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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the vault. Uh. This one

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Speaker 1: originally aired January eleven two, and it's part one of

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Speaker 1: our series on tumbleweeds. This was a fun series. I recall,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot more to these plants than you might think.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Like many of you

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Speaker 1: out there, I've been familiar with with tumbleweeds for a while,

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Speaker 1: but almost almost exclusively as just this um sort of

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Speaker 1: mundane symbol of the American West, right, you know, men,

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Speaker 1: Mainly it's this type of thing you see popping up

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Speaker 1: an old westerns or perhaps more to the point, old

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Speaker 1: cartoons inspired by old Westerns. Anytime you need the audience

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Speaker 1: to understand, this place is is desolate, this place is

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Speaker 1: in the American desert, or this place is a ghost town.

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Speaker 1: What do you do? You have the old tumbleweed roll by, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: tumbleweed means nothing's going on. In fact, I think it's

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Speaker 1: even a common gift. Right. You can meme a tumbleweed

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Speaker 1: if you are to indicate this thread has died or

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Speaker 1: or you know, nobody's got anything to say. Yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: nobody in here. This is It comes to represent like

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Speaker 1: not only desolation, but also uh, emptiness and tedium. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's just in boredom. It's like this, this place is empty.

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Speaker 1: This place there's nothing going on. This is the domain

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Speaker 1: of tumbleweeds. And therefore it's easy to think, well, tumbleweeds

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Speaker 1: themselves are boring tumbleweeds. Uh, there's nothing going on with

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Speaker 1: tumble weeds. There's It's not the kind of thing you

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Speaker 1: could do a two part series on for a podcast.

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Speaker 1: Oh but you would be wrong, yes, yes, uh and

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Speaker 1: uh and hopefully we will we will prove that in uh,

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Speaker 1: in this pair of episodes that we're gonna be doing. Um.

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Speaker 1: But but before just a couple of weeks ago, I

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Speaker 1: was very much of the mind the tumbleweeds. They they

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Speaker 1: pop up in movies sometimes a lot of times they

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Speaker 1: look fake. Um. Yeah, for we were actually looking at

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Speaker 1: some clips prior to recording these. You know, does this

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Speaker 1: look like a real tumbleweed or a fake tumbleweed. Um,

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Speaker 1: And I wasn't always in a good place to judge this. Well.

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Speaker 1: I think one way in which movie tumbleweeds often fall

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Speaker 1: short is in size, just the size shown, because the

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Speaker 1: tumbleweed in the movie it's always pretty much basketball sized.

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Speaker 1: It's very round, or maybe you could say like turkey sized.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's like a good Thanksgiving turkey, but it's

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Speaker 1: made out of twigs. Now, obviously, tumbleweeds can vary in

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Speaker 1: size and reality, and we'll we'll explain more about that

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Speaker 1: as we go on. But you know, a lot of

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Speaker 1: real tumbleweeds I've seen, especially in some of the more

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Speaker 1: dramatic uble weed footage where where humanity is really doing

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Speaker 1: battle with with tumbleweeds. Uh, they get big, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're more in the like beach ball to bean bag

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Speaker 1: chair range. Oh absolutely, yeah, you know, thinking about the

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Speaker 1: cinematic ones. Yeah, a lot of the times when you

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Speaker 1: see a kind of essentially a fake looking kumble weed

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Speaker 1: and obvious plant, a plant that is it self a plant, um,

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Speaker 1: it will be that beach ball or turkey sized, uh,

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Speaker 1: tumbleweed just big enough to where it is amusing, but

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Speaker 1: not a threat. Uh, it'll just kind of be, you know,

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Speaker 1: lazily rolling by in the background. And uh, one film

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Speaker 1: that that I was looking at it was pretty interesting

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Speaker 1: because you can see both examples of this, and that's

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Speaker 1: the film The Petrified Forest starring Leslie Howard, Betty Davis,

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Speaker 1: and Humphrey Bogart, which in and of itself is a

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Speaker 1: tremendous film. But some of it is is obviously on

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Speaker 1: more of a set or a sound stage, and other

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Speaker 1: bits of it are filmed outdoors. Uh, perhaps in actual

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Speaker 1: Arizona or at least somewhere in California that that you know,

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Speaker 1: fit the bill. Yeah, yeah, And in the location shot,

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Speaker 1: in fact, there's an early location shot where you see

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Speaker 1: Leslie Howard's character walking down the street there and there's

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Speaker 1: a fair sized tumbleweed that that comes in at a

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Speaker 1: at a pretty swift pace. I don't know if they

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Speaker 1: filmed it in during an actual windstorm or they just

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Speaker 1: have some you know, some big fans going. But uh,

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Speaker 1: there's a moment there where I when I was rewatching

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Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, jeez, I hope this doesn't hit

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Speaker 1: Leslie Howard. That would uh you know that that that

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be very becoming of such a suave character. Well,

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Speaker 1: isn't the beginning premise of the film that he has

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Speaker 1: traveled out west in order to maybe commit suicide. So

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Speaker 1: is it possible that he wanted suicide by tumbleweed? I

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Speaker 1: don't know how romantic would that be. Uh? Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think he says that he he's hoping to one day

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Speaker 1: see the Pacific Ocean and perhaps drowned in it. But

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Speaker 1: but I can't imagine saying I hoped one day too

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Speaker 1: to uh run across the six feet tumbleweed and be

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Speaker 1: demolished by it. I hope one day to to be

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Speaker 1: absorbed by a sea of thorns. Yeah. So yeah, to

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Speaker 1: to get back to the to the point here. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: these tumbleweeds can get rather large. And I never really

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Speaker 1: realized this before until this holiday season, this uh that

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Speaker 1: we've just gone through because this year or this previous

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Speaker 1: year rather just after Christmas, my family we found ourselves

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Speaker 1: um driving south from Phoenix to Tucson, Arizona, and then

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Speaker 1: west towards Las Cruces before cutting up to Albuquerque and

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Speaker 1: then Santa Fe and um, and we were doing this

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Speaker 1: because we originally are going to take a northern route

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Speaker 1: through Flagstaff, but winter weather forced us to pivot. So

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Speaker 1: here we are, Uh, we're going on Interstate ten between

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Speaker 1: Tucson and Las Crucis. And what during my stretch of

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Speaker 1: the driving, we begin to enter this uh, this this

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Speaker 1: this uh you know that you know, we're in the desert,

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Speaker 1: is you know, desolate. We get these advisories about possible

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Speaker 1: you know, wind possible, uh, dust storms and uh and

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Speaker 1: then I begin to see the first tumbleweeds. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: you know, I've been going out west for a while now,

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Speaker 1: and I don't think I'd ever really seen a tumbleweed

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Speaker 1: in action. Maybe i'd maybe i'd seen one small like

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Speaker 1: turkey basketball size one. But this was the first time

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Speaker 1: I started seeing some real bad boys, some real monsters

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Speaker 1: rolling around. Uh. For first of all, at the you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of the side of the road or sometimes like

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Speaker 1: stuck up against a fence. But then eventually, uh, they're

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Speaker 1: they're crossing the road, they're being blown across the the highway.

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Speaker 1: And it's quite alarming because again, some of these are

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Speaker 1: are huge. There we were we were commenting at the time,

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Speaker 1: perhaps overreacting that they look like they're the know, about

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Speaker 1: half the size of a Volkswagen. Did you hit one? Oh? Yes, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Eventually let's started hitting them and they explode. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: kind of or it's kind of like, um, it's like frosted,

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Speaker 1: not frosted of what were they? Yeah, but not the

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Speaker 1: many ones, the big ones. Oh yeah, Okay, it's like

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Speaker 1: a shredded wheat, like shredded many wheat. Of the shredded

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Speaker 1: wheat hitting the front of your car, they just kind of,

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Speaker 1: uh yeah, crumple and implode and um, part of it

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Speaker 1: gets stuck under the vehicle. But it's alarming because they're

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Speaker 1: so big in volume at the size at the time.

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Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought of it this way,

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Speaker 1: but I was imagining it's like running into a ball

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Speaker 1: of about five thousand tooth brushes and toothpicks, all loosely

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Speaker 1: taped together. Yeah. Yeah, and it's it's like that. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're seeing them slam into other vehicles in the the

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Speaker 1: opposing side of the highway. I'm watching them just slam

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Speaker 1: into the fronts of tractor trailer rigs and and it's

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Speaker 1: weird to watch them because on one hand, there there's

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Speaker 1: something about the tumble weed moving around that is kind

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Speaker 1: of comical. There's something absurd about it, and so I'm

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Speaker 1: kind of freaking out about the driving of My wife

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Speaker 1: is just like cracking up laughing at these things in

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Speaker 1: the seat next to me, and um. And then the

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Speaker 1: other thing is the way that they're you know, they're

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Speaker 1: they're not perfect spheres. Uh, They're not perfectly round. They

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Speaker 1: have this kind of oblong shape to them, so they

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Speaker 1: kind of tumble and bounce, and especially with the you know,

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Speaker 1: the uncertainty of the wind and also the aerodynamics of

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Speaker 1: the high speed traffic, the way that they behave kind

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Speaker 1: of comes to to mimic that of an animal. You're

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out what's it gonna do? Is it

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Speaker 1: gonna cross, is it not gonna cross? Is it gonna

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Speaker 1: halfway cross? And then change direction? And so all of

