The Fascinating History of Dandelions

11:22Chuck Bryant:That's pretty cool. I think so, too. Do you want to take a break and come back and talk about where they got their name? Let's do it.

11:41Josh Clark:What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

12:00Chuck Bryant:Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.

12:06Josh Clark:NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

12:54Chuck Bryant:So, Chuck, dandelion, I've never stopped and considered why it was called that. But it turns out that whole, that lion at the end is actually a giveaway for where the name came from. It's French for lion's tooth, dandelion. Pretty neat. I love that. The reason they call it that is it's a reference to the deeply serrated, jagged leaves. I guess somebody was like, that looks like a lion's tooth. And they lived in France, and that's where they got the name dandelion.

13:24Josh Clark:Yeah, and it's also, if you look at the botanical name, it really gives a good indication of what it was being used for back then. The genus name is Taraxacum. And there are a couple of explanations here. I kind of like the second one. The first one is a Greek word for disorder, which is ataxia. But it's also could have come from Arabic for bitter herb, which is terakshagag. And then when you combine bitter herb with the species name, which is, how would you say that? Officinelli?

13:57Chuck Bryant:I don't know.

13:57Josh Clark:Officinelli. That is a word for monastery storeroom. So a bitter herb in a monastery storeroom basically is telling you, hey, we use this plant in a very productive way. Yeah.

14:11Chuck Bryant:The whole disorder thing is totally insensible, if you ask me. Yeah, I agree. So one of the other great things, so humans use dandelions, as we'll see in a lot of different ways and have for a very long time. But our animal friends love dandelions too. Those flowers, even though they look kind of flimsy, if you think about it, they're rich in nectar, packed with it. So bees, butterflies, basically any kind of pollinators love dandelions. Like you said, the reason the stalk falls to the ground after flowering and as the seed heads are developing, that's because birds love the little dandelion seeds.

14:51Chuck Bryant:And one of the other things that's important about them too is they basically flower and seed almost around like the whole year, depending on where you live. So at times where there's not a lot of food sources for birds and pollinators, the dandelion's there to kind of keep them going through the, say, you know, late fall.

15:17Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah. And I think it's one of the first guys to get going in the spring, too, right?

15:21Chuck Bryant:I believe so, yeah.

15:23Josh Clark:So we're going to get more in detail about, you know, how it's been eaten. But actually, let's save all that. But let's just tease it then and say it has long been eaten and is now being eaten again due to the sort of foraging movement happening in the culinary world. That's a great tease. I think that kind of kicked off in COVID when people are like, well, I can't go to the store. What can I eat that's in my backyard?

15:49Chuck Bryant:I'll try dandelions. I've always wondered what they taste like. Bitter. So, yeah. Nice. So I think we said probably a couple times that people have been using dandelions for all sorts of reasons, not just as pot herbs. For a long time, one of the earlier mentions we can find was in the Arabic world. A couple of physicians named Razi's and Avicenna both wrote about some of the properties of dandelions and dandelion roots back in the 10th and 11th centuries. And most of what they were talking about was its use as a diuretic. And medicinally speaking, that's probably the most famous property that dandelions have is they make you pee.

16:34Chuck Bryant:And in fact, there's a couple of names that refer to that, depending on where you are, for dandelions that refer to the fact that they make you pee, right?

16:42Josh Clark:Yeah, that's right. In France, they're called the, apparently more than they're called the dente de Lyon, they're called the pissinlet, which means, you know, pee-pee in the night. And a folk name in England is a piss-a-bed. For the same reason. Yeah. And, you know, apparently it's all the potassium in there that's going to stimulate urination. And, you know, because of that, diuretics are used for a lot of things. And, you know, medicinally now and historically. if you want to work something through your system and pee it out, dandelions is a good way to make that happen.

17:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and very famously in the American Midwest, they're called pee-pee weeds. Aw. That's totally made up, I should say. Oh, that's not true either? No, I just made it up. Oh, okay. I got you. I got you back for the, what was the lateral gene transfer gospel group that you got me with?

