December 25, 2025 • 44 mins
In today’s classic holiday episode, Rob and Joe once more turn their minds to Christmas trees – but not the ones you’ll find in living rooms and department stores. No, for these Christmas trees, they’ll be considering natural organisms in the watery depths of Earths’ oceans… (originally 12/12/2024)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Merry Christmas. Today is Christmas, so
we are running a vault episode. This is going to
be our holiday episode from last year, originally published twelve twelve,
twenty twenty four, and it is Christmas Trees beneath the Sea,
So don't worry. We're not talking about the dumping of
(00:28):
old Christmas trees, certainly not artificial ones. We're going to
be talking about natural organisms in the watery depths of Earth,
so otions that in varying ways bring to mind a
holiday decorated tree. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
We have a special holiday episode here for you today.
It does concern Christmas trees of a sort. We have,
of course talked about Christmas trees plenty of times on
Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the past. I think
the most recent installment being an episode we did a
couple of years back. Holiday inventions, Christmas tree lights, tinsel
(01:22):
and angels. We've talked about Christmas trees and connection to
sacred trees in the past. But today we're going to
find our Christmas trees in an all new location. We
are going to venture beneath the sea.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
That's right, it's Yule tied in the deep today.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yes, deep down in the ocean. In some cases, deep
in the ocean where it's said that Cuthulhu waits dreaming.
But just maybe maybe he's dreaming of a white Christmas.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
He's dreaming of that red writer be begun.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, so that'd we come around to Christmas trees under
the sea? Well, credit where credits due. We had a
couple of lead ends to this. One of the organisms
we're going to cover here is one that was already
on your radar and is also something that I've observed
in the wild before. And then another source of inspiration
(02:12):
was a twenty twenty one Jay Store Daily article by
Sierra Garcia titled Meet the Christmas Tree Doppelgangers of the Sea. Now,
obviously with a title like that, you know I'm going
to give the post a second look. You know. Doppelganger
of course, being the German double walker, the uncanny, sinister
and perhaps doom harboragering duplication of self. Christmas, with its
(02:36):
hidden depths of darkness, seems a great place for such
creatures to wander around. But of course it's not about
actual doppelgangers. It's about things in the ocean that may
or may not resemble Christmas trees, depending on how much
you want to see Christmas in them.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
You know, my daughter is two years old now, and
so this is going to be her first, her first
really conscious Christmas, the one that I think she's really
going to be very aware of. And of course at
her age, I'm constantly thinking about, like the recognition of objects,
because she likes to point to things and either ask
what's that or to say what the thing she's pointing
(03:13):
at is, And a lot of times it's not the
thing she says it is, but you can see the resemblance.
And so I'm constantly thinking about the minimum visual criteria
to associate a shape or some kind of sight with
an object or a concept that she already has. And
one of them now is Christmas trees, and so like
I'm wondering what kind of triangular thing this week? You know,
(03:33):
she'll point out is that Christmas tree? And we're sort
of playing the same game now, aren't we.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you've got to call these organisms something, right,
We've encountered examples of this before. You know, everything is
an apple, according to Western explorers, some version of an apple,
be it pine or otherwise. But you know, on another level,
all of this kind of connects with the ancient notion
that we've discussed in the show before, the idea that
(03:59):
if if you look into the water, if you gaze
deep into it, you're going to inevitably fine twins of
things that exist above the water. You're going to find
lions of the sea, cows of the sea, and so
much more so. Maybe it's not all that off the
mark anyway, that there are doppelgangers Christmas tree doppelgangers in
(04:20):
the deep, because we have Christmas trees up here, so
they must exist in the mirror realm beneath the waves.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
That's right. Well, are you ready to kick things off
with my example here?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yes? Yes, this is a fun one. This is probably
the one that's instantly coming to some folks mind out there,
especially folks who have done a little snorkeling and scuba diving.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Well, we're going to start in the place you might
expect for undersea Christmas Trees, and that is James Cameron's
Avatar from two thousand and nine. I know, I was
actually so reading an article about this that was LinkedIn
that Jastore Daily you mentioned earlier. But this was a
short article that was mainly just promoting a conference presentation,
(05:00):
but it had some interesting behind the scenes details about the
making of Avatar. It was called of Plants in Film
by Tanya Marion and the Botanical Artist twenty fifteen, and
so it was talking about when Cameron was setting out
to design the world of Avatar, he wanted to achieve
some degree of biological plausibility, and the movie is set
(05:21):
on a planet. Actually, I think it's supposed to be
a moon called Pandora, which he was originally imagining as
a place with low light conditions and a toxic atmosphere,
so it would have kind of different different material pressures
applying to the biosphere, maybe leading to different forms of
life than we have here on Earth. And so in
(05:43):
trying to dream up these life forms, he consulted with
a plant physiologist from UC Riverside named Jody Holt to
help imagine the botany of the alien biosphere. It's kind
of interesting how the plants they dreamed up in some
way resemble life forms that are found not on the
surface of Earth but underneath Earth's oceans. So the movie
(06:06):
features in some scenes a type of large ground flora,
I think within the sort of in universe lore. It's
they call it like a zoo botanical or something like that.
It's sort of like an animal plant combination. But whatever
it is, it basically seems plant formed. It's a piece
of large ground flora with spiral shaped foliage, and in
(06:28):
the universe of the movie it's called helicoradium spirally. And
in the movie we see that this plant has an
unusual reaction to activity in its environment. When it is
physically disturbed, these fanned out, corkscrew shaped leaves rapidly recoil
and fold up into almost nothingness. So you can be
(06:49):
standing in the middle of a little grove of these
things and suddenly they all fold up and you can
see everything around you. It's a touch me not reflex.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Very impressive effects in play here, particularly nice on the
big screen and in three D. You know, say what
you will about the Avatar films, but there's a lot
of fantastic biological world building going on in them, And yeah,
this is a great example of one of the organisms
that Cameron unleashes us.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, And so it turns out this was one of
the biological elements of the movie that was inspired by
organisms that actually exist in nature, not so much a plant,
but by an animal, the real animal called Spirobranchus gigantius,
or the Christmas tree worm. And that's the animal that
I want to talk about for a minute here. So
(07:40):
first of all, your mind, if it works like mine,
might be looking in the wrong direction here, because when
I hear Christmas tree worm, for some reason, to me,
it sounds like the name of a pest animal that
is named after the crop that it is most notorious
for infesting and consuming. So like the tobacco hornworm or
the tato tuber worm. These are in reality both moth
(08:03):
species that in their larval stages feed on night shade
plants like the ones in their names, and other night
shade plants as well. But you know, humans kind of
have a sometimes a kind of economic agricultural mindset in
interfacing with wildlife, so they can sort of name animals
after the crop that that animal is causing them problems with.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, it's like Christmas tree worms have ravaged the harvest
again is going to be a tough winner exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
But the Christmas tree worm is not a caterpillar that
infests Christmas tree farms. Instead, it is a marine tubeworm
that lives on the surface of coral reefs. And so
what's the association. Well, these animals are named after Christmas
trees because they look like Christmas trees. And yet sometimes
(08:51):
these naming conventions are a bit of a stretch, But
for my part, I think it's close enough. I think
these worms really do kind of remind me of Christmas trees,
though I will qualify that, and my qualification is that
it's not so much that they resemble the actual species
of evergreens, which are usually fir trees that we use
(09:12):
as Christmas decorations. The only way in which I'd say
they actually evoke the trees themselves is in general shape.
So like Christmas trees, the part of these worms you
can see is a cone which is widest at the
base and the narrows towards the top, and it does
sort of have branches, branches radiating from a central trunk
(09:34):
or spine. They're also sort of needly needly branches, which
you could compare to evergreen pine needle texture, but it's
not exactly a perfect match when you look at it. Instead,
I think the main way that they remind me and
remind other people of Christmas trees is that they mimic
a popular style of Christmas tree decoration, especially from years past,
(09:57):
which is that you would have a string of lights
or a brightly colored garland wrapped around the tree in
a spiral pattern. I've got a couple of examples for
you to look at here, Rob. I don't really know
that much about historical patterns of Christmas tree decoration, but
this reads to me as a more old style way
of decorating a Christmas tree. I associate it with like
(10:17):
the nineteen thirties or forties.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, yeah, And I guess maybe some of this survived.
I don't know, I'm looking at this. I'm not sure
when this style of tree decoration dies out or then
again resurges again. For that matter, I'm not sure where
we are now. We don't put a tremendous amount of
thought into it. We just throw up the tree and
(10:40):
we put our favorite decorations up and call it a day.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, yeah, my family never had a spiral garland on
our tree, so it's not something I remember from personal experience.
