November 15, 2023 • 58 mins
Pretty much every living thing relies on plants. Through the superpower of photosynthesis, they function as the great translators of solar energy, powering the planet. Yet like any other living thing, they are vulnerable to changes in the world around them -- and scientists are increasingly concerned that, one day, plants may cease photosynthesis entirely. So... what happens when it stops?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Breathe in the air.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Do you have a mantra? Do you guys have a
mantra when you meditate? I have a breath work.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I have a few.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah, but also I uh, we were talking about this
just briefly off air tonight's episode. We're diving into some
stuff that maybe we didn't all appreciate in grade school,
because it's like, why do I have to learn all
these abstract facts?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Oh dude, That's where it's been coming back to me from.
Like I'm flashing back to like middle school and maybe
later elementary school, learning about photosynthesis and like the water cycle.
I'm literally picturing these diagrams from textbooks.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
They're flashing through my mind.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, my mantra is fosspho glycerie.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
That's that is a really good mind light number of syllables.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Nine is goose and we so.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
A while back, folks, we on I think a strange
news segment. We talked a little bit about a fascinating
study that led us collectively to a new appreciation of
one of Earth's most underrated life forms, plants. You know,
towering trees, humble shrubs, weeds, everything in between. And weed,
by the way, is a very unfair linguistic trick.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
Yeah, except for like, you know, the one that you smoke,
that one for some reason.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Which is yeah, totally sure. But yeah, what makes us
shrub humble?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Though?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
I love that because it does it feels that way.
But what makes the shrubs so humble? If you combine
a bunch of shrubs, it could be quite ostentatious.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
M especially if you trim it into a topious shape shape. Uh. Yeah.
The the thing is again, you know, for all of
human civilization, people have been anthropomorphizing everything in the world
around them, and of course plants are no different. We
as we owe, all of civilization is not hyperbole. All
(02:37):
of civilization two plants, and for most of history. That
was awesome. I was not a problem. Plants were dope
ten ten No notes for now. So what may change
and when would it change? What does that mean? Here
are the facts?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Give it up to plants. Who you like steak? You
like plant in.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
The Wait a minute?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
What?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Where those like exist coexisting? Or is it like if
you like steak, you'll like plants can't have like seak.
You can't have steak without photo.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
You can't have your favorite things and your least favorite things,
you can't have them without plants. And because of their
superpowered photosynthesis that we can eat it.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Too, like the literal superpower.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
It is a superpower. Wild.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I understand the science, and it still doesn't really make sense,
Like how evolution just fruit force hacked to that one.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, we're gonna get into it, but like literally, so
sunlight is the powerhouse, right, The sun is the powerhouse
for all life that we know, and somehow these cells
specialized in a way to take that sunlight and all
the water that's going on on this planet and make stuff.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Well, not to mention the whole Goldilocks zone of it.
All of the sun is also the perfect distance away
to give us that you know, rejuvenating energy without like
frying our eyeballs out of our skulls or setting the
forests on fire.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
For now.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Yeah, I'm just saying the perfection of this fluke whatever,
whatever you may believe, The science of it as bonkers,
and the fact that it works and just kind of
always has been, it's mind blowing. And then we figured
out how to farm, you know, and just kind of
extend that whole natural process.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah, I agree, it's pretty fascinating. I'm always taken with
the the the order of operations cognitively, the Goldilocks zone argument,
because if life evolved very differently, if we're on, say,
another planet in the Solar System, would that planet's life
forms not also make the same Goldilocks argument. We evolved
(04:46):
to fit the shoe. The shoe did not evolve around us.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Right, You're totally right. The plants developed those abilities because
of conditions over time. Right, Like I say, it was
always there, but in our minds it was just like
this is for you, for shade, you know, for sustenance,
for medicine. I mean, it's we can it's a whole
other axe.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, there's a reference I had to cut to Sean
Connery's Medicine Man, which it shouldn't have anything to do with.
It was just a reason to talk about that film.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
He brought it back. Tell us about medicine.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
That counts now you could you could it was.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
A grumpy hit a ponytail.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I remember he has a white ponytail, and he was
sort of a Jane Goodall type figure, like a bit.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Of a white savior story.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
If I'm not mistaken a bit for a little problematic,
it probably didn't age well.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
But I do remember seeing in the theaters.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Same and then as now in the in the theatrical
run of Medicine Man, as well as the ancient past
in the current day. As you said, Matt, the world
has always, for the most part run on solar power.
It Uh something that I think we all look back
on fondley was during the days when uh, the giant
(05:59):
non fiction company Discovery owned our little podcast, they would
occasionally send us these very high production value, prestigious documentary
collections Planet Earth and of course Life. And one thing
that got to me about though, is that still stays
with me, is that observation that almost every single earthly ecosystem,
(06:22):
regardless of how different they may appear to be. They
all depend on the Sun for energy, with a few exceptions.
I think one would be deep sea thermal vents, those
little mini ecosystems they get their energy from those hydrothermic
off bleeds.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah, anything in the Abystle system where the light no
longer reaches, you can count on other energy sources being utilized.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
You could also say that they still they still get
solar powered, just through more steps because of animals that
are closer to the surface of the ocean when they
die or per day a pun one.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Thing about all the crazy adaptations that that results in.
You know that these these particularly deep sea dwelling creatures
that have like headlamps and stuff, and you know, again
part of the whole system and the whole Goldilocks zone
of it all, like that particular zone created that particular
type of life.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
But the Sun still kind of, like you said, was involved.
I mean, think about it, like, Okay, this is one
of the dumb facts that always that still captures me
about those documentaries. Cave systems, even the majority of cave
systems get their power through the Sun, but in what
humans might call a somewhat ignoble way they get it
from excrement from like Guato. When bats fly to.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
The surface, they fly back in.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And I can't remember was it David Attenborough who narrated those.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Oh, he did the Planet Earth ones, but then there
was like a recut version where I think the Sigourney
Weaver did it. There's also, obviously, I'm sure that Morgan
Freeman has done some over the years, but yeah, Davy
Attenborough is the main, main guy talking about I always
think about ace Ventura when nature calls. That's what I
think of when I think of Guana.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I just remember our pal. I think it was Dave,
and Dave apologies and forget us wrong, but I remember
when our pal was like, walts about caves. Surely they
don't use the sun. And I'm sitting there, I'm like,
eat a sandwich so fast, observe. That's like he's into it.
(08:27):
And so we're all. Even though we may not all
universally love the sun, we can admit that it keeps
Earth going. In addition to feeding everything in plants, it
creates wind, ocean currents, oceanic currents, clouds to transport water
and inspire poets and so on. For about five billion years,
this guy has been amazing the sun and potentially catastrophic
(08:55):
power source. And people don't spend too much time I'm
you know, thinking about the grand scheme of things in
a scientific bent. For much of human history just sort
of always knew. Everybody always knew that the sun is
the creator of livestock, agriculture, you know what I mean.
(09:15):
And National Geographic had a great, a great quote about
this about how the sun's placement even affected architecture forever.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Basically, well, yeah, is that we're talking about where we
put windows and entrances. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yes, And the quote goes, early civilizations around the world
positioned buildings to face south to gather heat and light.
They used windows and skylights for the same reason as
well as to allow.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
For air circulation.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Genius, and like what, we haven't really improved on that technology,
at least in terms of like dwellings, you know, I mean,
obviously there's climate control and stuff, but skylights, windows, if
you don't have those, all your plants are going to die.
All of your house plants are going to to die.
And you can get like grow lights and stuff, but
it's so key to have that sunlight entering your house
(10:06):
directly if you're gonna keep plants alive.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Well, yeah, it also changed like what types of materials
were used to build those houses and structures, right, because
some materials absorb that heat from the sun a little
better than others.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, stone and concrete for instance, And also the construction
of greenhouses leveraging solar power to grow plants out of
season or an otherwise inhospitable climates. Aka, you know that
with the global shipping conspiracy is the reason that you
can eat so many things in far flung areas of
(10:44):
the world. At every step along the way, plants have
been right there, you know what I mean, they've been
the is Andy Richter, the guy who works with Conan O'Brien.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
He did, yeah, the show eventually.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But plants are the Andy Richter to the son's Conan O'Brien.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And yeah, because you know if they make oxygen too,
they do.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
They do.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
The sun does not care really about If the Sun
is God, then plants are like.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Jesus, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
That's good too, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I mean
this is all we could all listen to this and say, yeah,
this basic stuff, solar architecture, I get it. I don't
have to be a biologist, a botanist, or an astronomer
to get my mind around the basics.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Here.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You guys are talking about photosynthesis, fundamental part of life.
It's up there with how everybody knows. I still don't
know how this became a meme. But all of us
know one thing about mitochondria. It's the powerhouse of the cell.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I didn't even know that one thing you do.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Yeah, one thing that's like I was probably tucked away
somewhere back there.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
But yeah, well, we all learned about photosynthesis if you
went through basic schooling and took any kind of life
science class, right, I mean, it's one of the first
things you learned, photosynthesis.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
I remember the drawing of a leaf with little animated
rays of light going in with arrows on it on
one side and then coming out as little blips of
like molecule models or whatever.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
You remember, you guys pictures.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Oh yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, and they'll break it down for you. In preparation
for this episode, a lot of us looked back at
just the just relearning right, all the things that we
learned as kids, and one of the greatest things you
can do right now is Head on over to YouTube
and just watch some of the some of the con
Academy videos from like twenty ten that actually break that
(12:33):
stuff down. The way you're describing Noel with diagrams with
a professor sitting there and showing you here's all the stuff.
It's it's not like, what was that movie Chlorophyl? More
like bora Phyl? Was that was that? In my head?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I don't know, but I do remember it's.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
A Oh god, that is a movie. Somebody right in
what movie is say? Anyway, it's so amazing to really
look at it and see the biological structures that exist
within plants that actually do these processes, because it is
just a beautiful machine at work in every leaf that
(13:10):
uses photosynthesis.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Billy Madison, that's it, Billy bad Oh boy. I wasn't
expected to Adam to show up. Welcome, Welcome, mister Sandler.
You're You're absolutely right, man. That's such a that's such
a beautiful description. It's going to set us up for
a beautiful episode in a later evening about whether plants
are cultivating humans and the nature of that relationship is
(13:37):
So this is all true. Nothing is controversial about this.
This is all biochemistry and botany that we have learned
some piece of in most of the world. But there's
a new wrinkle occurring, but a wrinkle that has some scientists,
not all, but some incredibly concerned. Riddle is this, folks,
(13:59):
What if it's some point in the near future plants
just sort of stop working. We're not talking about a
world of you know, sentient plants going on strike or
taking collective action. We're talking instead about a world where
photosynthesis is no longer possible. And why that should terrify everyone.
