March 20, 2026 • 42 mins
Dandelions are way more interesting than you think. Trust us and click play.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Unless you like to puff the little seeds off of
dandelion heads, you probably don't think very highly of dandelions.
There are weeds, after all, but what is a weed
other than an unloved plant? You know, you might have
a different opinion of these teeth of the lions after
hearing this episode, and come to think of it, I
feel like we're really laying a bridge of understanding between
(00:25):
humans and our garden pest with this playlist, so gratifying cool.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Puffball Chuck, and there's Blowball Jerry, and I like to
call me Month's head. And this is stuff you should do.
Did you get those references?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Uh? Sure?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Okay, Well we should probably explain them to everybody else
because they probably think it's an in joke. But it's
not at all. Number one, because we're about to share
it with you. Number two, it's not really a joke.
And number three, those are alternate names for dandelions.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
That's right, And we're going to be exalting the dandelion
probably say a lot of times how great we think
it is.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, sorry if you hate dandelions.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, how it's unfairly maligned. And we want to thank
Sarah Andrews from Idaho because Sarah is a listener who's
senting this in.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Nice, very nice. Thanks a lot, Sarah. Every time I
hear Idaho, I'm reminded of that silly T shirt that
said Idaho Daho. Do you remember that one?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I never saw that one.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
What was that one? There was a company called like
Dangerous T Shirts or something like that, and they had, like, man,
they were killing it with the crazy T shirts for
a while in like the early two thousands.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Was that like instead of Saint coch let's say, you know,
poke or cocaine.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, kind of sometimes more original than that, but yeah,
they were coveted for a little bit among people who
liked incubus and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I couldn't name an incu of a song, so that's
not me.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Okay, So let's get back to dandelions. I don't know
how we ever get off track. It's kind of strange,
but it happens from time to time, and it just happened, chuck.
So let's stop it from happening right now.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Right because dandelions, as you will see, have had a long,
rich history that we're going to talk about in depth
as a medicinal plant, as an edible plant, as a
wonderful pollinator, and it was recast as a villains, as
a weed to get rid of. But you need only
(02:59):
look at the history of the dandelion, the fact that
it was brought to North America by colonists to kind
of underscore the fact that we wanted the dandelion here.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Right, And it's important to say that they brought it
here on purpose. I saw somebody point out like this,
it wasn't it didn't hit your ride. It was like
purposely brought here. And the idea that dandelions suck is
a really recent development, especially compared to how long people
valued and prized dandelions. I just find that fascinating.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
For sure.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
This thing is about thirty million years old, native and
sort of Atlantic Europe all the way to Siberia and
in the northern Hemisphere. You're gonna know a dandelion because
between March and October you're going to see these beautiful
yellow flowers. You'll see some what's called a rosette, which
(03:54):
are these very short level ground stems that grow in
a circular pattern, and then these little slender, green, hollow stalks,
you know, two to twenty inches, but usually at least
around here the dandelions are i don't know, like eight inches.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, that seems about right. That's my experience as well.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So one of the other really impressive things about the
dandelion is if you look really closely at the flower,
each individual pedal has a little what becomes the part
of the puffball. When the flower seeds, it already is attached,
and that thing is called the papas and at the
bottom of the papist is the seed, and the papos
(04:37):
itself is like this like parachute essentially that keeps the
seed aloft. And research into I saw pepeye, but I
like paposes as the plural.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Oh, I love peppy.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
So it's found that they're actually phenomenal at keeping the
seeds aloft. They create a kind of vortex that, until
it was seen when they started testing pappy was thought
to be impossible.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
And that vortex not only makes it, you know, travel
up and out and away in such a way that
if it was shaped any differently, it wouldn't do that.
But if that little thing lands on water, that same
vortex is going to form a little air bubble around
it and protect it.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah. One of my prize possessions is this dandelion puffball
in caseed in resin, and it's like the real deal.
And I've never understood how it worked, but it turns
out that if you actually take a dandelion puffball and
actually not just put water in it, but submerge it
in water, the puffball does not It doesn't collapse. Isn't
(05:46):
that nuts?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
I think so too. So that's just one of the
many amazing things we're going to reveal today on stuff
you should know?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Did I wander into the wrong show?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Well, we should tell everybody it's ten am, and we
usually refer one. So I'm a much different person at
ten am.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
You're a news anchor, apparently, So I mentioned yellow. They're
not always yellow. They can be orange, they can be white,
they can be kind of purply peach. They open in
the morning and close in the evening, which has given
them the name the Shepherd's Clock, and they do that
to preserve pollen and keep that pollen safe for the
(06:27):
next day, which also makes it and this is one
of my favorite words at photo nasty.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Oh that's a great word.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Yeah, plants open and close with the setting and rising
of the sun. Yeah, felt photo nasty.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I saw like a time lapse. I actually was in
a video. It's just a series of photos of the
dandelion flower opening and closing over the course of the day.
I found I ran across a word from researching this
that I'd never heard before that I absolutely love dandelion,
Like you said, are edible. They're used in cooking their
culinary plant, which makes them a potter herb. One word,
(07:08):
a potterb. Isn't that awesome? What a great homey little
like I just imagine, you know, hobbits using that word.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, hobbits. And my wife, Oh does.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
She call it potterbs? You've heard that before?
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Oh yeah, yeah, she's I mean that's older. We're talking
about dandelions today, and she was just like, oh, are
you going to talk about this?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
This, this, this, this, this all right?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
She's like, oh, the famous potter.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It's also another kind of clock, you know.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
I already mentioned the shepherd's clock because of opening and
closing it at the sunrise and sunset. But those little
seed heads. They're called dandelion clocks, and that is from
the old uh you know, you make a wish when
you blow the dandelion and you scatter those seeds as
sort of a long rich childhood tradition. But apparently the
number of puffs it takes to empty that thing is
(07:53):
what time it is, so it can I haven't tested
this out. I don't know this is rock solid signs, but.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
That's a sort of a thing that's pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And one other thing about those paposes and the seeds
that are attached to them, there's a longstanding, I guess,
kind of urban legend or maybe rural legend that they
can travel up to one hundred kilometers sixty two miles,
and that does not seem to be the case, even
though you'll see that stat absolutely everywhere, including some legitimate places.
(08:29):
But Kyle helped us with this, our British buddy, and
he found that a two thousand and three study, which
is the most recent you can find on this, is
that just one in seven thousand papases travels more than
one kilometer. So just leave one hundred kilometers out of
the whole equation.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Yeah, And Kyle told us that because he's from England.
But for our North American listeners, we're talking three hundred
and twenty something feet if it's one hundred kilometers in
about three and a half feet for a meter.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, and apparently ninety nine and a half percent of
all papists land just within thirty feet of the parent plant,
which is also ten meters. So yes, if you ever
hear that a papist contain travel one hundred kilometers, you
can be like, that's wrong. What you just said is wrong.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
I think like one did, and they framed that. Maybe
that's the one you have in amber.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, it's like that first dollar bill you make as
a business, you put it into amber.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
There's also a cool adaptation where after they flower, that
little hollow stalk that the flower sits upon goes limp
on the ground and is just sort of hiding there
away from birds and stuff, And when they ripen up,
they jump back up again and they're like, here we are.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
That's pretty cool. I think so too. Do you want
to take a break and come back and talk about
where they got their name? Let's do it, so, Chuck Dandelion.
(10:16):
I've never stopped and considered why it was called that,
But it turns out that whole that lion at the
end is actually a giveaway for where the name came from.
