuff you should do.
Did you get those references?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Uh? Sure?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Okay, Well we should probably explain them to everybody else
because they probably think it's an in joke, but it's
not at all. Number one, because we're about to share
it with you. Number two, it's not really a joke.
And number three, those are alternate names for dandelions.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
That's right, and we're going to be exalting the dandelion
probably say a lot of times how great we think
it is.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, sorry if you hate dandelions.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, how it's unfairly maligned. And we want to thank
Sarah Andrews from Idaho because Sarah is a listener who's
sent this in.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Nice, very nice. Thanks a lot, Sarah. Every time I
hear Idaho, I'm reminded of that silly T shirt that
said Idaho Daho. Do you remember that one?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I never saw that one?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
What was that one? There was a company called like
Dangerous t Shirts or something like that. And they had like, man,
they were killing it with the crazy T shirts for
a while in like the early two thousands.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Was that like instead of saying coch it would say
you know, poke or cocaine.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, kind of sometimes more original than that, but yeah,
they were coveted for a little bit among people who
liked incubus and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Uh. I couldn't name an Incuba's song, so that's not me.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Okay, So let's get back to dandelions. I don't know
how we ever get off track. It's kind of strange,
but it happens from time to time, and it just happened, chuck.
So let's stop it from happening right now.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Right, because dandelions, as you will see, have had a long,
rich history that we're going to talk about in depth
as a medicinal plant, as an edible plant, as a
wonderful pollinator, and it was recast as a villain as
a weed to get rid of. But you need only
(02:21):
look at the history of the dandelion, the fact that
it was brought to North America by colonists to kind
of underscore the fact that we wanted the dandelion here.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Right, and it's important to say that they brought it
here on purpose. I saw somebody point out like this,
it wasn't it didn't hit your ride. It was like
purposely brought here. And the idea that dandelions suck is
a really recent development, especially compared to how long people
valued and prized dandelions. I just find that fascinating for sure.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
This thing is about thirty million years old.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Native in sort of Atlantic Europe all the way to
Siberia and in the northern Hemisphere. You're gonna know a
dandelion because between March and October, you're gonna see these
beautiful yellow flowers. You'll see some what's called a rosette,
which are these very short level ground stems that grow
(03:20):
in a circular pattern, and then these little slender, green
hollow stalks, you know, two to twenty inches, but usually
at least around here the dandelions are i don't know,
like eight inches.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, that seems about right. That's my experience as well.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
So one of the other really impressive things about the
dandelion is if you look really closely at the flower,
each individual pedal has a little what becomes the part
of the puffball. When the flower seeds. It already is attached,
and that thing is called the papas and at the
bottom of the PAPIs is the seed, and the papos
(03:58):
itself is like this like parachute essentially that keeps the
seed aloft. And research into I saw pepeye, but I
like papusas as the plural.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Oh I love peppy.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So it's found that they're actually phenomenal at keeping the
seeds aloft. Like they create a kind of vortex that,
until it was seen when they started testing pappy was
thought to be impossible.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, And that vortex not only makes it, you know,
travel up and out and away in such a way
that if it was shaped any differently it wouldn't do that.
But if that little thing lands on water, that same
vortex is going to form a little air bubble around
it and protect it.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah. One of my prize possessions is this dandelion puffball
in cased in resin, and it's like the real deal.
And I've never understood how it worked, but it turns
out that if you actually take a dandelion puffball and
actually not just put water in a but submerge it
in water, the puffball does not. It doesn't collapse. Isn't
(05:08):
that nuts?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I think so too. So that's just one of the
many amazing things we're going to reveal today on stuff
you should know.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Did I wander into the wrong show?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Know?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Well, we should tell everybody it's ten am, and we
usually refer to this one. So I'm a much different
person at ten am.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
You're a news anchor. Apparently, So I mentioned yellow. They're
not always yellow. They can be orange, they can be white,
they can be kind of purply peach. They open in
the morning and close in the evening, which is given
them the name the shepherd's clock, and they do that
to preserve pollen and keep that pollen safe for the
(05:49):
next day, which also makes it and this is one
of my favorite words at photo nasty.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Oh that's a great word.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, plants open and close with the setting and rising
of the sun.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, felt photo nasty.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Huh. I saw like a time lapse. I actually it
was in a video. It's just a series of photos
of the dandelion flower opening and closing over the course
of the day. I found I ran across a word
from researching this that I'd never heard before that I
absolutely love. Dandelions, like you said, are edible. They're used
in cooking their culinary plant, which makes them a pot herb.