17:37Josh Clark:Oh, geez, I don't even remember now. It was that. But I've only gotten you once. The score is Josh 3000. Oh, man.

17:47Chuck Bryant:There was a 16th century book, too. What was the name of that one? People call it Garden of Health because the full title of it is containing the sundry, rare and hidden virtues of all kinds of simples and plants together with the manner of how they are used and applied in medicine for the health of man's body against diverse diseases and infirmities most common against men, gathered by the long experience in industry of William Langham, practitioner of physic. That's the actual title of that book, which is why there's like, yeah, we're just going to call it Garden of Health.

18:22Josh Clark:I mean, Garden of Health really says what that says.

18:24Chuck Bryant:I know. He didn't need all that extra stuff. That's like the introduction, I think. He put the introduction in the title.

18:30Josh Clark:Yeah, that's a little, did it say the end at the end? Pretty much. This is from, like I said, the 16th century, And it talked a lot about, you know, all the kinds of things they thought it could help back then, toothaches, fevers, depression, even baldness. But they also talked about growing it alongside other vegetables and herbs in the garden. And you dug up this kind of cool fact. It's ethylene gas that they release. So if you actually grow dandelions or have dandelions growing near fruiting plants like tomatoes, they're going to ripen faster.

19:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Isn't that neat? Super cool. Yeah, we're going to cover a lot of actually pretty cool little benefits, I guess, that they provide. But let's keep going with the tradition of using them medicinally, shall we? Sure. There's a guy named John Gerard who wrote a book in the 1630s, and he's like, hey, I want to contribute to this too. I've found that dandelion strengthens the weak stomach, which is important because actually if you use the roots of a dandelion, it contains a lot of inulin, which is an important prebiotic for gut health. So John Gerard wasn't just Whistlin' Dixie.

19:40Josh Clark:No, not at all. It turns out they have more vitamin A than spinach, more vitamin C than tomatoes. They've got a ton. We already mentioned potassium, but also a lot of calcium, a lot of iron, and then a lot of words that I can barely pronounce that you found that it's packed with, starting with flavonoids. That's the only one I had heard of.

20:02Chuck Bryant:It has triterpenes, sesquiterpenes, phenolic acids, sterols, and coumarins. And they bestow things like antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, and anti-tumor properties. And you dug up a lot of ways that they actually help health, right?

20:21Josh Clark:Yeah. So, I mean, we can talk all day about like the ways that people thought it would help you back in the 16th century. But people might poo-poo something like that. But there have been modern studies. I'll just give you a few examples. There was a study from 2015 in Canada that reported that dandelion extract can block ultraviolet UVB radiation. That's crazy. When applied to the skin, it can also irritate the skin. So don't necessarily just take dandelions and start rubbing them all over yourself at the pool. There was a 2016 review of studies from a university in Denmark that suggests that dandelion extracts actually stimulates pancreatic cells to produce insulin, so it could potentially help control blood sugar.

21:08Josh Clark:And what about those ones on the liver too, right?

21:10Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I said it was hepatoprotective, which means it helps the liver, and actually it goes in and just kicks butt in your liver. It slows the progression of fibrosis, which is scarring of the liver. And the extract actually inactivates the cells that cause fibrosis in the liver. And essentially, your liver, as everybody knows, it can regenerate itself. Once the dandelion extract has gone in and stopped the fibrosis, the liver can heal. So it's incredibly helpful with protecting the liver from damage. I mean, that's nuts. It's almost like it was designed to do that for the liver. It's that effective.

21:50Josh Clark:I do want to mention the cancer one because Emily had a very funny, very Emily line. There was a 2020, man, why do I do that lately? 2012, I did that on Tuesday too. You do that a lot, yeah. What is happening?

22:04Chuck Bryant:I don't know.