It's French for lion's tooth, dent de leon pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
The reason they call it that is it's a reference
to the deeply serrated jagged leaves. I guess somebody was like,
that looks like a lion's tooth, and they lived in France,
and that's where they got the name dandelion.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
And it's also if you look at the botanical name,
it really gives a good indication of what it was
being used for back then. The genus name is Taraxicum,
and there are a couple of explanations here. I kind
of like the second one. The first one is a
Greek word for disorder, which is a taxia, but it's
also could have come from Arabic for bitter herb, which
(11:07):
is terraq chagogue. And then when you combine bitter herb
with the species name, which is how'd you say that,
I don't know? Aficionelle. That is a word for monastery
store room. So a bitter herb in a monastery storeroom
basically is telling you, hey, we use this plant in
(11:29):
a very productive way.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, The whole disorder thing is totally insensible if you
ask me.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So one of the other great things so humans use
dandelions is we'll see in a lot of different ways
and have for a very long time. But our animal
friends love dandelions too. Those flowers, even though they look
kind of flimsy if you think about it, they're rich
in nectar packed with it. So bees, butterflies, basically any
(11:56):
kind of pollinators love dandelions. Like you said, the reason
the stalk falls to the ground after flowering and as
the seedheads are developing, that's because birds love the little
dandelion seeds. And one of the other things that's important
about them too is they they basically flower and seed
(12:20):
almost around the like the whole year, depending on where
you live. So at times where there's not a lot
of food sources for birds and pollinators, the dandelions there
to kind of keep them going through the same you know,
late fall.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Yeah, and I think it's one of the first guys
to get going in the spring.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Too, right, I believe.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Yeah, So we're going to get more in detail about
you know, how it's been eaten. But well, actually, let's
let's save all that. Let's just let's just tease it
then and say it has long been eaten, is now
being eaten again due to the sort of foraging movement
happening in the culinary world.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
It's a great time.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I think that kind of kicked off in COVID when
people are like, well, it can't go to the store.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
What can I eat that's in my backyard.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I'll try dandelions. I've always wondered what it tastes like.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Bitter?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So yeah, nice. So I think we said probably a
couple of times that people have been using dandelions for
all sorts of reasons, not just as potterbs, for a
long time. One of the earlier mentions we can find
was in the Arabic world. A couple of physicians named
Rozi's and Avicenna both wrote about some of the properties
(13:34):
of dandelions and dandelion roots back in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, and most of what they were talking about
was its use as a diuretic and medicinally speaking, that's
probably the most famous property that dandelions have, as they
make you pee. And in fact, there's a couple of
(13:55):
names that refer to that, depending on where you are.
For dandelions, that were to the fact that they make
you pee, right.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
In France they're called the apparently more than they're called
the dentte leone, they're called the pisson lit, which means
you know, pepe in the night, and a folk name
in England.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Is a pissipad for the same reason.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Yeah, and you know, apparently it's it's all the potassium
in there that's going to stimulate your nation. And you know,
because of that, diuretics are used for a lot of things,
and you know, medicinally now and historically, if you want
to work something through your system and pee it out,
dandelions is a good way to make that happen.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah, and very famously in the American Midwest they're called
peepee weeds. Oh that's that's totally made up.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I should say, Oh, that's not true either.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
No, I just made it up.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I got you. I got you back for the what
was the lateral gene transfer gospel group that you got
me with?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Oh geez, I don't even remember now it was that.
But I've only gotten you once.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
The score is Josh three thousand one. Oh man, there
was a sixteenth century book too. What was the name
of that one?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
People call it Garden of Health because the full title
of it is containing the sundry, rare and hidden virtues
of all kinds of simples and plants, together with the
manner of how they are used and applied in medicine
for the health of man's body against diverse diseases and
infirmities most common against men, gathered by the long experience
(15:33):
and industry of William Langham, practitioner of physic That's the
actual title of that book, which is why there's like, yeah,
we're just going to call it Garden of Health.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
I mean, Garden of Health really says what that says.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I know, he didn't need all that extra stuff. That's
like the introduction. I think he put the introduction in
the title.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, that was a little did it say? The end?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
At the end pretty much.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
This is from, like I said, the sixteenth century, and
it talked a lot about, you know, all the kinds
of things they thought it could help back then, toothache,
fever's depression, even baldness. But they also talked about growing
it alongside other vegetables. And herbs in the garden, and
you duck up this kind of cool fact. It's ethylene
gas that they released. So if you actually grow dandelions
(16:16):
or have dandelions growing near fruiting plants like tomatoes, they're
going to ripen faster.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, and that neat super cool. Yeah, we're going to
cover a lot of actually pretty cool little benefits I
guess that they provide. But let's keep going with the
tradition of using them medicinally, shall we. Sure there's a
guy named John Girard who wrote a book in the
sixteen thirties and he's like, hey, I want to contribute
to this too. I've found that dandelion strengthens the weak stomach,
(16:46):
and which is important because actually, if you use the
roots of a dandelion, it contains a lot of inulin,
which is an important prebiotic for gut health. So John
Girard wasn't just whistling dixie.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
No, not at all.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
It turns out they have more vitamin A than spinach,
more vitamin C than tomatoes. They've got a ton we
already mentioned potassium, but also a lot of calcium, a
lot of iron, and then a lot of words that
I can barely pronounce that you found that it's packed
with starting with flavonoids, that's the only one I had
heard of.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Has triterpenes, sesquiterpenes, phenolic acid, sterols, and cumerants, and they
bestow things like antibacterial, antioxidant, anti inflammatory, hepadoprotective, and anti
tumor properties. And you dug up a lot of ways
that they actually help health.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Right, Yeah, So, I mean we can talk all day
about like the ways that people thought it would help
you back in the sixteenth century, but people might poo
poo something like that, But there have been modern studies.
I'll just give you a few examples. There was a
study from twenty fifteen in Canada that reported that dandelion
extract can block ultraviolet UVB radiations crazy when applied to
(18:03):
the skin, it can also irritate the skin. So don't
necessarily just like take dandelions and like start rubbing them
all over yourself at the pool. There was a twenty
sixteen review of studies from a university in Denmark that
suggests that dandelion extracts actually stimulates pancreatic cells to produce insulin,
so it could potentially help control blood sugar, right, and what.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
About there was one on the liver too, right.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, I said it was Hepato protective, which means it
helps the liver. And actually it goes in and like
just kicks butt in your liver. It slows the progression
of fibrosis, which is scarring of the liver, and the
extract actually inactivates the cells that cause fibrosis in the
liver and essentially your liver, as everybody knows, it can
(18:52):
regenerate itself. Once the dandelion extract has gone in and
stopped the fibrosis, the liver can heal. So it's incredibly
helpful with protecting the liver from damage. I mean, that's nuts.
It's almost like it was designed to do that for
the liver. It's that effective.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I do want to mention the cancer one because Emily
had a very funny, very Emily line. There was a
twenty twenty man, why do I do that lately? Twelve?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I did that. I did that a lot. Yeah, what
is happening?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
It's a study from the University of Windsor in Canada
about dandelion root extract can induce apoptosis, which is cell death.
And pancreatic and prostate cancer and test tube and their
cells in the test tubes potentially preventing their spread. So
this is something Emily new and this morning she was like, yeah,
(19:46):
it's so like modern American at the very least, to
take something that could actually help fight cancer and sprayue
chemicals on it to kill it it cause cancer.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, and she stormed out of the room.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Sometimes we have to learn the hard way, but it
is reassuring that things seem to be coming full circle,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Yeah, I feel like people are getting a little more
eyes open to stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, they're getting on board the dandelion train. So one
thing about those studies that you said, like, they're essentially
confirming to our modern tastes what the Chinese knew all
the way back in six point fifty nine CE, people
like Nicholas Culpepper knew in the eighteenth century. All these
(20:29):
people wrote about this stuff and just how effective it was.
And then now science is going in and saying these
people were right, and here's how it is effective. I
think that's pretty cool. And in part because of that,
the dandelion is being rehabilitated. But first I think we
need to mention you said that it came by North America.
(20:50):
I piped up on purpose, I think more than once,
even I was so excited about that. And it's possible
it was actually on the Mayflower. It arrived that early.
And they think that because of plant migration, as we
talked about before, the dandelion may have spread ahead of
Europeans as they entered further and further into the North
(21:11):
American continent, and so Native Americans that they encountered may
have already been using dandelions in some of their medicines.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Oh yeah, absolutely. They were drinking it in tonics. They
were boiling it with fatty meats, which it sounds disgusting.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It does it really, unless you're talking about something like
collards with like hamhocks or something that sounds okay. But
in this case, I imagine a pot of boiling water with
a skin of fat just bubbling at the top and
some dandelion leaves floating around in it.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
And we'll talk about you know, more ways you can
eat it, but it's long been used in like cordials
and beers, like the dandelion root. You can you know,
grind it up and use it as like a coffee substitute,
kind of like chicory. So you know, people were using
it for metal, they were using it for old kinds
of folk remedies and foods and things, largely because again
it was everywhere. It grows in not very good soil.