(06:28):
One word, a potterb. Is that awesome? What a great
homey little like. I just imagine you know, hobbits using
that word.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, hobbits. And my wife, Oh.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Does she call it potterbs? You've heard that before?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, she's I mean, that's a weird talking
about dandelions today. And she was just like, oh, are
you gonna talk about this?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
This, this, this, this, this.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Right, She's like, oh, the famous potter.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
It's also another kind of clock.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I already mentioned the shepherd's clock because of opening and
closing it at the sunrise and sunset. But those little
seed heads they're called dandelion clocks, and that is from
the old you know, you make a wish when you
blow the dandelion and you scatter those seeds as sort
of a long rich childhood tradition. But apparently the number
of puffs it takes to empty that thing is what
(07:15):
time it is, so it can I haven't tested this out.
I don't know this is rock solid science, but that's
a sort of a thing.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And one other thing about those papass and the seeds
that are attached to them, there's a longstanding, i guess,
kind of urban legend or maybe rural legend that they
can travel up to one hundred kilometers sixty two miles,
and that does not seem to be the case, even
though you'll see that stat absolutely everywhere, including some legitimate places.
(07:51):
But Kyle helped us with this, our British buddy, and
he found that a two thousand and three study, which
is the most recent you can find on this, is
that just one in seven thousand papises travels more than
one kilometer. So just leave one hundred kilometers out of
the whole equation.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, And Kyle told us that because he's from England.
But for our North American listeners, we're talking three hundred
and twenty something feet if it's one hundred kilometers in
about three and a half feet for a meter.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, And apparently ninety nine and a half percent of
all papists land just within thirty feet of the parent plant,
which is also ten meters. So yes, if you ever
hear that a papist contain travel one hundred kilometers, you
can be like, that's wrong. What you just said is wrong.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I think like one did, and they framed that maybe
that's the one you have in amber.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, it's like that first dollar bill you make as
a business, you put it into amber.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
There's also a cool adaptation where after they flower, that
little hollow stalk that the flower sits upon goes limp
on the ground and is just sort of hiding there
away from birds and stuff, And when they ripen up,
they jump back up again and they're like, here we are.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
That's pretty cool. I think so too. Do you want
to take a break and come back and talk about
where they got their name? Let's do it, so chuck
(09:36):
a dandelion. I've never stopped and considered why it was
called that, but it turns out that whole that lion
at the end is actually a giveaway for where the
name came from. Uh. It's French for lion's tooth dent
de leon pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
The reason they call it that is it's a reference
to the deeply serrated jagged leaves. I guess somebody was like,
that looks like a lion's tooth, and they lived in France,
and that's where they got the name dandelion.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, and it's also if you look at the botanical name,
it really gives a good indication of what it was
being used for back then. The genus name is Taraxicum.
And there are a couple of explanations here. I kind
of like the second one. The first one is a
Greek word for disorder, which is a taxia.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
But it's also could.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Have come from Arabic for bitter herb, which is tarak chagogue.
And then when you combine bitter herb with the species name,
which is how would you say that aficion alle, that
is a word for monastery store room. So a bitter
herb in a monastery storeroom basically is telling you, hey,
(10:49):
we use this plant in a very productive way.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, the whole disorder thing is totally insensible if you
ask me.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So one of the other great things. Humans use dandelions,
as we'll see, in a lot of different ways and
have for a very long time. But our animal friends
love dandelions too. Those flowers, even though they look kind
of flimsy if you think about it, they're rich in
nectar packed with it. So bees, butterflies, basically any kind
(11:18):
of pollinators love dandelions, Like you said, the reason the
stalk falls to the ground after flowering and as the
seedheads are developing, that's because birds love the little dandelion seeds.
