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