22:04Josh Clark:It's a study from the University of Windsor in Canada about dandelion root extract can induce apoptosis, which is cell death and pancreatic and prostate cancer in test tube, in their cells in the test tubes, potentially preventing their spread. So this is something Emily knew. And this morning she was like, yeah, it's so like modern American at the very least to take something that could actually help fight cancer and spray chemicals on it to kill it that cause cancer. Right.

22:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

22:38Josh Clark:And she stormed out of the room.

22:39Chuck Bryant:Sometimes we have to learn the hard way, but it is reassuring that things seem to be coming full circle. You know what I mean?

22:45Josh Clark:Yeah, I feel like people are getting a little more eyes open to stuff like that.

22:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah, they're getting on board the dandelion train. So one thing about those studies that you said, like they're essentially confirming to our modern tastes what the Chinese knew all the way back in 659 CE. people like Nicholas Culpepper knew in the 18th century. All these people wrote about this stuff and just how effective it was. And then now science is going in and saying these people were right. And here's how it is effective. I think that's pretty cool. And in part because of that, the dandelion is being rehabilitated. But first, I think we need to mention, you said that it came by North America.

23:30Chuck Bryant:I piped up on purpose. I think more than once even. I was so excited about that. And it's possible it was actually on the Mayflower. It arrived that early. And they think that because of plant migration, as we talked about before, the dandelion may have spread ahead of Europeans as they entered further and further into the North American continent. And so Native Americans that they encountered may have already been using dandelions in some of their medicines.

23:59Josh Clark:Oh, yeah, absolutely. They were drinking it in tonics. they were boiling it with fatty meats, which sounds disgusting.

24:08Chuck Bryant:It does. It really does.

24:10Josh Clark:Fatty meats.

24:10Chuck Bryant:Unless you're talking about something like collards with like ham hocks or something. That sounds okay. But in this case, I imagine a pot of boiling water with a skin of fat just bubbling at the top and some dandelion leaves floating around in it.

24:26Josh Clark:And we'll talk about more ways you can eat it, but it's long been used in like cordials and beers, like the dandelion root. You can, you know, grind it up and use it as like a coffee substitute, kind of like chicory. So, you know, people were using it for medicine. They were using it for old kinds of folk remedies and foods and things, largely because, again, it was everywhere. It grows in not very good soil. It's considered a perennial because they can live, well, because like you said, they're kind of growing year-round, but they can live for more than 10 years if you don't mess with them. Isn't that neat?

24:59Josh Clark:And kill them, yeah.

25:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think that's pretty cool too. One of the other things I saw, there's a book called The Economical Housewife from the 1850s that it might be the first recipe for dandelion wine. And people still make that today. And it's actually super easy. You just take some dandelion flowers, some water. Eventually you add some sugar and some lemon, let it sit for a couple of weeks, strain it out, and then let it sit for another week and age. And you've got yourself some dandelion wine. and it sounds deliciously easy or maybe easily delicious, one of the two. But I'd love to try it. Have you ever had dandelion wine or dandelion beer or anything like that?

25:38Josh Clark:No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely a thing. Ray Bradbury had a novel called Dandelion Wine from 1957, so it's something that's been enjoyed all over the world. In France, they use it sometimes. They'll take the leaves and blanch them and spread them with bread and butter. Like, it sounds like if there's not a Brooklyn restaurant serving dandelion toast at this point, then what is happening in our world? I don't know.

26:05Chuck Bryant:It sounds like fairy toast, like the Australians love, but with dandelion leaves instead. Yeah.

26:11Josh Clark:It's also, you know, just a salad, a salad green component. And like we said, it is very bitter, but it's used in all kinds of salads. Sometimes it's the only kind of leaf used in a salad. Sometimes it can be mixed in with other things. But in France, they have one called the Salade de Pissinlitz from that original name that's got bacon in it and dandelion leaves. It just, you know, sounds pretty good to me.

26:36Chuck Bryant:Yeah, apparently that was a common dish during the Depression in America, too, because it was just cheap, you know? Yeah. And it sounds delicious, too. I say we take a break and we come back and talk about another surprising use of dandelion that I hadn't heard of until this. But you probably did because of Emily.