I feel like I've seen it in older media, which
is maybe why I think of it as something that's older.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
We might have had a spiral garland, or maybe my
grandmother did. I don't remember, but it feels like something
I've seen in my lifetimee somewhere. Hard to get excited
about the garland, though, especially as a kid, because it's
the individual ornaments and the lights that have all of
the personality.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I think, especially for people with brains like yours in mind.
I think you and I were both like the Illustrated
Dictionary kind of kids. We like things with lots of
little individual in trees, with the little illustration and explanation,
and that's kind of what the individual ornaments feel like
to me. I like individual ornaments with personality.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of puting it.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
But coming back to the Christmas tree worm, So if
you do a search for pictures of this worm, you
will find plenty of stunning underwater photos of coral reef
surfaces speckled with multicolored pairs of spiral Christmas trees. Each
pair branching in a fork. So what you'll see are
two little Christmas trees right beside one another, with the
(11:55):
same coloration. Now, each pair has a different coloration from
the other ones around, but within the pair, the two
little trees next to each other that are growing in
a V shape split at the base, those will be
the same color usually. And one important thing to emphasize
is that the Christmas trees that you're seeing are not
(12:15):
the whole of the organism. Each pair of Christmas trees
represents the two crowns, or feeding and breathing appendages of
a worm, the main cylindrical body of which is hidden
in a tube in the coral right beneath where the
trees emerge. And whether or not you think they look
like Christmas trees, these things are beautiful. I know they're
(12:37):
especially popular as a site for like scuba divers and snorkelers.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, I've gotten to observe these in the wild before,
snorkeling in Breeze and in Rowatan. They're one of the
smaller pleasures of snorkeling in the shallows, and honestly, that's
what I'm all about when it comes to snorkeling. I
don't really I don't really want to see anything big,
you know, unless it's like a big coral format. I mean,
I see a bigger fish, it's neat. But I often
(13:03):
spend my time with looking around for those little details
things that are you know, curling about inside the reefs
and the rocks and and and you know, I think
that's one of the things that makes something like a
Christmas tree worm special. Now, in terms of whether they
look like Christmas trees, I don't know. Obviously, It's one
(13:24):
of those things where I knew what they were called,
but as they were pointed out to me, so I
couldn't help but bring Christmas tree into the scenario. But
the ones I remember looking at I tended to think
more of like bristle cleaner for straws and tubes, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
But gorgeously decorated.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, Like, I don't remember them being the ones I saw,
mind you, as colorful as the ones I see in
some of these photos. But on the other hand, underwater
photography is very much a lighting game. I mean, I
guess all photography is a lighting game, and you know,
what you actually see with your own eyes, and maybe
less than optimal lighting conditions the water. You know, they're
(14:01):
not going to necessarily match up with what you see,
you know, in somebody's showcase of underwater photography. But yeah,
they still they do have a lot of character. You know,
there's something sneaky and whimsical about them. A lot of
the things in the water don't want to be seen
and will do what they can passively or actively to
avoid a clumsy human and a mask and a snorkel
from seeing them. But Christmas tree worms tend to feel
(14:24):
just a little extra cheeky in the way they hide from.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Us, Like they're not just hiding from you, they're almost
kind of playing peekaboo, maybe playing yeah hard to get.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, there is like a peekaboo feel to them, you.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Know, yeah, yeah, you know. I was reading some guides
to marine life and coral reef life that we're talking
about people who try to get photos of these things,
and apparently they's somewhat They're sensitive to multiple things, including
changes in light conditions. So maybe if a shadow falls
under them, they could retract, or if the flash of
a camera goes off, they could retract, and then slowly
(14:58):
over time after they retract, they'll so re emerge, and
so I think there might be some patience involved in
trying to get up close and see them or to
take a good photo of them, to kind of wait
for them to come back out after you have spooked
them the first time. But then another thing I saw
in one of the sources I was reading was that
(15:18):
how skittish they are might well depend on their surroundings.
Like the ones that are in shallower, more turbulent waters,
I think, tend to be a little less skittish than
the ones that are in deeper, more calm and stable waters,
which sort of makes sense. Yeah, but anyway, Okay, so
what's the biological rundown on the Christmas tree worm. It
(15:42):
is a relatively small polychet worm that lives the entirety
of its adult life with the majority of its body
hidden inside a calcareous tube that it makes initially on
the surface of a rock or more often a coral reef,
and then the tube can kind of become subsumed within
(16:03):
the coral as the coral grows, and then the worm
and its tube grows up along with the coral. So
it begins life in a short planktonic larval phase, floating
around after which it lands somewhere on the reef, secretes
a tube made of mucus, which it lives in for
a bit, and over time that mucous tube becomes cemented
(16:26):
with solid minerals, and then within that tube, the Christmas
tree worm metamorphoses and grows into its adult form, where
it will live the rest of its life, growing with
the structure of the reef, safe and secure, and covered
inside its tube by a nice lubricating blanket of mucus.
I've seen different estimates on size range. According to a
(16:49):
post by the NOAA, on average, these worms are less
than four centimeters long, but according to marine biologist Eugene
Kaplan in his book A Field Guide Coral Reefs from
nineteen ninety nine, their body length can reach up to
twelve centimeters or about five inches either way. They are small,
but they're easy to spot because they're very colorful, and
(17:11):
in some cases because of rapid changes that you can
observe with them, most often them disappearing suddenly, so the
exposed parts the two Christmas trees are two tentacles or crowns,
and I've also seen them called gill plumes arranged in
a spiral or whirl pattern, which themselves contain what's called
(17:33):
a bipinnate arrangement of hair like or needle like protrusions
called radioles. And then those little needle protrusions are themselves
perpendicularly covered in other smaller protrusions called pinules or ccilia.
So you can imagine a kind of fern shape. You know,
you have the main stalk going out, and then you
(17:54):
have branches going out from that stalk, and then out
from the branches you got the little leaves projecting at
a ninety gre angle. So these radioles covered in the cilia,
the worm fans them out in this spiral pattern and
then beats them in the water to catch floating phytoplankton
and other bits of biological particle matter that will become
(18:16):
the worm's food. The little pins sort of they catch
hold of bits of organic stuff suspended in the water,
and then they sort of transport those particles in a
stream in little ridges along the surface of the worlds
down to the worm's mouth. Delicious. So imagine kind of
a spiral Christmas tree that gradually sucks in all of
(18:37):
its ornaments, sucks the ornaments down the branches and then
down the trunk and eats them.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I mean it sometimes works like that if you have
a cat and Christmas tree.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Now, these structures are not only for filter feeding, they're
also for breathing. They are the worm's gills, and so
the worm uses these radioles to extract dissolved oxygen from
the water. Now, the activity that makes the Christmas tree
worm notable as an inspiration for the plants in Avatar
is the touch me not reflex. When it senses danger
(19:10):
through multiple types of stimuli, it can rapidly retract its
two Christmas trees into the hole where it lives, and
on top of that, it can also shut the door
behind it. It has a flat body structure, sometimes capped
with some sort of horny surface called an operculum, which
(19:30):
it can slam shut over the opening of its tube.
And we've talked about this adaptation the operculum in other species,
such as snails. Snails sometimes have an operculum that they
can use to cover the opening of their shell. Serves
the same purpose, but of course, in the case of
a snail, the shell is mobile. Here we'd be talking
about a stationary tube on a substrate for a sedentary organism.
(19:53):
We also talked about it in our episodes on hermit crabs,
because in some cases the hermit crab will have one
one claw that is so made that it functions as
an operculum at the opening of the shell.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
That's right. It's perfect little lid for their shell.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
That's right. So the operculum is a biological adaptation for
slamming the door shut. Now, I wanted to shout out
an interesting sort of ecological fact that I became aware
of because I saw it in a PBS Nova segment,
So thank you Nova. But the interesting thing is that
there is some evidence that the relationship between the Christmas
(20:33):
tree worm and the coral reef on which it lives
goes both ways. Now, of course you can see how
the worm benefits. The worm benefits from the coral skeletal structure,
which of course provides it, you know, rigid protection against
predators and you know, the tube it can live in.
