Selects: Plant Migration

9:10Josh Clark:Reed's paradox.

9:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he's got a great, great title for it.

9:14Josh Clark:Of rapid plant migration. That's the full title.

9:16Chuck Bryant:It sounds almost like snake oil from the 19th century.

9:19Josh Clark:Yeah, it kind of does. So what is it? Oh, okay. I didn't know you were setting me up. We're still tight after all these years. For sure. So what he found from the fossil record, like you were talking about, and as we'll see, that's one, like, you know, pretty good way to study this stuff, especially pollen fossils, right?

9:36Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because they're so hardy.

9:38Josh Clark:Yeah, so he saw that trees were migrating a lot faster than, like, the rate that you would think. And so he, like, those oaks, I think, was one example you gave on the British Isles. After the last glacial period, over a span of, like, 10 ,000 years or so, they traveled about 600 miles. And it would normally take about a million years if the seeds were just dispersed in a typical way. But what he figured was that what may be happening here is, like, some weird weather event happens. that sent things much farther than usual. Or, like, some deer or something eats something and then poops out something really far away from where it started.

10:27Josh Clark:And so all of a sudden this animal has spread it via their poo-poo.

10:31Chuck Bryant:Right. And this is how, like, large-scale migration happens. Or I should say rapid migration over long distances, right?

10:40Josh Clark:Right, yeah.

10:41Chuck Bryant:It's the unusual, not just the acorn falling and hitting the ground. It's not just gravity-assisted. It's animal-assisted, which is called zoo-cory. Or it's wind-assisted, which is called the nemo-cory. Or water-assisted, which is called hydro-cory. And that's just the way that some plants disperse their seeds. That's kind of on top of the normal way they disperse it, which is just dropping it from their leaves or the spores blowing on the wind, which I guess is one type of cory. Yeah.

11:10Josh Clark:So like if a squirrel loaded up its mouth full of things and somehow found its way into your camper as you set off for Arizona.

11:17Chuck Bryant:That would be a freak event, sure. And it probably wouldn't be en masse. But, you know, that's a way a tree could move. All it takes is that one oak to make it— Sure. To just survive, and then it starts its own new part of the range.

11:34Josh Clark:Yeah, absolutely. And we all should point out, when was Reed doing this? This was a while ago, like 100 plus years ago, right?

11:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he was a geologist. I don't know if we said, but his Reed's Paradox of Rapid Plant Migration came out in 1899, and it was a smash hit.

11:51Josh Clark:Yeah, so people, I mean, for at least that long, science has been sort of curious about this migration happening at a rate that they would not expect.

12:01Chuck Bryant:Right. The thing is, is that it's really hard when you throw in that X factor to calculate how fast an actual species can migrate. And there's a few ways that you can study that kind of thing. One, as you said, is studying the fossil record, which is super helpful. But it's not showing you what's going on contemporaneously or within the last couple of decades. This is 10 ,000, a million years ago, something like that, right?

12:30Josh Clark:Yeah. So if you wanted to study something a little closer to home, timeline-wise, you would maybe set up what's called a permanent vegetation plot. So you would mark off an area, and you would go back there every so often, like every six months or every year or so, and just sort of chart what's happening. That's one really good way. I think they've been doing this for about 100 years, since the 1920s. So we've got a pretty good data set there. Something else you could do is go somewhere, like let's say you dug up some cool scientific journal from a scientist from, you know, 200 years ago that went and explored some island.

13:12Josh Clark:And while they may not have like charted everything out exactly like you would in today's science, they may have a really nice diary about all the plant life there and things that they saw there and where it might be. and you could go back to that place. And it's not quite as tight of a record, but you could still get a pretty good idea of what's happening.

13:30Chuck Bryant:Yeah, depending on whose journal you're working from. And back in 2012, a Danish team of scientists followed the record left by a 19th century geologist named Alexander von Humboldt from Germany, who was just an interesting dude in and of himself. He called coffee concentrated sunbeams. So he's my kind of guy. Oh, man, that's great. They went back to Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador, which Humboldt studied in detail. And not only did he study the vegetation there, and he classified all sorts of new plants that Europeans didn't know about at that point, he also noted exactly where they were on the mountain as far as the elevation went.