26:57Josh Clark:No, I delighted her with that fact as well. So we'll be right back.

27:24Josh Clark:You're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

27:33Chuck Bryant:Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, a.k.a.

27:40Josh Clark:Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

28:27Josh Clark:All right, so Josh said that he hadn't heard of this cool fact. I hadn't heard of it. Emily hadn't heard of it. And I think it may be the fact of the podcast. But dandelions are a source of natural rubber.

28:43Chuck Bryant:Pretty cool. Full stop. I would take issue with that. I think it has to do with the vortices over the pappy or the fact that they're potterbs. All right. This one's good. It's up there. Maybe they're all tied for first. I don't know.

28:59Josh Clark:Hey, that means we've got a good topic if there are several competitors. Yeah.

29:03Chuck Bryant:And so not just any dandelion produces rubber or latex that can be turned into rubber. A specific type of dandelion, they figured out the Kazakh dandelion, which is native to the Eurasian steppes. How'd you like that? It's also called the Russian dandelion here in the United States. That specific one puts out enough latex that it gave rubber trees a run for their money during World War II, which we've talked about many times. America and Britain were like, we need more rubber for the war effort. And the Japanese control, essentially all of the rubber supply. We're at war with the Japanese, so we better come up with something else quick.

29:48Yeah.

29:48Josh Clark:So they literally started screening like thousands and thousands of plants. And I guess they were like, hey, if the rubber tree can grow rubber, there's got to be something else out there. The Soviets are the ones who said, try this Kazakh dandelion. And because of shortages during the wars, they said, here, here's a bunch of seeds. And they sent a bunch of those Kazakh seeds, the Soviet allies at the time in the 1940s. And ultimately, we use some of it. Russians, Americans and Germans did produce rubber from dandelions. It's very hardy. It can be susceptible to disease, though, depending what kind of disease.

30:29Josh Clark:but also grows everywhere and serves as a pollinator and it doesn't deforest things. So the big problem, though, and I know everyone's like, oh, my God, this is the miracle we've all been hoping for with rubber. It just doesn't yield as much as the Russians said it did. And so it's not economically viable as long as the real rubber tree is around.

30:50Chuck Bryant:They released some paper that overstated how much rubber can be gotten from the dandelion because they wanted to sound like big shots.

30:59Josh Clark:Yeah.

30:59Chuck Bryant:So the reason why we didn't just keep going with dandelion rubber research in trying to figure out how to increase yields is because in the meantime, people figured out we could make synthetic rubber from petroleum. It was almost as good as natural rubber. It certainly was a good enough substitute. And we could just make batch after batch after batch rather than have to try to yield it from dandelion. So that fell to the wayside. And then by the time World War II ended, we had access to natural rubber supplies from the Southeast Asia, I should say. And so all that kind of put dandelion rubber on the back shelf.

31:39Chuck Bryant:But in the, what, 80, almost 100 years, geez, since World War II, I remember when that was like just like that was firmly like 40 to 50 years in the past. and it just keeps getting further and further away. It's really awful. But we've kind of figured out in the interim that synthetic rubber, it's useful, but there's nothing that can match natural rubber for like grip, heat dissipation, all sorts of other properties. So we're starting to go back to look at sources for natural rubber, including ones that are more sustainable than the rubber trees, which require you basically deforest and then plant the rubber trees to create a plantation.

32:22Chuck Bryant:with dandelions, you don't have to do that stuff.

32:25Josh Clark:No, you got a big field, you can have dandelions. And like I said, it grows in, it doesn't have to be great soil. You can grow it hydroponically without soil at all. You can grow it in the air, which is aeroponically. It's pretty amazing. And I think it's one of those things where like, anytime you have a monoculture plant like that, like the rubber tree, it makes people a little bit nervous besides the deforestation. Like if anything ever happened, like some kind of weird blight and the rubber trees were just, you know, not a candidate anymore. You got dandelions kind of waiting on deck with their bat.