But also as it grows, it lifts it up into
(20:54):
the water where it can have access to better waters
for filter feeding. But the coral itself may also benefit
from having Christmas tree worms all over it, because apparently
the Christmas tree worms can provide a kind of protection
for the coral against one of the coral's major predators,
and that predator is the crown of thorns starfish aka acinthaster,
(21:20):
plantcy or plunky p l A n c I. But
I'll just say crown of thorns starfish because boy, is
the epicness of that name appropriate. So imagine kind of
a cross between a giant sunflower and an iron maiden
turned inside out. These things are absolutely from the hell
razor universe, extremely wicked. They might do. They're large, they
(21:43):
might be roughly a foot and a half in diameter
on average, coated in spikes, and what they do is
they crawl over the surface of the coral reef just mowing.
There's just mowing the lawn, eating everything they can. According
to that NOVA segment, these giant starfish are in part
responsible for the major decline of living coral within the
(22:04):
Great Barrier Reef. There are other factors at work as well,
but when these things get going, a sort of explosion
in the population of these coral predators can clean out
a reef of living corals, and so the whole ventral surface,
the underside of the starfish, you can kind of think
of as a vast digestive organ complex containing tube feet
(22:28):
and this inverted stomach inside out stomach system, so it's
just the underside of it is foreeat. It is just
going to devour the coral underneath. And it turns out
there's some evidence that if it comes to a part
of a coral reef where there are Christmas tree worms,
the Christmas tree worms can protect the corals directly underneath
(22:51):
them because they get in the way of the starfish
feeding and in fact they irritate the starfish's feeding organs.
I've looked up a pa so I was trying to
find the paper that was the source of this observation,
and I found one published in the Marine Ecology Progress
Series from nineteen eighty six by Devantier at All called
(23:12):
does spiro Bronchus gigantius protect host porities from predation by
acanthaster planky predator pressure as a mechanism of coevolution? And
I was looking for the part of the paper that
describes exactly how this works. I found it in their
results section where they say, quote, preliminary field experiments indicate
that for certain worms, contact by Acinhaster planky induces retraction,
(23:37):
followed by almost immediate reappearance with the operculum and bronchial
crowns pushing against the tube feet and arms of the starfish.
This caused the predator to move quickly away. So something
about what these worms like poking it at their tube
feed and the averted stomach. The starfish do not like
(23:58):
the worms messing with them, and so this can have
the effect of protecting the corals that are situated right
around where the worms are, And so it's not going
to protect the reef totally from being mowed by the starfish,
but what it can do is make sure that some
corals are left alive on the reef, and that those
(24:20):
corals left alive around the worms protected by the worms,
can reseed the rest of the reef structure with living
coral once again.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Fascinating. So they're holding down their turf, which could allow
the overall reef to then grow and heal later. Yes, fascinating.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
So I don't know. We've been thinking about trees a
lot lately as apotropaic magic. Is there something here protective
kind of the coral reef's got its own protective amulet,
Except I guess it's not magic. It's just like literally
keeping the starfish from absolutely devouring every inch of its life.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
It would be like if your Christmas tree protected your
else by coming alive in the night, yeah, and fighting
you know, weird alpine demons that might venture into your home.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, it's like if aliens wanted to come over your
house and suck all of the people out of it.
If the Christmas tree that you had like poked the
alien ship and irritated it and made it go away.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
So that does it for Christmas tree worms. But I
know we had some other organisms we were going to
talk about.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
That's right. This next one is one that I learned
about in that Jaystore Daily post that I referenced earlier,
and it's very much still in the world of coral.
Christmas tree coral, a cold water black coral discovered apparently
in the mid two thousands. Some of you may be wondering,
what is a black coral? Like, what does this even mean? Okay, Well,
you know a reminder that generally, you know, corals, of course,
(25:56):
are animals, like we've been discussing, and if you've gotten
out into the water, you're probably mostly familiar with the
vibrant corals and you know sometimes the bleached corals and
shallow coastal environments, but what are black corals well? As
the NAA article Black Corals of Hawaii by Anthony Montgomery
(26:17):
points out, black corals or thorn corals, which are officially
known as antipatharia, are found all over the world and
at varying depths, so you don't have to go into
the deep waters to find them, but they're often noted
for their presence in deep sea environments. Despite their name,
they are rarely actually black. I'll get to why we
(26:38):
still call them black corals in spite of this, but
they can be various even bright colors, and their shapes
also vary wildly. A key difference, however, between black corals
and the stony corals that I think more people are
familiar with, is that black corals have a skeleton made
(26:59):
of protein and kitan. This skeleton is black, no matter
what color the outer layers are, and that's the reason
they end up with this name. So they have black skeletons,
but they may have any number of colors on top
of that skeleton. I see now Montgomery and that na
article stresses that black corals do not have symbiotic algae
(27:24):
associated with them, and they don't require light, thus their
ability to survive at greater depths. And there are apparently
something like two hundred known species of black coral. Now
the Christmas tree black coral in question. Here is a
particular species Antipathos Dindo christos in nomine patre. That's not
(27:46):
part of it, but it sounds very Catholic, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Dendro cristos. That's gotta literally mean Christmas tree.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, yeah, this is one. I'm gonna get to another
organism later where not everybody seems to be associated with
Christmas as far as I can understand, but this one,
it's right there in the official name.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
According to environmental factors that influence the distribution, size, and
biotic relationships of the Christmas tree coral, Antipathis dindol krystos
in the southern California bite by huff at All. This
is in Marine Ecology Progress Series twenty thirteen. The Christmas
tree coral is an uncommon, long lived colonial coral that
(28:23):
typically supports a diverse population of marine life forms. This,
of course, is one of the reasons that there are
a number of studies looking at it because there's a
lot more to learn about them and a lot of
organisms depend on them. But why do we call it
a Christmas tree coral? What is even remotely christmas y
about it? Well, while your mind may easily turn to
(28:45):
an image of a green tree, you know, draped in
silver tassels and multicolored lights, the Christmas tree, its name for,
is actually one of those artificially frosted, you know, white
flocked Christmas trees. You know what I'm talking about. These
are the ones where the idea is the tree is
supposed to look like a frost covered tree in the forest,
(29:07):
very much in keeping with the movie Jack Frost that
we watched for Weird House Cinema, in which Jack Frost
essentially like flocks the trees in the forest, covering them
with ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that is what they're
going for here, Joe, I included a photograph for you here.
This This is an image I believe from the huff
(29:27):
at All Paper.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Oh, I absolutely see the comparison. It looks very much
like fur tree branches covered in snow.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah it's not now, it's not tree shaped, it's not
really conical, but yeah, it looks like like fur tree
branches that are completely covered in some through a white frost. Now,
as the huff at All Paper points out, Christmas tree
corals also occur in red. But my first thought was like, well,
it doesn't always look like a Christmas tree. But that
shows how little I know about the history of flocking
(29:56):
Christmas trees or creating you know, plastic a official trees,
because I easily found an image of like a flocked
red Christmas tree where it just is like a bright
red imitation fur tree I'm assuming here, And yeah, I
mean it does not look unlike an actual photograph of
a red Christmas tree, black coral.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
I'd see that. For some reason, this one made me
think alveoli just like you know, a little uh red
broccoli in the lungs.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another solid comparison. Yeah. I
also have to point out this one picture from the
huff at All paper that has the red There's a
red one and then there's a white one right behind it.
And on the red one you see two different crustaceans
climbing about, And to me it looks like one of
(30:46):
those sometimes you see like a really wacky themed holiday tree,
you know where there's very much a particular theme in mind.
It's not about just getting all of your favorite ornaments
on there, but like making something that is very fashionable.
And so I can imagine a tree where it's like
your only two ornaments are two enormous crustaceans crawling about
on the tree.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, Ho ho LV four twenty six.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, that sort of thing. So full grown colonies of
this particular form of black coral apparently reach heights of
eight feet in eight feet tall, and they can live
more than a century of conditions are favorable. A two
thousand and seven bulletin of marine science paper from Love
at All found that basically in this paper they've discussed
(31:31):
how they found a dead two point one meter or
six point eight feet tall Christmas tree black coral collected
from one hundred and six meter depth or three hundred
and forty eight feet depth off off the coast of
southern California, and this one they found it would be
to have been about one hundred and forty years old
when it died, and its skeleton was heavily colonized by invertebrates.