(22:09):
They can it's considered a perennial because they can live
well because like you said, they're kind of growing year round,
but they can live for more.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Than ten years, and they don't mess with them and
kill them.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty cool too. One of
the other things I saw, there's a book called The
Economical Housewife from the eighteen fifties that it might be
the first recipe for dandelion wine, and people still make
that today, and it's actually super easy. You just take
some dandelion flours, some water. Eventually you had some sugar
and some lemon, let it sit for a couple of weeks,
(22:41):
strain it out, and then let it sit for another
week in age, and you've got yourself some dandelion wine.
And it sounds deliciously easy or maybe easily delicious, one
of the two, but I'd love to try. Have you
ever had dandelion wine or dandelion beer or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely a thing.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Ray Bradbury had a novel called Dandelion Wine from nineteen
fifty seven, so it's something that's been enjoyed all over
the world.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
In France they use it.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Sometimes they'll take the leaves and blanch them and spread
them with bread and butter. Like it sounds like if
there's not a Brooklyn restaurant serving dandelion toast at this point.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, and what is happening in our life?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I don't know. It sounds like fairy toast like the
Australians love, but with dandelion leaves instead.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
It's also, you know, just a salad, a salad green component,
and like we said, it is very bitter, but it's
using all kinds of salad. Sometimes it's the only kind
of leaf using a salad. Sometimes it can be mixed
in with other things. But in France they have one
called the salad de pisson lits from that original name,
(23:52):
that's got bacon in it and dandelion leaves.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
It just you know, sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah. Apparently that was a common dish during the depression
in America. Too, because it was just cheap, you know. Yeah,
and it sounds delicious too. I say, we take a
break and we come back and talk about another surprising
use of dandelion that I hadn't heard of until this,
but you probably did because of Emily.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
No.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
I delighted her with that fact as well, So we'll
be right back, all right. So Josh said that he
(24:47):
hadn't heard of this cool fact. I hadn't heard of it.
Emily hadn't heard of it, and I think it may
be the fact of the podcast. But dandelions are a
source of natural rubber.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Pretty cool, I would I would take issue with that.
I think it has to do with the vortices over
the pappy or the fact that they're potterbs. All right,
this one's good. It's up there. Maybe they're all tied
for first. I don't know, but hey.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
That means we've got a good topic if there are several,
right competitors.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, and so not just any dandelion produces rubber or
latex that can be turned into rubber. A specific type
of dandelion they figured out the Kazakh dandelion, which is
native to the Eurasian steps. How'd you like that it's
also called the Russian dandelion here in the United States.
(25:42):
That specific one puts out enough latex that it gave
rubber trees a run for their money. During World War Two,
which we've talked about many times, America and Britain were like,
we need more rubber for the war effort in the
Japanese control. Essentially all of the rubbers apply at war
with the Japanese, so we better come up with something
(26:03):
else quick.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
So they literally started screening like thousands and thousands of plants,
and then I guess they're like, hey, if the rubber
tree can grow rubber, there's got to be something else
out there. The Soviets are the ones who said, try
this Kazakh dandelion, and because of shortages during the wars,
they said, here, here's a bunch of seeds, and they
(26:28):
send a bunch of those Kazakh seeds the Soviet allies
at the time in the nineteen forties, and ultimately we
use some of it. Russians, Americans, and Germans did produce
rubber from dandelions. It's very hearty. It can be susceptible
to disease, though, depending what kind of disease but also
grows everywhere and serves as a pollinator and it doesn't
(26:50):
deforce things. So the big problem though, and I nowhere
m's like, oh my god, is this the miracle we've
all been hoping for with rubber. It just doesn't yield
much as the Russian said it did, and so it's
not economically viable as long as the real rubber tree
is around.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
They released some paper that overstated how much rubber it
can be gotten from the dandelion because they wanted to
sound like big shots.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
So the reason why we didn't just keep going with
dandelion rubber research in trying to figure out how to
increase yields is because in the meantime, people figured out
we could make synthetic rubber from petroleum. It was almost
as good as natural rubber, and it certainly was a
good enough substitute, and we could just make batch after
batch after batch rather than have to try to yield
(27:39):
it from dandelion. So that fell to the wayside, and
then by the time World War two ended, we had
access to natural rubber supplies from the southeast Southeast Asia,
i should say, and so all that kind of put
dandelion rubber on the back shelf. But in the what
eighty almost a hundred years, jeez, since World War Two.
(28:03):
I remember when that was like just like that was
firmly like forty to fifty years in the past, and
it just keeps getting further and further away. It's really awful.
But we've kind of figured out in the introim that
synthetic rubber it's useful, but there's nothing that can match
natural rubber for like grip, heat, dissipation, all sorts of
(28:24):
other properties. So we're starting to go back to look
at sources for natural rubber, including ones that are more
sustainable than the rubber trees, which require you basically DeForest
and then plant the rubber trees to create a plantation
with dandelions. You don't have to do that stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
Now you got a big field, you can have dandelions,
and like I said, it grows and it doesn't have.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
To be great soil.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
You can grow it hydroponically, without soil at all. You
can grow it in the air, which is aeroponically. It's
pretty amazing, and I think it's one of those things
where like anytime you have a monoculture plant like that,
like the rubber tree.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
It makes people a little bit nervous.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Besides the deporestation, like have anything ever happened like some
kind of weird blight, and the rubber trees were just,
you know, not a candidate anymore. You got dandelions kind
of waiting on deck with their bat right.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
So it's kind of surprising that it went from this
really prized plant in so many ways to a hated weed,
especially in Europe and the United States. And you hit
upon why it became a hitted weed. You use the
word monoculture, and the largest monoculture here in the United
States are people's lawns. And for part of the esthetic
(29:38):
of the lawn, you cannot have dandelions breaking up that perfect,
unbroken sea of green grass. You got a dandelion popping up,
the whole thing's ruined. Basically, that's the way people think
of dandelions and lawns these days, or have since about
the fifties.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Essentially, that beautiful yellow flower, stop it right, dig it up.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
But yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
And we've gone over this before, but just sort of
as a quick overview, this is the kind of thing
that came over from England starting in the seventeenth century
is when British aristocracy really started to get into these
perfect sort of croquet croquet playing lawns, I guess is
what you would call them. And then in America it
(30:24):
was post World War Two when suburbanization really took hold.
Lawnmowers really came into their own. Everyone was like, Hey,
we've got these great new chemicals that'll kill everything except
and make the grass grow really really well, and it's
just modern and tidy and good looking, and that really
(30:45):
kind of transformed the United States, you know, like, keep
up that lawn, make a perfect green lawn if you
want to keep your property value over everybody.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Big one and Kyle also dug up another reason too
that once the Cold War rolled around, conformity was equated
with safety. So if you weren't keeping your lawn trim
like everybody else, what's going on with you? You're making
me feel a little bit nervous because you're not conforming.