14:10Josh Clark:Super helpful.

14:11Chuck Bryant:Super helpful. So based on this information, the 2012 Danes were able to go back and recreate his trip. and then they were able to note what plants were where. And they found that everything, all species on average, had moved up the mountain by about an average of about 500 meters, which is significant. It's like almost a mile. It's like eight-tenths of a mile.

14:36Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah, that's the average. Yeah. There was a lot of variation within that, but that's a long way.

14:42Chuck Bryant:For sure.

14:43Josh Clark:And what we found out, and I guess this comes up a little later, But a plant can find more hospitable climbs going up 500 meters than they might by going, let's just say, north like 90 to 100 miles. Yes. So like a much quicker road to better climbs if you just go up that mountain.

15:04Chuck Bryant:For sure. Yeah, that's kind of two ways they move is longitudinally.

15:10Josh Clark:Yeah. Or altitudinally.

15:13Chuck Bryant:You got to be in shape, though. Oh, for sure. You're going to climb that mountain.

15:18Josh Clark:Should we take a break?

15:20Chuck Bryant:I think we should. But just to wrap it up real quick, there's a bunch of ways you can study the movement of trees. But it's so slow and it happens over such long timelines, longer than a human timeline, that it's harder to do than you'd think. But we still have figured out some ways to do it. All right.

15:35Josh Clark:We'll be right back and we'll talk about all this stuff in more detail right after this.

15:50Josh Clark:I'm Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. You know what I love about cooking? The endless inspiration, sharing exceptional flavors, and of course, the best ingredients. I refuse to make a dish without them. McCormick has been and is an essential in the kitchen. Now McCormick's new line of signature seasonings make bringing fresh inspiration and endless versatility to everyday dishes easier than ever. There's the everyday essential, garlic and olive oil, the savory sweetness of caramelized onion, and globally inspired flavors like the herby with a touch of heat, chimichurri, and chili garlic that elevates everything from ramen to stir-fry to even grilled meats.

16:38Josh Clark:Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious. When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at mccormick.com.

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17:03Josh Clark:Can he tell I'm picking up prescription hemorrhoid cream? I'm probably standing weird.

17:08Chuck Bryant:Why is he smiling?

17:09Josh Clark:He knows. He's going to call me Heproid Lloyd tomorrow.

17:13Chuck Bryant:I know it. I've got to quit my job.

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18:05Josh Clark:One other way we failed to mention, probably would have been better to just say that before the break. But again, still learning after 16 years. Satellite images is another way that you can study on the short term. You know, the fossil pollen is much longer, and those plant plots and things like that, vegetation plots, are shorter term. But satellite images can also help.

18:28Chuck Bryant:Yeah. If you want to catch, like, a Venus flytrap in the act of leapfrogging over some other plant, satellite image is going to help you with that. The fossil record won't show you that.

18:38Josh Clark:Here's the thing with all this, though. It's not like we're going to talk a lot about climate change because that's what's spurring a lot of the movement right now. But the Earth's climate has changed a lot over the years, and this is not some new thing. There used to be periods of time where the Sahara Desert was quite green, and there was grasses growing there and tropical plants growing there and elephants roaming the Sahara and wildlife living there. And they've learned that this is actually one of the things that helped move, you know, humans around. Like, humans could actually migrate through the Sahara with much more ease than they could before during these green Sahara periods.

19:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's so fascinating that, you know, who knows when we would have migrated out of Africa into Europe in the ages had the green Sahara not happened. Isn't that just nuts?

19:31Josh Clark:Yeah, like hundreds of miles, it says here, that they would find tropical plants growing where they shouldn't be growing. alongside, you know, the desert stuff that survived. So there was this weird sort of mixed up biome for a time.

19:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah, in the Green Sahara period, there were a few of them that have been documented, but they figured out that they happen about every 23 ,000 years.

19:51Josh Clark:Right.

19:52Chuck Bryant:We're due for one in about 12 ,000 years, something like that. And it's based on the tilt in Earth's axis. That's neither here nor there. But the point is, is during these periods where the Sahara was just a humid kind of tropical forest, there was a mixture, kind of what you touched upon, of different, like you said, a hybrid biome of stuff that wouldn't necessarily live together under normal circumstances, but got along just famously in the couple thousand years that the Sahara was green and those plants were growing together.