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Speaker 1: this adds up to this this anxiety I was feeling

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Speaker 1: about these tumbleweeds because I'm trying to to to figure

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Speaker 1: out what they're going to do and if I'm going

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Speaker 1: to hit them, and then I have to make sure

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to swerve and make the situation worse. Well,

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Speaker 1: so with us talking like this, I immediately wonder if

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Speaker 1: it's like if it's like us also talking about trying

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Speaker 1: to drive in snow. I don't know if you've seen

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Speaker 1: the stuff on the internet where anybody who lives up

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Speaker 1: north makes fun of people from the south. You're like,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's like an inch of snow on the

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Speaker 1: ground and suddenly nobody can drive. Yeah. I imagine that

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Speaker 1: there are some some desert dwellers out there who are

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Speaker 1: who are having a laugh at um at at how

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Speaker 1: we're talking about this here, And I mean they're probably

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Speaker 1: used to it. Uh yeah, I just I don't think

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Speaker 1: i'd ever been down there or and I wasn't in

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Speaker 1: the right place at the right time to encounter like

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Speaker 1: full blown literally full blown tumbleweed season. And I was

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Speaker 1: I was actually wondering, why are there no signs advising

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Speaker 1: tourists about this, Like they're warning us about what to

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Speaker 1: do during the dust storm, But how about it like

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Speaker 1: don't swerve, just go ahead and hit the tumbleweed, you know,

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Speaker 1: some sort of a poster to that effect. Anyway, I afterwards,

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Speaker 1: I started looking around because I was curious, Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: does this ever get out of hand or is this

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Speaker 1: just something where if you're if you live around at

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Speaker 1: you're used to it. Well, uh, I did some research online.

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Speaker 1: I started running across news stories with headlines featuring things

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Speaker 1: like tumbleweed nightmares from as recently as last month, in

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Speaker 1: which winds basically blocked certain New Mexico roads with tumbleweeds,

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Speaker 1: or a NBC headline quote thirty foot tumbleweed pile up traps, cars,

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Speaker 1: semi trucks on Washington Highway or another one. This this

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Speaker 1: was quite impressive. Tumbleweeds bear a New Mexico town. And

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Speaker 1: if you start looking up footage or images of some

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Speaker 1: of this um it's it's not as much of an

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Speaker 1: exaggeration as as you think, like you're looking at a

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Speaker 1: two story like suburban homes and the tumble weeds, which

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Speaker 1: again you're talking about tumbleweeds that can reach, you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes like six feet in diameter. They're piling up, They're

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Speaker 1: reaching the second floor of the house. Yeah, piled up

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Speaker 1: like heavy snow drifts, except probably even more difficult to

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Speaker 1: deal with than snow, right because snow, I mean you

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Speaker 1: can at least shovel out of the way. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if I could say easily, but to some degree easily.

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Speaker 1: Tumbleweeds are notoriously difficult to handle and deal with. I

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Speaker 1: think because of their size and their shape and the composition,

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Speaker 1: like the thorny nous of them, it's difficult to just

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Speaker 1: grab them because they're usually thorny and and in some

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Speaker 1: way repel your flesh and uh. It's also difficult to

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Speaker 1: to sort of scoop them out of the way because

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Speaker 1: they tend to break. Yeah. With snow, like, one of

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Speaker 1: the great things about snow is that even if you

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Speaker 1: don't shovel it um, usually what's gonna happen is it's

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Speaker 1: gonna melt. Right, the sun is gonna come out, temperatures

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Speaker 1: are gonna rise, that snow is gonna melt. The tumbleweed

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Speaker 1: is not going to melt. The tumbleweeds a mask against

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Speaker 1: the side of your house might not distribute on their own,

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Speaker 1: and they might catch on fire, might catch on fire, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because they're basically they're dried out, lifeless, brittle um vegetation.

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Speaker 1: So they're they're they're a fire hazard. They're a legitimate

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Speaker 1: fire hazard clumped up against the side of your house,

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Speaker 1: so you've got to get rid of them. Or if

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Speaker 1: they're not again, if they're not against the side of

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Speaker 1: your house, then they're perhaps blocking the road. Uh. They

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Speaker 1: can also cause other issues, you know, they build up

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Speaker 1: against fences. They can interfere with with drainage systems. M

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Speaker 1: because again, a lot of the environments we're talking about

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Speaker 1: here are very dry most of the year, but then

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Speaker 1: there will be a deluge and during that time you

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Speaker 1: need to have sufficient drainage systems in place. You don't

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Speaker 1: need those drainage systems and canals, etcetera clogged with old tumbleweeds.

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Speaker 1: They can also interfere with irrigation systems. They can they

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Speaker 1: can cause a huge mess, and they do cause traffic accidents. Um,

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Speaker 1: I'm read. I was reading about one in Jadito Wash

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Speaker 1: that was apparently so impressive that the Arizona Daily Press

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Speaker 1: did a ten year anniversary story about the incident, and

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Speaker 1: I included a photo from the story in our notes here, Joe,

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Speaker 1: it does look quite impressive. You ever, like comb a

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Speaker 1: shedding dog and end up with all these clumps of

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Speaker 1: hair that you need to get rid of at the end.

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Speaker 1: But then now imagine that, but it's twenty ft high. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like like Clifford the Big Red Dog Marmaduke sized

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Speaker 1: uh pile of of of shavings here now, like you

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Speaker 1: were saying, Yeah, it's difficult to clean all this stuff up.

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Speaker 1: What do you have to do? You have to get

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Speaker 1: a work crew out there. They've got to to gather

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Speaker 1: these materials up. You've got to put them into vehicles, uh,

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Speaker 1: and and take them somewhere, take them away, and they're

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Speaker 1: mostly air, so you end up like really filling up

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Speaker 1: a vehicle. But then you know the weight volume isn't there,

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Speaker 1: so uh, you know, you start doing the math on

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Speaker 1: on you know, the cost of labor, the cost of materials,

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Speaker 1: the cost of transportation, and and the cost end up

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Speaker 1: really skyrocketing for the various counties and towns and cities

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Speaker 1: that have to engage in this kind of cleanup effort.

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Speaker 1: One of the articles we were both reading for this

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Speaker 1: episode is a PBS article about tumbleweeds by an author

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Speaker 1: named Gabriella Kiros, but citing information from somebody named Ariel

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Speaker 1: of Vario, a deputy agricultural commissioner at the county's Weed

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Speaker 1: Abatement Division in Lancaster, calif Borno. Ciros writes, quote in

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Speaker 1: the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster, tumbleweeds are such a

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Speaker 1: big problem that Los Angeles county spends a hundred thousand

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Speaker 1: to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars yearly mowing and

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Speaker 1: chipping dried out Russian thistle. That's a name of one

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Speaker 1: specific dominant species of tumbleweed in vacant lots and abandoned

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Speaker 1: agricultural fields before they can tumble away. So this is

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Speaker 1: above a hundred thousand dollars a year of a problem

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Speaker 1: for one county, I mean big county. But uh, every year,

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Speaker 1: it's enough to make you wonder. Um, you know, there's

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Speaker 1: got to be a better way, right, It's got to

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Speaker 1: be some sort of technological improvement, uh, that that we

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Speaker 1: could make that would uh, that would improve this situation.

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Speaker 1: Uh and uh And indeed I found evidence of a

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Speaker 1: of a really promising and and frightening looking project that

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure ever really quite got off the ground.

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Speaker 1: But I to read verbatim from this n l A

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Speaker 1: Times article by Eddie Pell's go for it all right,

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Speaker 1: There we go Los Cruces, New Mexico. It looks like

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Speaker 1: a contraption straight out of a Stephen King novel, huge

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Speaker 1: metal spoke, squirreling away, shredding everything in its path. But

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Speaker 1: the invention from New Mexico State University's Advanced Manufacturing Center

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Speaker 1: is out only to mow down the bane of the West,

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Speaker 1: the ever present tumbleweed. So you shared video of this

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Speaker 1: mangler with me, and it does look like a beast. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I found this this archived video that was put out

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Speaker 1: I think by the by a New Mexico State University

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Speaker 1: UM or perhaps the State Highway Department. I forget which,

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Speaker 1: but it was it was all about this this promising

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Speaker 1: new project, and it included footage of the prototype for

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Speaker 1: this that the invention we're talking about is the tumbleweed crumbler.

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Speaker 1: It was developed via a forty contract at the time

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Speaker 1: to New Mexico State University from the State Highway Department

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Speaker 1: develop a better way of collecting and shredding the time

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Speaker 1: buble weeds. And the prototype was essentially a pair of rotating,

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Speaker 1: like inwardly rotating metal spokes hooked at the front of

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Speaker 1: a snow plow truck. Um. Yeah, so it's like drum

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Speaker 1: barrels imagine that are sort of rolling inward as if

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Speaker 1: you know, to roll things into the gap between them,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty small, and that it's got spikes sticking

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Speaker 1: out of the drums. Uh. And There's a really excellent

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Speaker 1: part of the video where a guy is standing right

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Speaker 1: in front of it while it's running, kind of feeding

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Speaker 1: tumbleweeds into it, and we were thinking, like, oh, is

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Speaker 1: he going to reach in there to try to clear

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Speaker 1: out a jam by hand? Yeah, it's gonna be like

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Speaker 1: one of those that like shake hands with dangerous safety videos.