(14:21):
So let's take a break for a word from our
sponsors and we'll be back so long as we have
enough oxygen to continue. Here's where it gets crazy bonkers, right,
plants without photosynthesis. That's like a McDonald's that doesn't make fries.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, it wouldn't be wouldn't be great. And just so
everybody understands, we're talking about photosynthesis. Okay, Well, there are
two things here, right, photosynthesis as a process. Is it
possible There's a scenario in which the entire planet Earth,
(15:04):
all across the board, from the leaves to the algae
to the bacteria, all the things that use energy from
the Sun to create oxygen and you know, the atp
and the things that the all those organisms need to grow.
Is it possible that that process could stop because of
some exterior factor.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Or not not even all of it stopping, but enough
of it stopping a high enough percentage that it would
render life as we know it non feasible.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Heard, Okay, that that would be Yeah, that would be
catastrophic for sure. And it's probably not something that could
ever occur in the flick of a switch, right, It
wouldn't just stop. But maybe there's a scenario where the
lights across the Earth start to slowly go out, you know,
starting in one region, and then they just continue to
go out, like some giant power outage.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Yeah, like the internet outage I just experienced covered from
I'm backing down, guys, thank.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
You for glad.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
We're glad to Isn't it funny though, like the microcosm
that you're talking about, Matt, It's like these artificial lights
are in a way, like an extension of this whole ecosystem,
this whole continuum that we're talking about, Like they wouldn't
exist either, and now there's this like whole other layer
of inorganic kind of but yet somehow weirdly organic in
(16:23):
origin stuff that kind of mimics the sun.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well, yeah, because each individual bacterium or algae or you know,
let's just say leaf, each one is a power plant, right,
And you do have to imagine that if somehow these
power plants just cease to function, or like the mechanisms
inside the power plants just broke.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
It doesn't have to be one hundred percent for the
results the consequences to be catastrophic. And part of the
reason it's easy to ignore these sort of things is
the vast discrepancy between what is considered a short amount
of time in a human life and a short amount
of time for life on Earth. Right, So a short
amount of time for life on Earth is still thousands
(17:10):
and thousands and thousands, if not millions of years this thing.
If plants one hundred percent, like you said, Matt In
almost as though the were switch being turned. If plants
all of a sudden stop photosynthesis, the world as we
know it would end incredibly quickly. It would not be
part of some purposeful conspiracy, but rather an accidental global
(17:33):
conspiracy on the part of every single human being. And
that's because there are a lot of plants to your
point all about the goldilock situation. There are currently an
estimated somewhere around three hundred and seventy five thousand species
of plants, but they're more being discovered each and every year.
(17:53):
And though I hesitate to use the phrase, they're not
all created equally. Some evolved to exist only in extremely
specific circumstances. I'm thinking of the largest flowering plant, the
corpse flower.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Brotty meat supposed to be a delight.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Yeah, But even like cacti, you know, like I think
I sounded a little wistful earlier when I was talking
about you gotta have windows.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Or you'll kill your plants.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
I killed my plants constantly because my house doesn't have
very much direct sunlight exposure because of the direction it's facing.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
But I can keep a cactus alive.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, And look other plants to the point about the cactus.
Other plants are pretty hardy, and they have a large,
let's say, margin of error. They have a large tolerance
for environmental change. And most plants are autotropic, which is
just a fancy word for saying producing one's own food.
(18:48):
And they do this using basic inorganic substances around them, water,
atmospheric carbon, dioxide and then you know, a bevy of
mineral nutrients from the soil. This is the real superpower.
This is what we were gaga about a few minutes ago.
All the like most of the other living things, the
vast majority of other living things on Earth are heterotrophic,
(19:12):
meaning we consume organic carbon and we cannot process these
raw materials that plants love. We can't do that ourselves.
So plants are taking one for the team in a
very real way. They are the basis of worldwide food webs.
They turn inorganic carbon into sugars, and then everybody else
(19:32):
shows up after the cooking is done.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
I mean, surely that's where the term plant comes from
in manufacturing and empower generation. I mean, you know, it
just they plants did it better, and then we had
to figure out a way to kind of copy their
whole system, you know, to to work for our benefit
for like making stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Whose idea was it to evolve complex systems that don't
have thylochoids? Really, like, why why would we not all
have that evolutionary trait? Because it's true, we could.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Pretty advantageous, you know, self sustaining for the most part.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
You know, seriously, we could stand in some water, look
up at the sun and be like, hey, we're good.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Have you heard the hippies that are really into like
sunning their buttholes like that?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
What?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, it's all tell us about it.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
It's a whole Like luckily I'm not Oh yeah, I
know I heard, not a practitioner, but but.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
It is literally just holding your butt to the sun
because you need to get that juice that sun, you know,
energy or whatever.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
When podcasts don't work out. That's our new startup, solar
Chakra dot com.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Right, that is Uh, that's a choice I would I
would have thought you would put your root like in
a water source, right, uh, and then absorb some.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Level to where we are planted. It is a good question.
I mean, in that scenario, if we want to walk
through it. So, if what we call animals also evolve
to have that power, inevitably, the theory of evolution would
argue that something would evolve to predate on that, not
(21:16):
to come up before, but to eat it, to use
that as a resource. So it's weird too because not
all plants use photosynthesis.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
The ones that don't largely evolve parasitic abilities, so they
they grow on other plants and steal that. Yeah, steal
the carbon and water and nutrients from from the upstanding
plants with an honest plant job, or they feed on
decomposing organic material. So even so while those themselves technically
(21:46):
don't practice photosynthesis, they still one hundred percent depend on
that process happening somewhere. Again, it's photosynthesis with extra steps.
Speak of extra steps want to do? We want to
talk about how to synthesis became a thing.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
I still can only picture the vague illustration from my
textbook in my mind's eye, and I know the basics
of it. It's like light in food out basically, I mean,
that's like what it amounts to.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
But then it also creates a byproduct.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
That we need very conveniently and are able to benefit from.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
In terms of oxygen.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, light and water are the primary things, because you
got to get that hydrogen and oxygen in there to
break down. But which is the craziest thing in the
world that inside plants there is a machine, there's machinery
within plants that can oxidize stuff, which is it usually
(22:44):
takes a tremendous amount of energy to do that. As
humans have tried to figure out how to oxidize things effectively,
and what actually breaks that hydrogen from the oxygen. You
need a lot of energy, and the plant's just like
no problem right.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Right, which is why they're too is to travel a
lot of times. But okay, let's go to our old colleague,
Jessline shields over at our alma matter how stuff works.
She has a great explanation of this. She says, quote,
this is the story how photosynthesis, says, how we got
here before we get to how it boils down. Around
(23:21):
a billion years ago, after the Earth was formed, life
showed up, says Jessolin, probably first as some anaerobic bacteria.
That's the stuff that doesn't need oxygen, slurping up sulfur
and hydrogen that came out of hydro thermal vents. Yeah,
and then she goes, and now we've got giraffes. But
there were ten thousand gigatons of steps on the road
between the first bacteria and giraffes. The bacteria had to
(23:44):
figure out how to find new hydrothermal vents. This led
to them developing a thermal sensing pigment called bacterio chlorophyll,
and then some bacteria still use that to detect infrared
signal generated by heat. To your point about tiny machines, Matt,
that's likewise astonishing. These bacteria, these heat thirsty boys, were
(24:09):
the ancestors of things that could later make chlorophyll. Chlorophyll
is also a pigment. It captures shorter, more energetic light
wave links from the sun and that's where the power
comes in. So props the Jessulain. What a well written explanation, dude.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
The idea of capturing photons, you know, and like, even
as it pertains to like photography for example, or like
you know, capturing light and harnessing it in some way
is so mind boggling to me, you know, and even
with our modern technology, Like it's it's just pretty insane.
But like the fact that these organic materials figure it
out just is it by accident? Was again just like
(24:49):
a set and setting kind of thing, like because of
again like the position and just the fact that it
was just constantly exposed and natures needed to find a
way to harness that.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Like how do you even put it into words.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Well, we don't know. We know that it's it's organisms
that somehow decided to team up and go inside each
other and becomes the mechanics that function the mitochondria. Yeah,
I mean, it really is mind boggling to think that
at some point life just decided to do that or
(25:23):
just started to do it and it worked, so it
kept doing.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
It, and it's a byproduct of that.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
The oxygen is like an afterthought, and that's what allows
humanity to exist.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
We're also only seeing the winners.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
I think that's a very it's just crazy the layers
of it. Where again, like the fact that oxygen is
just sort of oh, that's not even the whole point,
Like all this other awesome stuff is happening for the plants,
and then this oxygen just you know, also happens to
be a thing that allows humans to breathe, and they need.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
The electrons, the hydrogens. The oxygen is just like, get
out of here, oxygen.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
What is the asked this way to get rid of
this unnecessary ingredient. That's what they're doing, just like a
factory of flushing out chemical byproducts into your local water system.
I mean, that's kind of what it is. The analogy
holds if those.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Byproducts were gold and like magic dust, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Well, we would say again, we would it's all perspective.
If there was a life form that thrived off of
the effluvium ejected from factories, that might say that's gold too,
you know, oxygen didn't They didn't care, right, These things
didn't really care about oxygen. It became important later. But
these these bacteria, after countless of them die and mutate
(26:40):
and effectively and then die again, you know. And this one, somehow,
at some indeterminable point, a mutation is successful. Bacteria becomes
the translator of capturing those photons using sunlight. But they
still haven't figured it out. They needed what we would say,
(27:01):
I guess we'd call them batteries. They had to be
able to accumulate those protons and hold them on a
discrete side of their membrane instead of the other one.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, and then start passing them down through the process. Right,
that actually generates all the all the things, all the
different byproducts that become the energy. And then but then
the craziest thing about this whole photosynthesis thing is this
not just one way like holding them holding the charge
and sending it through one way. It then goes back
(27:32):
through the other way in the membrane to create other
stuff that the plant then uses to grow itself. So
you're just like, sorry, my mind is so nuts.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
It's insane. I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
It's the it's also uh we have to give you know,
honorable mentions to all the other uh, all all the
other things that came into play, the sano bacteria, the chloroplasts,
et cetera, et cetera, and all of this leads to
something pretty dope.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Plants. You know them.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
You should love them, even if you're not a vegetarian.