20:26Josh Clark:Yeah, it's just amazing to think about.

20:28Chuck Bryant:And then in North America, we have another example, too, after the Laurentide Glacier, which is way up in the Arctic right now, used to be down in Indiana and northern New Jersey. And when it retreated, it took everything with it. It took boulders. It carved out lakes. It did all sorts of neat stuff. But what it didn't leave behind was vegetation. So it left – it was like a giant ice cream truck, basically. Yeah. It left nothing behind, and it was just a great place for plants to pioneer and colonize.

21:00Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, that's why you have pine trees in New Jersey, right?

21:03Chuck Bryant:I would think so. Yeah, or in the south because they were too far. They were trapped below the Laurentide Glacier down in the southeast, even though they normally would have been growing in the north, right? And as the glacier retreated, the climate changed in that area. And so the trees just moved on up. So that's an example of migration as well.

21:28Josh Clark:Oh, wait, I thought they were – it was more hospitable in the south for these trees. And that migration sent them north.

21:36Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's what I said, right?

21:37Josh Clark:Oh, okay.

21:38Chuck Bryant:I'm pretty sure. Maybe I heard you wrong. Yeah.

21:40Josh Clark:The other thing we should talk about as far as climate change goes, because like I said, we're going to mention that a lot, is the rate of change of the climate is increasing, as most people agree on. and that is kind of where we are now in discussing this is like is the rate of climate increasing too fast for the plant migration to catch up or in some cases are the plants migrating ahead of that pace and that's really sort of you know a lot of this episode is about this rate of change in the 200 years since the beginning of the industrial age no coincidence the the temperature of the Earth has increased more than one degree.

22:22Josh Clark:Celsius, right? Yeah, we all know now that, you know, one degree is like a huge, huge deal.

22:28Chuck Bryant:It's 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

22:31Josh Clark:Yeah, exactly. But 0.37 of that change over the past 200 years has come since 2011. Yes, dude. So it's, people have, you know, someone has stepped on the gas here. Yeah. And it's happening much, much faster and seemingly in many cases faster than these plants can catch up.

22:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So plants are used to migrating like they've been migrating throughout Earth's history. But these conditions are different. It's not like it was before, even when the Earth was heating up after the last ice age. I think, did you say that it took about an average of 1 ,400 years to increase by one degree after the last glacial period?

23:11Josh Clark:No, no. That was the setup that would have been very helpful, actually.

23:14Chuck Bryant:I mean, think about it. So we've achieved one degree in 200 years. And after the last glacial period ended, the Earth heated at one degree every 1400 years.

23:26Josh Clark:Yeah, that's called a rapid increase.

23:28Chuck Bryant:Yeah, like you said, somebody's put their foot on the gas and that somebody is Western industrialized nations, right? Yeah. So that's one thing that's really kind of putting the heat on plants, literally, is their southernmost ranges or their northernmost ranges, depending on what – I guess their equatorial pointing ranges, where it's hotter. Yeah. Those are the ones that are really at stake. So are those plants' ranges big enough that they'll be able to survive that change in climate and just keep moving northward? Or are they going to be outpaced by the movement of the climate? Because the climate is racing toward the poles just like the plants are, right?

24:10Chuck Bryant:So who's faster? Well, it turns out if you talk about New England's trees, they move something. I think red oaks is what it was that this University of Vermont group was studying. they move something like a tenth to three-tenths of a mile a year, right? Yeah. The climate is moving something like four to six miles a year. So the climate is really kind of showing up as kind of the Usain Bolt of this race. And I don't know, the plants are like me racing Usain Bolt.

24:46Josh Clark:Yeah, that lab group in Vermont, they all have T-shirts that just say, you do the math. Exactly. It's very smarmy, but they get their point across. For sure. There's another example of, and, you know, we've kind of been talking about northern movement, which is generally the pattern, but not always. There's a researcher at Purdue named Songlin Fei. I think Fei or Fi? I don't know. FEI. I bet it's fine. Who studied 86 species of trees in the eastern U.S. over about 30 years from the mid-80s to 2015. And it depends on what the tree is. Hardwoods, scarlet oaks, red maples, magnolias are moving west at about one and a half kilometers a year because the Midwest is becoming more wet and the conditions are good for those trees to grow.