(31:53):
According to this paper and this particular specimen two five
hundred and fifty four species living there.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Wow, somebody counted all those species.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, yeah, so it's a lot now that you know
this is a dead one. But you know, basically the
idea here is that you know, alive, we're dead. They
have an important place in the ecosystem, you know, providing
you know, substrate and so forth for various other organisms
to thrive. And of course black corals, like like other corals,
(32:25):
are you know, generally threatened by a climate change and
related human industrial level activities, so you know, it's any
threat to them is of course not only a threat
to this particular species, but then there's also all these
cascading effects that can occur with all the species that
are then dependent upon it. I was also reading about
(32:46):
how the black in general, not with this particular species,
the Christmas tree black coral, but black corals in general.
They have at times been prize for medicinal uses and
then also for jewelry making, and I believe in Hawaii
there's still a certain amount of black coral harvesting that
(33:06):
is allowed, and I think largely for jewelry making, though
perhaps there's some medicinal usage in there as well. In
other areas, though black corals, along with other forms of coral,
are completely protected. And to be clear, there is some
level of protection in Hawaii based on what I was reading.
It's just I think there is some allowance for harvesting.
(33:27):
So again, Christmas tree black corals named named for the
Christmas tree, and you know, I think it's not unreasonable
to say, yes, they do kind of look like Christmas trees.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I was going to say, if you tried to make
a Christmas tree like harvests, assuming you could and ecological
concerns aside, harvest some and make it the Christmas tree
in your house, would it still look like a Christmas
tree out of the water.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
I'm not sure. I think well, I mean one of
the things, once you with the black corals, it's like
people were harvest was doing it and doing stuff with
the black skeleton. So I don't know, you might end
up with some sort of like you know, goth black
Christmas tree, which you know, I'm also totally on board
for do what you want with your Christmas trees. Make
them a statement of your identity.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Okay, what's our third underwater Christmas tree? Okay?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I I did to do a little bit more digging
for this one, because I was like, all right, we
really need something else for the episode. You've got to
round it out with a third, right, And for a
little bit there I was like, I think the third
is going to be the Christmas Tree of the desert.
And then I had to remind myself in the way,
I can't do that. That's that's not deep sea. That's
the opposite of deep sea. That's the desert. So I
was beginning to think there wasn't going to be something,
(34:41):
but then I started finding some references from the Monterey
Bay Aquarium and that led me to a particular genus
of Sciphonophore that we're going to talk about here, and
that genus is a forced Kalia. And this genus I
believe is unofficially referred to as containing at least one
(35:06):
variety of Christmas tree Siphonophor. Okay, so what is a
siphonophor or Sciphonophora is an order of colonial free swimming
or floating marine hydra zooins, such as the Portuguese Man
of War that's probably the most well known member of
this group. And they're mostly delicate, transparent, various colors in play,
(35:32):
and they are composed of zooids, zooids that possess special
functions such as feeding or locomotion. They're very strange. The
Good Wizard recently discussed Man of Wars on Automa alias Stupendium,
an occasional Wednesday episode that we do, and in that
(35:54):
we went into some of the details of what a
sephonophor actually is. It is a colonial organism made up
of getically identical but highly specialized polyps. So what you
might mistake for a single organism's reproductive system or a
digestive system, grasping arms, or the flotation bladder are in
(36:14):
fact individual zooids. And I have a way that I
make sense of all this, and I'm going to adapt
what is in that Animalius to Pendium episode for the
holiday theme here. Okay, so imagine your Santa Claus and
you need a reindeer to pull your sleigh this year.
It's a common problem. Unfortunately, all but one of your
(36:35):
reindeer were killed last year by the bear spirit Tombach.
So what are you going to do? You just got
one one can't pull the sleigh right. Fortunately, your Santa Claus,
you have access to advanced cloning technology, So what can
you do? Well? You could simply clone blitz In a
dozen times to produce a host of genetically identical reindeer
(36:56):
to pull your sleigh. That would work, But your Santa Claus,
what if you aimed higher? What have you instead? Formed
each Blitzen clone into a giant organ or organ system
or you know, or tissue or part of some sort
of a greater organism. You know, one Blitzen becomes the
digestive system, another they're reproductive system, another the skeletal and
(37:18):
so forth, until you have a single uber Blitzen, a
colonial super deer organism composed of genetically identical individuals. Those
individuals do not look like a deer. They look like
parts of the greater thing that you associate as a
single entity.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Kind of Blitzen.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Biovultron, Yeah, vultron is another way of thinking. Like when
you look at a Portuguese man of war, and when
you look at any of these siphonophores, you are looking
at vultrons. But unlike vultron, vultron of course can come
back apart into lions and fly about. That doesn't happen here,
like they're all part of the whole. They there is
(37:57):
no decoupling from the whole here interesting. There may be
a better way of thinking about it, but yeah, I
tend to think of it in this way. I think
the vultrone way of understanding them is also pretty solid.
So the Forscalia genus was first described in the eighteen hundreds,
and the species in question here is Forskalia formosa, first
(38:18):
recorded by Keverstein and Elers in eighteen sixty. Now, I
am personally not certain if anyone other than the Monterey
Bay Aquarium and perhaps their web team are calling this
species the Christmas tree siphonopour. But even if they're the
only ones, that's good enough for me, because A they're
a world class institution and B we needed one more
(38:41):
Christmas tree to round out podcasts.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I mean, I see it. Looking at a picture of
this thing, it looks the most festively decorated I mean
talk about garlands.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, yeah, there are some pictures of this on the
Monterey Bay Aquariums website. There's also some really nice video
footage on the Bay Aquarium Research Institutes YouTube page. Especially
that video. I find you look at it and you're like, yes,
it looks like a Christmas tree. It's upside down, but
it looks like a you know, roughly Christmas tree shaped
(39:14):
array of branches with illumination.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah, definitely. So it's kind of actually, I think like
the Christmas tree worm, where it's not so much that
the crowns of the worm look really a lot like
you know, evergreen trees. They're sort of cone shaped, they're
generally shaped like a tree. But then the real thing
is that that decorating convention, the garland that you wrap
around a tree like a spiral that resembles the the
(39:40):
you know, the color tips of the spiral, the radioals
going up around the tentacles of the worm in a
similar fashion. Here, I would say that it's not so
much that this looks like a Christmas tree, is that
it's roughly tree shaped, and then it has these little white,
shining or glowing bits in the video you've seen, which
makes me think of like the lights that we put
(40:02):
on a Christmas tree. So again, it's kind of a
decorating convention that I think really seals the esthetic comparison.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah. Now, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, these organisms
live in the deep ocean, ranging from the surface down
to six six hundred feet or two hundred meters deep
in the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They reach sizes
of up to ten feet or three meters in length
or height, depending on how you want to view it
as a Christmas tree. I guess, subsisting on various small
(40:32):
sea animals in those environments, and it moves through the
water via a system of floats and swimming bells.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Whether or not it looks like a Christmas tree to you,
it is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
That's right. Well, then you know you could maybe again
use this as inspiration for your own Christmas tree instead
of ornaments this year, you know, decorate your tree with zooids.
I don't know. Yeah, no, no, In truth, I think
you could technically do a theme tree based on all
three of these organisms. It would be an impressive feat,
(41:04):
and I guess it would be for a limited audience.
But I don't know. Maybe there's some marine biologists out
there who really get into it. If you have ever
decorated your Christmas tree to align with actual marine organisms
name for Christmas trees or associated with Christmas trees, obviously
we want to know about it. Oh, yes, I mean
it's not impossible. It's not impossible, but I guess it's
(41:25):
more likely there may be people with Christmas trees out
there that have some sort of a science theme or
even a marine biology or underwater oceanic theme. I would
settle for that. I'm always game to look at the
pictures of somebody's Christmas tree, So by all means, send
them in, please do all right, I think we're going
to go ahead and wrap this episode up, but hopefully
(41:47):
this was a fun and surprisingly different holiday episode from
us here. You know, in the past we've done again,
you know, Christmas inventions, things that tie into like psychological
or even philosophical ideas that are associated with the holidays.
This time we went a little deeper in the oceanic sense.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
All I want for Christmas is to have my body
exfoliated by a crown of thorn starfish.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Oh yeah, those look pretty rough, kind of like a
like a whoope cushion from hell. I guess, you know.
C stars in general have like a do not touch vibe,
but these really have it do not touch vibe.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Maybe we have to come back in the future and
give them, give them their own episode.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
I think yeah, we could easily do an episode on
I mean on starfish in general, you know, calling out
various particular species of note. But yeah, maybe these guys too.
All right, we're gonna wrap it up here then, But
just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode
(42:49):
on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
House Cinema. If you want to follow us on Instagram,
that's probably the best place to follow us these days.
You can find us at st b y M Podcast
And let's see what else do we want to mention here?