These things take in carbon dioxide and water, as we mentioned,
from air and soil, and then they have kind of
some feature versus from nutrients, minerals, micronutrients and stuff in
the dirt. The water is, as you said, matt oxidized
and oxidze just means it loses electrons. This COE is
(28:21):
the carbon dioxide exceesing CO two is reduced so it
gains electrons. This transforms the water and oxygen. Carbon dioxide
turns in the glucose. The plant is like, I'm amazing
at this, and then it releases that oxygen back into
the air. Who cares about that? And it stores energy
within those glucose molecules.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Not to mention they're delicious whether or not you're a vegetarian,
and they provide us nourishment. I forgot about the whole
fact that we can eat the things too.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Are you that part out too?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Cheese loiase, And I mean they are attractive. They make
us want to eat them, you know what I mean,
And they taste good, and the ones that don't kill
you or you're some kind of glutton for like a
really spicy pepper like Matt.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Yeah, and just if you want to go down this
rabbit hole, you really should cannot recommend the video series
that the con Academy has for free you can watch
right now that goes all into the what they call
the light reactions, the dark or light independent reactions, all
the way to the Calvin cycle. The Calvin cycle is
something we're not even going to fully go into today,
(29:26):
but like good, uh, just reblow your mind to remind
remember how Alvin cycle. Yeah, it's it's all that. It's
all that extra stuff of like what the diagrams.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Within the diagrams with little circle like arrows around it,
you know, like it's.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, shut out Stomata stroma all the hits.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I remember, okay, okay, now you're jogging some some more
like that again.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
The vocabulary is great and all that, but the how
it works together just I don't know. It gives you
an appreciation. It's like an overview effect that you can
get by studying a plant.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
It's weird, well said big fans of cotn Academy as well.
Ken show them out enough. And this reminds me of
I listened back to I can't remember the title, excellent
episode we did back in the day about plants and
consciousness because plants do something very similar to speaking with
each other. And also, oh man, there's so many great
(30:28):
TED talks too, which you mentioned along with CONN Academy. This, Yeah,
this is fascinating. I think that's an excellent point, Matt.
The idea of the overview effect. You don't have to
be an astronaut to encounter it. The world continues. All
after all of this brute force, evolutionary hacking, the countless
back to the drawing board moments, we are here in
(30:49):
twenty twenty three. We have to remember plants are like
any other living thing that humans know of. They have
evolved to live in a set of specific ranges and
thresholds and circumstances. Just like humans can and will die
when wet bulb temperature gets past a certain threshold, plants
need a specific temperature to really vibe. By vibe, we
(31:11):
mean conduct photosynthesis to use their superpower. It turns out
that past a certain threshold, a temperature can become a
kryptonite to the plant's superpower, and they will suddenly be
up a very bad river with no way back down.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
It is crazy. We've known that those thresholds exist with
ambient temperatures and plants since the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Since eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Yeah, So we're going to take a quick break and
then we'll come back and get into why we're even
doing this episode. Why are we worried about photosynthesis? There's
a real threat.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
And we have returned.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Also, just because we're going into some of the more
disturbing territory here, I want you guys to know we're
recording this remotely. The reason I put my handle on
here as photosimp assist is just because I thought it
was a cool pun and there's not really a way
to put it in naturally.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
So is that like, is that reference to being like
this you simp for a photosynthesis.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
I'm still not sure. You know, you find the pun
first and then you figure more quick.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Wait, that's not how we do science.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
That's how plants figured out the oxygen thing.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
So all right, here's what happened. There was a paper
published in the journal Nature in August the twenty twenty three,
led by a guy named Christopher Doughty. He is the
associate professor in echo informatics at Northern Arizona University, and
they put in some crazy work.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
If you were worried.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
About the mass extinction of bees, allow us to introduce
you to a nice side dish, make that existential dread
a combo meal.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Flowers don't work, and neither do you leaves.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Professor Dowdy says, let's do this, He says, let's get
a specific type of instrument, something called ecostress, a thermal sensor.
Let's launch that on the International Space Station ISS, and
we're going to keep it up there for about for
a while. We're going to use two years worth of
(33:24):
data from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty to get a
big picture of the overall situation. And they didn't stop there.
They also looked on the ground.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
They put, well, let's talk before we talk about on
the ground, let's talk about just exactly what they're looking
at with from that big picture. Sure, because when they
get photos and information back and temperature readings from all
the way up at the ISS they're looking at one
pixel equals seventy meters like square meters, So that's a
huge swath like an area, right that they're studying from
(33:56):
that overview standpoint. But but you can't get very granular
with that. So they needed a way to get closer
to the action.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
And if you want to learn more about Ecostress, I
cut a lot of this, but it's really interesting. Go
to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory over at the California Institute
of Technology Caltech. Just search that in ecostress and you
can learn in detail some of the stuff Matt is
talking about. You're absolutely right, and so they needed just
(34:29):
as you described, Matt, they needed a closer look. So
what we were saying is they did not stop there.
They went on the ground. They placed sensors across canopies
around the globe Australia, Brazil, Panama, Puerto Rico, and they
were not working off just some sort of inarticulate hunch. Scientists,
(34:51):
as we mentioned previously, knew there was something important about
temperature and plants as far back as eighteen sixty four,
and what they found this again way back then, was
that the leaves of some plants could survive temperatures of
up to one hundred and twenty two degrees fahrenheit for
the rest of the world, that's fifty degrees celsius, and
(35:12):
once they got passed at or past that point, the
leaves would die important distinction, not the whole plant, the leaves,
the things that are like it's almost like saying your
mouth or your lungs or your digestive system die, right,
but your body is still technically alive, and so knowing
(35:34):
that this is how amazing the study is. This professor
and his team also pulled a study from twenty twenty
one which found that one hundred and forty seven different
tree species in tropical biomes. They found that these trees
their photosynthesis petered out at an average temperature of forty
(35:54):
six point seven degrees celsius. That would be a little
north of one hundred and sixteen degrees fahrenheit, so good
to knowe for most of human history this was not
a huge issue. The places that typically reached those temperatures
had typically reached those temperatures for a very, very long time,
and plants that existed in those areas had adapted to
(36:16):
live there. But that might be changing. And here's the kicker.
I want to be careful with this and not be
too too alarmists, but Dowdy's team found that roughly one
in every ten thousand leaves in their big measurement experienced
temperature changes right now that are too high for photosynthesis.
(36:38):
Those leaves were out of commission, they were dying. It's
pretty pretty somber stuff. Science News also points out that
this is to the earlier to our earlier statement, this
is not happening around the world yet. This is happening
in discrete hot spots. Ooh, accidental, pun terrible, But it's
(37:00):
happening in discrete areas, similar to the way that monsoons
or hurricanes only occur in specific parts of the world.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, and they're only studying the canopies of tropical rainforest.
That's really really important. And they're only finding that one
in ten thousand of these leaves are getting affected or
trees are being affected. So it's you know, at this
point from this study, it's sombering, but it's not and
(37:28):
it's not alarm bells going off, right, because it is
just at the very tippy top. When we're talking about canopy,
you're talking about the upper levels of plants, because they
are all kinds of different plants of different sizes in
a tropical rainforest, and tropical rainforests tend to run hot
a lot hotter than other places and other large forests.
So like we've got to keep all that stuff in
(37:49):
mind when we're thinking about this, because it doesn't sound
scary one in ten thousand leaves, but if we're at
a threshold and ambient temperatures all rising across the board,
then it could potentially be a much bigger problem pretty soon.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Agreed.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah, Science News does it this way, they say.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
The analysis was revealed a mosaic of temperatures in forest
canopies during periods when forests were hot and the soil
was dry, temperatures across the canopy reached an average peak
of thirty four degrees celsius. Some tracks exceeded forty degrees celsius.
And going back to going all the way back to
the mid eighteen hundreds, fifty degrees celsius is our very
(38:33):
worrisome point. Aboutzero point zero one percent of the time,
just in the upper canopy these leaves would hit above
the danger threshold. The highway to the danger zone is
forty six point seven degrees celsius. The ride out danger
zone proper fifty degrees celsius. And that means that on
a regular basis, Earth is beginning to hit that limit,
(38:56):
past which photosynthesis simply will not occur.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
But it's not like this would happen overnight with like
every I mean, it's it's a gradual process. And it's
like like you described earlier, Matt, the idea of like
a power grid like visually going down kind of cascading,
but maybe on a much longer timeline or what kind
of timeline are we talking.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Well, well, yeah, we'll talk to the timeline. But the
big thing to note is this is the canopy of
a tropical rainforest region. So if ambient temperatures at in
that specific band around the Earth hit those exceed those
levels on a regular basis, you're talking about killing the
or potentially the leaves on that upper level dying. Now,
(39:39):
if those ambient temperatures reach all the way down to
the ground level right in the dense forest, then you're
talking about potentially killing off leaves basically vertically as you're
moving down towards the ground.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
And there's a snowball effect because those leaves in every
level of the canopy above right, those leaves also provide
cover and cool for the levels beneath them, so that
there is the possibility for an exacerbation of this. And
to your questionable regarding how this wall breaks down, I
(40:13):
found a really fun thread on what I want to say,
one of my most enjoyable subreddits. They did the math.
It's the unnecessarily well I would say, it's very thorough
math about all sorts of strange questions. And one of
the estimates there I said, Okay, let's assume photosynthesis even
(40:34):
though it won't happen. Let's assume it all goes dead
at once. We just have a finite amount of oxygen.
From that point on, how long would it take humans
alone to suffocate themselves in the escape room of Earth?
The answer seven hundred and four thousand years.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Oh the we're fine.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yeah, Well, because algae like ocean algae is the primary
oxygen source, right, I.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Mean around seventy percent.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, so we're yeah, yeah, we Would's good to know.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Not doesn't give us a pass, but it is good
to know that like this isn't an immediate apocalyptic events
like you know, breathing up all the air like in
a ninny sub or something.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
You know, I do know.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
The only I've got to give a shout out where
it's due credit whords do The only reason I know
the algae stuff is because of the film water World.
Watching that, I thought, well, all the plants are gone
except for this one islands, how could they breathe? And
that's when a friend helpfully pointed out, well, but an
algae create most of the oxygen.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
That's also where I learned about desalination, or at least
in terms of pea. And remember that scene, so I
think it's the what everyone remembers where he's on the
raft and he peas the kind of a thing and
then he drinks it.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
I guess that is still suit. Basically, it's a portable
still suit.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
But that boat was so cool. What is the name
for those? Is it a catamaran?
Speaker 4 (41:56):
I think it is the trail I just remember data carve.
We did a joke about it, like asses, they say,
you can't pee into a mister coffee and expect taste's choice.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Classic, Classic, It's such a good stand up career in
the cards. But so okay, there are things that make
this number. There are problems with this number, and you
can walk through the math. You can see it. The
people on Reddit posting this data, great job. It doesn't
factor in a lot of other things. It doesn't factor in,
(42:26):
for example, all of the other non human animals that
are big fans of breathing oxygen on a dare I
say regular basis. It doesn't factor in comorbid stuff, increases
in population, you know, the fact that mass starvation will
occur before the oxygen quote unquote runs out. Climate chaos,
(42:46):
which again I think is a far more accurate term
than the sort of milk toast climate.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Change we've been using.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
So it seems like, again without being experts, that while
seven hundred and four thousand years is a long long time,
things hit the fan way way before that point. But
the good news, like you said, no, this is not
going to immediately lead to disaster. Point zero one percent
is not a big percentage.
