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