We should have a call out that we do have
(43:10):
a merch store. If you want to check that out.
There should be a link on the Instagram. You can
also find a link at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
to topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
A photop
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Merry Christmas. Today is Christmas, so
we are running a vault episode. This is going to
be our holiday episode from last year, originally published twelve twelve,
twenty twenty four, and it is Christmas Trees beneath the Sea,
So don't worry. We're not talking about the dumping of
(00:28):
old Christmas trees, certainly not artificial ones. We're going to
be talking about natural organisms in the watery depths of Earth,
so otions that in varying ways bring to mind a
holiday decorated tree. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
We have a special holiday episode here for you today.
It does concern Christmas trees of a sort. We have,
of course talked about Christmas trees plenty of times on
Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the past. I think
the most recent installment being an episode we did a
couple of years back. Holiday inventions, Christmas tree lights, tinsel
(01:22):
and angels. We've talked about Christmas trees and connection to
sacred trees in the past. But today we're going to
find our Christmas trees in an all new location. We
are going to venture beneath the sea.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
That's right, it's Yule tied in the deep today.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yes, deep down in the ocean. In some cases, deep
in the ocean where it's said that Cuthulhu waits dreaming.
But just maybe maybe he's dreaming of a white Christmas.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
He's dreaming of that red writer be begun.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, so that'd we come around to Christmas trees under
the sea? Well, credit where credits due. We had a
couple of lead ends to this. One of the organisms
we're going to cover here is one that was already
on your radar and is also something that I've observed
in the wild before. And then another source of inspiration
(02:12):
was a twenty twenty one Jay Store Daily article by
Sierra Garcia titled Meet the Christmas Tree Doppelgangers of the Sea. Now,
obviously with a title like that, you know I'm going
to give the post a second look. You know. Doppelganger
of course, being the German double walker, the uncanny, sinister
and perhaps doom harboragering duplication of self. Christmas, with its
(02:36):
hidden depths of darkness, seems a great place for such
creatures to wander around. But of course it's not about
actual doppelgangers. It's about things in the ocean that may
or may not resemble Christmas trees, depending on how much
you want to see Christmas in them.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
You know, my daughter is two years old now, and
so this is going to be her first, her first
really conscious Christmas, the one that I think she's really
going to be very aware of. And of course at
her age, I'm constantly thinking about, like the recognition of objects,
because she likes to point to things and either ask
what's that or to say what the thing she's pointing
(03:13):
at is, And a lot of times it's not the
thing she says it is, but you can see the resemblance.
And so I'm constantly thinking about the minimum visual criteria
to associate a shape or some kind of sight with
an object or a concept that she already has. And
one of them now is Christmas trees, and so like
I'm wondering what kind of triangular thing this week? You know,
(03:33):
she'll point out is that Christmas tree? And we're sort
of playing the same game now, aren't we.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you've got to call these organisms something, right,
We've encountered examples of this before. You know, everything is
an apple, according to Western explorers, some version of an apple,
be it pine or otherwise. But you know, on another level,
all of this kind of connects with the ancient notion
that we've discussed in the show before, the idea that
(03:59):
if if you look into the water, if you gaze
deep into it, you're going to inevitably fine twins of
things that exist above the water. You're going to find
lions of the sea, cows of the sea, and so
much more so. Maybe it's not all that off the
mark anyway, that there are doppelgangers Christmas tree doppelgangers in
(04:20):
the deep, because we have Christmas trees up here, so
they must exist in the mirror realm beneath the waves.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
That's right. Well, are you ready to kick things off
with my example here?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yes? Yes, this is a fun one. This is probably
the one that's instantly coming to some folks mind out there,
especially folks who have done a little snorkeling and scuba diving.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Well, we're going to start in the place you might
expect for undersea Christmas Trees, and that is James Cameron's
Avatar from two thousand and nine. I know, I was
actually so reading an article about this that was LinkedIn
that Jastore Daily you mentioned earlier. But this was a
short article that was mainly just promoting a conference presentation,
(05:00):
but it had some interesting behind the scenes details about the
making of Avatar. It was called of Plants in Film
by Tanya Marion and the Botanical Artist twenty fifteen, and
so it was talking about when Cameron was setting out
to design the world of Avatar, he wanted to achieve
some degree of biological plausibility, and the movie is set
(05:21):
on a planet. Actually, I think it's supposed to be
a moon called Pandora, which he was originally imagining as
a place with low light conditions and a toxic atmosphere,
so it would have kind of different different material pressures
applying to the biosphere, maybe leading to different forms of
life than we have here on Earth. And so in
(05:43):
trying to dream up these life forms, he consulted with
a plant physiologist from UC Riverside named Jody Holt to
help imagine the botany of the alien biosphere. It's kind
of interesting how the plants they dreamed up in some
way resemble life forms that are found not on the
surface of Earth but underneath Earth's oceans. So the movie
(06:06):
features in some scenes a type of large ground flora,
I think within the sort of in universe lore. It's
they call it like a zoo botanical or something like that.
It's sort of like an animal plant combination. But whatever
it is, it basically seems plant formed. It's a piece
of large ground flora with spiral shaped foliage, and in
(06:28):
the universe of the movie it's called helicoradium spirally. And
in the movie we see that this plant has an
unusual reaction to activity in its environment. When it is
physically disturbed, these fanned out, corkscrew shaped leaves rapidly recoil
and fold up into almost nothingness. So you can be
(06:49):
standing in the middle of a little grove of these
things and suddenly they all fold up and you can
see everything around you. It's a touch me not reflex.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Very impressive effects in play here, particularly nice on the
big screen and in three D. You know, say what
you will about the Avatar films, but there's a lot
of fantastic biological world building going on in them, And yeah,
this is a great example of one of the organisms
that Cameron unleashes us.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, And so it turns out this was one of
the biological elements of the movie that was inspired by
organisms that actually exist in nature, not so much a plant,
but by an animal, the real animal called Spirobranchus gigantius,
or the Christmas tree worm. And that's the animal that
I want to talk about for a minute here. So
(07:40):
first of all, your mind, if it works like mine,
might be looking in the wrong direction here, because when
I hear Christmas tree worm, for some reason, to me,
it sounds like the name of a pest animal that
is named after the crop that it is most notorious
for infesting and consuming. So like the tobacco hornworm or
the tato tuber worm. These are in reality both moth
(08:03):
species that in their larval stages feed on night shade
plants like the ones in their names, and other night
shade plants as well. But you know, humans kind of
have a sometimes a kind of economic agricultural mindset in
interfacing with wildlife, so they can sort of name animals
after the crop that that animal is causing them problems with.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, it's like Christmas tree worms have ravaged the harvest
again is going to be a tough winner exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
But the Christmas tree worm is not a caterpillar that
infests Christmas tree farms. Instead, it is a marine tubeworm
that lives on the surface of coral reefs. And so
what's the association. Well, these animals are named after Christmas
trees because they look like Christmas trees. And yet sometimes
(08:51):
these naming conventions are a bit of a stretch, But
for my part, I think it's close enough. I think
these worms really do kind of remind me of Christmas trees,
though I will qualify that, and my qualification is that
it's not so much that they resemble the actual species
of evergreens, which are usually fir trees that we use
(09:12):
as Christmas decorations. The only way in which I'd say
they actually evoke the trees themselves is in general shape.
So like Christmas trees, the part of these worms you
can see is a cone which is widest at the
base and the narrows towards the top, and it does
sort of have branches, branches radiating from a central trunk
(09:34):
or spine. They're also sort of needly needly branches, which
you could compare to evergreen pine needle texture, but it's
not exactly a perfect match when you look at it. Instead,
I think the main way that they remind me and
remind other people of Christmas trees is that they mimic
a popular style of Christmas tree decoration, especially from years past,
(09:57):
which is that you would have a string of lights
or a brightly colored garland wrapped around the tree in
a spiral pattern. I've got a couple of examples for
you to look at here, Rob. I don't really know
that much about historical patterns of Christmas tree decoration, but
this reads to me as a more old style way
of decorating a Christmas tree. I associate it with like
(10:17):
the nineteen thirties or forties.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, yeah, And I guess maybe some of this survived.
I don't know, I'm looking at this. I'm not sure
when this style of tree decoration dies out or then
again resurges again. For that matter, I'm not sure where
we are now. We don't put a tremendous amount of
thought into it. We just throw up the tree and
(10:40):
we put our favorite decorations up and call it a day.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, yeah, my family never had a spiral garland on
our tree, so it's not something I remember from personal experience.