25:38Josh Clark:Softwoods, shortleaf pines, red pines, bald cypress, they're actually moving north about a kilometer a year. So different plants and trees are moving in different directions at different rates.

25:52Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's very much akin to a neighborhood that's this old, settled-in neighborhood with a bunch of mix of people that's being gentrified. It's being pushed out and separated. Not everybody just – the whole neighborhood doesn't just move. This neighborhood breaks up and goes in different directions. And so to ecologists and arborists, like this is very concerning because for a long time we've looked at groups of plants as communities. Like some plants go with other plants. Like I think – what is it? Beach and hickory? Where is it? I don't know. I like hickory, though. We can't leave that in there.

26:36Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah, hemlocks. I knew it was an H tree. Beach and hemlocks go together like peanut butter and chocolate. So, too, do like firs and spruces, right? So, when you find one of these, you usually find the other one. And there's also a bunch of other plants that kind of interact and usually some types of animals that hang out in those same types of forests. So if you've got the hemlocks going north and the beach going west, who are the hemlocks going to mix with and who are the beach going to mix with when they start to set up these new communities? And that was really troubling to ecologists. But I think palynologists, these fossil pollen scientists, have said it's always been this way.

27:16Chuck Bryant:Communities aren't permanent. They're kind of instable. They just seem permanent to us because our life years or our lifespan is on the order of like 70, 80 years, right? Right. This is much – it's a much slower process, but it's a constantly changing turnover. So it's not that big of a deal. But again, because of the pace of climate change, when these hemlocks get further north and the beach get further west, they're going to have far less time to develop new connections and networks with the new plants that they set up communities with.

27:49Josh Clark:Yeah. And the other thing, too, you know, earlier when I mentioned that a series of trees might move up a mountainside because it's a way quicker way to get to a more hospitable climate than moving that 90 miles north. Yeah. When they and this happens in in other cases as well. It's not just like up a mountainside, but when they get to the place where they're going, it may be a better place, maybe more hospitable climate wise. But other things aren't so great. So if you move up that mountain slope, let's say you have shallower soil. And so those trees move up there because the climate's better.

28:28Josh Clark:But then they get there and the soil isn't as great. So they get squeezed into where they can grow, maybe into like a tiny little narrow band that's, you know, potentially choking off the rest of the forest.

28:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I figured out it's kind of like hiding in a closet during a house fire. Like you're going to be safe in the short term, but in the long term, it's not a great strategy. But it's not like the trees have any choice. They can't go back down. It's too hot there. They can't move further up. The soil's inhospitable. So they're trapped, and they're eventually going to become a thinner and thinner band until they just pop out of existence.

29:03Josh Clark:That's right. And the other thing that can happen, too, when, like you said, when they get to a new place and they don't have enough time to make new friends, all of a sudden that can open the window for bad friends to show up. Yeah. And all of a sudden invasive species are there, and then you've got a whole other set of problems.

29:20Chuck Bryant:Yeah. The ones that wear like leather jackets with the little silver studs on their shoulders. Those are the ones you got to watch out for, those plants.

29:29Josh Clark:If this all seems very kind of on too long of a timeline for you to care, first of all, you probably don't care much about climate change because that's the whole name of the game there. But maple syrup is a good example that Livia found. Livia helped us out. She did a great job with this. The maple tree Which species is it? The sugar maple is one of the two main species That we use to get that delicious maple syrup

29:56Chuck Bryant:I'm sorry, just as an aside Sugar maple are two beautiful words That form an even more beautiful

30:02Josh Clark:You are right on the money, my friend You know? Sugar maple It just sounds nice coming out of my mouth

30:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah

30:09Josh Clark:They have been migrating north into Canada And you might say, well, that's great Canada's a fine place to live and I'm sure they love their maple syrup there too. But in Quebec, the researchers have found that they're not going to go beyond their current range up there because they're boreal forests up there. So the soil, again, the climate might be better, but then they get up there and the soil pH and the microbe content in the soil is not what they're used to and not what they work well with and grow well with. So they're not doing well up there in the forest.