Speaker 4 (43:14):
Selfishly, I was like, my immediate calculation was not within
my lifetime or the lifetime of my kid or loved ones.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
So I'm good. But that's really a selfish way to think.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Well, that may not be trutal, really okay, go on, Well,
and it all depends on how runaway, you know, the
greenhouse effect becomes, right, and if it does get really bad,
if rising ambient temperatures expand out of that tropical zone
(43:45):
and keep moving towards the polls and it gets worse
and worse and worse, then what is the year, Ben
We both talked about it off air, like twenty.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Twenty one hundred would be the the time that greenhouse
gas emissions push the world to that amount of warming.
That amount of warming right now. Experts estimate these plants
can survive about four degrees celsius of warming above the
current levels before trees lose all their leaves, the plant
(44:19):
version of going bald and then die. It wouldn't hit
the entire Earth at once. Plant die offs follow the
pattern of gotta stop saying. Hotspots follow the pattern of
the warming here, right, So, for instance, in the poles
of the planet, this warming, this you know, like the
(44:40):
transformation of the tundra and the thawing of permafrost. That's
going to be a very different situation than what will
occur in the equator and in the tropical areas of Earth.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Guys, is it still even remotely controversial, like climate change,
climate chaos? Are there still people that find that.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
To be Maybe and we're nuts. The jury still out.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yes, there are people who who feel that way, but
I think it's safe to say that the science so
far is unanimous. Now that the corporations who were paying
for opposing voices, now that they are exposed, it's increasingly
(45:24):
less controversial. I don't think it's controversial at all.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
I think it feels maybe more like a political talking point,
you know, like on one side of an argument to
like I don't know if even the people that say
it believe it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I think it was Vladimir Putin just recently. I think
it was yesterday. We're recording November ninth. This was on
November eighth. He started asking these very strange questions about
ice in Antarctica, and it was like, how much ice
can you store in Antarctica? Repeatedly?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
And is that like a riddle. It's yeah, I don't know,
is it a code? Very interesting.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Western analysts are speculating that that is an an attempt
to cast further aspersion upon the idea of climate chaos.
But yeah, to your boy political, I think.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah, it doesn't help that there are all kinds of
strange sounding schemes like carbon offset programs where you can
just somehow pay your way out of the pollution your
corporation just it's paying indulgences to the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
It's like the economist. The economist and neoliberals love that one.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Well, yeah, but it does it does not help the
skepticism I think that exists out there for you know,
for this science behind the subject, because it does feel
like it's being taken advantage of by people who want
to make money and want to be able to spend
more tax dollars on things that are not probably helpful. Yeah, anyway, I.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Mean there's also the fact that when you hear these numbers,
and you know, it's a bit of a roller coaster,
plants are dying because it's getting too hot. True, that
does seem to be the precedent, That does seem to
be the pattern that will continue unless variables change. But
there's still a bevy of other factors at play. There
(47:26):
would already be there already is a growing impact on
historical agricultural resources, the so called bread baskets of civilization,
the interior of the US, parts of Europe, Asia, India,
parts of Africa, and you know, the biodiversity of South America.
In Southeast Asia also under intense threat. And they would
(47:49):
be dealing with this growing plant die off in conjunction
with unpredictable weather, droughts, flooding at the wrong time, and
of course the ever present growing threat of political instability.
The truth is, we don't know everything about the fallout here.
We also don't know everything about the adaptive abilities of
(48:12):
every tree species. Humanity still doesn't know how many plant
species exist. There are many unknowns here, and we also
don't know We don't know how the deaths of individual
leaves impact the mortality of a given species of tree.
And so that's why there are some people saying, hold on,
(48:33):
we might be overestimating vulnerability. One guy, ecologist, Christopher Still
so he's not just some guy, he is an ecologist.
He said, maybe we're you know, we're making this assumption
that when leaves hit this critical temperature they die. That's
a cold comfort, though, I would argue it's a bit
of a fig leaf in the face of what may
well become an existential threat.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
I mean and saying we're just barely covering it up
just enough to where it can still walk around and
we wouldn't be embarrassed by what's under the figure belief.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Just enough to tell later generations. Well, you know, we
put a good hustle in. It was a big swing.
And my question though, is is this a possible tipping point?
Like what happens not one hundred percent of plants stop photosynthesis,
that seems very very far away in alarmist, but what
(49:26):
happens when a certain percentage of them stop? What do
you guys, how do you think? Guys think this shakes out?
Speaker 2 (49:34):
It's gonna get real weird because you know, there are
massive ice sheets on Antarctica that are now beyond the
point of being able to maintain right, So there's some
series melting occurring there. There's gonna be a lot more
water if within the whole system that we run in here,
both both in the oceans and in the skies, so
(49:56):
plants are gonna have no shortage of the the hydrate
they need to continue photosynthesis. They're gonna have no shortage
of sun because it's just hanging out there, blast in
the earth. We uh if we can love.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
That image, Matt. So I just hanging out blast in
the air.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Well. It blasts everything.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Oh, it blasts everything.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
But but isn't Remember we were talking at the beginning
about how and what a coincidence did.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
Is this exact right distance?
Speaker 4 (50:22):
As the ozone layer continues to be depleted and stuff,
I mean, is that going to become I know that
the warming is one part of it, but just like
the heat like I mean, I wonder.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Not long ago the ozone holes, some of the major
ones were beginning to fill in, which was actually good news.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
Yeah, it's due to the success of the Montreal Protocol,
the ozon mitigation.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
Yeah. Thang, okay, maybe I'm not aware of that.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
That's going to take about four decades go it.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
The big thing now is just heat trapping. That still occurs.
Heat trapping within the system.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
The plants they're resilient buggers. Yeah, for sure, that's the thing.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
We see it on a human life span because that's
all we know, and we measure time in life and
death of humanity, right of.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
Generations, timeline discrepancy. We're talking about it earlier.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, yeah, sorry, I don't mean to retread things. It's
just I think it is a matter of perspective.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
Oh yeah, it really makes you think, you know, how
that we were just a blip. I mean, no, just
the idea of the evolution and the connection, and the
fact that plants are really not about individuals.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
They're about like the whole system, you know.
Speaker 4 (51:45):
And even if they were to go away, you have
to imagine that byproduct that we've relied on, that would
be the issue for us. They'll probably evolve into something
else over time, on another planet, on another star whatever.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Oh, I forgot to tell you guys, I read this.
I got really into research with fungus in space. I
didn't know this, but fungus is a huge problem for astronauts.
Were you guys aware of this.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Because they're always tripping balls when they're in their space suits, and.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Well, it's literally their balls. It's oh no.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
It grows. Yeah, it coats uh, mechanisms, coats windows, everything.
It's it's actually a really good argument for pan spermia,
which still needs a better name as a theory.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
But sperm another thing that astronauts are plagued by.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Yes, wait a minute, what globules? Just like in space,
no one can hear you, you know what? Never mind,
no one can.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
I'm sorry this this disaster though, and and I got
I do hope this was worth an episode.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
I yeah, make them mount album mole Hill.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
If so, I apologize, But we gotta remember this disaster
occurs concurrently. It's in depth with other things that are
on the way. Widespread drought, climate migration on massive levels,
rising oceans, the long term effects of microplastics. The list
goes on and on and on, and fortunately so does
the science.
Speaker 4 (53:14):
Well, and while this is an existential threat episode, I
found it very educational and enlightening as well, you know
what I mean. It was really fun hearkening back to
some of those earliest memories of like learning about what
science is and how magical these systems are, you know,
and how utterly mind boggling their existence is, you know.
(53:37):
And again, I hope we don't see any of this
these ramifications in our life. Do you guys think there's
there's mitigation there's mitigation for this, like is it too late?
Speaker 3 (53:45):
Have we swung too far? It's not enough?
Speaker 1 (53:49):
People care well, it's it's it's difficult, I think sometimes
to articulate in an impactful way consequences that do not
seem immediately apparent, right, going to that idea of perspective
and timescale. Maybe we mentioned this, I think on a
previous recording, But maybe one of the best ways to
(54:10):
think about it is, Okay, the car accident, like climate costs,
is like a car accident, and in this comparison, the
accident is already happening. The car has left the road,
we can see the tree ahead. The question is what
do we do in those figurative few seconds before the
(54:30):
car hits the.
Speaker 4 (54:31):
Tree, jump out of the car space, we find a
new car, or we walk never set foot in a
car again.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
So maybe it's a matter of you know, in that
it's not the best comparison, but maybe it's a matter
of seatbelts, airbags, swerving to what degree that can occur,
But it takes a lot of collective global action in
a way that is relatively unprecedented.
Speaker 4 (54:56):
It was to hear that those zone holes are doing better,
like that's that was news to me.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
I'm not joking.
Speaker 4 (55:03):
I was like, wait, cool, Okay, that's that's some positive
silver lining.
Speaker 2 (55:07):
Yeah, there's been. It's so weird because we have experienced
over our lifetimes a lot of alarmism over this stuff, right,
probably rightly. So it's balancing the fear we need to
have in order to take action, right with the knowledge
(55:28):
that that fear should it has to be tempered because
if we're just freaking out about it because it feels
so dire, we're not going to get anything done. But
if you don't have enough fear, you're not getting get
anything done either. So I don't know, and I.
Speaker 4 (55:41):
Think we always strive to be as not alarmist as
humanly possible, to just lay out the facts, approach it
with a little bit of lightheartedness, because what else can
you do. And hopefully we're not trying to freak anybody
out or make anyone feel as spared, you know, but
this is something to be aware of, but also don't
let it keep you up at I guess if you
can help it or do I don't, Well, we have to.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Maybe the best way to put a button on this
is to say, look, you can put political ideology, corporate perspectives,
cultural differences, all that jazz, all that space fungus to
one side, because none of it alters the simple fact.
The clock is ticking and the question is what does
humanity do in response? And hey, folks, thanks as always
(56:26):
for tuning in. If you can fix this, if you
can share it with us, the immediate solution, we would
love to hear it. We will forward it everywhere. All
you have to do, or you know, if you have,
we want to hear your take on this. From your
neck to the global woods. Ideas for future episodes, limericks,
cool puns. Surely we can do better than photosynthesis, So
(56:50):
let us know what's on your mind. We try to
be easy to find in a variety of ways.
Speaker 4 (56:55):
Oh you're not even the simp. You're the assistant of
the simp. It's a very frot concept.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
Then I love it.
Speaker 4 (57:02):
But you can indeed write to us about that. Make
up new words, send it to us. You can find
us on social media. We are conspiracy Stuff on YouTube,
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Speaker 2 (57:16):
Hey do you like to talk on your phone, Well
talk to us. Our number is one eight three three
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be empty right now. We need new voicemails. Yeah, so
you know when you call, you got three minutes. Give
yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we
can use your name and message on one of our
(57:37):
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can fit in that voicemail, why not instead send us
a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (57:44):
We are the folks who read every single email we get.