I feel like I've seen it in older media, which
is maybe why I think of it as something that's older.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
We might have had a spiral garland, or maybe my
grandmother did. I don't remember, but it feels like something
I've seen in my lifetimee somewhere. Hard to get excited
about the garland, though, especially as a kid, because it's
the individual ornaments and the lights that have all of
the personality.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I think, especially for people with brains like yours in mind.
I think you and I were both like the Illustrated
Dictionary kind of kids. We like things with lots of
little individual in trees, with the little illustration and explanation,
and that's kind of what the individual ornaments feel like
to me. I like individual ornaments with personality.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of puting it.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
But coming back to the Christmas tree worm, So if
you do a search for pictures of this worm, you
will find plenty of stunning underwater photos of coral reef
surfaces speckled with multicolored pairs of spiral Christmas trees. Each
pair branching in a fork. So what you'll see are
two little Christmas trees right beside one another, with the
(11:55):
same coloration. Now, each pair has a different coloration from
the other ones around, but within the pair, the two
little trees next to each other that are growing in
a V shape split at the base, those will be
the same color usually. And one important thing to emphasize
is that the Christmas trees that you're seeing are not
(12:15):
the whole of the organism. Each pair of Christmas trees
represents the two crowns, or feeding and breathing appendages of
a worm, the main cylindrical body of which is hidden
in a tube in the coral right beneath where the
trees emerge. And whether or not you think they look
like Christmas trees, these things are beautiful. I know they're
(12:37):
especially popular as a site for like scuba divers and snorkelers.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, I've gotten to observe these in the wild before,
snorkeling in Breeze and in Rowatan. They're one of the
smaller pleasures of snorkeling in the shallows, and honestly, that's
what I'm all about when it comes to snorkeling. I
don't really I don't really want to see anything big,
you know, unless it's like a big coral format. I mean,
I see a bigger fish, it's neat. But I often
(13:03):
spend my time with looking around for those little details
things that are you know, curling about inside the reefs
and the rocks and and and you know, I think
that's one of the things that makes something like a
Christmas tree worm special. Now, in terms of whether they
look like Christmas trees, I don't know. Obviously, It's one
(13:24):
of those things where I knew what they were called,
but as they were pointed out to me, so I
couldn't help but bring Christmas tree into the scenario. But
the ones I remember looking at I tended to think
more of like bristle cleaner for straws and tubes, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
But gorgeously decorated.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, Like, I don't remember them being the ones I saw,
mind you, as colorful as the ones I see in
some of these photos. But on the other hand, underwater
photography is very much a lighting game. I mean, I
guess all photography is a lighting game, and you know,
what you actually see with your own eyes, and maybe
less than optimal lighting conditions the water. You know, they're
(14:01):
not going to necessarily match up with what you see,
you know, in somebody's showcase of underwater photography. But yeah,
they still they do have a lot of character. You know,
there's something sneaky and whimsical about them. A lot of
the things in the water don't want to be seen
and will do what they can passively or actively to
avoid a clumsy human and a mask and a snorkel
from seeing them. But Christmas tree worms tend to feel
(14:24):
just a little extra cheeky in the way they hide from.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Us, Like they're not just hiding from you, they're almost
kind of playing peekaboo, maybe playing yeah hard to get.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, there is like a peekaboo feel to them, you.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Know, yeah, yeah, you know. I was reading some guides
to marine life and coral reef life that we're talking
about people who try to get photos of these things,
and apparently they's somewhat They're sensitive to multiple things, including
changes in light conditions. So maybe if a shadow falls
under them, they could retract, or if the flash of
a camera goes off, they could retract, and then slowly
(14:58):
over time after they retract, they'll so re emerge, and
so I think there might be some patience involved in
trying to get up close and see them or to
take a good photo of them, to kind of wait
for them to come back out after you have spooked
them the first time. But then another thing I saw
in one of the sources I was reading was that
(15:18):
how skittish they are might well depend on their surroundings.
Like the ones that are in shallower, more turbulent waters,
I think, tend to be a little less skittish than
the ones that are in deeper, more calm and stable waters,
which sort of makes sense. Yeah, but anyway, Okay, so
what's the biological rundown on the Christmas tree worm. It
(15:42):
is a relatively small polychet worm that lives the entirety
of its adult life with the majority of its body
hidden inside a calcareous tube that it makes initially on
the surface of a rock or more often a coral reef,
and then the tube can kind of become subsumed within
(16:03):
the coral as the coral grows, and then the worm
and its tube grows up along with the coral. So
it begins life in a short planktonic larval phase, floating
around after which it lands somewhere on the reef, secretes
a tube made of mucus, which it lives in for
a bit, and over time that mucous tube becomes cemented
(16:26):
with solid minerals, and then within that tube, the Christmas
tree worm metamorphoses and grows into its adult form, where
it will live the rest of its life, growing with
the structure of the reef, safe and secure, and covered
inside its tube by a nice lubricating blanket of mucus.
I've seen different estimates on size range. According to a
(16:49):
post by the NOAA, on average, these worms are less
than four centimeters long, but according to marine biologist Eugene
Kaplan in his book A Field Guide Coral Reefs from
nineteen ninety nine, their body length can reach up to
twelve centimeters or about five inches either way. They are small,
but they're easy to spot because they're very colorful, and
(17:11):
in some cases because of rapid changes that you can
observe with them, most often them disappearing suddenly, so the
exposed parts the two Christmas trees are two tentacles or crowns,
and I've also seen them called gill plumes arranged in
a spiral or whirl pattern, which themselves contain what's called
(17:33):
a bipinnate arrangement of hair like or needle like protrusions
called radioles. And then those little needle protrusions are themselves
perpendicularly covered in other smaller protrusions called pinules or ccilia.
So you can imagine a kind of fern shape. You know,
you have the main stalk going out, and then you
(17:54):
have branches going out from that stalk, and then out
from the branches you got the little leaves projecting at
a ninety gre angle. So these radioles covered in the cilia,
the worm fans them out in this spiral pattern and
then beats them in the water to catch floating phytoplankton
and other bits of biological particle matter that will become
(18:16):
the worm's food. The little pins sort of they catch
hold of bits of organic stuff suspended in the water,
and then they sort of transport those particles in a
stream in little ridges along the surface of the worlds
down to the worm's mouth. Delicious. So imagine kind of
a spiral Christmas tree that gradually sucks in all of
(18:37):
its ornaments, sucks the ornaments down the branches and then
down the trunk and eats them.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I mean it sometimes works like that if you have
a cat and Christmas tree.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Now, these structures are not only for filter feeding, they're
also for breathing. They are the worm's gills, and so
the worm uses these radioles to extract dissolved oxygen from
the water. Now, the activity that makes the Christmas tree
worm notable as an inspiration for the plants in Avatar
is the touch me not reflex. When it senses danger
(19:10):
through multiple types of stimuli, it can rapidly retract its
two Christmas trees into the hole where it lives, and
on top of that, it can also shut the door
behind it. It has a flat body structure, sometimes capped
with some sort of horny surface called an operculum, which
(19:30):
it can slam shut over the opening of its tube.
And we've talked about this adaptation the operculum in other species,
such as snails. Snails sometimes have an operculum that they
can use to cover the opening of their shell. Serves
the same purpose, but of course, in the case of
a snail, the shell is mobile. Here we'd be talking
about a stationary tube on a substrate for a sedentary organism.
(19:53):
We also talked about it in our episodes on hermit crabs,
because in some cases the hermit crab will have one
one claw that is so made that it functions as
an operculum at the opening of the shell.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
That's right. It's perfect little lid for their shell.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
That's right. So the operculum is a biological adaptation for
slamming the door shut. Now, I wanted to shout out
an interesting sort of ecological fact that I became aware
of because I saw it in a PBS Nova segment,
So thank you Nova. But the interesting thing is that
there is some evidence that the relationship between the Christmas
(20:33):
tree worm and the coral reef on which it lives
goes both ways. Now, of course you can see how
the worm benefits. The worm benefits from the coral skeletal structure,
which of course provides it, you know, rigid protection against
predators and you know, the tube it can live in.