And one of the other things that's important about them
too is they they basically flower and seed almost around
(11:42):
the like the whole year, depending on where you live.
So at times where there's not a lot of food
sources for birds and pollinators, the dandelions there to kind
of keep them going through the same you know, late fall.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, yeah, and I think it's one of the first
guys to get going in the spring.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Too, right, I believe so. Yeah, So we're going to get.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
More in detail about you know, how it's been eaten, but.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Well, actually let's save all that.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Let's just tease it then and say it has long
been eaten as now being eaten again due to the
sort of foraging movement happening in the culinary world.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
It's a great time.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
I think that kind of kicked off in COVID when
people are like, well, I can't go to the store.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
What can I eat that's in my backyard.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I'll try dandelions. I've always wondered what it tastes like better.
So yeah, nice. So I think we said probably a
couple of times that people have been using dandelions for
all sorts of reasons, not just as potterbs, for a
long time. One of the earlier mentions we can find
was in the Arabic world. A couple of physicians named
(12:53):
Rozi's and Avicenna both wrote about some of the properties
of dandelions and dandelion roots in the tenth and eleventh centuries,
and most of what they were talking about was its
use as a diuretic and medicinally speaking, that's probably the
most famous property that dandelions have is they make you pee.
(13:16):
And in fact, there's a couple of names that refer
to that, depending on where you are for dandelions that
refer to the fact that they make you pee, right.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
In France, they're called the apparently more than they're called
the dentte leone, they're called the pison lit, which means
you know, pp in the night, and a folk name
in England is a pissipad for the same reason.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, and you.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Know, apparently it's all the potassium in there that's going
to stimulate your nation and you know. Because of that,
diuretics are used for a lot of things, and you know,
medicinally now and historically, if you want to work something
through your system and pee it out, dandelions is a
good way to make that happen.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, and very famously in the American Midwest they're called
peepee weeds. Oh, that's totally made up, I.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Should say, Oh, that's not true either.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
No, I just made it up.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Okay, I got you.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I got you back for the what was the lateral
gene transfer gospel group that you got me with?
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Oh, geez, I don't even remember now it was that.
But I've only gotten you once. The score is Josh
three thousand.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Oh man.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
There was a sixteenth century book too. What was the
name of that one?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
People call it Garden of Health, because the full title
of it is containing the sundry, rare and hidden virtues
of all kinds of simples and plants, together with the
manner of how they are used and applied in medicine
for the health of man's body against diverse diseases and
infirmities most common against men. Gathered by the long experience
(14:54):
and industry of William Langham, practitioner of physic that's the
actual title of that book, which is why there's like, yeah,
we're just going to call it Garden of Health.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I mean, Garden of Health really says what that says.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I know, he didn't need all that extra stuff. That's
like the introduction. I think he put the introduction in
the title.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah, this was a little did it say the end
at the end pretty much.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
This is from, like I said, the sixteenth century, and
it talked a lot about, you know, all kinds of
things they thought it could help back then, toothache, fever's depression,
even baldness. But they also talked about growing it alongside
other vegetables and herbs in the garden. And you duck
up this kind of cool fact. It's ethylene gas that
they release, So if you actually grow dandelions or have
(15:38):
dandelions growing near fruiting plants like tomatoes, they're going to
ripen faster.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, isn't that neat super cool? Yeah, we're going to
cover a lot of actually pretty cool little benefits I
guess that they provide. But let's keep going with the
tradition of using them medicinally, shall we. Sure there's a
guy named John Girard, who wrote a book in the
sixteen thirties, and he's like, hey, I want to contribute
to this too. I've found that dandelion strengthens the weak stomach,
(16:08):
and which is important because actually, if you use the
roots of a dandelion, it's a It contains a lot
of inulin, which is an important prebiotic for gut health.