Send us those links, send us those photos. We can't
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Speaker 2 (58:10):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Breathe in the air.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Do you have a mantra? Do you guys have a
mantra when you meditate? I have a breath work.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I have a few.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah, but also I uh, we were talking about this
just briefly off air tonight's episode. We're diving into some
stuff that maybe we didn't all appreciate in grade school,
because it's like, why do I have to learn all
these abstract facts?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Oh dude, That's where it's been coming back to me from.
Like I'm flashing back to like middle school and maybe
later elementary school, learning about photosynthesis and like the water cycle.
I'm literally picturing these diagrams from textbooks.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
They're flashing through my mind.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, my mantra is fosspho glycerie.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
That's that is a really good mind light number of syllables.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Nine is goose and we so.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
A while back, folks, we on I think a strange
news segment. We talked a little bit about a fascinating
study that led us collectively to a new appreciation of
one of Earth's most underrated life forms, plants. You know,
towering trees, humble shrubs, weeds, everything in between. And weed,
by the way, is a very unfair linguistic trick.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
Yeah, except for like, you know, the one that you smoke,
that one for some reason.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Which is yeah, totally sure. But yeah, what makes us
shrub humble?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Though?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
I love that because it does it feels that way.
But what makes the shrubs so humble? If you combine
a bunch of shrubs, it could be quite ostentatious.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
M especially if you trim it into a topious shape shape. Uh. Yeah.
The the thing is again, you know, for all of
human civilization, people have been anthropomorphizing everything in the world
around them, and of course plants are no different. We
as we owe, all of civilization is not hyperbole. All
(02:37):
of civilization two plants, and for most of history. That
was awesome. I was not a problem. Plants were dope
ten ten No notes for now. So what may change
and when would it change? What does that mean? Here
are the facts?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Give it up to plants. Who you like steak? You
like plant in.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
The Wait a minute?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
What?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Where those like exist coexisting? Or is it like if
you like steak, you'll like plants can't have like seak.
You can't have steak without photo.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
You can't have your favorite things and your least favorite things,
you can't have them without plants. And because of their
superpowered photosynthesis that we can eat it.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Too, like the literal superpower.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
It is a superpower. Wild.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I understand the science, and it still doesn't really make sense,
Like how evolution just fruit force hacked to that one.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, we're gonna get into it, but like literally, so
sunlight is the powerhouse, right, The sun is the powerhouse
for all life that we know, and somehow these cells
specialized in a way to take that sunlight and all
the water that's going on on this planet and make stuff.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Well, not to mention the whole Goldilocks zone of it.
All of the sun is also the perfect distance away
to give us that you know, rejuvenating energy without like
frying our eyeballs out of our skulls or setting the
forests on fire.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
For now.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Yeah, I'm just saying the perfection of this fluke whatever,
whatever you may believe, The science of it as bonkers,
and the fact that it works and just kind of
always has been, it's mind blowing. And then we figured
out how to farm, you know, and just kind of
extend that whole natural process.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah, I agree, it's pretty fascinating. I'm always taken with
the the the order of operations cognitively, the Goldilocks zone argument,
because if life evolved very differently, if we're on, say,
another planet in the Solar System, would that planet's life
forms not also make the same Goldilocks argument. We evolved
(04:46):
to fit the shoe. The shoe did not evolve around us.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Right, You're totally right. The plants developed those abilities because
of conditions over time. Right, Like I say, it was
always there, but in our minds it was just like
this is for you, for shade, you know, for sustenance,
for medicine. I mean, it's we can it's a whole
other axe.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, there's a reference I had to cut to Sean
Connery's Medicine Man, which it shouldn't have anything to do with.
It was just a reason to talk about that film.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
He brought it back. Tell us about medicine.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
That counts now you could you could it was.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
A grumpy hit a ponytail.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I remember he has a white ponytail, and he was
sort of a Jane Goodall type figure, like a bit.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Of a white savior story.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
If I'm not mistaken a bit for a little problematic,
it probably didn't age well.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
But I do remember seeing in the theaters.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Same and then as now in the in the theatrical
run of Medicine Man, as well as the ancient past
in the current day. As you said, Matt, the world
has always, for the most part run on solar power.
It Uh something that I think we all look back
on fondley was during the days when uh, the giant
(05:59):
non fiction company Discovery owned our little podcast, they would
occasionally send us these very high production value, prestigious documentary
collections Planet Earth and of course Life. And one thing
that got to me about though, is that still stays
with me, is that observation that almost every single earthly ecosystem,
(06:22):
regardless of how different they may appear to be. They
all depend on the Sun for energy, with a few exceptions.
I think one would be deep sea thermal vents, those
little mini ecosystems they get their energy from those hydrothermic
off bleeds.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah, anything in the Abystle system where the light no
longer reaches, you can count on other energy sources being utilized.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
You could also say that they still they still get
solar powered, just through more steps because of animals that
are closer to the surface of the ocean when they
die or per day a pun one.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Thing about all the crazy adaptations that that results in.
You know that these these particularly deep sea dwelling creatures
that have like headlamps and stuff, and you know, again
part of the whole system and the whole Goldilocks zone
of it all, like that particular zone created that particular
type of life.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
But the Sun still kind of, like you said, was involved.
I mean, think about it, like, Okay, this is one
of the dumb facts that always that still captures me
about those documentaries. Cave systems, even the majority of cave
systems get their power through the Sun, but in what
humans might call a somewhat ignoble way they get it
from excrement from like Guato. When bats fly to.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
The surface, they fly back in.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And I can't remember was it David Attenborough who narrated those.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Oh, he did the Planet Earth ones, but then there
was like a recut version where I think the Sigourney
Weaver did it. There's also, obviously, I'm sure that Morgan
Freeman has done some over the years, but yeah, Davy
Attenborough is the main, main guy talking about I always
think about ace Ventura when nature calls. That's what I
think of when I think of Guana.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I just remember our pal. I think it was Dave,
and Dave apologies and forget us wrong, but I remember
when our pal was like, walts about caves. Surely they
don't use the sun. And I'm sitting there, I'm like,
eat a sandwich so fast, observe. That's like he's into it.
(08:27):
And so we're all. Even though we may not all
universally love the sun, we can admit that it keeps
Earth going. In addition to feeding everything in plants, it
creates wind, ocean currents, oceanic currents, clouds to transport water
and inspire poets and so on. For about five billion years,
this guy has been amazing the sun and potentially catastrophic
(08:55):
power source. And people don't spend too much time I'm
you know, thinking about the grand scheme of things in
a scientific bent. For much of human history just sort
of always knew. Everybody always knew that the sun is
the creator of livestock, agriculture, you know what I mean.
(09:15):
And National Geographic had a great, a great quote about
this about how the sun's placement even affected architecture forever.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Basically, well, yeah, is that we're talking about where we
put windows and entrances. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Yes, And the quote goes, early civilizations around the world
positioned buildings to face south to gather heat and light.
They used windows and skylights for the same reason as
well as to allow.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
For air circulation.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Genius, and like what, we haven't really improved on that technology,
at least in terms of like dwellings, you know, I mean,
obviously there's climate control and stuff, but skylights, windows, if
you don't have those, all your plants are going to die.
All of your house plants are going to to die.
And you can get like grow lights and stuff, but
it's so key to have that sunlight entering your house
(10:06):
directly if you're gonna keep plants alive.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Well, yeah, it also changed like what types of materials
were used to build those houses and structures, right, because
some materials absorb that heat from the sun a little
better than others.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, stone and concrete for instance, And also the construction
of greenhouses leveraging solar power to grow plants out of
season or an otherwise inhospitable climates. Aka, you know that
with the global shipping conspiracy is the reason that you
can eat so many things in far flung areas of
(10:44):
the world. At every step along the way, plants have
been right there, you know what I mean, they've been
the is Andy Richter, the guy who works with Conan O'Brien.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
He did, yeah, the show eventually.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But plants are the Andy Richter to the son's Conan O'Brien.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And yeah, because you know if they make oxygen too,
they do.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
They do.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
The sun does not care really about If the Sun
is God, then plants are like.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Jesus, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
That's good too, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I mean
this is all we could all listen to this and say, yeah,
this basic stuff, solar architecture, I get it. I don't
have to be a biologist, a botanist, or an astronomer
to get my mind around the basics.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Here.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You guys are talking about photosynthesis, fundamental part of life.
It's up there with how everybody knows. I still don't
know how this became a meme. But all of us
know one thing about mitochondria. It's the powerhouse of the cell.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I didn't even know that one thing you do.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Yeah, one thing that's like I was probably tucked away
somewhere back there.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
But yeah, well, we all learned about photosynthesis if you
went through basic schooling and took any kind of life
science class, right, I mean, it's one of the first
things you learned, photosynthesis.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
I remember the drawing of a leaf with little animated
rays of light going in with arrows on it on
one side and then coming out as little blips of
like molecule models or whatever.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
You remember, you guys pictures.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Oh yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, and they'll break it down for you. In preparation
for this episode, a lot of us looked back at
just the just relearning right, all the things that we
learned as kids, and one of the greatest things you
can do right now is Head on over to YouTube
and just watch some of the some of the con
Academy videos from like twenty ten that actually break that
(12:33):
stuff down. The way you're describing Noel with diagrams with
a professor sitting there and showing you here's all the stuff.
It's it's not like, what was that movie Chlorophyl? More
like bora Phyl? Was that was that? In my head?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I don't know, but I do remember it's.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
A Oh god, that is a movie. Somebody right in
what movie is say? Anyway, it's so amazing to really
look at it and see the biological structures that exist
within plants that actually do these processes, because it is
just a beautiful machine at work in every leaf that
(13:10):
uses photosynthesis.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Billy Madison, that's it, Billy bad Oh boy. I wasn't
expected to Adam to show up. Welcome, Welcome, mister Sandler.
You're You're absolutely right, man. That's such a that's such
a beautiful description. It's going to set us up for
a beautiful episode in a later evening about whether plants
are cultivating humans and the nature of that relationship is
(13:37):
So this is all true. Nothing is controversial about this.
This is all biochemistry and botany that we have learned
some piece of in most of the world. But there's
a new wrinkle occurring, but a wrinkle that has some scientists,
not all, but some incredibly concerned. Riddle is this, folks,
(13:59):
What if it's some point in the near future plants
just sort of stop working. We're not talking about a
world of you know, sentient plants going on strike or
taking collective action. We're talking instead about a world where
photosynthesis is no longer possible. And why that should terrify everyone.
(14:21):
So let's take a break for a word from our
sponsors and we'll be back so long as we have
enough oxygen to continue. Here's where it gets crazy bonkers, right,
plants without photosynthesis. That's like a McDonald's that doesn't make fries.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, it wouldn't be wouldn't be great. And just so
everybody understands, we're talking about photosynthesis. Okay, Well, there are
two things here, right, photosynthesis as a process. Is it
possible There's a scenario in which the entire planet Earth,
(15:04):
all across the board, from the leaves to the algae
to the bacteria, all the things that use energy from
the Sun to create oxygen and you know, the atp
and the things that the all those organisms need to grow.