You must be a red spy hiding out in suburbia, basically, right,
(31:15):
And I think that's a really important kind of overlooked
driver for things like perfectly manicured lawns and everybody having
the same kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Yeah, And speaking of driver, the other I don't think
we've ever mentioned contributor to this nice was in the
nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Golf started being televised.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
In nineteen fifty seven, you got golf on television for
the first time, and people look at Augusta National and
these golf courses that were beautifully manicured and aesthetically pleasing
to the eye, and they're like, hey, I need to
get some of that in my front yard. Maybe I
can practice chipping some balls around in my front yard.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah. Also, if you're sitting there thinking like, Wow, I
really love hearing these guys talk about grass, but I'd
love to hear them have a dispute over it, you
should go listen to How Our Grass Works episode. It's
actually a pretty good way. It's a classic stuff you
should know episode.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
It totally is.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
But anyway, all that preamble about you know, us poopa
and lawns and why America did that brought us to this,
which is weeds became enemy number one and dandelions were
maybe even near the top of that list.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why. For all the
reasons that they're valuable, the pollinators and other kinds of plants,
and that they can grow in marginal lands and basically
everywhere is it makes them an enemy as a weed
if you're trying to create a monoculture lawn, right. So,
they can regenerate from like a one inch section of root,
(32:45):
which means that if you cut a dandelion off at
the even below ground level, it's like good, you know, good,
try pal, but it just sprouts right back up. You
have to dig them up, and even after you dig
them up, you might not get them because one of
the things that I didn't know about dandelions is I
knew they grew from a tap root. You have to
get that tap root up or else it's just feudile. Yeah,
(33:08):
but that tap root can grow, depending on the age
of the dandelion, over a dozen feet meters four meters
into the ground meters.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah, and that makes.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
It really hard to get rid of. And so if
you're like a grounds keeper for a golf course or
something like that, you have to really keep up with
the dandelions because they'll spread really fast and they're really
hard to get rid of once you do start trying
to get rid of them.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Yeah, for sure, I got to say this last fact
from Kyle because it goes back to the lawns, but
this really kind of drives at home of about how
not great a perfect green lawn is for our society.
There's a study in two thousand and five residential lawns
in the United States make up two percent of the
land but require more irrigation than any domestic agricultural crop.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I've got one to piggyback on that. Let's see the
US Fish and Wildlife Service says that homeowners use up
to ten times more pesticides per acre then farmers use
on their crops. So we're using this stuff over using it,
and we're using it on stuff that's not productive land
just to keep up with the Joneses. So they don't
(34:18):
think we're communist spies.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Yeah, you know, I walk Gibson in the mornings and
there are the only lawns that he ever like rubs
his face in are the most perfect green ones. And
I know that it's because they have recently been sprayed,
and he smells it and is trying to rub all
in that stuff, and it drives me bonkers.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, it's it's a like I would love to just
let my lawn and use me too. Just go to
like wildflowers, go to weeds, you know, just mow it.
You keep it mowed, but at a higher height. But yeah,
you just let this stuff grow and we would be
completely we would stick out like a sore thrum from
the rest of the neighborhood, so much of their neighbors
(35:03):
would be mad at us. That's how that's how entrenched.
The idea of having a perfect lawn is still in
the United States, depending on where you live.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Yeah, for sure, And like no one around there even
does like permaculture and you know, other options besides just
letting it grow wild and crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
No, it's it's nuts. So we definitely draw a line.
So we're like, Okay, we'll keep up with the lawn,
but don't touch the you know, the shrubbery, the perennials,
the garden essentially, right, But people will hire the same
company to like treat their lawn with chemicals, to spray
their bushes and spray their gardens with chemicals to kill
off the bugs. And then they have to go in
(35:43):
and try to recreate the stuff that the bugs are
doing for free, the services they're providing because you've killed
off the bugs it's it's insane to me, So we
definitely don't don't. We don't cot into that.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yeah, there was speaking of bugs. It was a scientific
review in twenty nineteen that found that the global massive
insects is falling at a rate of about two and a.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Half percent per year.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
And dandelions is a high high on the list of pollinators.
Caterpillars love munching on them, Moths loves munching on them,
and all those bees and butterflies love doing their thing
on them. So even you know, I'm not trying to
shame people, but let's say you do like your lawn
and everything, even waiting in the spring, like longer to
(36:31):
cut it, even cutting it higher, letting the dandelions grow
up a little bit before you start whacking them down.
Even that minimal amount will help out a little bit.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
What's interesting is a non chemical way I saw to
treat your turf grass for dandelions is to let your
grass grow longer than you have been like cutting it
at a higher mower height.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yeah, because as.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
We talked about, dandelion leaves are so low growing that
the grass will shade out and out compete the dandelions.
So if you really do want to get rid of dandelions,
but you don't want to use chemicals. That's a pretty
good way to do it from what I've seen.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Some states have actual programs or just one in Minnesota
called Lawns to Legumes, which is a great title. They
launched that in twenty nineteen where they just basically incini
incentivized people to say, get rid of that lawn, put
in flowering plants, put in beds. You can have a
rebate if you have a pollinator friendly native wildflower scene
(37:30):
at your house.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah. I didn't look up the amount, but I would
guess at a minimum the rebate is worth a million dollars, right,
that'd be my guess, you think. So, there's a couple
other things that I found that dandelions, I don't know
if you looked at it or not, that they kind
of provide services to the plants growing around them, including grass,
(37:56):
because as we mentioned, those tap roots, they grow really deep,
and as they're growing deep, they're actually accessing nutrients that
other plants around them, again, including grass, the roots of
those plants can't reach because it's too deep, and it
brings those nutrients up toward the surface, and as the
dandelion dies off, the other plants to get to eat
(38:19):
those nutrients that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to.
And those same roots also air rate and loose and
compacted dirt too, which makes it easier for the plants
around the dandelions to grow.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Is there anything dandelions can't do?
Speaker 3 (38:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
I mean, they're not super fragrant.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
No, that's true. They're pretty much useless in that sun.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
But they can grant a child of wish.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
They sure can, man, they sure can. I remember doing
that so many times. I keep trying to do that
with my dandelion puffhead in resin and it's not working.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
I don't have anything else, so I'm kind of looking
over the list here, I kind of all over the place.
But it's just sort of one of those episodes where
it's like, well, here's a list of one hundred amazing things.
And so sometimes those are a little tougher to organize.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah, but they can be pretty fun too. I had
fun at least.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
How about you and that rubber thing? Are you kidding?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Since neither one of us has anything else about dandelions,
and we're going to call it quits on this episode,
which means we've just activated listener mail.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
You know, no listener mail today.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Because what we're going to do with something we haven't
done in a while is help support and bring some
attention to a great cause, our friends from the Cooperative
for Education aka co ED, whose mission it is to
break the cycle of poverty and Guatemala through education. And
we've been working with them for fifteen years, and we
got a new thing coming up with them, right.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yes, we do. So first, let me just explain over
one point three million dollars and contributions have been made
to co ED thanks to our partnership with them at
stuff you should know for fifteen years. That's really good,
if you ask me, that's incredible, which means that one
hundred and sixty kids have been given like a huge
leg up to escape poverty and create like break intergenerational
(40:11):
poverty and create literally like a new life for their
entire family from that point on.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
You know, we went down there, I guess fifteen years
ago when they invited us very early on and stuff
you should know canon, yeah, in our history, and we
went down to Guatemala and those shows we did some
shows on that trip and that visit we get to
actually hear Jerry speak, which is pretty exciting. Yeah, and
they're just great that we've been working with them ever
since and the fact that the stuff you should know
(40:39):
Army has raised one point three million bucks for them
over the past fifteen years is going to be a
real proud part of our legacy. But we have a
call to action, right.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yes, so you can joined we're starting a drive essentially,
right now, that's right. You can join the cooperative, which
is a program of theirs, for twenty dollars a month
and you'll collectively sponsor. There are a bunch of students
in the Rise Youth Development program, right, that's right, and
so it's going to get spread out. You're going to
be helping a bunch of kids at once, so you
(41:08):
can feel good like five times over with each each
monthly donation. And then in twenty twenty five, more than
eleven hundred students will be able to start school in
World Guatemala, which will be their biggest class ever. They
need help to make that happen, which is why we're
saying join the cooperative.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
That's right, and as an incentive if this is for you.
If you set up your gift by Tuesday, December third,
then you are signed up for a chance to do
a virtual hangout with Josh and I. We do this
every year around the same time. It's always a lot
of fun. We hang out with I don't know, if
six or eight people all over the country and they
get to just you know, ask us questions and tell
(41:46):
us that we're cool or dumb or whatever.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
It's your chance to really hand it to us if
that's what you're after.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Right, Yeah, hopefully don't do that, but sure, I mean,
I guess if you've given to co ED and you
deserve to do whatever you want to with, that's right.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
So just go to Cooperative for Education dot org. That's
the word cooperative f o R education dot org slash
s y s k and start giving.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Now. A little bit goes a long way down there.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yes, And in the meantime, while you're looking up Cooperative
for Education dot org slash s y s k, you
can also send us an email. Send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Unless you like to puff the little seeds off of
dandelion heads, you probably don't think very highly of dandelions.