So John Gerard wasn't just whistling dixie.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
No, not at all.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
It turns out they have more vitamin A than spinach,
more vitamin C than tomatoes. They've got a ton we
already mentioned potassium, but also a lot of calcium, a
lot of iron, and then a lot of words that
I can barely pronounce that you found that it's packed with,
starting with flavonoids, that's the only one I had heard of.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
It has triterpenes, sesquiterpenes, phenolic acids, sterols, and cumerants, and
they bestow things like antibacterial, antioxidant, anti inflammatory, hepatoprotective, and
anti tumor properties. And you dug up all ways that
they actually help health.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Right, Yeah, So I mean we can talk all day
about like the ways that people thought it would help
you back in the sixteenth century, but people might poo
poo something like that. But there have been modern studies.
I'll just give you a few examples. There was a
study from twenty fifteen in Canada that reported that dandelion
extract can block ultraviolet UVB radiations. Crazy when applied to
(17:25):
the skin, it can also irritate the skin. So don't
necessarily just like take dandelions and like start rubbing them
all over yourself at the pool. There was a tw
twenty sixteen review of studies from a university in Denmark
that suggests that dandelion extracts actually stimulates pancreatic cells to
produce insulin, so it could potentially help control blood sugar. Right,
(17:49):
and what about there was one on the liver too, Right.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, I said it was hypato protective, which means it
helps deliver And actually it goes in and like just
kicks butt in your liver. It slows the progression of fibrosis,
which is scarring of the liver, and the extract actually
inactivates the cells that cause fibrosis in the liver and
essentially your liver. As everybody knows, it can regenerate itself
(18:16):
once the dandelion extract has gone in and stopped the fibrosis,
the liver can heal, So it's incredibly helpful with protecting
the liver from damage. I mean, that's nuts. It's almost
like it was designed to do that.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
For the liver.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
It's that effective.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I do want to mention the cancer one because Emily
had a very funny, very Emily line. There was a
twenty twenty man, why do I do that lately? Twenty twelve,
I did that.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I did do that a lot. Yeah, what is happening?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
It's a study from the University of Windsor in Canada
about dandelion root extract can induce apoptosis, which is cell
death in pancreatic and prostate cancer and test tube in
their cells in the test tubes, potentially preventing their spread.
So this is something Emily new and this morning she
(19:06):
was like, yeah, it's so like modern American at the
very least, to take something that could actually help fight
cancer and spray chemicals on it to kill it. It
caused cancer, right, yeah, and she stormed out of the room.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Sometimes we have to learn the hard way, but it
is it is reassuring that things seem to be coming
full circle, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, I feel like people are getting a little more
eyes open to stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah, they're getting on board the dandelion train. So one
thing about those studies that you said, like, they're essentially
confirming to our modern tastes what the Chinese knew all
the way back in six point fifty nine CE, people
like Nicholas Culpepper knew in the eighteenth century. All these
(19:51):
people wrote about this stuff and just how effective it was.
And then now science is going in and saying these
people were right, and here's how it is effective. I
think that's pretty cool, and in part because of that,
the dandelion is being rehabilitated. But first I think we
need to mention you said that it came by North America.
(20:12):
I piped up on purpose. I think more than once
even I was so excited about that. And it's possible
it was actually on the Mayflower. It arrived that early.
And they think that because of plant migration, as we
talked about before, the dandelion may have spread ahead of
Europeans as they entered further and further into the North
(20:33):
American continent, and so Native Americans that they encountered may
have already been using dandelions in some of their medicines.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Oh yeah, absolutely. They were drinking it in tonics. They
were boiling it with fatty meats, which sounds disgusting.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It does it, really, unless you're talking about something like
collards with like hamhocks or something that sounds okay. But
in this case, I imagine a pot of boiling water
with a skin of fat just bubbling at the top
and some dandelion leaves floating around in it.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
And we'll talk about, you know, more ways you can
eat it, but it's long been used in like cordials
and beers like the dandelion root. You can you know,
grind it up and use it as like a coffee substitute,
kind of like chickory. So you know, people were using
it for medicine. They were using it for old kinds
of folk remedies and foods and things, largely because again
it was everywhere it grows in not very good soil.