But also as it grows, it lifts it up into
(20:54):
the water where it can have access to better waters
for filter feeding. But the coral itself may also benefit
from having Christmas tree worms all over it, because apparently
the Christmas tree worms can provide a kind of protection
for the coral against one of the coral's major predators,
and that predator is the crown of thorns starfish aka acinthaster,
(21:20):
plantcy or plunky p l A n c I. But
I'll just say crown of thorns starfish because boy, is
the epicness of that name appropriate. So imagine kind of
a cross between a giant sunflower and an iron maiden
turned inside out. These things are absolutely from the hell
razor universe, extremely wicked. They might do. They're large, they
(21:43):
might be roughly a foot and a half in diameter
on average, coated in spikes, and what they do is
they crawl over the surface of the coral reef just mowing.
There's just mowing the lawn, eating everything they can. According
to that NOVA segment, these giant starfish are in part
responsible for the major decline of living coral within the
(22:04):
Great Barrier Reef. There are other factors at work as well,
but when these things get going, a sort of explosion
in the population of these coral predators can clean out
a reef of living corals, and so the whole ventral surface,
the underside of the starfish, you can kind of think
of as a vast digestive organ complex containing tube feet
(22:28):
and this inverted stomach inside out stomach system, so it's
just the underside of it is foreeat. It is just
going to devour the coral underneath. And it turns out
there's some evidence that if it comes to a part
of a coral reef where there are Christmas tree worms,
the Christmas tree worms can protect the corals directly underneath
(22:51):
them because they get in the way of the starfish
feeding and in fact they irritate the starfish's feeding organs.
I've looked up a pa so I was trying to
find the paper that was the source of this observation,
and I found one published in the Marine Ecology Progress
Series from nineteen eighty six by Devantier at All called
(23:12):
does spiro Bronchus gigantius protect host porities from predation by
acanthaster planky predator pressure as a mechanism of coevolution? And
I was looking for the part of the paper that
describes exactly how this works. I found it in their
results section where they say, quote, preliminary field experiments indicate
that for certain worms, contact by Acinhaster planky induces retraction,
(23:37):
followed by almost immediate reappearance with the operculum and bronchial
crowns pushing against the tube feet and arms of the starfish.
This caused the predator to move quickly away. So something
about what these worms like poking it at their tube
feed and the averted stomach. The starfish do not like
(23:58):
the worms messing with them, and so this can have
the effect of protecting the corals that are situated right
around where the worms are, And so it's not going
to protect the reef totally from being mowed by the starfish,
but what it can do is make sure that some
corals are left alive on the reef, and that those
(24:20):
corals left alive around the worms protected by the worms,
can reseed the rest of the reef structure with living
coral once again.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Fascinating. So they're holding down their turf, which could allow
the overall reef to then grow and heal later. Yes, fascinating.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
So I don't know. We've been thinking about trees a
lot lately as apotropaic magic. Is there something here protective
kind of the coral reef's got its own protective amulet,
Except I guess it's not magic. It's just like literally
keeping the starfish from absolutely devouring every inch of its life.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
It would be like if your Christmas tree protected your
else by coming alive in the night, yeah, and fighting
you know, weird alpine demons that might venture into your home.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, it's like if aliens wanted to come over your
house and suck all of the people out of it.
If the Christmas tree that you had like poked the
alien ship and irritated it and made it go away.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
So that does it for Christmas tree worms. But I
know we had some other organisms we were going to
talk about.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
That's right. This next one is one that I learned
about in that Jaystore Daily post that I referenced earlier,
and it's very much still in the world of coral.
Christmas tree coral, a cold water black coral discovered apparently
in the mid two thousands. Some of you may be wondering,
what is a black coral? Like, what does this even mean? Okay, Well,
you know a reminder that generally, you know, corals, of course,
(25:56):
are animals, like we've been discussing, and if you've gotten
out into the water, you're probably mostly familiar with the
vibrant corals and you know sometimes the bleached corals and
shallow coastal environments, but what are black corals well? As
the NAA article Black Corals of Hawaii by Anthony Montgomery
(26:17):
points out, black corals or thorn corals, which are officially
known as antipatharia, are found all over the world and
at varying depths, so you don't have to go into
the deep waters to find them, but they're often noted
for their presence in deep sea environments. Despite their name,
they are rarely actually black. I'll get to why we
(26:38):
still call them black corals in spite of this, but
they can be various even bright colors, and their shapes
also vary wildly. A key difference, however, between black corals
and the stony corals that I think more people are
familiar with, is that black corals have a skeleton made
(26:59):
of protein and kitan. This skeleton is black, no matter
what color the outer layers are, and that's the reason
they end up with this name. So they have black skeletons,
but they may have any number of colors on top
of that skeleton. I see now Montgomery and that na
article stresses that black corals do not have symbiotic algae
(27:24):
associated with them, and they don't require light, thus their
ability to survive at greater depths. And there are apparently
something like two hundred known species of black coral. Now
the Christmas tree black coral in question. Here is a
particular species Antipathos Dindo christos in nomine patre. That's not
(27:46):
part of it, but it sounds very Catholic, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Dendro cristos. That's gotta literally mean Christmas tree.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, yeah, this is one. I'm gonna get to another
organism later where not everybody seems to be associated with
Christmas as far as I can understand, but this one,
it's right there in the official name.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
According to environmental factors that influence the distribution, size, and
biotic relationships of the Christmas tree coral, Antipathis dindol krystos
in the southern California bite by huff at All. This
is in Marine Ecology Progress Series twenty thirteen. The Christmas
tree coral is an uncommon, long lived colonial coral that
(28:23):
typically supports a diverse population of marine life forms. This,
of course, is one of the reasons that there are
a number of studies looking at it because there's a
lot more to learn about them and a lot of
organisms depend on them. But why do we call it
a Christmas tree coral? What is even remotely christmas y
about it? Well, while your mind may easily turn to
(28:45):
an image of a green tree, you know, draped in
silver tassels and multicolored lights, the Christmas tree, its name for,
is actually one of those artificially frosted, you know, white
flocked Christmas trees. You know what I'm talking about. These
are the ones where the idea is the tree is
supposed to look like a frost covered tree in the forest,
(29:07):
very much in keeping with the movie Jack Frost that
we watched for Weird House Cinema, in which Jack Frost
essentially like flocks the trees in the forest, covering them
with ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that is what they're
going for here, Joe, I included a photograph for you here.
This This is an image I believe from the huff
(29:27):
at All Paper.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Oh, I absolutely see the comparison. It looks very much
like fur tree branches covered in snow.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah it's not now, it's not tree shaped, it's not
really conical, but yeah, it looks like like fur tree
branches that are completely covered in some through a white frost. Now,
as the huff at All Paper points out, Christmas tree
corals also occur in red. But my first thought was like, well,
it doesn't always look like a Christmas tree. But that
shows how little I know about the history of flocking
(29:56):
Christmas trees or creating you know, plastic a official trees,
because I easily found an image of like a flocked
red Christmas tree where it just is like a bright
red imitation fur tree I'm assuming here, And yeah, I
mean it does not look unlike an actual photograph of
a red Christmas tree, black coral.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
I'd see that. For some reason, this one made me
think alveoli just like you know, a little uh red
broccoli in the lungs.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another solid comparison. Yeah. I
also have to point out this one picture from the
huff at All paper that has the red There's a
red one and then there's a white one right behind it.
And on the red one you see two different crustaceans
climbing about, And to me it looks like one of
(30:46):
those sometimes you see like a really wacky themed holiday tree,
you know where there's very much a particular theme in mind.
It's not about just getting all of your favorite ornaments
on there, but like making something that is very fashionable.
And so I can imagine a tree where it's like
your only two ornaments are two enormous crustaceans crawling about
on the tree.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, Ho ho LV four twenty six.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, that sort of thing. So full grown colonies of
this particular form of black coral apparently reach heights of
eight feet in eight feet tall, and they can live
more than a century of conditions are favorable. A two
thousand and seven bulletin of marine science paper from Love
at All found that basically in this paper they've discussed
(31:31):
how they found a dead two point one meter or
six point eight feet tall Christmas tree black coral collected
from one hundred and six meter depth or three hundred
and forty eight feet depth off off the coast of
southern California, and this one they found it would be
to have been about one hundred and forty years old
when it died, and its skeleton was heavily colonized by invertebrates.
(31:53):
According to this paper and this particular specimen two five
hundred and fifty four species living there.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Wow, somebody counted all those species.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, yeah, so it's a lot now that you know
this is a dead one. But you know, basically the
idea here is that you know, alive, we're dead. They
have an important place in the ecosystem, you know, providing
you know, substrate and so forth for various other organisms
to thrive. And of course black corals, like like other corals,
(32:25):
are you know, generally threatened by a climate change and
related human industrial level activities, so you know, it's any
threat to them is of course not only a threat
to this particular species, but then there's also all these
cascading effects that can occur with all the species that
are then dependent upon it. I was also reading about
(32:46):
how the black in general, not with this particular species,
the Christmas tree black coral, but black corals in general.