30:44Chuck Bryant:No, no. No, and it's the exact same position as the trees that are trying to go up the mountain are running into. Eventually, these trees that are moving into the boreal forest areas, they can't go any further. They're not adapted to that. Over a long enough timeline, those sugar maples, a few of them could land in the boreal forest and end up surviving in that kind of soil. And then they would be adapted for it, and they'd start reproducing. And then as the boreal forest moved closer to the poles or the Arctic, those trees would move where the boreal forest used to be, right? Totally not a problem over a long enough time span.

31:24Chuck Bryant:Again, climate change has so drastically shortened that time span that there's probably not going to be time for this. And those sugar maples will just run into that boreal soil and just – it'll be like hitting a brick wall for their species.

31:37Josh Clark:Yeah. Another issue that can happen, and I know this all just seems like doomsday stuff.

31:42Chuck Bryant:Kind of is.

31:43Josh Clark:It kind of is, though. Let's say, like the Amazon episode that we talked about, when trees are moving out there, they might be replaced by something. And it may not be an invasive species, but it may just be weeds or grasses or something. Those aren't as good at capturing carbon as those trees were. So then that accelerates the problem even more.

32:06Chuck Bryant:Right. And then there's another, if you want to keep talking about doomsday scenarios, those boreal forests, they actually are, if you look at a map or if you look at planet Earth from outer space, they're dark, which means that they absorb more sunlight, more heat, more UV radiation than the polar caps, the ice that reflects it back into space. So as those boreal forests advance further and further north toward the Arctic or the North Pole, and there's less and less ice to reflect it, there's more and more heat for them to trap, which is just going to heat the Earth up that much faster. It's a positive feedback loop that's super-duper negative.

32:49Josh Clark:Yeah, very negative. Maybe we should cover tropical things moving north and then take a break?

32:56Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because I got some good stuff on that, man. I'm super excited.

32:59Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, it goes both ways. So you can have like tropical plants and tropical zones like Florida where, you know, the earth is warming so they can move further and further north. And all of a sudden these plants that are native to tropical zones are ending up in areas where it's, you know, not necessarily a tropical zone. I can't remember which zone Atlanta is.

33:23Chuck Bryant:Atlanta's 7B and 8A. I love that you know that stuff.

33:29Josh Clark:But the point is, like, these, like, kill frost that you might get that happen to—I love that name, kill frost. Like, it'll get really cold and frost over and, like, kill things maybe that shouldn't be there. If that's happening less and less and there's even less in the way of those tropical plants moving northward.

33:49Chuck Bryant:Right. And so I guess climatologists are expecting that by the end of the century, which seems like a long way away. But, buddy, that's like less than that's like eight decades, 70 something years, maybe even 77, you could say, to be exact. But in 77 years, climatologists expect all of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. I'm guessing the southern half to be tropical. Those are subtropical now. If you want an example of what a tropical country is, go to Ecuador. Go to Guatemala. Those are tropical. And Alabama and Arizona are going to be like Guatemala by the end of the century.

34:37Chuck Bryant:That's insane.

34:39Josh Clark:I know. It's really – and it's happening. It's not like – like they've shown that it's currently happening.

34:46Chuck Bryant:Yes, and it's happening because, like you were saying, those extreme cold events are becoming rarer and they're becoming warmer. So the coldest day of the year is not as cold as it used to be, in other words.

34:57Josh Clark:I think the scientific term is killfrost.

34:59Chuck Bryant:I love that. That is definitely a band name.

35:03Josh Clark:Oh, for sure. Like, what are they, though?

35:05Chuck Bryant:Kill – oh, I don't know. They could be all sorts. Some kind of heavy or something, right? I don't know. Remember Destroyer? They were great. They didn't really – they had, like, kind of like a belying name. You know what I mean?

35:16Josh Clark:No, that's true. So it could be like that. I think he named the band that for that reason. It's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek thing, maybe.

35:23Chuck Bryant:I knew I liked that guy. Yeah.

35:26Josh Clark:Behar is who we're talking about. Not Joy.

35:30Chuck Bryant:Tony.

35:31Josh Clark:Tony Behar. Todd. No, it's Dan, I think, right?

35:34Chuck Bryant:I don't know. I just know a couple of Destroyer songs. I don't have to know the guy's life story, do I?