32:58Chuck Bryant:Right. So it's kind of surprising that it went from this really prized plant in so many ways to a hated weed, especially in Europe and the United States. And you hit upon why it became a hated weed. You use the word monoculture. And the largest monoculture here in the United States are people's lawns. And for part of the aesthetic of the lawn, you cannot have dandelions breaking up that perfect unbroken sea of green grass. You got a dandelion popping up, the whole thing's ruined, basically. That's the way people think of dandelions in lawns these days, or have since about the 50s, essentially.

33:39Chuck Bryant:That beautiful yellow flower. Stomp it! Right.

33:43Josh Clark:Dig it up. But yeah, that's what happened. And we've gone over this before, but just sort of as a quick overview. This is the kind of thing that came over from England starting in the 17th century is when British aristocracy really started to get into these perfect sort of croquet playing lawns, I guess is what you would call them. And then in America, it was post-World War II when suburbanization really took hold. Lawnmowers really came into their own. everyone was like, hey, we've got these great new chemicals that'll kill everything and make the grass grow really, really well. And it's just modern and tidy and good looking.

34:28Josh Clark:And that really kind of transformed the United States. You know, like keep up that lawn, make a perfect green lawn if you want to keep your property value up, everybody.

34:37Chuck Bryant:That's a big one. Kyle also dug up another reason too, that once the Cold War rolled around, conformity was equated with safety. So if you weren't keeping your lawn trimmed like everybody else, what's going on with you? You're making me feel a little bit nervous because you're not conforming. You must be a red spy hiding out in suburbia, basically. Right. And I think that's a really important kind of overlooked driver for things like perfectly manicured lawns and everybody having the same kind of thing. Yeah.

35:08Josh Clark:And speaking of driver, the other I don't think we've ever mentioned, contributor to this, was in the 1950s, golf started being televised. In 1957, you got golf on television for the first time. And people look at Augusta National and these golf courses that were beautifully manicured and aesthetically pleasing to the eye. And they're like, hey, I need to get some of that in my front yard. Maybe I can practice chipping some balls around in my front yard.

35:38Chuck Bryant:Also, if you're sitting there thinking like, wow, I really love hearing these guys talk about grass, but I'd love to hear them have a dispute over it. You should go listen to how our grass works episode. It's actually a pretty good one. It's a classic stuff you should know episode.

35:52Josh Clark:It totally is. But anyway, all that preamble about, you know, us poopooing lawns and why America did that brought us to this, which is weeds became enemy number one and dandelions were maybe even near the top of that list. Yeah.

36:09Chuck Bryant:There's a lot of reasons why for all the reasons that they're valuable, the pollinators and other kinds of plants, and that they can grow in marginal lands and basically everywhere, is it makes them an enemy as a weed if you're trying to create a monoculture lawn, right? So they can regenerate from like a one-inch section of root, which means that if you cut a dandelion off at the, even below ground level, it's like good, you know, good try pal but it just sprouts right back up you have to dig them up and even after you dig them up you might not get them because one of the things that i didn't know about dandelions is i knew they grew from a taproot you have to get that taproot up or else it's just futile yeah but that taproot can grow depending on the age of the dandelion over a dozen feet meters four meters into the ground.

37:01Chuck Bryant:Meters. And that makes it really hard to get rid of. And so if you're like a groundskeeper for a golf course or something like that, you have to really keep up with the dandelions because they'll spread really fast and they're really hard to get rid of once you do start trying to get rid of them.

37:18Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And I got to say this last fact from Kyle because it goes back to the lawns, but this really kind of drives it home about how not great a perfect green lawn is for our society. There was a study in 2005. Residential lawns in the United States make up 2 % of the land but require more irrigation than any domestic agricultural crop.

37:42Chuck Bryant:I've got one to piggyback on that. Let's hear it. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that homeowners use up to 10 times more pesticides per acre than farmers use on their crops. So we're using this stuff, overusing it, and we're using it on stuff that's not productive land just to keep up with the Joneses so they don't think we're communist spies.