There are weeds, after all, but what is a weed
other than an unloved plant? You know, you might have
a different opinion of these teeth of the lions after
hearing this episode, and come to think of it, I
feel like we're really laying a bridge of understanding between
(00:25):
humans and our garden pest with this playlist, so gratifying cool.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Puffball Chuck, and there's Blowball Jerry, and I like to
call me Month's head. And this is stuff you should do.
Did you get those references?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Uh? Sure?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Okay, Well we should probably explain them to everybody else
because they probably think it's an in joke. But it's
not at all. Number one, because we're about to share
it with you. Number two, it's not really a joke.
And number three, those are alternate names for dandelions.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
That's right, And we're going to be exalting the dandelion
probably say a lot of times how great we think
it is.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, sorry if you hate dandelions.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, how it's unfairly maligned. And we want to thank
Sarah Andrews from Idaho because Sarah is a listener who's
senting this in.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Nice, very nice. Thanks a lot, Sarah. Every time I
hear Idaho, I'm reminded of that silly T shirt that
said Idaho Daho. Do you remember that one?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I never saw that one.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
What was that one? There was a company called like
Dangerous T Shirts or something like that, and they had, like, man,
they were killing it with the crazy T shirts for
a while in like the early two thousands.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Was that like instead of Saint coch let's say, you know,
poke or cocaine.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, kind of sometimes more original than that, but yeah,
they were coveted for a little bit among people who
liked incubus and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I couldn't name an incu of a song, so that's
not me.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Okay, So let's get back to dandelions. I don't know
how we ever get off track. It's kind of strange,
but it happens from time to time, and it just happened, chuck.
So let's stop it from happening right now.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Right because dandelions, as you will see, have had a long,
rich history that we're going to talk about in depth
as a medicinal plant, as an edible plant, as a
wonderful pollinator, and it was recast as a villains, as
a weed to get rid of. But you need only
(02:59):
look at the history of the dandelion, the fact that
it was brought to North America by colonists to kind
of underscore the fact that we wanted the dandelion here.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Right, And it's important to say that they brought it
here on purpose. I saw somebody point out like this,
it wasn't it didn't hit your ride. It was like
purposely brought here. And the idea that dandelions suck is
a really recent development, especially compared to how long people
valued and prized dandelions. I just find that fascinating.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
For sure.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
This thing is about thirty million years old, native and
sort of Atlantic Europe all the way to Siberia and
in the northern Hemisphere. You're gonna know a dandelion because
between March and October you're going to see these beautiful
yellow flowers. You'll see some what's called a rosette, which
(03:54):
are these very short level ground stems that grow in
a circular pattern, and then these little slender, green, hollow stalks,
you know, two to twenty inches, but usually at least
around here the dandelions are i don't know, like eight inches.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, that seems about right. That's my experience as well.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So one of the other really impressive things about the
dandelion is if you look really closely at the flower,
each individual pedal has a little what becomes the part
of the puffball. When the flower seeds, it already is attached,
and that thing is called the papas and at the
bottom of the papist is the seed, and the papos
(04:37):
itself is like this like parachute essentially that keeps the
seed aloft. And research into I saw pepeye, but I
like paposes as the plural.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Oh, I love peppy.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
So it's found that they're actually phenomenal at keeping the
seeds aloft. They create a kind of vortex that, until
it was seen when they started testing pappy was thought
to be impossible.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
And that vortex not only makes it, you know, travel
up and out and away in such a way that
if it was shaped any differently, it wouldn't do that.
But if that little thing lands on water, that same
vortex is going to form a little air bubble around
it and protect it.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah. One of my prize possessions is this dandelion puffball
in caseed in resin, and it's like the real deal.
And I've never understood how it worked, but it turns
out that if you actually take a dandelion puffball and
actually not just put water in it, but submerge it
in water, the puffball does not It doesn't collapse. Isn't
(05:46):
that nuts?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
I think so too. So that's just one of the
many amazing things we're going to reveal today on stuff
you should know?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Did I wander into the wrong show?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Well, we should tell everybody it's ten am, and we
usually refer one. So I'm a much different person at
ten am.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
You're a news anchor, apparently, So I mentioned yellow. They're
not always yellow. They can be orange, they can be white,
they can be kind of purply peach. They open in
the morning and close in the evening, which has given
them the name the Shepherd's Clock, and they do that
to preserve pollen and keep that pollen safe for the
(06:27):
next day, which also makes it and this is one
of my favorite words at photo nasty.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Oh that's a great word.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Yeah, plants open and close with the setting and rising
of the sun. Yeah, felt photo nasty.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I saw like a time lapse. I actually was in
a video. It's just a series of photos of the
dandelion flower opening and closing over the course of the day.
I found I ran across a word from researching this
that I'd never heard before that I absolutely love dandelion,
Like you said, are edible. They're used in cooking their
culinary plant, which makes them a potter herb. One word,
(07:08):
a potterb. Isn't that awesome? What a great homey little
like I just imagine, you know, hobbits using that word.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, hobbits. And my wife, Oh does.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
She call it potterbs? You've heard that before?
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Oh yeah, yeah, she's I mean that's older. We're talking
about dandelions today, and she was just like, oh, are
you going to talk about this?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
This, this, this, this, this all right?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
She's like, oh, the famous potter.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It's also another kind of clock, you know.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
I already mentioned the shepherd's clock because of opening and
closing it at the sunrise and sunset. But those little
seed heads. They're called dandelion clocks, and that is from
the old uh you know, you make a wish when
you blow the dandelion and you scatter those seeds as
sort of a long rich childhood tradition. But apparently the
number of puffs it takes to empty that thing is
(07:53):
what time it is, so it can I haven't tested
this out. I don't know this is rock solid signs, but.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
That's a sort of a thing that's pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And one other thing about those paposes and the seeds
that are attached to them, there's a longstanding, I guess,
kind of urban legend or maybe rural legend that they
can travel up to one hundred kilometers sixty two miles,
and that does not seem to be the case, even
though you'll see that stat absolutely everywhere, including some legitimate places.
(08:29):
But Kyle helped us with this, our British buddy, and
he found that a two thousand and three study, which
is the most recent you can find on this, is
that just one in seven thousand papases travels more than
one kilometer. So just leave one hundred kilometers out of
the whole equation.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Yeah, And Kyle told us that because he's from England.
But for our North American listeners, we're talking three hundred
and twenty something feet if it's one hundred kilometers in
about three and a half feet for a meter.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, and apparently ninety nine and a half percent of
all papists land just within thirty feet of the parent plant,
which is also ten meters. So yes, if you ever
hear that a papist contain travel one hundred kilometers, you
can be like, that's wrong. What you just said is wrong.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
I think like one did, and they framed that. Maybe
that's the one you have in amber.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, it's like that first dollar bill you make as
a business, you put it into amber.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
There's also a cool adaptation where after they flower, that
little hollow stalk that the flower sits upon goes limp
on the ground and is just sort of hiding there
away from birds and stuff, And when they ripen up,
they jump back up again and they're like, here we are.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
That's pretty cool. I think so too. Do you want
to take a break and come back and talk about
where they got their name? Let's do it, so, Chuck Dandelion.
(10:16):
I've never stopped and considered why it was called that,
But it turns out that whole that lion at the
end is actually a giveaway for where the name came from.