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Speaker 1: It just looks very unsafe and and I don't, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. I may the guitar twine comes in. Johnny

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Speaker 1: thought he could save time because the I mean it's terrifying,

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Speaker 1: but it also looks really effective. They show it, uh

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Speaker 1: like running into mounds of tumbleweeds. These uh, these wheels

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Speaker 1: with the with the spikes on them, they grind up

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Speaker 1: these these tumbleweeds and then the ground up remnants are

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Speaker 1: like sucked up and shot into the back of the

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Speaker 1: snowplow truck. So, uh, you know, this seems like it

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Speaker 1: seems like it would it would have been a great

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Speaker 1: fix because first of all, you have the snowplow trucks

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Speaker 1: anyway that are being used during you know, parts of

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Speaker 1: the year to to deal with keeping the roads clear,

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Speaker 1: and then snowplow trucks without this kind of spike contraction

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Speaker 1: are apparently sometimes used to clear the roads of tumbleweeds anyway,

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Speaker 1: though of course they're just mostly pushing them out of

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Speaker 1: the way and not really you know, not collecting them.

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Speaker 1: So it seems like this would have been a cool

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Speaker 1: way to to deal with the problem. But so are

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Speaker 1: these machines day rigur Now, No, I don't think they are.

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Speaker 1: That's the thing, you know, you you see, uh, you

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Speaker 1: see an article like this, and you see I see

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Speaker 1: footage like this, and again this was ninety six and

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Speaker 1: as far as I can tell this this ended up

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Speaker 1: not really going too much more beyond the prototype phase

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Speaker 1: in the video they're talking about they're going on to

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Speaker 1: another as a development. And I don't know. Maybe I

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Speaker 1: couldn't find an answer as to why exactly they didn't

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Speaker 1: go with this. Maybe it just came down to something

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Speaker 1: as mundane as uh, you know, the money or politics, uh,

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Speaker 1: cost effective or something. Maybe it just wasn't cost effective.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe it was too dangerous. I have

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Speaker 1: no no way of knowing, and I wasn't able to

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Speaker 1: find out. But this seems to be a trend with

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Speaker 1: a lot of issues related to the problem of tumble weeds,

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Speaker 1: particularly in the United States. I kept running across UH

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Speaker 1: promising sounding scientific solutions UH from years past, solutions that

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Speaker 1: in many cases may still be in development, but but

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Speaker 1: but have not reached that point where someone is out

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Speaker 1: there saying, yes, this is the thing we're actually doing

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Speaker 1: tumble weeds, watch out because we're coming. Though some of

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Speaker 1: these solutions do get more sci fi than the mangler. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: thank all, Right, well, I guess it's worth explaining it

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Speaker 1: this point. What are tumbleweeds? Uh? And I think the

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Speaker 1: most important point to say the beginning is that technically

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Speaker 1: tumbleweed is not a single species of plant. Tumbleweed is

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Speaker 1: a common morphological feature of a number of different species

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Speaker 1: of plants spread out across different families. Though in the

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Speaker 1: American context, there is one single species in the in

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Speaker 1: the amaranth family that tumbleweed most often refers to, but

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Speaker 1: it's by no means the only one, and we'll talk

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Speaker 1: more about that species in particular later. But the broader

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Speaker 1: category of features of a tumbleweed is this. So a

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Speaker 1: tumbleweed is the above ground structure of a plant which

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Speaker 1: at maturity dries up and snaps away from the roots.

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Speaker 1: Structure and then is blown around by the wind, scattering

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Speaker 1: seeds as it goes. Yeah, it's sometimes referred to as

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Speaker 1: a detachable diaspore. Yeah. And and a diaspore is basically

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Speaker 1: any seed and other structure that helps the seed spread.

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00:20:05,119 --> 00:20:07,919
Speaker 1: So die spore could include like say, a little parachute

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Speaker 1: like thing that catches the wind, or it could include

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Speaker 1: like a fruit to that you know that an animal

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Speaker 1: would eat. It's the thing around the seed that helps

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Speaker 1: the seed get where it's going. Yeah, but in this

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Speaker 1: case it's pretty much the entire above ground part of

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Speaker 1: the plant. Uh. And So there are variations between different species,

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Speaker 1: but in most cases you can picture, for a tumbleweed,

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Speaker 1: a bush like plant that becomes very brittle and dry

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Speaker 1: and has a big tangle of different stem segments, and

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Speaker 1: eventually it breaks off at the roots at roughly the

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Speaker 1: place where the stem meets the ground, and then it

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Speaker 1: rolls around on the planes, driven driven on the wind,

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Speaker 1: like a giant inflatable ball. Now you might think, Okay,

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Speaker 1: most plants don't break off at the place where they

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Speaker 1: meet the ground and then get their bodies blown around,

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Speaker 1: dead and dry by the wind, So why do tumble

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Speaker 1: needs do that? Well, Actually, the answer is similar to

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Speaker 1: the answer to the question why are fruits delicious? Uh.

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Speaker 1: The the answer is it's for seed dispersal, meaning the

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Speaker 1: transportation of seeds and thus the next generation of plants

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Speaker 1: away from the parent and UH. A lot of plant

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Speaker 1: species actually spend a great effort at seed dispersal, and

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Speaker 1: there are a host of different strategies available. So, for example,

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Speaker 1: there is animal dispersal. So you can think of the

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Speaker 1: seeds of edible fruits. The fruit is tasty and dense

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Speaker 1: and calories, so animals want to eat it. The animal

386
00:21:36,560 --> 00:21:39,280
Speaker 1: will be attracted to the fruit, they'll nom nom, they'll

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00:21:39,320 --> 00:21:42,119
Speaker 1: swallow it, and then they will travel elsewhere on their

388
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:45,240
Speaker 1: their wings or their legs, and then they will defecate

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Speaker 1: and deposit the seeds in a new home. But that's

390
00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:51,200
Speaker 1: not the only method of animal dispersal. There are also

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Speaker 1: the burrs that cling to the fur of mammals that

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00:21:54,680 --> 00:21:57,720
Speaker 1: that brush up against the parent plant. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if if you've got pets that burr

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Speaker 1: magnets like my dog is. But you know, sometimes Charlie

395
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Speaker 1: will will get into some bushes and then when he

396
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Speaker 1: when he comes out, it's a problem. He has probably

397
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:12,040
Speaker 1: like you know, a thousand of these things stuck to him,

398
00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:14,320
Speaker 1: and and there are a bunch more that there. For example,

399
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:18,240
Speaker 1: there is a whole class of of diaspores that are

400
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:21,679
Speaker 1: spread specifically by ants that you know that they have

401
00:22:21,840 --> 00:22:25,800
Speaker 1: specific relationships with ants that will maybe bury them underground

402
00:22:25,880 --> 00:22:29,040
Speaker 1: in a way that's preferable to to the plant. But

403
00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:32,359
Speaker 1: there's also wind dispersal, So you can think of the

404
00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:36,680
Speaker 1: seeds of dandelions. They contain a natural parachute, like a

405
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 1: structure that catches the breeze and allows the seed to

406
00:22:39,760 --> 00:22:42,200
Speaker 1: be picked up by the wind and blown to new lands.

407
00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:46,159
Speaker 1: There's water dispersal. Coconuts are a great example here. They

408
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:48,919
Speaker 1: float on the water and allow currents to carry them

409
00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:52,919
Speaker 1: to New German nation sites. There's gravity dispersal, that's what

410
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:57,160
Speaker 1: it sounds like. There's explosive dispersal. That one's fun. Yeah, yeah,

411
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Speaker 1: bursting pods and so forth. So there are a number

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Speaker 1: of from methods UH, and there are some primary reasons

413
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Speaker 1: that a plant would want to disperse its seeds to

414
00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:11,040
Speaker 1: get the seeds away from the parent plant. One idea

415
00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:16,399
Speaker 1: is that doing this UH reduces competition between the seed

416
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:21,360
Speaker 1: and the parent plant. And with other nearby adult plants. So,

417
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:25,719
Speaker 1: just like animals, plants need access to resources. And uh

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00:23:26,080 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: one example here would be sunlight. Plants need sunlight in

419
00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:32,600
Speaker 1: order to power photosynthesis. But if they fall straight down

420
00:23:32,800 --> 00:23:35,639
Speaker 1: off of the parent this could limit them right because

421
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:38,119
Speaker 1: they could be trying to grow in the shadow of

422
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 1: the adult plant. And you can imagine other competitions for

423
00:23:42,119 --> 00:23:45,400
Speaker 1: nutrients in the soil, for water and so forth. So

424
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:48,560
Speaker 1: one reason seeds might be dispersed is that the is

425
00:23:48,640 --> 00:23:51,159
Speaker 1: that it allows the parent plant and the offspring to

426
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: grow separately without competing with one another for access to

427
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 1: the same resources. You know that that does make me

428
00:23:57,560 --> 00:24:00,400
Speaker 1: think of the old thing the apple does and fall

429
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:02,840
Speaker 1: far from the tree, But that's saying really kind of

430
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:05,119
Speaker 1: misses the point because it's not the The apple is

431
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: not supposed to just fall off the tree and remain there,

432
00:24:08,320 --> 00:24:10,280
Speaker 1: and then the seeds are going to end up in

433
00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:12,520
Speaker 1: the soil right there beside the parent tree. Like the

434
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 1: idea is that this is animal dispersal, that those seeds

435
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:18,360
Speaker 1: are in this lovely, delicious apple that's going to be

436
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:22,639
Speaker 1: consumed or carried off by some other creature. That's a

437
00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:25,439
Speaker 1: very good point. If the apple stays too close to

438
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 1: the tree. That could be really bad for the young

439
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 1: apple right or the young apple tree I guess um.