38:05Josh Clark:Yeah, you know, I walk Gibson in the mornings and there are the only lawns that he ever like rubs his face in are the most perfect green ones. And I know that it's because they have recently been sprayed and he smells it and is trying to rub all in that stuff. and it drives me bonkers.

38:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's like I would love to just let my lawn, and you and me too, just go to like wildflowers, go to weeds, you know, just mow it. You keep it mowed, but at a higher height. But yeah, you just let this stuff grow and we would be completely, we would stick out like a sore throat from the rest of the neighborhood so much that our neighbors would be mad at us. That's how entrenched the idea of having a perfect lawn is still in the United States, depending on where you live.

38:56Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And like no one around there even does like permaculture and, you know, other options besides just letting it grow wild and crazy.

39:04Chuck Bryant:No, it's not. So we definitely draw a line. So we're like, OK, we'll keep up with the lawn, but don't touch the, you know, the shrubbery, the perennials, the garden, essentially. Right. But people will hire the same company to like treat their lawn with chemicals to spray their bushes and spray their gardens with chemicals to kill off the bugs. And then they have to go in and try to recreate the stuff that the bugs are doing for free, the services they're providing, because you've killed off the bugs. It's insane to me. So we definitely don't cotton to that.

39:41Josh Clark:Yeah. Speaking of bugs, there was a scientific review in 2019 that found that the global mass of insects is falling at a rate of about two and a half percent per year. And dandelions is a high, high on the list of pollinators. Caterpillars love munching on them. Moths love munching on them. And all those bees and butterflies love doing their thing on them. So even, you know, I'm not trying to shame people, but let's say you do like your lawn and everything, even waiting in the spring, like longer to cut it, even cutting it higher, letting the dandelions grow up a little bit before you start whacking them down.

40:21Josh Clark:Even that minimal amount will help out a little bit.

40:24Chuck Bryant:What's interesting is a non-chemical way I saw to treat your turf grass for dandelions is to let your grass grow longer than you have been, like cutting it at a higher mower height.

40:36Josh Clark:Because as

40:37Chuck Bryant:we talked about, dandelion leaves are so low growing that the grass will shade out and out compete the dandelions. So if you really do want to get rid of dandelions, but you don't want to use chemicals, that's a pretty good way to do it from what I've seen.

40:50Josh Clark:Yeah, totally. Some states have actual programs. There's one in Minnesota called Lawns to Legumes, which is a great title. They launched that in 2019, where they just basically incentivize people to say, get rid of that lawn, put in flowering plants, put in beds. You can have a rebate if you have a pollinator friendly native wildflower scene at your house.

41:15Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I didn't look up the amount, but I would guess at a minimum, the rebate is worth a million dollars. That'd be my guess. You think so? There's a couple other things that I found that dandelions, I don't know if you looked at it or not, that they kind of provide services to the plants growing around them, including grass. Yeah. Because as we mentioned, those tap roots, they grow really deep. And as they're growing deep, they're actually accessing nutrients that other plants around them, again, including grass, the roots of those plants can't reach because it's too deep. And it brings those nutrients up toward the surface.

41:56Chuck Bryant:And as the dandelion dies off, the other plants get to eat those nutrients that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to. and those same roots also aerate and loosen compacted dirt too, which makes it easier for the plants around the dandelions to grow.

42:14Josh Clark:Amazing.

42:15Chuck Bryant:Is there anything dandelions can't do?

42:20Josh Clark:I don't know. I mean, they're not super fragrant.

42:24Chuck Bryant:No, that's true. They're pretty much useless in that sense.

42:28Josh Clark:But they can grant a child a wish.

42:30Chuck Bryant:They sure can, man. They sure can. I remember doing that so many times. I keep trying to do that with my dandelion puff head in resin, and it's not working.

42:40Josh Clark:I don't have anything else, though. I'm kind of looking over the list here. I know we were kind of all over the place, but it's just sort of one of those episodes where it's like, well, here's a list of 100 amazing things. And so sometimes those are a little tougher to organize.