35:39Josh Clark:Well, settle down. No, I wanted to look it up because he's also a part-time member of maybe my favorite all-time band, The New Pornographers, like modern band.

35:53Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah?

35:54Josh Clark:Yeah, he's on most of their albums but hasn't done the past few.

35:57Chuck Bryant:Who was the singer for New Pornographers? Was it Nico Case?

36:01Josh Clark:Well, she sings and Carl Newman sings. And also the great Catherine Calder, who is a Stuff You Should Know listener. Oh, neat. Oh, wow. Yeah, I found that out, and I was like, oh, I've got to get in touch with her. And I did, and now we are email buddies. And on the last New Pornographer's show in Atlanta, she was kind enough to meet me behind the bus, as they say, in the back parking lot. And we chatted for a while, and she's just wonderful. And she also, I'm going to plug her other band, because she has put out a great album last year with her band Front Person. So get Front Person. If you like synthy goodness and like a beautiful angelic voice, then get front person.

36:46Chuck Bryant:Speaking of synthy goodness, it's so funny you bring that up. Just today I discovered an entirely new genre of music called dungeon synth. Have you heard of it? What? No. Okay. Okay. It's a really well-named genre, but it is synth. Super like synthy synth, like 80s kind of synth. I love it. But the kind of synth that you would find is like the score to a 70s Hobbit cartoon movie, animated movie. It's super wizardy and fantasy. It just evokes all that stuff and does such a good job of it. But I've only heard one album. I can't remember whose it was, but check out Dungeon Synth. Yeah, Kill Frost is a Dungeon Synth band.

37:33Chuck Bryant:Nice work.

37:34Josh Clark:All right. Dungeon Synth and the Front Person album, their most recent one, Parade, is great. Very nice.

37:40Chuck Bryant:I think it's time for a break.

37:42Josh Clark:Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be back with more album reviews right after this.

37:58Josh Clark:I'm Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. You know what I love about cooking? the endless inspiration, sharing exceptional flavors, and of course, the best ingredients. I refuse to make a dish without them. McCormick has been and is an essential in the kitchen. Now McCormick's new line of signature seasonings make bringing fresh inspiration and endless versatility to everyday dishes easier than ever. There's the everyday essential, garlic and olive oil, the savory sweetness of caramelized onion, and globally inspired flavors like the herby with a touch of heat chimichurri, and chili garlic that elevates everything from ramen to stir fry to even grilled meats.

38:46Josh Clark:Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious. When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at mccormick.com.

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39:39Chuck Bryant:special forces as an army green beret and I was recommended to Rasmussen by a former student. She said she loved the culture. It was a family atmosphere. I went to visit the campus.

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40:13Chuck Bryant:So, Chuck, one thing you can say about humans is that we are action-oriented. Sure. In a lot of ways. I will give you that. It depends. We sit around and bicker and complain and moan and undermine one another. But when the chips are down, we can invent our way out of a lot of problems. And invention doesn't have to necessarily mean that we, you know, put some metal on metal and made it go on its own. It can be something like inventing new areas for species that are in danger of being lost to climate change to settle and make another part of their range out of.

40:53Josh Clark:Well, sir, it sounds like you were talking about forest-assisted migration. By God, I am. That's right. And that is basically, and we'll talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of this. That is human beings, scientists getting involved in the ecosystem and nature and spreading seed and sort of getting ahead of the pace if the pace isn't where it should be to keep up with climate change. Saying, well, let me give you a little help forward. and this is can be kind of thorny because it's it's humans like I said getting involved in the ecosystem in ways that science has long said let nature work it out and that's the best way to do it because you don't know what can happen once you start messing around.

41:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, like nature finds a way. It does. These guys are saying, the people who are in favor of this are saying, that made sense before July 2023, which is probably the hottest month in Earth's history, at least as far as since it cooled, basically. And that followed the hottest June ever, right? So these ecologists that are like, no, we need to take much more of an active hand in this are saying like, it's our obligation to do something. Not doing anything is going to be more destructive. It's like saying like, yeah, we shouldn't move these people out of this house that's being bulldozed over because we don't know what they're going to do in their new neighborhood.