440
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 1: But then there are other reasons. So that's just one

441
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 1: possible motivation in the evolutionary sense. Other evolutionary motivations for

442
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 1: seed dispersal would be saying, limiting bad things that can

443
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:47,680
Speaker 1: happen to young plants when they tend to be densely

444
00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 1: congregated around the parent plant. Uh So, these bad things

445
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:55,800
Speaker 1: could include contagion, could include the you know, the spreading

446
00:24:55,800 --> 00:25:00,920
Speaker 1: of pathogens that would spread among densely congregated plant, or

447
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:04,400
Speaker 1: the harvesting of predators. So if say seeds are potentially

448
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: edible and they all fall in one place right around

449
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,600
Speaker 1: the parent, this often results in say an animal that

450
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:13,160
Speaker 1: would eat those seeds. It would eat those young plants,

451
00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 1: the seedlings, uh coming, gobbling them all up at one

452
00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:18,880
Speaker 1: time in one big buffet. But if they spread out

453
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:22,360
Speaker 1: all over the place, the risks of things like pathogens

454
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:26,119
Speaker 1: and predators are reduced. And then other motivations could be

455
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 1: things like colonization of new areas without competition. So you

456
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: might want a way to spread your your offspring plants

457
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:37,159
Speaker 1: to areas that don't really have any other plants in

458
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: them right now, you know, just kind of some bare

459
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,160
Speaker 1: ground if it can be located. And in the cases

460
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 1: of tumbleweeds in particular, that often is located because tumbleweeds

461
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,400
Speaker 1: can grow in areas that many other plants can't tolerate

462
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: or haven't been able to take root in yet. And

463
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 1: that's going to be key moving forward, So keep that

464
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,960
Speaker 1: in mind, right, Uh and uh. But another thing might

465
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,879
Speaker 1: be that see weeds would be dispersed so that they

466
00:26:01,920 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 1: could target a specific germination spot to where the plant

467
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:09,199
Speaker 1: is likely to thrive. And you can interpret that in

468
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 1: a couple of ways. For example, some animal dispersal would

469
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:14,719
Speaker 1: mean that the seed ends up either buried in the

470
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 1: ground or maybe surrounded by dung which can protect it

471
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:22,119
Speaker 1: and provide other benefits. Or in other cases, uh, this

472
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: might be methods of dispersal aimed at getting the seed

473
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:28,920
Speaker 1: to a certain kind of landscape or environment. Yeah, and

474
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 1: I guess one thing to keep in mind. It kind

475
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:32,160
Speaker 1: of goes back to the whole day about the idea

476
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 1: about the apple falling far from the tree. It's not

477
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:37,399
Speaker 1: about where the apple initially falls, it's about where the

478
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 1: seeds end up and with the tumble weed, it's actually

479
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: quite similar. It's not about it's not about really where

480
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: the tumble weed ultimately goes. It's about the seeds it

481
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 1: drops along the way, that's right. So if you apply

482
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about to the tumbleweed in particular,

483
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: how does it disperse its seeds? Generally, what what the

484
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:01,720
Speaker 1: detachable diaspore of a tumbleweed plant does is dry up

485
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: with a bunch of seeds in it, and then it

486
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: will be blown about by the wind, dropping seeds as

487
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 1: it goes, because it will be kind of dry and brittle,

488
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: so it bounces over the landscape, uh, sort of degrading

489
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,680
Speaker 1: and breaking apart as it as it blows around, and

490
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,600
Speaker 1: it will drop seeds intermittently, so all over the place

491
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,439
Speaker 1: you get. You get vast seed dispersal with this method,

492
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: and thousands of seeds. Yeah, yeah, totally. And also if

493
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:30,399
Speaker 1: there are any seeds left in the tumbleweed when it

494
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 1: reaches its final destination, whatever that is, I mean, I

495
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:36,200
Speaker 1: guess there probably usually are some seeds still left in it. Uh,

496
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:39,600
Speaker 1: it can it can try to germinate from wherever it

497
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 1: comes to rest, especially if it finds a water source.

498
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:44,680
Speaker 1: If it happens to land in a place with moisture, yes,

499
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: But one of the interesting things to keep in mind

500
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: is that, again, this is a plant that does extremely

501
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:55,159
Speaker 1: well and barren environments. Uh So, like an abandoned agricultural site.

502
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:58,600
Speaker 1: Oh that's that's that's pristine for the tumbleweed. You know,

503
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 1: a vacant lot. Yes, it wants to get in there.

504
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: But one of the things about say, tumbleweeds accumulating in

505
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:08,879
Speaker 1: a well irrigated yard is that I've I've read that

506
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 1: those those tumbleweed seeds if they land there, and they're

507
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:13,680
Speaker 1: not going to really be able to compete with the

508
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: grass that's growing there. So yeah, this is ultimately a

509
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: plant that is at its best uh in the worst

510
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,200
Speaker 1: of environments, at least from uh you know, from from

511
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: from a typical human perspective, in the worst of environments,

512
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: or in environments that have for some reason been cleared

513
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: of their natural vegetation, which often happens in the case

514
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: of human development. Yeah, and I think it's worth this

515
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 1: is something that I saw pointed out in a couple

516
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 1: of different sources. It's easy to get to get in

517
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 1: this mind because again, tumbleweeds and we'll discuss more about this.

518
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,800
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're a pest there there and there there.

519
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: It's it's a problem that people having to deal with.

520
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: But you can't just look at the tumbleweed like a disease.

521
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:57,160
Speaker 1: You also have to look at the tumbleweed as a

522
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:02,720
Speaker 1: symptom of land degregation degradation. Yeah yeah, so uh, let's

523
00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:05,719
Speaker 1: talk about the life cycle just a little bit here. So, um, so,

524
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:09,920
Speaker 1: what happens once that seed lands in just the right spot. Well,

525
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 1: they don't need much water at all to start growing,

526
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:15,440
Speaker 1: and they have this kind of like screw like shape.

527
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 1: They're they're kind of interesting to see the close ups

528
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: of the seed. And then when they start growing, they

529
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 1: start out looking like just blades of grass. They have

530
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: kind of like a pinkish uh, like a white and

531
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,760
Speaker 1: pinkish um section towards the bottom. They almost look like

532
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:32,880
Speaker 1: it almost looks like some sort of weird onion grass

533
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: or something. Oh yeah, yeah, Now I want to be

534
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,640
Speaker 1: clear at this point, we're talking about one species of

535
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:42,840
Speaker 1: tumbleweed in particular, the one that that Americans usually mean

536
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: when they say tumbleweeds. So now we've narrowed it from

537
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: the broader class of tumbleweed structures to the plant people

538
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: are usually calling tumbleweed, which is known as Calli tregas

539
00:29:53,520 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 1: or sell Sola tregas, or more commonly prickly Russian thistle.

540
00:29:57,720 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's the one we're talking about now. And yeah,

541
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: and and I'll get into a fascinating little history lesson

542
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 1: about that one in a bit. Yeah. And if you're

543
00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 1: a singing cowboy, this is the variety you're probably singing about. Yeah,

544
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: unless you hear like a really uh like you're singing

545
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: botanist cowboy, and then perhaps you have a more robust

546
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 1: um uh you know, lyrical treatment of the whole situation.

547
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: But yes, your your description is good. Yeah. So, like

548
00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: usually white and pink lower stem areas branching out into

549
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: green grass like structures above and in in this young form,

550
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: you know, this plant doesn't look quite so quite so threatening.

551
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 1: You know, it's not thorny yet, it's not dry and

552
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: brittle yet. And uh and according to the way it looks,

553
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: in fact, that this this young form can be eaten

554
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 1: by some animals. Yeah, and it it should be noted

555
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 1: that the initial leaves here are long, but then these

556
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:52,840
Speaker 1: spring leaves eventually fall off and they're replaced by shorter leaves.

557
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: Each flower contains a fruit that develops into a single seed.

558
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: But then in the late fall, and and again we're

559
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 1: just talking more or less about one variety, you see

560
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: some some differences depending on the variety of tumbleweed that

561
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,000
Speaker 1: you're you're looking at the different species. But during the

562
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 1: late fall, they begin to dry out and die, and

563
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 1: the wind eventually breaks the dead tumbleweed free of its roots.

564
00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:18,160
Speaker 1: And as as described in that that PBS source wee

565
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: we referenced earlier, it's a clean break. Um, it's it's

566
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 1: the sort of thing you could compare to like a

567
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 1: lizard shedding its tail due to a microscopic layer of

568
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 1: cells at the base of the plant called the abscission layer.