(21:31):
They can it's considered a perennial because they can live
well because like you said, they're kind of growing year round,
but they can live for more than ten years, and
you don't mess with them and kill them.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty cool too. One of
the other things I saw, there's a book called The
Economical Housewife from the eighteen fifties that it might be
the first recipe for dandelion wine, and people still make
that today, and it's actually super easy. You just take
some dandelion flowers, some water. Eventually you had some sugar
and some lemon, let it sit for a couple of weeks,
(22:03):
strain it out, and then let it sit for another
week in age, and you've got yourself some dandelion wine.
And it sounds deliciously easy or maybe easily delicious, one
of the two. But I'd love to try. Have you
ever had dandelion wine or dandelion beer or anything like that?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely a thing.
Ray Bradbury had a novel called Dandelion Wine from nineteen
fifty seven, so it's something that's.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Been enjoyed all over the world. In France they.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Use it sometimes they'll take the leaves and blanch them
and spread them with bread and butter like it sounds
like if there's not a Brooklyn restaurant serving dandelion toast
at this point, yeah, then what is happening in.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Our I don't know. It sounds like fairy toast like
the Australians love, but with dandelion leaves instead.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, it's also, you know, just a salad, a salad
green component, and like we said, it is very bitter.
But it's using all kinds of salads. Sometimes it's the
only kind of leaf using a salad. Sometimes it can
be mixed in with other things. But in France they
have one called the salad de pisson lits from that
original name, that's got bacon in it and dandelion leaves.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
It just you know, sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Yeah. Apparently that was a common dish during the depression
in America too, because it was just cheap, you know. Yeah,
and it sounds delicious too. I say, we take a
break and we come back and talk about another surprising
use of dandelion that I hadn't heard of until this,
but you probably did because of Emily.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
No. I delighted her with that fact as well, So
we'll be right back, all right. So Josh said that
(24:08):
he hadn't heard of this cool fact. I hadn't heard
of it. Emily hadn't heard of it. And I think
it may be the fact of the podcast, but dandelions
are a source of natural rubber.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Pretty cool, I would I would take issue with that.
I think it has to do with the vortices over
the pappy or the fact that they're potterbs. All right,
this one's good. It's up there. Maybe they're all tied
for first I don't know, but hey.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
That means we've got a good topic if there are several,
right competitors.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, and so not just any dandelion produces rubber or
latex that can be turned into rubber. A specific type
of dandelion they figured out the Kazakh dandelion, which is
native to the Eurasian steps. How'd you like that? It's
also called the Russian dandelion here in the United States.
(25:03):
That specific one puts out enough latex that it gave
rubber trees a run for their money. During World War Two,
which we've talked about many times, America and Britain were like,
we need more rubber for the war effort, and the
Japanese control essentially all of the rubber supply were at
war with the Japanese, so we better come up with
(25:24):
something else quick.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, So they literally started screening like thousands and thousands
of plants, and then I guess they're like, hey, if
the rubber tree can grow rubber, there's got to be
something else out there. The Soviets are the ones who said,
try this Kazakh dandelion, and because of shortages during the wars,
they said, here, here's a bunch of seeds, and they
(25:50):
sent a bunch of those Kazakh seeds the Soviet allies
at the time in the nineteen forties, and ultimately we
use some of it. Russians, Americans and Germans did produce
rub from dandelions. It's very hearty. It can be susceptible
to disease, though, depending what kind of disease, but also
grows everywhere and serves as a pollinator and it doesn't
(26:12):