They have at times been prize for medicinal uses and
then also for jewelry making, and I believe in Hawaii
there's still a certain amount of black coral harvesting that
(33:06):
is allowed, and I think largely for jewelry making, though
perhaps there's some medicinal usage in there as well. In
other areas, though black corals, along with other forms of coral,
are completely protected. And to be clear, there is some
level of protection in Hawaii based on what I was reading.
It's just I think there is some allowance for harvesting.
(33:27):
So again, Christmas tree black corals named named for the
Christmas tree, and you know, I think it's not unreasonable
to say, yes, they do kind of look like Christmas trees.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I was going to say, if you tried to make
a Christmas tree like harvests, assuming you could and ecological
concerns aside, harvest some and make it the Christmas tree
in your house, would it still look like a Christmas
tree out of the water.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
I'm not sure. I think well, I mean one of
the things, once you with the black corals, it's like
people were harvest was doing it and doing stuff with
the black skeleton. So I don't know, you might end
up with some sort of like you know, goth black
Christmas tree, which you know, I'm also totally on board
for do what you want with your Christmas trees. Make
them a statement of your identity.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Okay, what's our third underwater Christmas tree? Okay?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I I did to do a little bit more digging
for this one, because I was like, all right, we
really need something else for the episode. You've got to
round it out with a third, right, And for a
little bit there I was like, I think the third
is going to be the Christmas Tree of the desert.
And then I had to remind myself in the way,
I can't do that. That's that's not deep sea. That's
the opposite of deep sea. That's the desert. So I
was beginning to think there wasn't going to be something,
(34:41):
but then I started finding some references from the Monterey
Bay Aquarium and that led me to a particular genus
of Sciphonophore that we're going to talk about here, and
that genus is a forced Kalia. And this genus I
believe is unofficially referred to as containing at least one
(35:06):
variety of Christmas tree Siphonophor. Okay, so what is a
siphonophor or Sciphonophora is an order of colonial free swimming
or floating marine hydra zooins, such as the Portuguese Man
of War that's probably the most well known member of
this group. And they're mostly delicate, transparent, various colors in play,
(35:32):
and they are composed of zooids, zooids that possess special
functions such as feeding or locomotion. They're very strange. The
Good Wizard recently discussed Man of Wars on Automa alias Stupendium,
an occasional Wednesday episode that we do, and in that
(35:54):
we went into some of the details of what a
sephonophor actually is. It is a colonial organism made up
of getically identical but highly specialized polyps. So what you
might mistake for a single organism's reproductive system or a
digestive system, grasping arms, or the flotation bladder are in
(36:14):
fact individual zooids. And I have a way that I
make sense of all this, and I'm going to adapt
what is in that Animalius to Pendium episode for the
holiday theme here. Okay, so imagine your Santa Claus and
you need a reindeer to pull your sleigh this year.
It's a common problem. Unfortunately, all but one of your
(36:35):
reindeer were killed last year by the bear spirit Tombach.
So what are you going to do? You just got
one one can't pull the sleigh right. Fortunately, your Santa Claus,
you have access to advanced cloning technology, So what can
you do? Well? You could simply clone blitz In a
dozen times to produce a host of genetically identical reindeer
(36:56):
to pull your sleigh. That would work, But your Santa Claus,
what if you aimed higher? What have you instead? Formed
each Blitzen clone into a giant organ or organ system
or you know, or tissue or part of some sort
of a greater organism. You know, one Blitzen becomes the
digestive system, another they're reproductive system, another the skeletal and
(37:18):
so forth, until you have a single uber Blitzen, a
colonial super deer organism composed of genetically identical individuals. Those
individuals do not look like a deer. They look like
parts of the greater thing that you associate as a
single entity.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Kind of Blitzen.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Biovultron, Yeah, vultron is another way of thinking. Like when
you look at a Portuguese man of war, and when
you look at any of these siphonophores, you are looking
at vultrons. But unlike vultron, vultron of course can come
back apart into lions and fly about. That doesn't happen here,
like they're all part of the whole. They there is
(37:57):
no decoupling from the whole here interesting. There may be
a better way of thinking about it, but yeah, I
tend to think of it in this way. I think
the vultrone way of understanding them is also pretty solid.
So the Forscalia genus was first described in the eighteen hundreds,
and the species in question here is Forskalia formosa, first
(38:18):
recorded by Keverstein and Elers in eighteen sixty. Now, I
am personally not certain if anyone other than the Monterey
Bay Aquarium and perhaps their web team are calling this
species the Christmas tree siphonopour. But even if they're the
only ones, that's good enough for me, because A they're
a world class institution and B we needed one more
(38:41):
Christmas tree to round out podcasts.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I mean, I see it. Looking at a picture of
this thing, it looks the most festively decorated I mean
talk about garlands.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, yeah, there are some pictures of this on the
Monterey Bay Aquariums website. There's also some really nice video
footage on the Bay Aquarium Research Institutes YouTube page. Especially
that video. I find you look at it and you're like, yes,
it looks like a Christmas tree. It's upside down, but
it looks like a you know, roughly Christmas tree shaped
(39:14):
array of branches with illumination.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah, definitely. So it's kind of actually, I think like
the Christmas tree worm, where it's not so much that
the crowns of the worm look really a lot like
you know, evergreen trees. They're sort of cone shaped, they're
generally shaped like a tree. But then the real thing
is that that decorating convention, the garland that you wrap
around a tree like a spiral that resembles the the
(39:40):
you know, the color tips of the spiral, the radioals
going up around the tentacles of the worm in a
similar fashion. Here, I would say that it's not so
much that this looks like a Christmas tree, is that
it's roughly tree shaped, and then it has these little white,
shining or glowing bits in the video you've seen, which
makes me think of like the lights that we put
(40:02):
on a Christmas tree. So again, it's kind of a
decorating convention that I think really seals the esthetic comparison.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah. Now, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, these organisms
live in the deep ocean, ranging from the surface down
to six six hundred feet or two hundred meters deep
in the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They reach sizes
of up to ten feet or three meters in length
or height, depending on how you want to view it
as a Christmas tree. I guess, subsisting on various small
(40:32):
sea animals in those environments, and it moves through the
water via a system of floats and swimming bells.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Whether or not it looks like a Christmas tree to you,
it is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
That's right. Well, then you know you could maybe again
use this as inspiration for your own Christmas tree instead
of ornaments this year, you know, decorate your tree with zooids.
I don't know. Yeah, no, no, In truth, I think
you could technically do a theme tree based on all
three of these organisms. It would be an impressive feat,
(41:04):
and I guess it would be for a limited audience.
But I don't know. Maybe there's some marine biologists out
there who really get into it. If you have ever
decorated your Christmas tree to align with actual marine organisms
name for Christmas trees or associated with Christmas trees, obviously
we want to know about it. Oh, yes, I mean
it's not impossible. It's not impossible, but I guess it's
(41:25):
more likely there may be people with Christmas trees out
there that have some sort of a science theme or
even a marine biology or underwater oceanic theme. I would
settle for that. I'm always game to look at the
pictures of somebody's Christmas tree, So by all means, send
them in, please do all right, I think we're going
to go ahead and wrap this episode up, but hopefully
(41:47):
this was a fun and surprisingly different holiday episode from
us here. You know, in the past we've done again,
you know, Christmas inventions, things that tie into like psychological
or even philosophical ideas that are associated with the holidays.
This time we went a little deeper in the oceanic sense.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
All I want for Christmas is to have my body
exfoliated by a crown of thorn starfish.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Oh yeah, those look pretty rough, kind of like a
like a whoope cushion from hell. I guess, you know.
C stars in general have like a do not touch vibe,
but these really have it do not touch vibe.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Maybe we have to come back in the future and
give them, give them their own episode.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
I think yeah, we could easily do an episode on
I mean on starfish in general, you know, calling out
various particular species of note. But yeah, maybe these guys too.
All right, we're gonna wrap it up here then, But
just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode
(42:49):
on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
House Cinema. If you want to follow us on Instagram,
that's probably the best place to follow us these days.
You can find us at st b y M Podcast
And let's see what else do we want to mention here?
We should have a call out that we do have
(43:10):
a merch store. If you want to check that out.
There should be a link on the Instagram. You can
also find a link at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
to topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.