42:21Chuck Bryant:So we're just going to stand there and watch them die as the bulldozer crushes them inside of their house. That's a pretty good analogy if I do congratulate myself here. It's very much akin to that. And so those ecologists have a pretty good point. It's like, yeah, it's not a great, perfect solution, but it's way better than doing nothing.

42:41Josh Clark:Yeah, and they're not doing it willy-nilly, though. They're very aware of the potential pitfalls like, you know, spreading disease and introducing something to an area that could be really bad for other things in that area. So they're not just out there, you know, with a seed cannon blasting stuff all over the place like Dolph Lundgren or something.

43:02Chuck Bryant:Wearing bike coat shorts.

43:05Josh Clark:There's a couple of different kinds, though. There's forest-assisted migration. The one that's really sort of thorny is assisted range expansion. So, like, if you're spreading something within the zone where it might still normally grow in, like, 200 years, that's one thing. If you're moving something completely out of that range, like, you know, they do forecasting and stuff, and they're like, what might this area look like 100 miles from here, 100 years from now? if they're moving something completely out of a range that it would even potentially grow, that gets way, way trickier. And I think there's less of that happening, right?

43:45Chuck Bryant:Yes, for sure. But you hit it on the head. They're saying like, okay, by 2100, what is this area going to be like? Is it going to be like where these red oaks like to live now in 2023? And if so, maybe we can give them a head start and hope that some of them will survive and adapt and start colonizing there, right? It gets even pricklier than assisted range expansion. There's another even more radical one called species rescue or assisted species migration. And that is where you take a plant completely out of its normal range, out of what you would even predict would be its normal range, and just move it somewhere it would never be.

44:25Right.

44:26Chuck Bryant:This is considered the riskiest of the three by ecologists because you can easily take something that's totally innocuous and benign under normal circumstances and make it into an invasive species when you move it. And the critics of this typically point to the Monterey pine as a good example.

44:45Josh Clark:Yeah, that's right. It's endangered in California. It is native to California. But they have introduced it in Australia. and it's, I don't know about wreaking havoc, but it's damaging the, it's an invasive species in Australia.

45:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. They consider it a weed and when they see it, they pluck it. They do not like those in New South Wales and Victoria, I believe, states.

45:09Josh Clark:Now that's a weed. Right. I don't know.

45:13Chuck Bryant:That's okay. Wasn't my best. No, I'm going to have to agree with you on that. I think you just came up with a brand new type of accent, frankly.

45:21Josh Clark:Yeah.

45:21Chuck Bryant:Can we hear it again?

45:23Josh Clark:No.

45:24Chuck Bryant:Okay. I'm just going to go back and replay it.

45:27Josh Clark:You know what's funny, though, is I use the lady on my phone that talks to me. What's it called on Apple? Siri. Siri, I guess. I don't use Siri, but I still have a voice for maps and stuff. And I usually go between an Irish woman and a Kiwi, a New Zealander. Oh, yeah? And the New Zealander says, right, and it always cracks me up.

45:49Chuck Bryant:That sounds like Matthew McConaughey. It does.

45:51Josh Clark:At the next street, take a ride.

45:54Chuck Bryant:I got to hear that. I didn't know you could do something that gee whiz to an Apple iPhone. Make it talk like a—

46:01Josh Clark:Oh, you got some regular old thing?

46:03Chuck Bryant:I don't do—like sounds, digital sounds are one of those—like I don't have misophonia, but if I do, it's for digital sounds. Like when I get a new computer, the first thing I do is turn off all sounds on it. Like any bings and bongs have to go. like I have to change my text sound every month or so because I'll just get like anxiety from it. I can't stand text sound, so I have to come up with a new one. I do not like them.

46:28Josh Clark:Well, you know what I do is I record my own text and phone rings and stuff. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I record my voice. Like when my phone rings, I never have my ringer on. But if it ever does, it's me going ring, ring, ring, ring. That's awesome. And if I get a text, it's me going text, man. That's great. Yeah. I get strange looks, but who cares?

46:48Chuck Bryant:Can I just use yours? Yeah, I'll send them to you if you want. Thank you.

46:52Josh Clark:Yeah. Or you can make one specific for Yumi, which is maybe just her sweet voice saying, hello, my love.