569
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:34,760
Speaker 1: Uh so this allows it to just snap off. So

570
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: the part of the stem that was made to snap clean,

571
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: it's like the part of the lizard's tail that can

572
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:44,400
Speaker 1: that can shake off for autautomy. Yeah, yeah, so it's

573
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 1: it's you would be forgiven if you just you know,

574
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 1: casually thought, well, you know, it's it's a dry place

575
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 1: and these bushes they just get so dry and dead,

576
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 1: and then the gets so windy here it just snaps

577
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:57,400
Speaker 1: the bushes off and they rolled around. Um, but no,

578
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 1: it's it is that, but it is also a a

579
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: species that has evolved to take advantage of of this

580
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 1: environment and to snap off it just the right place

581
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 1: and it just the right time. Now, I saw some

582
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 1: wildly different numbers about how many seeds and individual tumbleweed

583
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 1: plant can drop as it rolls around. I assume obviously

584
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,880
Speaker 1: this varies by species, but even just with reference to

585
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 1: Calli tragus or the Russian thistle, I saw people mentioning that,

586
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 1: you know, one can drop a few thousand seeds, like

587
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: maybe two thousand or twenty hundred, and then I saw

588
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,640
Speaker 1: estimates of like hundreds of thousands, So I really don't

589
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 1: know which one is more at the correct end there, Yeah,

590
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:39,600
Speaker 1: I saw tens of thousands. Um. I guess the tacome

591
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 1: here is that we need to think of it again,

592
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 1: not as like a single seed, but a depositor of many,

593
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: many seeds. It's not about where the where it goes.

594
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: It's about the seeds it drops along the way, as

595
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: it tumbles, as it bounds across the landscape, as it

596
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: weaves in and out of traffic and collides with semi trucks. Um,

597
00:32:57,400 --> 00:32:59,440
Speaker 1: it's just gonna spread out the seeds across the way,

598
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: and and all the ones that land in just the

599
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 1: right spot are going to have a shot at growing

600
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 1: into plant, into adult plants themselves. It's one of those

601
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: evolutionary marvels, which is in fact neither of these things,

602
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:15,440
Speaker 1: but kind of strikes you somehow as stupid and genius

603
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, and I think that's that

604
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: again kind of cuts to the reason that tumbleweeds can

605
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: be both frightening and impressive in person, but also innately comical.

606
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 1: There's just something kind of ridunculous about this large bush

607
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 1: bumbling and bouncing across the landscape. So I was curious

608
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 1: about the you know, the physics of of this thing.

609
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 1: I was like, and my and my wife even brought

610
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: this up, just like, surely somebody's looked at the physics

611
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:51,720
Speaker 1: of this. So I was looking around and I found

612
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 1: a wonderful book by Ralph D. Laurens, a planetary scientist

613
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 1: and engineer at the John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. It's

614
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: titled Spinning Flight Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras and Skipping Stones,

615
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: And uh, there's a there's only a brief part of

616
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 1: the book that really gets into tumbleweeds um and ultimately

617
00:34:13,440 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 1: he ends up talking more about tumbleweed rover designs, which

618
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:20,080
Speaker 1: I'll touch on briefly in a minute. But uh, first

619
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:23,880
Speaker 1: I want to read this quote from the book by Lorenz. Quote.

620
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 1: It is worth noting that the center of mass of

621
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: a tumbleweed is generally offset from the geometric center. To

622
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: what extent this is an inevitable consequence of the dendritic

623
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:38,400
Speaker 1: architecture of a plant, in that the branches must converge

624
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 1: towards an apex which is linked to the roots system

625
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: is unclear. It may be that there are dispersal performance

626
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 1: advantages in such a departure from spherical symmetry. Tumbling bouncing

627
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:53,879
Speaker 1: rather than rolling, may enhance the shedding of seeds from

628
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 1: the plant. That totally makes sense to me. So if

629
00:34:56,600 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 1: it were a more perfectly round dry that were to

630
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: roll away, it might roll better, but it also might shake. Uh,

631
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: it might shake seeds loose in a less even way.

632
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:13,840
Speaker 1: But by having a kind of oblong or uneven structure,

633
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: it's always kind of bouncing while it rolls, and with

634
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:20,320
Speaker 1: every impact as it bounces it can have a greater

635
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:23,839
Speaker 1: chance of shaking some of those seeds loose. Yeah. Absolutely,

636
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 1: And he also points out that that the tumbleweed is

637
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:29,160
Speaker 1: naturally porous, so when we look at the air flow,

638
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:31,960
Speaker 1: the air flowing not only on and around it and

639
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:35,440
Speaker 1: against it, but also through it. Um. And he discusses

640
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: he discusses most of this in connection again to the

641
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 1: tumbleweed rover designs. These are various UH engineering approaches to

642
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 1: creating some sort of a you know, a rover or

643
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:48,520
Speaker 1: probe that will work on the UH. Generally we're talking

644
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:52,520
Speaker 1: about the surface of another planet or another planetary body

645
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 1: of some sort, or a moon or or something. Yeah. Yeah,

646
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:58,120
Speaker 1: Mars is often a target here because again we have

647
00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:00,920
Speaker 1: to remember there is wind on Mars and UH and

648
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 1: if we could take advantage of that, uh, that would

649
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: be a way to to move a rover across the landscape. UM.

650
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 1: So you have various takes on this that are you know,

651
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:16,000
Speaker 1: and some are inflatable, some are non inflatable, UM, you know,

652
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 1: roughly spherical designs to allow a rover to roll more

653
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:24,279
Speaker 1: or less like a tumbleweed. UM. But it sounds like

654
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 1: the you know, while this is a promising area of study.

655
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:29,920
Speaker 1: The tumbleweed rover nut remains too, you know, remains to

656
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 1: be fully cracked. But a lot of the science around

657
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: it um I thought was interesting because it kind of

658
00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: helps illustrate what really works about the tumbleweed, the plant

659
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: as a as an as an evolved solution and as

660
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: an as as an evolved approach to the landscape, and

661
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: what wouldn't work for a probe or a vehicle. So

662
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:52,920
Speaker 1: some of the designs do tend towards non smooth surfaces

663
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: like the real tumble weed, and there have even been

664
00:36:55,440 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: some experiments with oblong shapes, but these produced bouncing to

665
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:04,799
Speaker 1: acquired kinetic energy, something Lauren's rights is quote not recommended

666
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:08,399
Speaker 1: for an attractive vehicle design, and I think that's quite

667
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 1: telling again because with it, with these tumbleweed rover designs,

668
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:15,640
Speaker 1: we are trying to solve a human vehicle problem, how

669
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:17,799
Speaker 1: to move a thing from one place to another and

670
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:21,359
Speaker 1: potentially to other locations, and to control the movement as well.

671
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,720
Speaker 1: The tumbleweed plant, on the other hand, is not trying

672
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,279
Speaker 1: to arrive at a destination. It's again all about the

673
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:29,839
Speaker 1: journey and that it and it's going to drop its

674
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:33,760
Speaker 1: various seeds along the way and bouncing far from being

675
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 1: a danger to sensitive cargo and and uh, you know,

676
00:37:37,080 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 1: sensors and whatnot. Uh, this can help free the seeds

677
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 1: that need to be dropped and um, you know, and

678
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:45,719
Speaker 1: again naturally, tumbleweed plants are not perfect spheres. They're they're

679
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: they're vaguely spherical and are I guess more bush shaped

680
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,959
Speaker 1: than anything, um as opposed to like, you know, ball shape.

681
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:55,360
Speaker 1: They're more shaped like a turkey than they are shaped

682
00:37:55,600 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: like a beach ball. If if a turkey were likely

683
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 1: to be like one to two meters in width and

684
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:05,160
Speaker 1: was like getting light enough to be pushed around in

685
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: the wind. Yeah, they're they're really it's it's really remarkable.

686
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: All right. Well, I think it's time to talk a

687
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: bit about the history of the tumbleweed. And one of

688
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 1: the strangest facts about the tumbleweed, this icon of the

689
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:20,879
Speaker 1: American West, is that it is not actually native to

690
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:25,719
Speaker 1: North America. It's a fairly late arrival. In fact, one

691
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 1: of the most common plants categorized as a tumbleweed in

692
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: the United States today is the one we focused on

693
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 1: a good bit already. Uh, known sometimes as callie tregas

694
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:40,959
Speaker 1: or previously known as Salsula tregas. The common name again

695
00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: is prickly Russian thistle. The name gives it away a

696
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 1: bit where it actually comes from. This is a species

697
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: originating in the steps of Eastern Europe and Western Asia,

698
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:55,359
Speaker 1: probably around the area of Ukraine. And I found a

699
00:38:55,520 --> 00:39:00,760
Speaker 1: very interesting description of tumbleweeds in an eight teen fifty

700
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: two botanical reference book by an English surgeon and botanist

701
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 1: named Arthur Henfrey. It's called The Vegetation of Europe Its

702
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: Conditions and Causes, published by Javan Vorst in eighteen fifty two.