deforce things. So the big problem though, and I nowhereone's like,
oh my god, it's just the miracle we've all been
hoping for with rubber. It just doesn't yield as much
as the Russian said it did, and so it's not
economically viable as long as the real rubber tree is around.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
They released some paper that overstated how much rubber can
be gotten from the dandelion because they wanted to sound
like big shots.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
So the reason why we didn't just keep going with
dandelion rubber research in trying to figure out how to
increase yields is because in the meantime, people figured out
we could make synthetic rubber from petroleum. It was almost
as good as natural rubber, and it certainly was a
good enough substitute, and we could just make batch after
batch after batch rather than have to try to yield
(27:01):
it from dandelion. So that fell to the wayside. And
then by the time World War two ended, we had
access to natural rubber supplies from the from the southeast
Southeast Asia, i should say, and so all that kind
of put dandelion rubber on the back shelf. But in
the what eighty almost one hundred years geez, since World
(27:23):
War Two, I remember when that was like just like
that was firmly like forty to fifty years in the past,
and it just keeps getting further and further away. It's
really awful. But we've kind of figured out in the
interim that synthetic rubber it's useful, but there's nothing that
can match natural rubber for like grip, heat, dissipation, all
(27:46):
sorts of other properties. So we're starting to go back
to look at sources for natural rubber, including ones that
are more sustainable than the rubber trees, which require you
basically DeForest and then plant the rubber trees to create
a plantation with dandelions. You don't have to do that stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Now you got a big field, you can have dandelions,
and like I said, it grows and it doesn't have
to be great soil. You can grow it hydroponically, without
soil at all. You can grow it in the air,
which is aeroponically. It's pretty amazing. And I think it's
one of those things where like anytime you have a
monoculture plant like that, like the rubber tree, it makes
(28:25):
people a little bit nervous besides a deporestation, like if
anything ever happened, like some kind of weird blight, and
the rubber trees were just, you know, not a candidate anymore.
You got dandelions kind of waiting on deck with their
bat right.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
So it's kind of surprising that it went from this
really prized plant in so many ways to a hated weed,
especially in Europe and the United States. And you hit
upon why it became a hitted weed. You use the
word monoculture, and the largest monoculture here in the United
States are people's lawns. And for part of the etacho
(29:00):
of the lawn, you cannot have dandelions breaking up that
perfect unbroken sea of green grass. You got a dandelion
popping up, the whole thing's ruined. Basically, that's the way
people think of dandelions and lawns these days, or have
since about the fifties.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Essentially, that beautiful yellow flower, stop it right, dig it up.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
But yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
And we've gone over this before, but just sort of
as a quick overview, this is the kind of thing
that came over from England. Starting in the seventeenth century
is when British aristocracy really started to get into these
perfect sort of croquet croquet playing.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Lawns, I guess is what you would call them.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
And then in America it was post World War Two
when suburbanization really took hold, lawnmowers really came into their own.
Everyone was like, hey, we've got these great new chemicals
that'll kill everything except and make.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
The grass grow really really well.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And it's it's just modern and tidy and good looking,
and that really kind of transformed the United States, you know, like,
keep up that lawn, make a perfect green lawn if
you want to keep your property value up.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Anybody a big one. And Kyle also dug up another
reason too that once the Cold War rolled around, conformity
was equated with safety. So if you weren't keeping your
lawn trimmed like everybody else, what's going on with you?