47:00Chuck Bryant:I used to have a ringtone with her singing that part from What's Love Got to Do With It. Yeah, exactly. But she just kept saying that over and over again. It was pretty great. Oh, I'd love to hear that. It's also kind of maddening. Yeah. No, it never was, actually. I never got sick of that one. I think that says a lot.

47:17Josh Clark:But it's better than...

47:20Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Man, you just stressed me out.

47:23Josh Clark:Sorry. You got anything else? No, I had a joke about your dislike of digital sounds, but your love of craft work flies in the face of that, but I won't even say it.

47:33Chuck Bryant:That's more a statement than a joke.

47:35Josh Clark:Yeah, true.

47:36Chuck Bryant:But it is true. It's quite accurate. I think that's it, Chuck.

47:41Josh Clark:Yeah, I got nothing else. This is a good one. And look out, you know, if you're in New Mexico and you see a palm tree growing, then watch out.

47:50Chuck Bryant:That's right. It means that you've gone tropical and you're in trouble now. Yeah, not in a good way. If you want to know more about plant migration, there's a lot of interesting stuff out there on the Internet to read. And go do that. And maybe go become an ecologist and figure out how to save the planet, please. Agreed. Since Chuck said agreed, it's time for listener mail.

48:13Josh Clark:This is from William Lloyd. We did a shorty on the NATO phonetic alphabet. And what we didn't consider was this. Hey, guys, being a pilot in prior Air Force, I was glad that you did one on this topic. It's not a correction. You guys did a good job. But you missed what I think is the best part, the numbers. The NATO alphabet is kind of a misnomer because it actually also includes numbers 0 through 9, but you can't really make a word starting from a number, so it's purely pronunciation. Most numbers are the same, with a notable exception of niner. We use niner instead of nine because over garbled radio it sounds like five, but mainly because NATO countries speak German.

48:59Josh Clark:Nine means no in German. Nice. Three is pronounced tree, to not be confused with the antiquated prefix sri, S-R-I. Four is two syllables, rhymes with lower, so you would say for. Sounds kind of funny. To differentiate it from, you know, F-O-R. And five is fife, to keep the word fire distinct in some dialects. Huh. This is good stuff. I feel dumb that we missed that. But that's all interesting, but you're probably thinking, does anyone actually say it like that? It depends. Niner is pretty universal. Plus, we think it makes us sound cool, which it does, of course. The rest are much less common, but depending where you are in the world and what dialects are involved, they're useful from time to time.

49:48Josh Clark:Signed, Tailwinds, Decker.

49:50Chuck Bryant:That's awesome. And also, what a great nickname, too. I hope that's your nickname and your parents didn't actually name you Tailwinds.

49:56Josh Clark:Well, no, no, no. Decker is the name. Tailwinds was the... Oh, the sign-off? Yeah.

50:02Chuck Bryant:The cheers or the one love? Exactly. So Decker's the first name.

50:08Josh Clark:Well, I don't know. It's just Decker. Decker may be a call sign, actually.

50:10Chuck Bryant:All right. Well, I love that. Thanks a lot, Decker. Much appreciated. I say niner whenever the occasion arises, you know?

50:18Josh Clark:I like that. You know, our good friend Joe Randazzo, formerly of The Onion and At Midnight Fame, our comedy writer friend. He signs his emails yours with a comma Joe Randazzo. That's great.

50:33Chuck Bryant:That's very warm. I think yours is

50:34Josh Clark:very, very warm. As is Joe.

50:36Chuck Bryant:Sure. It's perfect for him.

50:38Josh Clark:And as always, hi to the kids. Yeah.

50:41Chuck Bryant:Joe's kids who listen. Yeah, the Randazzo's. They're a listening family. The flying Randazzo's. They're a trapeze artist family just waiting to happen. They should be. We'll see. A lot's going to happen by the end of the century apparently. Who knows? That's right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Decker did and confuse me with your sign-off, I'd appreciate it. So would Chuck, too. He loves that kind of thing. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

51:13Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

51:29Chuck Bryant:I'm U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. We all seem to be in a rush these days, from work to driving our kids around. But when you're behind the wheel, please do not speed. A few minutes saved by going faster is never worth the risk. So follow the speed limit, enjoy the drive, maybe bring some snacks for the kids, and know that along the way, you're getting quality time with your family. Paid for by NHTSA.

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