It's French for lion's tooth, dent de leon pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
The reason they call it that is it's a reference
to the deeply serrated jagged leaves. I guess somebody was like,
that looks like a lion's tooth, and they lived in France,
and that's where they got the name dandelion.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
And it's also if you look at the botanical name,
it really gives a good indication of what it was
being used for back then. The genus name is Taraxicum,
and there are a couple of explanations here. I kind
of like the second one. The first one is a
Greek word for disorder, which is a taxia, but it's
also could have come from Arabic for bitter herb, which
(11:07):
is terraq chagogue. And then when you combine bitter herb
with the species name, which is how'd you say that,
I don't know? Aficionelle. That is a word for monastery
store room. So a bitter herb in a monastery storeroom
basically is telling you, hey, we use this plant in
(11:29):
a very productive way.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, The whole disorder thing is totally insensible if you
ask me.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So one of the other great things so humans use
dandelions is we'll see in a lot of different ways
and have for a very long time. But our animal
friends love dandelions too. Those flowers, even though they look
kind of flimsy if you think about it, they're rich
in nectar packed with it. So bees, butterflies, basically any
(11:56):
kind of pollinators love dandelions. Like you said, the reason
the stalk falls to the ground after flowering and as
the seedheads are developing, that's because birds love the little
dandelion seeds. And one of the other things that's important
about them too is they they basically flower and seed
(12:20):
almost around the like the whole year, depending on where
you live. So at times where there's not a lot
of food sources for birds and pollinators, the dandelions there
to kind of keep them going through the same you know,
late fall.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Yeah, and I think it's one of the first guys
to get going in the spring.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Too, right, I believe.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Yeah, So we're going to get more in detail about
you know, how it's been eaten. But well, actually, let's
let's save all that. Let's just let's just tease it
then and say it has long been eaten, is now
being eaten again due to the sort of foraging movement
happening in the culinary world.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
It's a great time.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I think that kind of kicked off in COVID when
people are like, well, it can't go to the store.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
What can I eat that's in my backyard.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I'll try dandelions. I've always wondered what it tastes like.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Bitter?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So yeah, nice. So I think we said probably a
couple of times that people have been using dandelions for
all sorts of reasons, not just as potterbs, for a
long time. One of the earlier mentions we can find
was in the Arabic world. A couple of physicians named
Rozi's and Avicenna both wrote about some of the properties
(13:34):
of dandelions and dandelion roots back in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, and most of what they were talking about
was its use as a diuretic and medicinally speaking, that's
probably the most famous property that dandelions have, as they
make you pee. And in fact, there's a couple of
(13:55):
names that refer to that, depending on where you are.
For dandelions, that were to the fact that they make
you pee, right.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
In France they're called the apparently more than they're called
the dentte leone, they're called the pisson lit, which means
you know, pepe in the night, and a folk name
in England.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Is a pissipad for the same reason.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Yeah, and you know, apparently it's it's all the potassium
in there that's going to stimulate your nation. And you know,
because of that, diuretics are used for a lot of things,
and you know, medicinally now and historically, if you want
to work something through your system and pee it out,
dandelions is a good way to make that happen.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah, and very famously in the American Midwest they're called
peepee weeds. Oh that's that's totally made up.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I should say, Oh, that's not true either.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
No, I just made it up.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I got you. I got you back for the what
was the lateral gene transfer gospel group that you got
me with?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Oh geez, I don't even remember now it was that.
But I've only gotten you once.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
The score is Josh three thousand one. Oh man, there
was a sixteenth century book too. What was the name
of that one?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
People call it Garden of Health because the full title
of it is containing the sundry, rare and hidden virtues
of all kinds of simples and plants, together with the
manner of how they are used and applied in medicine
for the health of man's body against diverse diseases and
infirmities most common against men, gathered by the long experience
(15:33):
and industry of William Langham, practitioner of physic That's the
actual title of that book, which is why there's like, yeah,
we're just going to call it Garden of Health.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
I mean, Garden of Health really says what that says.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I know, he didn't need all that extra stuff. That's
like the introduction. I think he put the introduction in
the title.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, that was a little did it say? The end?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
At the end pretty much.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
This is from, like I said, the sixteenth century, and
it talked a lot about, you know, all the kinds
of things they thought it could help back then, toothache,
fever's depression, even baldness. But they also talked about growing
it alongside other vegetables. And herbs in the garden, and
you duck up this kind of cool fact. It's ethylene
gas that they released. So if you actually grow dandelions
(16:16):
or have dandelions growing near fruiting plants like tomatoes, they're
going to ripen faster.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, and that neat super cool. Yeah, we're going to
cover a lot of actually pretty cool little benefits I
guess that they provide. But let's keep going with the
tradition of using them medicinally, shall we. Sure there's a
guy named John Girard who wrote a book in the
sixteen thirties and he's like, hey, I want to contribute
to this too. I've found that dandelion strengthens the weak stomach,
(16:46):
and which is important because actually, if you use the
roots of a dandelion, it contains a lot of inulin,
which is an important prebiotic for gut health. So John
Girard wasn't just whistling dixie.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
No, not at all.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
It turns out they have more vitamin A than spinach,
more vitamin C than tomatoes. They've got a ton we
already mentioned potassium, but also a lot of calcium, a
lot of iron, and then a lot of words that
I can barely pronounce that you found that it's packed
with starting with flavonoids, that's the only one I had
heard of.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Has triterpenes, sesquiterpenes, phenolic acid, sterols, and cumerants, and they
bestow things like antibacterial, antioxidant, anti inflammatory, hepadoprotective, and anti
tumor properties. And you dug up a lot of ways
that they actually help health.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Right, Yeah, So, I mean we can talk all day
about like the ways that people thought it would help
you back in the sixteenth century, but people might poo
poo something like that, But there have been modern studies.
I'll just give you a few examples. There was a
study from twenty fifteen in Canada that reported that dandelion
extract can block ultraviolet UVB radiations crazy when applied to
(18:03):
the skin, it can also irritate the skin. So don't
necessarily just like take dandelions and like start rubbing them
all over yourself at the pool. There was a twenty
sixteen review of studies from a university in Denmark that
suggests that dandelion extracts actually stimulates pancreatic cells to produce insulin,
so it could potentially help control blood sugar, right, and what.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
About there was one on the liver too, right.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, I said it was Hepato protective, which means it
helps the liver. And actually it goes in and like
just kicks butt in your liver. It slows the progression
of fibrosis, which is scarring of the liver, and the
extract actually inactivates the cells that cause fibrosis in the
liver and essentially your liver, as everybody knows, it can
(18:52):
regenerate itself. Once the dandelion extract has gone in and
stopped the fibrosis, the liver can heal. So it's incredibly
helpful with protecting the liver from damage. I mean, that's nuts.
It's almost like it was designed to do that for
the liver. It's that effective.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I do want to mention the cancer one because Emily
had a very funny, very Emily line. There was a
twenty twenty man, why do I do that lately? Twelve?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I did that. I did that a lot. Yeah, what
is happening?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
It's a study from the University of Windsor in Canada
about dandelion root extract can induce apoptosis, which is cell death.
And pancreatic and prostate cancer and test tube and their
cells in the test tubes potentially preventing their spread. So
this is something Emily new and this morning she was like, yeah,
(19:46):
it's so like modern American at the very least, to
take something that could actually help fight cancer and sprayue
chemicals on it to kill it it cause cancer.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, and she stormed out of the room.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Sometimes we have to learn the hard way, but it
is reassuring that things seem to be coming full circle,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Yeah, I feel like people are getting a little more
eyes open to stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, they're getting on board the dandelion train. So one
thing about those studies that you said, like, they're essentially
confirming to our modern tastes what the Chinese knew all
the way back in six point fifty nine CE, people
like Nicholas Culpepper knew in the eighteenth century. All these
(20:29):
people wrote about this stuff and just how effective it was.
And then now science is going in and saying these
people were right, and here's how it is effective. I
think that's pretty cool. And in part because of that,
the dandelion is being rehabilitated. But first I think we
need to mention you said that it came by North America.
(20:50):
I piped up on purpose, I think more than once,
even I was so excited about that. And it's possible
it was actually on the Mayflower. It arrived that early.
And they think that because of plant migration, as we
talked about before, the dandelion may have spread ahead of
Europeans as they entered further and further into the North
(21:11):
American continent, and so Native Americans that they encountered may
have already been using dandelions in some of their medicines.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Oh yeah, absolutely. They were drinking it in tonics. They
were boiling it with fatty meats, which it sounds disgusting.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It does it really, unless you're talking about something like
collards with like hamhocks or something that sounds okay. But
in this case, I imagine a pot of boiling water with
a skin of fat just bubbling at the top and
some dandelion leaves floating around in it.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
And we'll talk about you know, more ways you can
eat it, but it's long been used in like cordials
and beers, like the dandelion root. You can you know,
grind it up and use it as like a coffee substitute,
kind of like chicory. So you know, people were using
it for metal, they were using it for old kinds
of folk remedies and foods and things, largely because again
it was everywhere. It grows in not very good soil.