You're making me feel a little bit nervous because you're
not conforming. You must be a red spy hiding out
in suburbia basically, right. And I think that's a really
(30:38):
important kind of overlooked driver for things like perfectly manicured
lawns and everybody having the same kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, And speaking of driver, the other I don't think
we've ever mentioned contributor to this nice was in the
nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Golf started being televised.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
In nineteen fifty seven, you got golf on television for
the first time, and people look at Augusta National and
these golf courses that were beautifully manicured and esthetically pleasing
to the eye, and they're like, hey, I need to
get some of that in my front yard. Maybe I
can practice chipping some balls around in my front yard.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah. Also, if you're sitting there thinking like, wow, I
really love hearing these guys talk about grass, but I'd
love to hear them have a dispute over it, you
should go listen to How Our Grass Works episode. It's
actually a pretty good one. It's a classic stuff you
should know episode.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
It totally is.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
But anyway, all that preamble about you know us poopa
and lawns and why America did that brought us to this,
which is weeds became enemy number one and dandelions were
maybe even near the.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Top of that list.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why. For all the
reasons that they're valuable the pollinators and other kinds of plants,
and that they can grow in marginal lands and basically everywhere,
is it makes them an enemy as a weed if
you're trying to create a monoculture lawn, right, so, they
can regenerate from like a one inch section of root,
(32:07):
which means that if you cut a dandelion off at
the even below ground level, it's like good, you know, good,
try pal, but it just sprouts right back up. You
have to dig them up, and even after you dig
them up, you might not get them because one of
the things that I didn't know about dandelions is I
knew they grew from a tap root. You have to
get that tap root up or else it's just feudile. Yeah,
(32:30):
but that tap root can grow, depending on the age
of the dandelion, over a dozen feet meters four meters
into the ground meters. Yeah, and that makes it really
hard to get rid of. And so if you're like
a grounds keeper for a golf course or something like that,
you have to really keep up with the dandelions because
they'll spread really fast and they're really hard to get
(32:52):
rid of once you do start trying to get rid
of them.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
And I got to say this last fact from Kyle
because it goes back to the lawns, but this really
kind of drives at home of about how not great
a perfect green lawn is for our society. There's a
study in two thousand and five residential lawns in the
United States make up two percent of the land but
require more irrigation than any domestic agricultural crop.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I've got one to piggyback on that. Let's see The
US Fish and Wildlife Service says that homeowners use up
to ten times more pesticides per acre then farmers use
on their crops. So we're using this stuff over using it,
and we're using it on stuff that's not productive land,
just to keep up with the Joneses. So they don't
(33:40):
think we're communist spies.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, you know, I walk Gibson in the mornings and
there are the only lawns that he ever like rubs
his face in are the most perfect green ones. And
I know that it's because they have recently been sprayed
and he's smell it and it is trying to rub
all in that stuff, and it drives me bonkers.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, it's it's a like I would love to just
let my lawn and you me too, just go to
like wildflowers, go to weeds, you know, just mow it,
you keep it mode, but at a higher height. But yeah,
you just let this stuff grow, and we would be
completely We would stick out like a sore throam from
the rest of the neighborhood, so much of their neighbors
(34:25):
would be mad at us. That's how entrenched the idea
of having a perfect lawn is still in the United states,
depending on where you live.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, for sure, and like no one around there even
does like permaculture and you know other options besides just
letting it grow wild and crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
No, it's it's nuts. So we definitely draw a line.
So we're like, Okay, we'll keep up with the lawn,
but don't touch the you know, the shrubbery, the perennials,
the garden essentially, right, But people will hire the same
company to like treat their lawn with chemicals, to spray
their bushes and spray their gardens with chemicals to kill
off the bugs, and then they have to go in
(35:05):
and try to recreate the stuff that the bugs are
doing for free, the services they're providing because you've killed
off the bugs. It's it's insane to me. So we
definitely don't don't. We don't cot into that.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Yeah, there was speaking of bugs.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
It was a scientific review in twenty nineteen that found
that the global massive insects is falling at a rate
of about two and a half percent per year, and
dandelions is a high high on the list of pollinators.
Caterpillars love munching on them, moths loves munching on them,
and all those bees and butterflies love.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Doing their thing on them.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
So even you know, I'm not trying to shame people,
but let's say you do like your lawn and everything,
even waiting in the spring like longer to cut it,
even cutting it higher, letting the dandelions grow up a
little bit before you start whacking them down. Then that
minimal amount will help out a little bit.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
What's interesting is a non chemical way I saw to
treat your turf grass for dandelions is to let your
grass grow longer than you have been like cutting it
at a high or mower height. Yeah, because as we
talked about, dandelion leaves are so low growing that the
grass will shade out and out compete the dandelions. So
if you really do want to get rid of dandelions
(36:24):
but you don't want to use chemicals, that's a pretty
good way to do it from what I've seen.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Some states have actual programs or just one in Minnesota
called Lawns Two Legumes, which is a great title. They
launched that in twenty nineteen where they just basically incentive
incentivized people to say, get rid of that lawn. Put
in flowering plants, put in beds. You can have a
rebate if you have a pollinator friendly native wildflower scene
(36:52):
at your house.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah. I didn't look up the amount, but I would
guess at a minimum, the rebate is worth a million dollars, right,
that'd be my guess, you think. So, there's a couple
other things that I found that dandelions, I don't know
if you looked at it or not, that they kind
of provide surfaces to the plants growing around them, including grass. Yeah,
(37:18):
because as we mentioned, those tap roots, they grow really deep,
and as they're growing deep, they're actually accessing nutrients that
other plants around them, again, including grass, the roots of
those plants can't reach because it's too deep, and it
brings those nutrients up towards the surface, and as the
dandelion dies off, the other plants get to get to
(37:40):
eat those nutrients that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to.