Is it possible that that process could stop because of
some exterior factor.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Or not not even all of it stopping, but enough
of it stopping a high enough percentage that it would
render life as we know it non feasible.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Heard, Okay, that that would be Yeah, that would be
catastrophic for sure. And it's probably not something that could
ever occur in the flick of a switch, right, It
wouldn't just stop. But maybe there's a scenario where the
lights across the Earth start to slowly go out, you know,
starting in one region, and then they just continue to
go out, like some giant power outage.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Yeah, like the internet outage I just experienced covered from
I'm backing down, guys, thank.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
You for glad.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
We're glad to Isn't it funny though, like the microcosm
that you're talking about, Matt, It's like these artificial lights
are in a way, like an extension of this whole ecosystem,
this whole continuum that we're talking about, Like they wouldn't
exist either, and now there's this like whole other layer
of inorganic kind of but yet somehow weirdly organic in
(16:23):
origin stuff that kind of mimics the sun.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well, yeah, because each individual bacterium or algae or you know,
let's just say leaf, each one is a power plant, right,
And you do have to imagine that if somehow these
power plants just cease to function, or like the mechanisms
inside the power plants just broke.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
It doesn't have to be one hundred percent for the
results the consequences to be catastrophic. And part of the
reason it's easy to ignore these sort of things is
the vast discrepancy between what is considered a short amount
of time in a human life and a short amount
of time for life on Earth. Right, So a short
amount of time for life on Earth is still thousands
(17:10):
and thousands and thousands, if not millions of years this thing.
If plants one hundred percent, like you said, Matt In
almost as though the were switch being turned. If plants
all of a sudden stop photosynthesis, the world as we
know it would end incredibly quickly. It would not be
part of some purposeful conspiracy, but rather an accidental global
(17:33):
conspiracy on the part of every single human being. And
that's because there are a lot of plants to your
point all about the goldilock situation. There are currently an
estimated somewhere around three hundred and seventy five thousand species
of plants, but they're more being discovered each and every year.
(17:53):
And though I hesitate to use the phrase, they're not
all created equally. Some evolved to exist only in extremely
specific circumstances. I'm thinking of the largest flowering plant, the
corpse flower.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Brotty meat supposed to be a delight.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Yeah, But even like cacti, you know, like I think
I sounded a little wistful earlier when I was talking
about you gotta have windows.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Or you'll kill your plants.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
I killed my plants constantly because my house doesn't have
very much direct sunlight exposure because of the direction it's facing.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
But I can keep a cactus alive.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, And look other plants to the point about the cactus.
Other plants are pretty hardy, and they have a large,
let's say, margin of error. They have a large tolerance
for environmental change. And most plants are autotropic, which is
just a fancy word for saying producing one's own food.
(18:48):
And they do this using basic inorganic substances around them, water,
atmospheric carbon, dioxide and then you know, a bevy of
mineral nutrients from the soil. This is the real superpower.
This is what we were gaga about a few minutes ago.
All the like most of the other living things, the
vast majority of other living things on Earth are heterotrophic,
(19:12):
meaning we consume organic carbon and we cannot process these
raw materials that plants love. We can't do that ourselves.
So plants are taking one for the team in a
very real way. They are the basis of worldwide food webs.
They turn inorganic carbon into sugars, and then everybody else
(19:32):
shows up after the cooking is done.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
I mean, surely that's where the term plant comes from
in manufacturing and empower generation. I mean, you know, it
just they plants did it better, and then we had
to figure out a way to kind of copy their
whole system, you know, to to work for our benefit
for like making stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Whose idea was it to evolve complex systems that don't
have thylochoids? Really, like, why why would we not all
have that evolutionary trait? Because it's true, we could.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Pretty advantageous, you know, self sustaining for the most part.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
You know, seriously, we could stand in some water, look
up at the sun and be like, hey, we're good.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Have you heard the hippies that are really into like
sunning their buttholes like that?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
What?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, it's all tell us about it.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
It's a whole Like luckily I'm not Oh yeah, I
know I heard, not a practitioner, but but.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
It is literally just holding your butt to the sun
because you need to get that juice that sun, you know,
energy or whatever.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
When podcasts don't work out. That's our new startup, solar
Chakra dot com.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Right, that is Uh, that's a choice I would I
would have thought you would put your root like in
a water source, right, uh, and then absorb some.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Level to where we are planted. It is a good question.
I mean, in that scenario, if we want to walk
through it. So, if what we call animals also evolve
to have that power, inevitably, the theory of evolution would
argue that something would evolve to predate on that, not
(21:16):
to come up before, but to eat it, to use
that as a resource. So it's weird too because not
all plants use photosynthesis.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
The ones that don't largely evolve parasitic abilities, so they
they grow on other plants and steal that. Yeah, steal
the carbon and water and nutrients from from the upstanding
plants with an honest plant job, or they feed on
decomposing organic material. So even so while those themselves technically
(21:46):
don't practice photosynthesis, they still one hundred percent depend on
that process happening somewhere. Again, it's photosynthesis with extra steps.
Speak of extra steps want to do? We want to
talk about how to synthesis became a thing.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
I still can only picture the vague illustration from my
textbook in my mind's eye, and I know the basics
of it. It's like light in food out basically, I mean,
that's like what it amounts to.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
But then it also creates a byproduct.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
That we need very conveniently and are able to benefit from.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
In terms of oxygen.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, light and water are the primary things, because you
got to get that hydrogen and oxygen in there to
break down. But which is the craziest thing in the
world that inside plants there is a machine, there's machinery
within plants that can oxidize stuff, which is it usually
(22:44):
takes a tremendous amount of energy to do that. As
humans have tried to figure out how to oxidize things effectively,
and what actually breaks that hydrogen from the oxygen. You
need a lot of energy, and the plant's just like
no problem right.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Right, which is why they're too is to travel a
lot of times. But okay, let's go to our old colleague,
Jessline shields over at our alma matter how stuff works.
She has a great explanation of this. She says, quote,
this is the story how photosynthesis, says, how we got
here before we get to how it boils down. Around
(23:21):
a billion years ago, after the Earth was formed, life
showed up, says Jessolin, probably first as some anaerobic bacteria.
That's the stuff that doesn't need oxygen, slurping up sulfur
and hydrogen that came out of hydro thermal vents. Yeah,
and then she goes, and now we've got giraffes. But
there were ten thousand gigatons of steps on the road
between the first bacteria and giraffes. The bacteria had to
(23:44):
figure out how to find new hydrothermal vents. This led
to them developing a thermal sensing pigment called bacterio chlorophyll,
and then some bacteria still use that to detect infrared
signal generated by heat. To your point about tiny machines, Matt,
that's likewise astonishing. These bacteria, these heat thirsty boys, were
(24:09):
the ancestors of things that could later make chlorophyll. Chlorophyll
is also a pigment. It captures shorter, more energetic light
wave links from the sun and that's where the power
comes in. So props the Jessulain. What a well written explanation, dude.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
The idea of capturing photons, you know, and like, even
as it pertains to like photography for example, or like
you know, capturing light and harnessing it in some way
is so mind boggling to me, you know, and even
with our modern technology, Like it's it's just pretty insane.
But like the fact that these organic materials figure it
out just is it by accident? Was again just like
(24:49):
a set and setting kind of thing, like because of
again like the position and just the fact that it
was just constantly exposed and natures needed to find a
way to harness that.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Like how do you even put it into words.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Well, we don't know. We know that it's it's organisms
that somehow decided to team up and go inside each
other and becomes the mechanics that function the mitochondria. Yeah,
I mean, it really is mind boggling to think that
at some point life just decided to do that or
(25:23):
just started to do it and it worked, so it
kept doing.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
It, and it's a byproduct of that.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
The oxygen is like an afterthought, and that's what allows
humanity to exist.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
We're also only seeing the winners.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
I think that's a very it's just crazy the layers
of it. Where again, like the fact that oxygen is
just sort of oh, that's not even the whole point,
Like all this other awesome stuff is happening for the plants,
and then this oxygen just you know, also happens to
be a thing that allows humans to breathe, and they need.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
The electrons, the hydrogens. The oxygen is just like, get
out of here, oxygen.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
What is the asked this way to get rid of
this unnecessary ingredient. That's what they're doing, just like a
factory of flushing out chemical byproducts into your local water system.
I mean, that's kind of what it is. The analogy
holds if those.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Byproducts were gold and like magic dust, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Well, we would say again, we would it's all perspective.
If there was a life form that thrived off of
the effluvium ejected from factories, that might say that's gold too,
you know, oxygen didn't They didn't care, right, These things
didn't really care about oxygen. It became important later. But
these these bacteria, after countless of them die and mutate
(26:40):
and effectively and then die again, you know. And this one, somehow,
at some indeterminable point, a mutation is successful. Bacteria becomes
the translator of capturing those photons using sunlight. But they
still haven't figured it out. They needed what we would say,
(27:01):
I guess we'd call them batteries. They had to be
able to accumulate those protons and hold them on a
discrete side of their membrane instead of the other one.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, and then start passing them down through the process. Right,
that actually generates all the all the things, all the
different byproducts that become the energy. And then but then
the craziest thing about this whole photosynthesis thing is this
not just one way like holding them holding the charge
and sending it through one way. It then goes back
(27:32):
through the other way in the membrane to create other
stuff that the plant then uses to grow itself. So
you're just like, sorry, my mind is so nuts.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
It's insane. I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
It's the it's also uh we have to give you know,
honorable mentions to all the other uh, all all the
other things that came into play, the sano bacteria, the chloroplasts,
et cetera, et cetera, and all of this leads to
something pretty dope.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Plants. You know them.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
You should love them, even if you're not a vegetarian.
These things take in carbon dioxide and water, as we mentioned,
from air and soil, and then they have kind of
some feature versus from nutrients, minerals, micronutrients and stuff in
the dirt. The water is, as you said, matt oxidized
and oxidze just means it loses electrons. This COE is
(28:21):
the carbon dioxide exceesing CO two is reduced so it
gains electrons. This transforms the water and oxygen. Carbon dioxide
turns in the glucose. The plant is like, I'm amazing
at this, and then it releases that oxygen back into
the air. Who cares about that? And it stores energy
within those glucose molecules.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Not to mention they're delicious whether or not you're a vegetarian,
and they provide us nourishment. I forgot about the whole
fact that we can eat the things too.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Are you that part out too?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Cheese loiase, And I mean they are attractive. They make
us want to eat them, you know what I mean,
And they taste good, and the ones that don't kill
you or you're some kind of glutton for like a
really spicy pepper like Matt.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Yeah, and just if you want to go down this
rabbit hole, you really should cannot recommend the video series
that the con Academy has for free you can watch
right now that goes all into the what they call
the light reactions, the dark or light independent reactions, all
the way to the Calvin cycle. The Calvin cycle is
something we're not even going to fully go into today,
(29:26):
but like good, uh, just reblow your mind to remind
remember how Alvin cycle. Yeah, it's it's all that. It's
all that extra stuff of like what the diagrams.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Within the diagrams with little circle like arrows around it,
you know, like it's.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, shut out Stomata stroma all the hits.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I remember, okay, okay, now you're jogging some some more
like that again.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
The vocabulary is great and all that, but the how
it works together just I don't know. It gives you
an appreciation. It's like an overview effect that you can
get by studying a plant.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
It's weird, well said big fans of cotn Academy as well.