(22:09):
They can it's considered a perennial because they can live
well because like you said, they're kind of growing year round,
but they can live for more.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Than ten years, and they don't mess with them and
kill them.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty cool too. One of
the other things I saw, there's a book called The
Economical Housewife from the eighteen fifties that it might be
the first recipe for dandelion wine, and people still make
that today, and it's actually super easy. You just take
some dandelion flours, some water. Eventually you had some sugar
and some lemon, let it sit for a couple of weeks,
(22:41):
strain it out, and then let it sit for another
week in age, and you've got yourself some dandelion wine.
And it sounds deliciously easy or maybe easily delicious, one
of the two, but I'd love to try. Have you
ever had dandelion wine or dandelion beer or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely a thing.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Ray Bradbury had a novel called Dandelion Wine from nineteen
fifty seven, so it's something that's been enjoyed all over
the world.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
In France they use it.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Sometimes they'll take the leaves and blanch them and spread
them with bread and butter. Like it sounds like if
there's not a Brooklyn restaurant serving dandelion toast at this point.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, and what is happening in our life?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I don't know. It sounds like fairy toast like the
Australians love, but with dandelion leaves instead.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
It's also, you know, just a salad, a salad green component,
and like we said, it is very bitter, but it's
using all kinds of salad. Sometimes it's the only kind
of leaf using a salad. Sometimes it can be mixed
in with other things. But in France they have one
called the salad de pisson lits from that original name,
(23:52):
that's got bacon in it and dandelion leaves.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
It just you know, sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah. Apparently that was a common dish during the depression
in America. Too, because it was just cheap, you know. Yeah,
and it sounds delicious too. I say, we take a
break and we come back and talk about another surprising
use of dandelion that I hadn't heard of until this,
but you probably did because of Emily.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
No.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
I delighted her with that fact as well, So we'll
be right back, all right. So Josh said that he
(24:47):
hadn't heard of this cool fact. I hadn't heard of it.
Emily hadn't heard of it, and I think it may
be the fact of the podcast. But dandelions are a
source of natural rubber.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Pretty cool, I would I would take issue with that.
I think it has to do with the vortices over
the pappy or the fact that they're potterbs. All right,
this one's good. It's up there. Maybe they're all tied
for first. I don't know, but hey.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
That means we've got a good topic if there are several,
right competitors.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, and so not just any dandelion produces rubber or
latex that can be turned into rubber. A specific type
of dandelion they figured out the Kazakh dandelion, which is
native to the Eurasian steps. How'd you like that it's
also called the Russian dandelion here in the United States.
(25:42):
That specific one puts out enough latex that it gave
rubber trees a run for their money. During World War Two,
which we've talked about many times, America and Britain were like,
we need more rubber for the war effort in the
Japanese control. Essentially all of the rubbers apply at war
with the Japanese, so we better come up with something
(26:03):
else quick.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
So they literally started screening like thousands and thousands of plants,
and then I guess they're like, hey, if the rubber
tree can grow rubber, there's got to be something else
out there. The Soviets are the ones who said, try
this Kazakh dandelion, and because of shortages during the wars,
they said, here, here's a bunch of seeds, and they
(26:28):
send a bunch of those Kazakh seeds the Soviet allies
at the time in the nineteen forties, and ultimately we
use some of it. Russians, Americans, and Germans did produce
rubber from dandelions. It's very hearty. It can be susceptible
to disease, though, depending what kind of disease but also
grows everywhere and serves as a pollinator and it doesn't
(26:50):
deforce things. So the big problem though, and I nowhere
m's like, oh my god, is this the miracle we've
all been hoping for with rubber. It just doesn't yield
much as the Russian said it did, and so it's
not economically viable as long as the real rubber tree
is around.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
They released some paper that overstated how much rubber it
can be gotten from the dandelion because they wanted to
sound like big shots.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
So the reason why we didn't just keep going with
dandelion rubber research in trying to figure out how to
increase yields is because in the meantime, people figured out
we could make synthetic rubber from petroleum. It was almost
as good as natural rubber, and it certainly was a
good enough substitute, and we could just make batch after
batch after batch rather than have to try to yield
(27:39):
it from dandelion. So that fell to the wayside, and
then by the time World War two ended, we had
access to natural rubber supplies from the southeast Southeast Asia,
i should say, and so all that kind of put
dandelion rubber on the back shelf. But in the what
eighty almost a hundred years, jeez, since World War Two.
(28:03):
I remember when that was like just like that was
firmly like forty to fifty years in the past, and
it just keeps getting further and further away. It's really awful.
But we've kind of figured out in the introim that
synthetic rubber it's useful, but there's nothing that can match
natural rubber for like grip, heat, dissipation, all sorts of
(28:24):
other properties. So we're starting to go back to look
at sources for natural rubber, including ones that are more
sustainable than the rubber trees, which require you basically DeForest
and then plant the rubber trees to create a plantation
with dandelions. You don't have to do that stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
Now you got a big field, you can have dandelions,
and like I said, it grows and it doesn't have.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
To be great soil.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
You can grow it hydroponically, without soil at all. You
can grow it in the air, which is aeroponically. It's
pretty amazing, and I think it's one of those things
where like anytime you have a monoculture plant like that,
like the rubber tree.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
It makes people a little bit nervous.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Besides the deporestation, like have anything ever happened like some
kind of weird blight, and the rubber trees were just,
you know, not a candidate anymore. You got dandelions kind
of waiting on deck with their bat right.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
So it's kind of surprising that it went from this
really prized plant in so many ways to a hated weed,
especially in Europe and the United States. And you hit
upon why it became a hitted weed. You use the
word monoculture, and the largest monoculture here in the United
States are people's lawns. And for part of the esthetic
(29:38):
of the lawn, you cannot have dandelions breaking up that perfect,
unbroken sea of green grass. You got a dandelion popping up,
the whole thing's ruined. Basically, that's the way people think
of dandelions and lawns these days, or have since about
the fifties.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Essentially, that beautiful yellow flower, stop it right, dig it up.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
But yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
And we've gone over this before, but just sort of
as a quick overview, this is the kind of thing
that came over from England starting in the seventeenth century
is when British aristocracy really started to get into these
perfect sort of croquet croquet playing lawns, I guess is
what you would call them. And then in America it
(30:24):
was post World War Two when suburbanization really took hold.
Lawnmowers really came into their own. Everyone was like, Hey,
we've got these great new chemicals that'll kill everything except
and make the grass grow really really well, and it's
just modern and tidy and good looking, and that really
(30:45):
kind of transformed the United States, you know, like, keep
up that lawn, make a perfect green lawn if you
want to keep your property value over everybody.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Big one and Kyle also dug up another reason too
that once the Cold War rolled around, conformity was equated
with safety. So if you weren't keeping your lawn trim
like everybody else, what's going on with you? You're making
me feel a little bit nervous because you're not conforming.