703
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:18,040
Speaker 1: And uh, he gets to talking about tumbleweeds in the

704
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 1: section of the book where he's cataloging the plant life

705
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:24,960
Speaker 1: of the Russian step. So again you have to imagine

706
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 1: that at the time this was written in the eighteen fifties,

707
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:31,799
Speaker 1: there was probably no trace of this type of tumbleweed

708
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:36,160
Speaker 1: in the United States. But here's what Hinfrey says. In

709
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:39,840
Speaker 1: these regions, the wormwoods and thistles grow to a size

710
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:42,719
Speaker 1: unknown in the west of Europe. It is said that

711
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:46,399
Speaker 1: the thistle bush found where these abound is tall enough

712
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 1: to hide a cossack horseman. The natives call all these

713
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:55,319
Speaker 1: rank weeds useless for past year Burian, and with the

714
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 1: dry dung of the flocks, this constitutes all the fuel

715
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,919
Speaker 1: they possess. Oh and I should note, by the way,

716
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:04,200
Speaker 1: that while he keeps saying thistle, because that is the

717
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:07,399
Speaker 1: common name and what they were classifying at is back then,

718
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 1: I think technically in the in the modern botanical sense,

719
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:13,279
Speaker 1: the tumbleweeds were referring to are not true thistles. They're

720
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:16,400
Speaker 1: not thistles, but that's what they're called here. So Hanfrey

721
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,799
Speaker 1: goes on. One curious plant of the thistle tribe has

722
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: attracted the notice of most travelers, the wind, which, as

723
00:40:24,560 --> 00:40:28,880
Speaker 1: it is called by the German colonists, or leap the field,

724
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 1: as the Russian name may be translated. It forms a

725
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:37,600
Speaker 1: large globular mass of light, wiry branches interlaced together, and

726
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 1: in autumn decays off at the route, the upper part

727
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 1: drying up. It is then at the mercy of the

728
00:40:43,560 --> 00:40:46,440
Speaker 1: autumn blast, and it is said that thousands of them

729
00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 1: may sometimes be seen coursing over the plane, rolling, dancing,

730
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 1: and leaping over the slight inequalities, often looking at a

731
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 1: distance like a troop of wild horses. It is not

732
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 1: uncommon for twenty or thirty to be come entangled into

733
00:41:01,160 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 1: a mass and then roll away, as Mr Cole says,

734
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 1: quote like a huge giant in his seven League boots.

735
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, yeah, this is this is exactly what

736
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:14,720
Speaker 1: I was saying on the highway a couple of weeks ago,

737
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:18,319
Speaker 1: because sometimes you would see two that were I saw

738
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: at one point two of them that were bound together.

739
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 1: And this monstrosity was what jumped in front of a semitruck. Wow.

740
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: I kind of wish I had seen that. But I

741
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:29,880
Speaker 1: gotta finish the last thing he says, because he describes

742
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:32,600
Speaker 1: the demise of this uh, this, this giant in the

743
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 1: seven League boots uh quote, thousands of them are annually

744
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:40,320
Speaker 1: blown into the Black Sea and here, once in contact

745
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:44,280
Speaker 1: with water, in an instant, lose the fantastic grace belonging

746
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:48,160
Speaker 1: to their dry, unsubstantial texture. They are like, oh, it's

747
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:50,680
Speaker 1: it is like a witch like melting in the water

748
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:55,279
Speaker 1: because the power, it's so good, the wind, which that

749
00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: I've been captivated by that ever since I read it.

750
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,840
Speaker 1: These things are are wind witches. Um. But so okay,

751
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 1: this is describing something in like the what they're calling

752
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 1: the Russian Step, probably the area around the Black Sea,

753
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:12,160
Speaker 1: the Black Sea basin, or probably around Ukraine. So how

754
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 1: does this type of plant end up in the United States. Well,

755
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: beginning in the later decades of the nineteenth century, reports

756
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 1: of a similar plant. I can't be sure they're talking

757
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 1: about exactly the same species, but it seems likely to me, uh,

758
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:27,959
Speaker 1: they're They're at least definitely talking about the same type

759
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:31,080
Speaker 1: of plants, some kind of tumble weed. UM. Reports of

760
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: a similar type of plants start pouring in from places

761
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:38,759
Speaker 1: in the Great Plains of North America, places like South Dakota,

762
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:42,120
Speaker 1: UM and Uh. It's hard to know exactly when they

763
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:45,840
Speaker 1: showed up, but a commonly reported claim put forward in

764
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: a source I'm going to mention in a minute here

765
00:42:48,360 --> 00:42:51,360
Speaker 1: is that they arrived in the United States around the

766
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:55,239
Speaker 1: year eighteen seventy or sometime in the early eighteen seventies,

767
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 1: possibly in shipments of flax seed contaminated with these Russian

768
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 1: setle seeds UM. A commonly given date is eighteen seventy three.

769
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: It is interesting to read reports from the early decades

770
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:11,840
Speaker 1: of their proliferation on the continent. By the eighteen nineties,

771
00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:14,799
Speaker 1: invasive Russian thistle had become such a problem that the

772
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:19,880
Speaker 1: U S Department of Agriculture Botany Division issued a farmer's

773
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 1: bulletin on the subject, authored by someone named L. H. Dewey.

774
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:28,400
Speaker 1: The l H stands for Lister Hoaxe Dewey, So you

775
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 1: can actually look up a PDF of this yourself online.

776
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:34,319
Speaker 1: It's called the Russian Thistle and other Troublesome Weeds in

777
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 1: the Wheat region of Minnesota and North and South Dakota.

778
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: This document is actually more interesting and fund to read

779
00:43:41,160 --> 00:43:44,359
Speaker 1: than you might expect for a farmer's bulletin. Uh So,

780
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:46,400
Speaker 1: so there's a number of tidbits I want to discuss

781
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:48,160
Speaker 1: from it, but first of all, I just want to

782
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:51,319
Speaker 1: read directly from it, as it is discussing the difficulty

783
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,400
Speaker 1: that farmers in the planes were facing due to the

784
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 1: proliferation of tumbleweeds, probably from from Russian thistle. So Dewey writes,

785
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 1: some of its special characteristics render this thistle much more

786
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 1: troublesome than other weeds. Again, it's not actually a thistle.

787
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:10,719
Speaker 1: It is armed with spines quite as sharp and much

788
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:14,400
Speaker 1: stronger than those of common thistles. Because of these, it

789
00:44:14,520 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: is difficult to drive horses through a field where the

790
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 1: plants are abundant. In some sections, the farmers find it

791
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:24,359
Speaker 1: necessary to bind leathers about the horses legs while at work.

792
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:27,720
Speaker 1: Horses running in the pasture are often injured by having

793
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 1: the skin on their legs badly lacerated. The spines breaking

794
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:35,279
Speaker 1: off under the skin cause festering sores. These sores are

795
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 1: caused by the irritation, however, not by any poisonous property,

796
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:43,120
Speaker 1: as is frequently supposed. Hunters find difficulty in getting their

797
00:44:43,160 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: dogs to work well for prairie chickens and the stubble,

798
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:49,240
Speaker 1: and the dogs are sometimes injured by the sharp spines.

799
00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 1: Thrashers find it almost impossible to get gloves thick enough

800
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:55,879
Speaker 1: to keep the spines out of their fingers, yet thin

801
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:58,840
Speaker 1: enough to work with. Oh, and then he talks about

802
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 1: how these tumble it's can be a fire hazard. Of course,

803
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:05,400
Speaker 1: so he says, the Russian thistle is the worst rolling

804
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,320
Speaker 1: tumbleweed on the prairie, and in time of prairie fires,

805
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 1: is easily blown across a firebreak of any width, carrying

806
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 1: fire to stacks and buildings. Yeah, so, yeah, this is

807
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:20,160
Speaker 1: the thing. Not only can they potentially be a fire

808
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:22,759
Speaker 1: hazard once they arrive at sort of a termination point,

809
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:24,760
Speaker 1: you know, when they're stuck against the fence or a house,

810
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:27,880
Speaker 1: but they can be on fire and be in motion.

811
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: And uh and probably one of the more outrageous examples

812
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: of this UM was making the rounds on the internet

813
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 1: I think back in uh and it took place at

814
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:44,160
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty acre um prescribed burn at the

815
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:48,439
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. And if you haven't

816
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:49,800
Speaker 1: seen this footage, look it up. I think it was

817
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,480
Speaker 1: making the rounds, especially on like BuzzFeed news and stuff. UM.

818
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 1: But what you see is you see firefighters out there,

819
00:45:56,640 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 1: you know, engaging in this um, you know, intentional burn

820
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: of the of landscape there, and a dust devil kicks up,

821
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 1: so you know, like a small vortex. And what does

822
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:10,600
Speaker 1: it do. It starts pulling tumbleweeds up into it. And

823
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 1: uh and and this is I've seen footage of this

824
00:46:12,560 --> 00:46:16,400
Speaker 1: occurring um with tumbleweeds elsewhere, except in this case the

825
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 1: tumbleweeds are also on fire, so it is essentially a

826
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:25,800
Speaker 1: dust devil of flaming tumbleweeds. Yeah, it's like it looks

827
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:29,719
Speaker 1: like a tornado made out of tumbleweeds that are on fire. Right,

828
00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:31,879
Speaker 1: it seems I mean it just sounds like a shark

829
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:35,799
Speaker 1: Nado sort of a situation. But no, it exists. I mean,

830
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 1: it would seems like the main characteristics that are the

831
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: problem here that tumbleweeds are so they're brittle, you know,

832
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: fuel their their woods, so they're they're highly flammable, and

833
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 1: they're very low density, so they can easily be moved around.

834
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:51,840
Speaker 1: And of course when there is fire, that creates drafts

835
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:54,320
Speaker 1: of air that that suck and blow things in different

836
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 1: directions on its own. Uh So, yeah, tumbleweeds plus fire

837
00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 1: just seems like a nightmare to try to con troll. Now, naturally,

838
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: one thing you would do to prevent fire from spreading,

839
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 1: say in a prairie region, as you would have what

840
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: are known as fire breaks. You would have you know,

841
00:47:09,080 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: like ditches or areas of cleared land where there's no fuel.