Ken show them out enough. And this reminds me of
I listened back to I can't remember the title, excellent
episode we did back in the day about plants and
consciousness because plants do something very similar to speaking with
each other. And also, oh man, there's so many great
(30:28):
TED talks too, which you mentioned along with CONN Academy. This, Yeah,
this is fascinating. I think that's an excellent point, Matt.
The idea of the overview effect. You don't have to
be an astronaut to encounter it. The world continues. All
after all of this brute force, evolutionary hacking, the countless
back to the drawing board moments, we are here in
(30:49):
twenty twenty three. We have to remember plants are like
any other living thing that humans know of. They have
evolved to live in a set of specific ranges and
thresholds and circumstances. Just like humans can and will die
when wet bulb temperature gets past a certain threshold, plants
need a specific temperature to really vibe. By vibe, we
(31:11):
mean conduct photosynthesis to use their superpower. It turns out
that past a certain threshold, a temperature can become a
kryptonite to the plant's superpower, and they will suddenly be
up a very bad river with no way back down.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
It is crazy. We've known that those thresholds exist with
ambient temperatures and plants since the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Since eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Yeah, So we're going to take a quick break and
then we'll come back and get into why we're even
doing this episode. Why are we worried about photosynthesis? There's
a real threat.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
And we have returned.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Also, just because we're going into some of the more
disturbing territory here, I want you guys to know we're
recording this remotely. The reason I put my handle on
here as photosimp assist is just because I thought it
was a cool pun and there's not really a way
to put it in naturally.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
So is that like, is that reference to being like
this you simp for a photosynthesis.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
I'm still not sure. You know, you find the pun
first and then you figure more quick.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Wait, that's not how we do science.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
That's how plants figured out the oxygen thing.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
So all right, here's what happened. There was a paper
published in the journal Nature in August the twenty twenty three,
led by a guy named Christopher Doughty. He is the
associate professor in echo informatics at Northern Arizona University, and
they put in some crazy work.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
If you were worried.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
About the mass extinction of bees, allow us to introduce
you to a nice side dish, make that existential dread
a combo meal.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Flowers don't work, and neither do you leaves.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Professor Dowdy says, let's do this, He says, let's get
a specific type of instrument, something called ecostress, a thermal sensor.
Let's launch that on the International Space Station ISS, and
we're going to keep it up there for about for
a while. We're going to use two years worth of
(33:24):
data from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty to get a
big picture of the overall situation. And they didn't stop there.
They also looked on the ground.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
They put, well, let's talk before we talk about on
the ground, let's talk about just exactly what they're looking
at with from that big picture. Sure, because when they
get photos and information back and temperature readings from all
the way up at the ISS they're looking at one
pixel equals seventy meters like square meters, So that's a
huge swath like an area, right that they're studying from
(33:56):
that overview standpoint. But but you can't get very granular
with that. So they needed a way to get closer
to the action.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
And if you want to learn more about Ecostress, I
cut a lot of this, but it's really interesting. Go
to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory over at the California Institute
of Technology Caltech. Just search that in ecostress and you
can learn in detail some of the stuff Matt is
talking about. You're absolutely right, and so they needed just
(34:29):
as you described, Matt, they needed a closer look. So
what we were saying is they did not stop there.
They went on the ground. They placed sensors across canopies
around the globe Australia, Brazil, Panama, Puerto Rico, and they
were not working off just some sort of inarticulate hunch. Scientists,
(34:51):
as we mentioned previously, knew there was something important about
temperature and plants as far back as eighteen sixty four,
and what they found this again way back then, was
that the leaves of some plants could survive temperatures of
up to one hundred and twenty two degrees fahrenheit for
the rest of the world, that's fifty degrees celsius, and
(35:12):
once they got passed at or past that point, the
leaves would die important distinction, not the whole plant, the leaves,
the things that are like it's almost like saying your
mouth or your lungs or your digestive system die, right,
but your body is still technically alive, and so knowing
(35:34):
that this is how amazing the study is. This professor
and his team also pulled a study from twenty twenty
one which found that one hundred and forty seven different
tree species in tropical biomes. They found that these trees
their photosynthesis petered out at an average temperature of forty
(35:54):
six point seven degrees celsius. That would be a little
north of one hundred and sixteen degrees fahrenheit, so good
to knowe for most of human history this was not
a huge issue. The places that typically reached those temperatures
had typically reached those temperatures for a very, very long time,
and plants that existed in those areas had adapted to
(36:16):
live there. But that might be changing. And here's the kicker.
I want to be careful with this and not be
too too alarmists, but Dowdy's team found that roughly one
in every ten thousand leaves in their big measurement experienced
temperature changes right now that are too high for photosynthesis.
(36:38):
Those leaves were out of commission, they were dying. It's
pretty pretty somber stuff. Science News also points out that
this is to the earlier to our earlier statement, this
is not happening around the world yet. This is happening
in discrete hot spots. Ooh, accidental, pun terrible, But it's
(37:00):
happening in discrete areas, similar to the way that monsoons
or hurricanes only occur in specific parts of the world.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, and they're only studying the canopies of tropical rainforest.
That's really really important. And they're only finding that one
in ten thousand of these leaves are getting affected or
trees are being affected. So it's you know, at this
point from this study, it's sombering, but it's not and
(37:28):
it's not alarm bells going off, right, because it is
just at the very tippy top. When we're talking about canopy,
you're talking about the upper levels of plants, because they
are all kinds of different plants of different sizes in
a tropical rainforest, and tropical rainforests tend to run hot
a lot hotter than other places and other large forests.
So like we've got to keep all that stuff in
(37:49):
mind when we're thinking about this, because it doesn't sound
scary one in ten thousand leaves, but if we're at
a threshold and ambient temperatures all rising across the board,
then it could potentially be a much bigger problem pretty soon.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Agreed.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah, Science News does it this way, they say.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
The analysis was revealed a mosaic of temperatures in forest
canopies during periods when forests were hot and the soil
was dry, temperatures across the canopy reached an average peak
of thirty four degrees celsius. Some tracks exceeded forty degrees celsius.
And going back to going all the way back to
the mid eighteen hundreds, fifty degrees celsius is our very
(38:33):
worrisome point. Aboutzero point zero one percent of the time,
just in the upper canopy these leaves would hit above
the danger threshold. The highway to the danger zone is
forty six point seven degrees celsius. The ride out danger
zone proper fifty degrees celsius. And that means that on
a regular basis, Earth is beginning to hit that limit,
(38:56):
past which photosynthesis simply will not occur.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
But it's not like this would happen overnight with like
every I mean, it's it's a gradual process. And it's
like like you described earlier, Matt, the idea of like
a power grid like visually going down kind of cascading,
but maybe on a much longer timeline or what kind
of timeline are we talking.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Well, well, yeah, we'll talk to the timeline. But the
big thing to note is this is the canopy of
a tropical rainforest region. So if ambient temperatures at in
that specific band around the Earth hit those exceed those
levels on a regular basis, you're talking about killing the
or potentially the leaves on that upper level dying. Now,
(39:39):
if those ambient temperatures reach all the way down to
the ground level right in the dense forest, then you're
talking about potentially killing off leaves basically vertically as you're
moving down towards the ground.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
And there's a snowball effect because those leaves in every
level of the canopy above right, those leaves also provide
cover and cool for the levels beneath them, so that
there is the possibility for an exacerbation of this. And
to your questionable regarding how this wall breaks down, I
(40:13):
found a really fun thread on what I want to say,
one of my most enjoyable subreddits. They did the math.
It's the unnecessarily well I would say, it's very thorough
math about all sorts of strange questions. And one of
the estimates there I said, Okay, let's assume photosynthesis even
(40:34):
though it won't happen. Let's assume it all goes dead
at once. We just have a finite amount of oxygen.
From that point on, how long would it take humans
alone to suffocate themselves in the escape room of Earth?
The answer seven hundred and four thousand years.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Oh the we're fine.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yeah, Well, because algae like ocean algae is the primary
oxygen source, right, I.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Mean around seventy percent.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, so we're yeah, yeah, we Would's good to know.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Not doesn't give us a pass, but it is good
to know that like this isn't an immediate apocalyptic events
like you know, breathing up all the air like in
a ninny sub or something.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
You know, I do know.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
The only I've got to give a shout out where
it's due credit whords do The only reason I know
the algae stuff is because of the film water World.
Watching that, I thought, well, all the plants are gone
except for this one islands, how could they breathe? And
that's when a friend helpfully pointed out, well, but an
algae create most of the oxygen.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
That's also where I learned about desalination, or at least
in terms of pea. And remember that scene, so I
think it's the what everyone remembers where he's on the
raft and he peas the kind of a thing and
then he drinks it.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
I guess that is still suit. Basically, it's a portable
still suit.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
But that boat was so cool. What is the name
for those? Is it a catamaran?
Speaker 4 (41:56):
I think it is the trail I just remember data carve.
We did a joke about it, like asses, they say,
you can't pee into a mister coffee and expect taste's choice.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Classic, Classic, It's such a good stand up career in
the cards. But so okay, there are things that make
this number. There are problems with this number, and you
can walk through the math. You can see it. The
people on Reddit posting this data, great job. It doesn't
factor in a lot of other things. It doesn't factor in,
(42:26):
for example, all of the other non human animals that
are big fans of breathing oxygen on a dare I
say regular basis. It doesn't factor in comorbid stuff, increases
in population, you know, the fact that mass starvation will
occur before the oxygen quote unquote runs out. Climate chaos,
(42:46):
which again I think is a far more accurate term
than the sort of milk toast climate.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Change we've been using.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
So it seems like, again without being experts, that while
seven hundred and four thousand years is a long long time,
things hit the fan way way before that point. But
the good news, like you said, no, this is not
going to immediately lead to disaster. Point zero one percent
is not a big percentage.