And those same roots also airrate in loose and compacted
dirt too, which makes it easier for the plants around
the dandelions to grow.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Is there anything dandelions can't do?
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I don't know. I mean, they're not super fragrant.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
No, that's true. They're pretty much useless in that.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
But they can grant a child to wish.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
They sure can, Man, they sure can. I remember doing
that so many times. I keep trying to do that
with my dandelion puffhead in Resin and it's not working.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
I don't have anything else, so I'm kind of looking
over the list here.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I know we were kind of all over the place,
but it's just sort of one of those episodes where
it's like, well, here's a list of one hundred amazing things,
and so sometimes those are a little tougher to organize.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, but they can be pretty fun too. I had
fun at least. How about you and that rubber thing?
Are you kidding? Since neither one of us has anything
else about dandelions, and we're gonna call it quits on
this episode, which means we've just activated listener mail.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
You know, no listener mail today, because what we're gonna
do is something we haven't done in a while, is
help support and bring some attention to a great cause,
our friends from the Cooperative for Education aka co ED,
whose mission it is to break the cycle of poverty
and Guatemala through education, and we've been working with them
for fifteen years and we got a new thing coming
up with them, right.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yes, we do. So first, let me just explain over
one point three million dollars and contributions have been made
to co ED thanks to our partnership with them, that
stuff you should know for fifteen years. That's that's really
good if you ask me, that's incredible, which means that
one hundred and sixty kids have been given like a
huge leg up to escape poverty and create like break
(39:31):
intergenerational poverty and create literally like a new life for
their entire family from that point on.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
You know, we went down there, I guess fifteen years
ago when they invited us very early on, and stuff
you should know is canon, yeah, in our history, And
we went down to Guatemala and those shows, we did
some shows on that trip and that visit we get
to actually hear Jerry speak, which is pretty exciting. Yeah,
And they're just great that we've been working with them
ever since. And the fact that the stuff you should
(40:01):
army has raised one point three million bucks for them
over the past fifteen years is going to be a
real proud part of our legacy. But we have a
call to action, right.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yes, so you can joined. We're starting a drive essentially
right now, that's right. You can join the cooperative, which
is a program of THEIRS, for twenty dollars a month,
and you'll collectively sponsor a bunch of students in the
Rise Youth Development program, right, that's right, And so it's
going to get spread out. You're going to be helping
a bunch of kids at once, so you can feel
(40:30):
good like five times over with each each monthly donation.
And then in twenty twenty five, more than eleven hundred
students will be able to start school in World Guatemala,
which will be their biggest class ever. They need help
to make that happen, which is why we're saying join
the cooperative.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And as an incentive, if this is for you, if
you set up your gift by Tuesday, December third, then
you are signed up for a chance to do a
virtual hangout with Josh and I. We do this every
year around the same time. It's always a lot of fun.
We hang out with I don't know if six or
eight people all over the country and they get to
just you know, ask us questions and tell us that
we're cool or dumb or whatever. It's your chance to
(41:11):
really hand it to us if that's what you're after, right.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, hopefully don't do that, but sure, I mean, I
guess if you've given to co ED and you deserve
to do whatever.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
You want to us, that's right.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
So just go to Cooperative for Education dot org. That's
the word cooperative f O R education dot org slash
s y s k and start giving.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Now. A little bit goes a long way down there.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yes, And in the meantime, while you're looking up Cooperative
for Education dot org slash s y s k, you
can also send us an email. Send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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