842
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 1: You know. So it's just like, if there is a fire,

843
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 1: it's going to be stopped here because there's no fuel

844
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: for it to spread across. But if you have tumbleweeds,

845
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:21,680
Speaker 1: first of all, they're they're they're likely to gather in

846
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 1: fire breaks anyway, because that's the kind of you know,

847
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:26,760
Speaker 1: they will fall, they will settle their seeds in cleared

848
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 1: land and grow grow there, so they can grow in

849
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 1: fire breaks. When they're tumbling, they'll probably get stuck in

850
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 1: fire breaks and pile up there. And uh and even

851
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: if there's nothing in the fire break, if there's tumble

852
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:40,799
Speaker 1: if there are tumbleweeds burning on one side, they can

853
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:43,400
Speaker 1: easily leap over the break and then just spread it

854
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 1: to the other side. You know, when I first encountered this,

855
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 1: I also was thinking, Okay, maybe this is just a

856
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 1: rare thing though, a flaming tumbleweed. I mean, just because

857
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:56,200
Speaker 1: it's on BuzzFeed News doesn't mean it's an accurate representation

858
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:59,359
Speaker 1: of reality. Um. But then I was looking around at

859
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:02,839
Speaker 1: some various folkloric references to tumble weeds, most of which

860
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:05,160
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say for part two. But there is this

861
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 1: one bit from a folkloreist by the name of Thomas

862
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:13,080
Speaker 1: Edward Cheney who lived nineteen o one through who specialized

863
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:16,359
Speaker 1: in Mormon folklore and folklore of the bad Lands, and

864
00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:20,920
Speaker 1: he wrote this in nineteen fifty nine in Scandinavian Immigrants

865
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: Stories quote, A story glows like a tumbleweed on fire.

866
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:28,760
Speaker 1: As it passes on it may die after a brief

867
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:31,799
Speaker 1: and flashy existence, or it may be retained in the

868
00:48:31,840 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 1: mind of a jokester until he dies and leaves his

869
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:38,440
Speaker 1: legacy to members of his family. They in turn recall

870
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 1: sporadically the stories which particularly resemble their experiences. Many such

871
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 1: stories die without the folkloreist or anyone else getting them

872
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: into the written language. Now, that's just a good quote

873
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:52,800
Speaker 1: about just sort of the nature of storytelling. And I

874
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 1: just kind of like what he's actually trying to relate there.

875
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 1: But I also love that, like that that here is

876
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 1: the flaming tumbleweed as a as a metaphor to explain that,

877
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:04,360
Speaker 1: and clearly like one that's not so novel as to

878
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 1: be foreign. I guess two people of of of this

879
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:09,800
Speaker 1: part of the country. Like, he doesn't have to stop

880
00:49:09,800 --> 00:49:11,319
Speaker 1: and say, let me tell you a story about a

881
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 1: tumbleweed that once caught on fire, and I'm gonna use

882
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 1: that to make my point. No, like the tumbleweed on

883
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:18,279
Speaker 1: fire seems to be just, you know, more or less

884
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 1: off the shelf, even if it feels a little novel

885
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:23,920
Speaker 1: to many of us. But I like that metaphor. Actually

886
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:28,319
Speaker 1: it has both, uh in terms of oral storytelling, it

887
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,680
Speaker 1: has both its strengthened its fragility there because a tumblewheat

888
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: on fire will burn up pretty quickly, and so it's

889
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:37,399
Speaker 1: it's very fleeting, it's very ephemeral. But on the other hand,

890
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:39,719
Speaker 1: it's you know, it spreads super easily, so if it

891
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:43,359
Speaker 1: if it reaches another fuel source there it goes Yeah, absolutely,

892
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:53,280
Speaker 1: thank thank But anyway, so in this document, this Department

893
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: of Agriculture document from the eighteen nineties, L. H. Dewey

894
00:49:57,200 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 1: goes on to talk about some of the same kind

895
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,719
Speaker 1: of problems we've already discussed in the modern age. You

896
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:04,239
Speaker 1: know that they will pile up against buildings, that they

897
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 1: will pile up against fences, that they will will choke fields,

898
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:13,040
Speaker 1: that they will even if you kind of mulch them down. Uh.

899
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:15,840
Speaker 1: That they may do some good in in nourishing the land,

900
00:50:15,920 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 1: but just that they're hard to deal with. When they're

901
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:20,759
Speaker 1: in their bulky form, they just get stuck in all

902
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff and and cause these huge problems. Uh.

903
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 1: There was another very interesting note I came across in this.

904
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 1: There was more just to kind of uh something mentioned

905
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:32,719
Speaker 1: in passing in this document, but I thought it was

906
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 1: sociologically interesting. So in discussing where Russian thistle comes from.

907
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:40,600
Speaker 1: Dewey says, all the evidence points to the idea that

908
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:44,960
Speaker 1: it was imported in contaminated shipments of flax seeds that

909
00:50:45,040 --> 00:50:48,919
Speaker 1: were received in in the States around eighteen seventy three

910
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:51,799
Speaker 1: or in the early eighteen seventies. And then he goes

911
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 1: on to say, quote, there is evidently no foundation whatever

912
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: for the theory which is too often related as a

913
00:50:58,120 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 1: fact that it was first son in South Dakota by immigrants,

914
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:05,440
Speaker 1: either for forage or to inflict an injury on an enemy.

915
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 1: So at least as early as the eighteen nineties, people

916
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:13,280
Speaker 1: were spreading a completely baseless rumor that this invasive plant

917
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:17,040
Speaker 1: was due to immigrants who had sowed the weed on purpose,

918
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:21,839
Speaker 1: possibly even with the intent to cause harm. Very much

919
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:26,160
Speaker 1: uh mo on the Simpsons immigrants, I knew it was them.

920
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:28,840
Speaker 1: But then later Dewey is talking about how quickly it

921
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:31,800
Speaker 1: He's trying to document how quickly the Russian thistle spread.

922
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 1: Uh He says, quote, in many localities where a few

923
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:38,440
Speaker 1: plants were first seen four or five years ago, every

924
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:41,279
Speaker 1: spot of land where the sod has been broken is

925
00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: now occupied on every badger burrow and over fed spot

926
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:49,840
Speaker 1: in the prairie, on every roadside, railroad, embankment, firebreak, and

927
00:51:49,920 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 1: neglected garden. On every field of early plowed land or

928
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 1: stubble may be seen a patch of thistles. Again, not thistles.

929
00:51:58,160 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 1: These are the tumble weeds. Uh. The seeds are not

930
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:04,520
Speaker 1: here and there as with eastern weeds, but they are everywhere.

931
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:07,600
Speaker 1: The few plants introduced four or five years ago have

932
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:11,719
Speaker 1: seeded the land for miles in every direction. Um. And

933
00:52:11,760 --> 00:52:14,120
Speaker 1: then the last thing in the document is a section

934
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:18,680
Speaker 1: I actually found somewhat hilarious where he issues recommendations that

935
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:22,399
Speaker 1: are they're like pure just like vilification propaganda. I mean,

936
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 1: not like obviously you know, these tumbleweeds can be a

937
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:27,480
Speaker 1: huge problem, and I'm not saying like I would just

938
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:31,760
Speaker 1: ignore them, but he like recommends that every school house

939
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:35,520
Speaker 1: in America should have a Russian thistle in the school

940
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: house so that the pupils may become familiar with it

941
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:41,400
Speaker 1: quote and teach them to kill it wherever they find it,

942
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:45,800
Speaker 1: as they would kill a rattlesnake. Oh my goodness, I

943
00:52:46,040 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: really feel for for many of us that, you know,

944
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: they didn't grow up in tumble weed country or haven't

945
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:55,719
Speaker 1: been visiting tumbleweed country during the times that they're on

946
00:52:55,760 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: the move, like this is just kind of a uh,

947
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:01,719
Speaker 1: this this great adversary that's been there the whole time

948
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: and we and I feel like I didn't really recognize

949
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:07,280
Speaker 1: it until just now. Well I think it is technically

950
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:12,040
Speaker 1: now in all forty eight contiguous US states, so it's everywhere. Yeah,

951
00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:14,319
Speaker 1: Like I mean, it is in Georgia, the state where we,

952
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:17,520
Speaker 1: uh we record this, But I do not recall ever

953
00:53:17,640 --> 00:53:20,320
Speaker 1: having seen it or you know, identified it as such

954
00:53:20,640 --> 00:53:23,000
Speaker 1: while I was here. I certainly have not had that

955
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 1: experience of you know, the herds of of them moving

956
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 1: across the highways, though I can only imagine how Georgia

957
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 1: drivers would would would respond to that. We don't take

958
00:53:35,200 --> 00:53:38,800
Speaker 1: kindly to stuff invading our highways. Now, I just wanted

959
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 1: to mention a few other interesting facts that came across

960
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:43,360
Speaker 1: in another article. I was trying to look for a

961
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:47,080
Speaker 1: a more recent article about the spread of the different

962
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:51,800
Speaker 1: tumbleweed species, especially ruscent Russian thistle and related species in

963
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:55,920
Speaker 1: the US. So there was one I read from eighteen

964
00:53:56,360 --> 00:53:59,799
Speaker 1: in the UC Boulder, Colorado Arts and Sciences magazine by

965
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 1: you See Boulder professor of evolutionary biology and ecology named