Speaker 4 (43:14):
Selfishly, I was like, my immediate calculation was not within
my lifetime or the lifetime of my kid or loved ones.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
So I'm good. But that's really a selfish way to think.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Well, that may not be trutal, really okay, go on, Well,
and it all depends on how runaway, you know, the
greenhouse effect becomes, right, and if it does get really bad,
if rising ambient temperatures expand out of that tropical zone
(43:45):
and keep moving towards the polls and it gets worse
and worse and worse, then what is the year, Ben
We both talked about it off air, like twenty.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Twenty one hundred would be the the time that greenhouse
gas emissions push the world to that amount of warming.
That amount of warming right now. Experts estimate these plants
can survive about four degrees celsius of warming above the
current levels before trees lose all their leaves, the plant
(44:19):
version of going bald and then die. It wouldn't hit
the entire Earth at once. Plant die offs follow the
pattern of gotta stop saying. Hotspots follow the pattern of
the warming here, right, So, for instance, in the poles
of the planet, this warming, this you know, like the
(44:40):
transformation of the tundra and the thawing of permafrost. That's
going to be a very different situation than what will
occur in the equator and in the tropical areas of Earth.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Guys, is it still even remotely controversial, like climate change,
climate chaos? Are there still people that find that.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
To be Maybe and we're nuts. The jury still out.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yes, there are people who who feel that way, but
I think it's safe to say that the science so
far is unanimous. Now that the corporations who were paying
for opposing voices, now that they are exposed, it's increasingly
(45:24):
less controversial. I don't think it's controversial at all.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
I think it feels maybe more like a political talking point,
you know, like on one side of an argument to
like I don't know if even the people that say
it believe it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I think it was Vladimir Putin just recently. I think
it was yesterday. We're recording November ninth. This was on
November eighth. He started asking these very strange questions about
ice in Antarctica, and it was like, how much ice
can you store in Antarctica? Repeatedly?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
And is that like a riddle. It's yeah, I don't know,
is it a code? Very interesting.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Western analysts are speculating that that is an an attempt
to cast further aspersion upon the idea of climate chaos.
But yeah, to your boy political, I think.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah, it doesn't help that there are all kinds of
strange sounding schemes like carbon offset programs where you can
just somehow pay your way out of the pollution your
corporation just it's paying indulgences to the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
It's like the economist. The economist and neoliberals love that one.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Well, yeah, but it does it does not help the
skepticism I think that exists out there for you know,
for this science behind the subject, because it does feel
like it's being taken advantage of by people who want
to make money and want to be able to spend
more tax dollars on things that are not probably helpful. Yeah, anyway, I.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Mean there's also the fact that when you hear these numbers,
and you know, it's a bit of a roller coaster,
plants are dying because it's getting too hot. True, that
does seem to be the precedent, That does seem to
be the pattern that will continue unless variables change. But
there's still a bevy of other factors at play. There
(47:26):
would already be there already is a growing impact on
historical agricultural resources, the so called bread baskets of civilization,
the interior of the US, parts of Europe, Asia, India,
parts of Africa, and you know, the biodiversity of South America.
In Southeast Asia also under intense threat. And they would
(47:49):
be dealing with this growing plant die off in conjunction
with unpredictable weather, droughts, flooding at the wrong time, and
of course the ever present growing threat of political instability.
The truth is, we don't know everything about the fallout here.
We also don't know everything about the adaptive abilities of
(48:12):
every tree species. Humanity still doesn't know how many plant
species exist. There are many unknowns here, and we also
don't know We don't know how the deaths of individual
leaves impact the mortality of a given species of tree.
And so that's why there are some people saying, hold on,
(48:33):
we might be overestimating vulnerability. One guy, ecologist, Christopher Still
so he's not just some guy, he is an ecologist.
He said, maybe we're you know, we're making this assumption
that when leaves hit this critical temperature they die. That's
a cold comfort, though, I would argue it's a bit
of a fig leaf in the face of what may
well become an existential threat.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
I mean and saying we're just barely covering it up
just enough to where it can still walk around and
we wouldn't be embarrassed by what's under the figure belief.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Just enough to tell later generations. Well, you know, we
put a good hustle in. It was a big swing.
And my question though, is is this a possible tipping point?
Like what happens not one hundred percent of plants stop photosynthesis,
that seems very very far away in alarmist, but what
(49:26):
happens when a certain percentage of them stop? What do
you guys, how do you think? Guys think this shakes out?
Speaker 2 (49:34):
It's gonna get real weird because you know, there are
massive ice sheets on Antarctica that are now beyond the
point of being able to maintain right, So there's some
series melting occurring there. There's gonna be a lot more
water if within the whole system that we run in here,
both both in the oceans and in the skies, so
(49:56):
plants are gonna have no shortage of the the hydrate
they need to continue photosynthesis. They're gonna have no shortage
of sun because it's just hanging out there, blast in
the earth. We uh if we can love.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
That image, Matt. So I just hanging out blast in
the air.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Well. It blasts everything.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Oh, it blasts everything.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
But but isn't Remember we were talking at the beginning
about how and what a coincidence did.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
Is this exact right distance?
Speaker 4 (50:22):
As the ozone layer continues to be depleted and stuff,
I mean, is that going to become I know that
the warming is one part of it, but just like
the heat like I mean, I wonder.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Not long ago the ozone holes, some of the major
ones were beginning to fill in, which was actually good news.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
Yeah, it's due to the success of the Montreal Protocol,
the ozon mitigation.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
Yeah. Thang, okay, maybe I'm not aware of that.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
That's going to take about four decades go it.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
The big thing now is just heat trapping. That still occurs.
Heat trapping within the system.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
The plants they're resilient buggers. Yeah, for sure, that's the thing.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
We see it on a human life span because that's
all we know, and we measure time in life and
death of humanity, right of.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
Generations, timeline discrepancy. We're talking about it earlier.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, yeah, sorry, I don't mean to retread things. It's
just I think it is a matter of perspective.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
Oh yeah, it really makes you think, you know, how
that we were just a blip. I mean, no, just
the idea of the evolution and the connection, and the
fact that plants are really not about individuals.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
They're about like the whole system, you know.
Speaker 4 (51:45):
And even if they were to go away, you have
to imagine that byproduct that we've relied on, that would
be the issue for us. They'll probably evolve into something
else over time, on another planet, on another star whatever.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Oh, I forgot to tell you guys, I read this.
I got really into research with fungus in space. I
didn't know this, but fungus is a huge problem for astronauts.
Were you guys aware of this.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Because they're always tripping balls when they're in their space suits, and.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Well, it's literally their balls. It's oh no.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
It grows. Yeah, it coats uh, mechanisms, coats windows, everything.
It's it's actually a really good argument for pan spermia,
which still needs a better name as a theory.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
But sperm another thing that astronauts are plagued by.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Yes, wait a minute, what globules? Just like in space,
no one can hear you, you know what? Never mind,
no one can.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
I'm sorry this this disaster though, and and I got
I do hope this was worth an episode.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
I yeah, make them mount album mole Hill.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
If so, I apologize, But we gotta remember this disaster
occurs concurrently. It's in depth with other things that are
on the way. Widespread drought, climate migration on massive levels,
rising oceans, the long term effects of microplastics. The list
goes on and on and on, and fortunately so does
the science.
Speaker 4 (53:14):
Well, and while this is an existential threat episode, I
found it very educational and enlightening as well, you know
what I mean. It was really fun hearkening back to
some of those earliest memories of like learning about what
science is and how magical these systems are, you know,
and how utterly mind boggling their existence is, you know.
(53:37):
And again, I hope we don't see any of this
these ramifications in our life. Do you guys think there's
there's mitigation there's mitigation for this, like is it too late?
Speaker 3 (53:45):
Have we swung too far? It's not enough?
Speaker 1 (53:49):
People care well, it's it's it's difficult, I think sometimes
to articulate in an impactful way consequences that do not
seem immediately apparent, right, going to that idea of perspective
and timescale. Maybe we mentioned this, I think on a
previous recording, But maybe one of the best ways to
(54:10):
think about it is, Okay, the car accident, like climate costs,
is like a car accident, and in this comparison, the
accident is already happening. The car has left the road,
we can see the tree ahead. The question is what
do we do in those figurative few seconds before the
(54:30):
car hits the.
Speaker 4 (54:31):
Tree, jump out of the car space, we find a
new car, or we walk never set foot in a
car again.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
So maybe it's a matter of you know, in that
it's not the best comparison, but maybe it's a matter
of seatbelts, airbags, swerving to what degree that can occur,
But it takes a lot of collective global action in
a way that is relatively unprecedented.
Speaker 4 (54:56):
It was to hear that those zone holes are doing better,
like that's that was news to me.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
I'm not joking.
Speaker 4 (55:03):
I was like, wait, cool, Okay, that's that's some positive
silver lining.
Speaker 2 (55:07):
Yeah, there's been. It's so weird because we have experienced
over our lifetimes a lot of alarmism over this stuff, right,
probably rightly. So it's balancing the fear we need to
have in order to take action, right with the knowledge
(55:28):
that that fear should it has to be tempered because
if we're just freaking out about it because it feels
so dire, we're not going to get anything done. But
if you don't have enough fear, you're not getting get
anything done either. So I don't know, and I.
Speaker 4 (55:41):
Think we always strive to be as not alarmist as
humanly possible, to just lay out the facts, approach it
with a little bit of lightheartedness, because what else can
you do. And hopefully we're not trying to freak anybody
out or make anyone feel as spared, you know, but
this is something to be aware of, but also don't
let it keep you up at I guess if you
can help it or do I don't, Well, we have to.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Maybe the best way to put a button on this
is to say, look, you can put political ideology, corporate perspectives,
cultural differences, all that jazz, all that space fungus to
one side, because none of it alters the simple fact.
The clock is ticking and the question is what does
humanity do in response? And hey, folks, thanks as always
(56:26):
for tuning in. If you can fix this, if you
can share it with us, the immediate solution, we would
love to hear it. We will forward it everywhere. All
you have to do, or you know, if you have,
we want to hear your take on this. From your
neck to the global woods. Ideas for future episodes, limericks,
cool puns. Surely we can do better than photosynthesis, So
(56:50):
let us know what's on your mind. We try to
be easy to find in a variety of ways.
Speaker 4 (56:55):
Oh you're not even the simp. You're the assistant of
the simp. It's a very frot concept.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
Then I love it.
Speaker 4 (57:02):
But you can indeed write to us about that. Make
up new words, send it to us. You can find
us on social media. We are conspiracy Stuff on YouTube,
Facebook and x nay, Twitter, Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram
and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Hey do you like to talk on your phone, Well
talk to us. Our number is one eight three three
std wytk. It's a voicemail system, guys, that happens to
be empty right now. We need new voicemails. Yeah, so
you know when you call, you got three minutes. Give
yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we
can use your name and message on one of our
(57:37):
listener mail episodes. If you've got more to say they
can fit in that voicemail, why not instead send us
a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (57:44):
We are the folks who read every single email we get.
Send us those links, send us those photos. We can't
wait to hear from you. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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