You must be a red spy hiding out in suburbia, basically, right,
(31:15):
And I think that's a really important kind of overlooked
driver for things like perfectly manicured lawns and everybody having
the same kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Yeah, And speaking of driver, the other I don't think
we've ever mentioned contributor to this nice was in the
nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Golf started being televised.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
In nineteen fifty seven, you got golf on television for
the first time, and people look at Augusta National and
these golf courses that were beautifully manicured and aesthetically pleasing
to the eye, and they're like, hey, I need to
get some of that in my front yard. Maybe I
can practice chipping some balls around in my front yard.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah. Also, if you're sitting there thinking like, Wow, I
really love hearing these guys talk about grass, but I'd
love to hear them have a dispute over it, you
should go listen to How Our Grass Works episode. It's
actually a pretty good way. It's a classic stuff you
should know episode.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
It totally is.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
But anyway, all that preamble about you know, us poopa
and lawns and why America did that brought us to this,
which is weeds became enemy number one and dandelions were
maybe even near the top of that list.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why. For all the
reasons that they're valuable, the pollinators and other kinds of plants,
and that they can grow in marginal lands and basically
everywhere is it makes them an enemy as a weed
if you're trying to create a monoculture lawn, right. So,
they can regenerate from like a one inch section of root,
(32:45):
which means that if you cut a dandelion off at
the even below ground level, it's like good, you know, good,
try pal, but it just sprouts right back up. You
have to dig them up, and even after you dig
them up, you might not get them because one of
the things that I didn't know about dandelions is I
knew they grew from a tap root. You have to
get that tap root up or else it's just feudile. Yeah,
(33:08):
but that tap root can grow, depending on the age
of the dandelion, over a dozen feet meters four meters
into the ground meters.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah, and that makes.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
It really hard to get rid of. And so if
you're like a grounds keeper for a golf course or
something like that, you have to really keep up with
the dandelions because they'll spread really fast and they're really
hard to get rid of once you do start trying
to get rid of them.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Yeah, for sure, I got to say this last fact
from Kyle because it goes back to the lawns, but
this really kind of drives at home of about how
not great a perfect green lawn is for our society.
There's a study in two thousand and five residential lawns
in the United States make up two percent of the
land but require more irrigation than any domestic agricultural crop.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I've got one to piggyback on that. Let's see the
US Fish and Wildlife Service says that homeowners use up
to ten times more pesticides per acre then farmers use
on their crops. So we're using this stuff over using it,
and we're using it on stuff that's not productive land
just to keep up with the Joneses. So they don't
(34:18):
think we're communist spies.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Yeah, you know, I walk Gibson in the mornings and
there are the only lawns that he ever like rubs
his face in are the most perfect green ones. And
I know that it's because they have recently been sprayed,
and he smells it and is trying to rub all
in that stuff, and it drives me bonkers.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, it's it's a like I would love to just
let my lawn and use me too. Just go to
like wildflowers, go to weeds, you know, just mow it.
You keep it mowed, but at a higher height. But yeah,
you just let this stuff grow and we would be
completely we would stick out like a sore thrum from
the rest of the neighborhood, so much of their neighbors
(35:03):
would be mad at us. That's how that's how entrenched.
The idea of having a perfect lawn is still in
the United States, depending on where you live.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Yeah, for sure, And like no one around there even
does like permaculture and you know, other options besides just
letting it grow wild and crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
No, it's it's nuts. So we definitely draw a line.
So we're like, Okay, we'll keep up with the lawn,
but don't touch the you know, the shrubbery, the perennials,
the garden essentially, right, But people will hire the same
company to like treat their lawn with chemicals, to spray
their bushes and spray their gardens with chemicals to kill
off the bugs. And then they have to go in
(35:43):
and try to recreate the stuff that the bugs are
doing for free, the services they're providing because you've killed
off the bugs it's it's insane to me, So we
definitely don't don't. We don't cot into that.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yeah, there was speaking of bugs. It was a scientific
review in twenty nineteen that found that the global massive
insects is falling at a rate of about two and a.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Half percent per year.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
And dandelions is a high high on the list of pollinators.
Caterpillars love munching on them, Moths loves munching on them,
and all those bees and butterflies love doing their thing
on them. So even you know, I'm not trying to
shame people, but let's say you do like your lawn
and everything, even waiting in the spring, like longer to
(36:31):
cut it, even cutting it higher, letting the dandelions grow
up a little bit before you start whacking them down.
Even that minimal amount will help out a little bit.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
What's interesting is a non chemical way I saw to
treat your turf grass for dandelions is to let your
grass grow longer than you have been like cutting it
at a higher mower height.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yeah, because as.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
We talked about, dandelion leaves are so low growing that
the grass will shade out and out compete the dandelions.
So if you really do want to get rid of dandelions,
but you don't want to use chemicals. That's a pretty
good way to do it from what I've seen.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Some states have actual programs or just one in Minnesota
called Lawns to Legumes, which is a great title. They
launched that in twenty nineteen where they just basically incini
incentivized people to say, get rid of that lawn, put
in flowering plants, put in beds. You can have a
rebate if you have a pollinator friendly native wildflower scene
(37:30):
at your house.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah. I didn't look up the amount, but I would
guess at a minimum the rebate is worth a million dollars, right,
that'd be my guess, you think. So, there's a couple
other things that I found that dandelions, I don't know
if you looked at it or not, that they kind
of provide services to the plants growing around them, including grass,
(37:56):
because as we mentioned, those tap roots, they grow really deep,
and as they're growing deep, they're actually accessing nutrients that
other plants around them, again, including grass, the roots of
those plants can't reach because it's too deep, and it
brings those nutrients up toward the surface, and as the
dandelion dies off, the other plants to get to eat
(38:19):
those nutrients that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to.
And those same roots also air rate and loose and
compacted dirt too, which makes it easier for the plants
around the dandelions to grow.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Is there anything dandelions can't do?
Speaker 3 (38:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
I mean, they're not super fragrant.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
No, that's true. They're pretty much useless in that sun.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
But they can grant a child of wish.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
They sure can, man, they sure can. I remember doing
that so many times. I keep trying to do that
with my dandelion puffhead in resin and it's not working.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
I don't have anything else, so I'm kind of looking
over the list here, I kind of all over the place.
But it's just sort of one of those episodes where
it's like, well, here's a list of one hundred amazing things.
And so sometimes those are a little tougher to organize.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah, but they can be pretty fun too. I had
fun at least.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
How about you and that rubber thing? Are you kidding?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Since neither one of us has anything else about dandelions,
and we're going to call it quits on this episode,
which means we've just activated listener mail.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
You know, no listener mail today.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Because what we're going to do with something we haven't
done in a while is help support and bring some
attention to a great cause, our friends from the Cooperative
for Education aka co ED, whose mission it is to
break the cycle of poverty and Guatemala through education. And
we've been working with them for fifteen years, and we
got a new thing coming up with them, right.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yes, we do. So first, let me just explain over
one point three million dollars and contributions have been made
to co ED thanks to our partnership with them at
stuff you should know for fifteen years. That's really good,
if you ask me, that's incredible, which means that one
hundred and sixty kids have been given like a huge
leg up to escape poverty and create like break intergenerational
(40:11):
poverty and create literally like a new life for their
entire family from that point on.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
You know, we went down there, I guess fifteen years
ago when they invited us very early on and stuff
you should know canon, yeah, in our history, and we
went down to Guatemala and those shows we did some
shows on that trip and that visit we get to
actually hear Jerry speak, which is pretty exciting. Yeah, and
they're just great that we've been working with them ever
since and the fact that the stuff you should know
(40:39):
Army has raised one point three million bucks for them
over the past fifteen years is going to be a
real proud part of our legacy. But we have a
call to action, right.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yes, so you can joined we're starting a drive essentially,
right now, that's right. You can join the cooperative, which
is a program of theirs, for twenty dollars a month
and you'll collectively sponsor. There are a bunch of students
in the Rise Youth Development program, right, that's right, and
so it's going to get spread out. You're going to
be helping a bunch of kids at once, so you
(41:08):
can feel good like five times over with each each
monthly donation. And then in twenty twenty five, more than
eleven hundred students will be able to start school in
World Guatemala, which will be their biggest class ever. They
need help to make that happen, which is why we're
saying join the cooperative.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
That's right, and as an incentive if this is for you.
If you set up your gift by Tuesday, December third,
then you are signed up for a chance to do
a virtual hangout with Josh and I. We do this
every year around the same time. It's always a lot
of fun. We hang out with I don't know, if
six or eight people all over the country and they
get to just you know, ask us questions and tell
(41:46):
us that we're cool or dumb or whatever.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
It's your chance to really hand it to us if
that's what you're after.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Right, Yeah, hopefully don't do that, but sure, I mean,
I guess if you've given to co ED and you
deserve to do whatever you want to with, that's right.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
So just go to Cooperative for Education dot org. That's
the word cooperative f o R education dot org slash
s y s k and start giving.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Now. A little bit goes a long way down there.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yes, And in the meantime, while you're looking up Cooperative
for Education dot org slash s y s k, you
can also send us an email. Send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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