42:53Chuck Bryant:Yeah, but they can be pretty fun, too. I had fun, at least. How about you? I did, too. And that rubber thing? Are you kidding me? No. Yeah. Since neither one of us has anything else about dandelions, then we're going to call it quits on this episode, which means we've just activated listener mail.

43:10Josh Clark:You know, no listener mail today, because what we're going to do is something we haven't done in a while, is help support and bring some attention to a great cause, our friends from the Cooperative for Education, a.k.a. Coed, whose mission it is to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala through education. and we've been working with them for 15 years, and we got a new thing coming up with them, right?

43:31Chuck Bryant:Yes, we do. So first, let me just explain. Over$1.3 million in contributions have been made to COED thanks to our partnership with them at Stuff You Should Know for 15 years. That's really good, if you ask me. That's incredible. Which means that 160 kids have been given a huge leg up to escape poverty and break intergenerational poverty and create literally a new life for their entire family from that point on.

44:00Josh Clark:That's right. We went down there, I guess, 15 years ago when they invited us very early on in Stuff You Should Know's Canon? Yeah. In our history. And we went down to Guatemala and we did some shows on that trip and that visit. We get to actually hear Jerry speak, which is pretty exciting. Yeah. And they're just great. We've been working with them ever since, and the fact that the Stuff You Should Know Army has raised$1.3 million for them over the past 15 years is going to be a real proud part of our legacy. But we have a call to action, right?

44:31Chuck Bryant:Yes. So you can join. We're starting a drive, essentially, right now.

44:36Josh Clark:That's right.

44:36Chuck Bryant:You can join the cooperative, which is a program of theirs for$20 a month, and you'll collectively sponsor a bunch of students in the RISE Youth Development Program, right?

44:47Josh Clark:That's right.

44:47Chuck Bryant:And so it's going to get spread out. You're going to be helping a bunch of kids at once so you can feel good like five times over with each each monthly donation. And then in 2025, more than eleven hundred students will be able to start school in rural Guatemala, which will be their biggest class ever. They need help to make that happen, which is why we're saying join the cooperative.

45:10Josh Clark:That's right. And as an incentive, if this is for you, if you set up your gift by Tuesday, December 3rd, then you are signed up for a chance to do a virtual hangout with Josh and I. We do this every year around the same time. It's always a lot of fun. We hang out with, I don't know, six or eight people all over the country. And they get to just, you know, ask us questions and tell us that we're cool or dumb or whatever. It's your chance to really hand it to us if that's what you're after. Right.

45:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Hopefully don't do that. But sure. I mean, I guess if you've given to co-ed, then you deserve to do whatever you want to.

45:42Josh Clark:That's right. So just go to cooperativeforeducation.org. That's the word cooperative, F-O-R, education.org slash S-Y-S-K. And start giving now. A little bit goes a long way down there.

45:56Chuck Bryant:Yes. And in the meantime, while you're looking up cooperativeforeducation.org slash S-Y-S-K, you can also send us an email. send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

46:12Josh 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.

46:29Josh Clark:Peace to the planet. Charlamagne the Godhead. Listen, we are back. The Black Effect Podcast Festival is back in Atlanta on April 25th at Pullman Yard. And the full lineup is nuts. We got the Grits and Eggs podcast, Deontay Kyle and Big Ice Cup Cat. We got Club 520 with Jeff Teague and the gang. Don't call me white, girl. Mona will be there. Keep it positive, sweetie, with Crystal Renee. We got Reality with the King with Carlos King. And yes, Drink Champ will be in the building. Plus, you know, we're going to have a lot of guests. So you need to join us. And we got the Black Effect Marketplace to pitch your podcast and everything you expect from the Black Effect Podcast Festival.

47:07Josh Clark:Tickets are on sale right now. Go get yours at blackeffect.com slash podcast festival. Don't play yourself, okay? Pull up.

47:18Josh Clark:What if mind control is real?

47:20Chuck Bryant:If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

47:23Josh Clark:Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.