966
00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 1: Jeff Mitton and Mitton covers some of the same ground

967
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: we've already talked about that, for example, that tumbleweed is

968
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:12,799
Speaker 1: a is a structure. It is a type of strategy

969
00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 1: for reproduction that is employed by many plants, but that

970
00:54:16,520 --> 00:54:18,959
Speaker 1: in the American context, most of the time when people

971
00:54:19,000 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 1: see a tumble weed or talk about a tumble weed,

972
00:54:21,640 --> 00:54:25,760
Speaker 1: they're usually talking about this Russian thistle species Salsula tregas

973
00:54:25,840 --> 00:54:29,560
Speaker 1: or Callie tregas and uh. He says interestingly that genomic

974
00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:33,400
Speaker 1: analysis in California has revealed that the tregas, the main species,

975
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:36,800
Speaker 1: was introduced to the US multiple times, at least twice

976
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:41,600
Speaker 1: from different places, so there were multiple introduction events, and

977
00:54:41,960 --> 00:54:44,399
Speaker 1: he emphasizes against something that that has come out from

978
00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: multiple sources. We've looked at that tumbleweeds became especially common

979
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:53,719
Speaker 1: as they took hold in otherwise barren areas or in

980
00:54:53,920 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 1: quote over graized sites, so abandoned farmlands or or overused

981
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 1: ranch lands could be especially good places for UH for

982
00:55:05,080 --> 00:55:07,239
Speaker 1: for these things to take root. They do better in

983
00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:10,360
Speaker 1: cleared land where they can scatter freely, where their seeds

984
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:13,960
Speaker 1: don't have to compete with native grasses and shrubs. So

985
00:55:14,040 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 1: it seems like one way to have a place resist

986
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:20,600
Speaker 1: colonization by the by the tumbleweeds is just to have

987
00:55:20,719 --> 00:55:25,600
Speaker 1: plenty of natural native vegetation covering the land. One last

988
00:55:25,640 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 1: thing I want to mention that that Mitten brings up

989
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: in this article is that, uh, you know, sometimes discussion

990
00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:37,760
Speaker 1: of of aggressively spreading non native species of plants can

991
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:40,400
Speaker 1: I don't know, it caused people to think of a

992
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:44,520
Speaker 1: plant as being wholly without use or merit in any

993
00:55:44,560 --> 00:55:47,719
Speaker 1: you know, it can provide no nourishment to anything at all.

994
00:55:48,120 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 1: And while tumbleweeds can certainly be a big problem for

995
00:55:51,440 --> 00:55:54,880
Speaker 1: for humans and other life forms, Mitten points out that

996
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 1: some animals can eat the sprouts of of these tumbleweed

997
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:00,839
Speaker 1: plants and and can get nourishment for them, especially when

998
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:04,560
Speaker 1: they're young and green, but he says that herbivores do

999
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:06,959
Speaker 1: tend to avoid them once they have reached their their

1000
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 1: thorny brittle adult state. Though he points out one interesting

1001
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:15,520
Speaker 1: historical fact about their use as nutrition in in American history.

1002
00:56:15,880 --> 00:56:18,640
Speaker 1: He says that tumbleweeds quote were one of the last

1003
00:56:18,760 --> 00:56:22,240
Speaker 1: plants growing during the dust Bowl nineteen thirty to nineteen

1004
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 1: thirty six, when many farmers and ranchers were unable to

1005
00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:29,400
Speaker 1: keep anything growing to feed cows and horses. Russian thistle

1006
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:32,759
Speaker 1: hay is credited with saving the beef cattle industry when

1007
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: other sources of hay disappeared. So this is a species

1008
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:41,400
Speaker 1: of plant that that plays rough, but when when nobody

1009
00:56:41,440 --> 00:56:43,640
Speaker 1: else can hack it, it is still there and you know,

1010
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:46,160
Speaker 1: in its young form it it can be eaten. Who

1011
00:56:46,239 --> 00:56:48,480
Speaker 1: may not be the best food source in the world,

1012
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:53,480
Speaker 1: but but the bovines can ingest. Anyway, I think that'll

1013
00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:55,680
Speaker 1: have to do it for part one of our series

1014
00:56:55,680 --> 00:56:58,520
Speaker 1: on the Wind, which the tumbleweed. But we've got a

1015
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:00,759
Speaker 1: lot more interesting stuff to talk about in part two.

1016
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we've got some some crazy tumbleweed variants that

1017
00:57:06,200 --> 00:57:08,200
Speaker 1: may interest you. We've got we've got we've got a

1018
00:57:08,200 --> 00:57:12,080
Speaker 1: few Mongolian riddles we're gonna share. Uh So, there should

1019
00:57:12,120 --> 00:57:15,680
Speaker 1: be a lot of a lot of interesting territory to cover,

1020
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: but we're gonna go ahead and let this particular tumbleweed

1021
00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 1: episode snap off at the roots and begin tumbling its

1022
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 1: way to listeners out there. Obviously, even yeah, with creativity

1023
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:35,040
Speaker 1: in the metaphoric sense. Right Um, now, I'm sure we

1024
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 1: have a number of listeners out there who have a

1025
00:57:37,080 --> 00:57:41,480
Speaker 1: lot more experience direct experience with tumbleweeds, and yes, we

1026
00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:45,120
Speaker 1: would love for you to share your experiences with us, uh,

1027
00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:49,360
Speaker 1: encountering tumbleweeds, rolling across the highways and into your house

1028
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:52,800
Speaker 1: and so forth. Um let us know you know how

1029
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:54,960
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, and we'll share that

1030
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:57,440
Speaker 1: information here in just a second. But hey, in the meantime,

1031
00:57:57,800 --> 00:58:01,120
Speaker 1: if you would like to listen to additional episodes of

1032
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:03,760
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find them in

1033
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:07,400
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcasts. Feed Core episodes

1034
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:11,600
Speaker 1: published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do listener mail.

1035
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:17,040
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we do an artifact or a monster fact episode.

1036
00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 1: On Fridays, we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time

1037
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:23,600
Speaker 1: to set aside most serious matters and just to focus

1038
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 1: in on a strange film and discuss a strange film.

1039
00:58:26,640 --> 00:58:30,000
Speaker 1: Um oh, I should also point out that I was

1040
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 1: just looking to to revamp some of our you know,

1041
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:37,880
Speaker 1: place holders, social media presences, and our Instagram account has

1042
00:58:37,880 --> 00:58:40,320
Speaker 1: been locked up for over a year. Nobody knows how

1043
00:58:40,320 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 1: to get into it. It's a ghost house. So we

1044
00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:45,240
Speaker 1: have a new Instagram. If you're into Instagram and you

1045
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:48,000
Speaker 1: want to follow us, you can follow us at st

1046
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:52,040
Speaker 1: b y e M Podcast. That's our handle there. But

1047
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:55,440
Speaker 1: I should also point out that we also have a

1048
00:58:55,560 --> 00:58:59,000
Speaker 1: separate Instagram for Weird House Cinema, and that one is

1049
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:02,920
Speaker 1: just Weird House Cinema. That's the that's the Instagram handle,

1050
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:05,920
Speaker 1: and uh, that one I've actually updated, so it has

1051
00:59:05,960 --> 00:59:08,480
Speaker 1: like a still from every episode of Weird House Cinema

1052
00:59:08,520 --> 00:59:10,760
Speaker 1: that we've done thus far. So that's a fun way

1053
00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:13,280
Speaker 1: if you just want to follow Weird House Cinema stuff.

1054
00:59:13,560 --> 00:59:15,720
Speaker 1: And I'll probably be updating that because because every now

1055
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 1: and then, when I'm watching a movie for a Weird House,

1056
00:59:17,800 --> 00:59:20,240
Speaker 1: I'll have to like take a picture of something on

1057
00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:23,840
Speaker 1: the on the on the TV screen, um, and this

1058
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:25,920
Speaker 1: might be a place where I would share that. So

1059
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:28,360
Speaker 1: so yeah, I'm liable to actually use that account for

1060
00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:33,000
Speaker 1: things beyond just the mentioning of new episodes. This is

1061
00:59:33,080 --> 00:59:36,800
Speaker 1: this is phone camera photo of a TV screen. Yeah, yeah,

1062
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 1: that's has more heart. Yeah. I think the first one

1063
00:59:41,400 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: the post I did on that Instagram account was it

1064
00:59:45,280 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 1: was just a picture I took off the screen during

1065
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:50,240
Speaker 1: Hands of Steel where it has the text at the

1066
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:51,800
Speaker 1: end that pops up and says it was a day

1067
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:54,760
Speaker 1: in our near future the era of the cyboid had

1068
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:58,920
Speaker 1: begun Arizona movie, so it ties in to what we're

1069
00:59:58,920 --> 01:00:01,920
Speaker 1: talking about here today. Not unrelated to tumbleweeds. There you go,

1070
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:08,040
Speaker 1: drifting along with the tumbling cyborg. Okay, anyway, huge things.

1071
01:00:08,080 --> 01:00:11,440
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

1072
01:00:11,600 --> 01:00:13,400
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

1073
01:00:13,400 --> 01:00:16,080
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1074
01:00:16,200 --> 01:00:18,240
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hi, you

1075
01:00:18,280 --> 01:00:21,160
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

1076
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:31,600
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

1077
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,

1078
01:00:34,600 --> 01:00:37,480
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're

1079
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows.