The Fascinating History of Dandelions

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Unless you like to puff the little seeds off of Dandelion heads you probably don't think

very highly of Dandelion.

They're 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 lion after hearing

this episode.

And come to think of it, I feel like we're really laying a bridge of understanding between

humans and our garden past with this playlist.

So gratifying.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh and there's Puffball Chuck and there's Blueball

Jerry and I like to call me Monthshead and this is Stuff You Should Know.

Did you get those references?

Sure.

Yeah, okay.

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.

Right.

And we're going to be exalting the Dandelion, probably say a lot of times, how great we think

it is.

Yeah, sorry if you hate Dandelions.

Yeah, how it's unfairly maligned.

And we want to thank Sarah Andrews from Idaho because Sarah is a listener who sent this

in.

Nice.

Very nice.

Thanks a lot, Sarah.

Every time we hear Idaho, I'm reminded of that silly T-shirt that said Idaho, Udaho.

Do you remember that one?

I never saw that one.

What was that one?

There was a company called Dangerous T-shirts or something like that and they had, they

were killing it with the crazy T-shirts for a while and the early 2000s.

Was that like a, instead of saying Coke, it would say, you know, Coke or cocaine.

Yeah.

That kind of thing.

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.

I couldn't even think of a song so that's not me.

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 happens, Chuck.

So let's stop it from happening right now.

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 villain, as a weed to get rid of.

But you need only 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.

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 purposefully brought here and the idea that Dandelion suck is a really recent

development, especially compared to how long people valued and prized Dandelions.

I just find that fascinating.

For sure.

This thing is about 30 million years old, native and sort of Atlantic Europe all the way

to Siberia and in the Northern Hemisphere, you're going to 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 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 20 inches, but usually

at least around here, the Dandelions are, I don't know, like eight inches.

Yeah, that seems about right.

That's my experience as well.

Yeah.

So one of the other really impressive things about the Dandelion is if you look really

closely at the flower, each individual petal has a little, what becomes the part of the

puff ball when the flower seeds, it already is attached and that thing is called the

Pappas.

And at the bottom of the Pappas is the seed.

And the Pappas itself is like this, like parachute essentially, that keeps the seed aloft.

And research into, I saw a Pappi, but I like Pappas as the Polaro.

Ooh, I love Pappi.

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 Pappi,

was thought to be impossible.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah.

One of my prized possessions is this dandelion puff ball encased 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

puff ball and actually not just put water in it, but submerge it in water, the puff ball

does not, it doesn't collapse.

Isn't that nuts?

It's amazing.

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.

Did I wander into the wrong show?

No.

Well, we should tell everybody it's 10 a.m. and we usually refer to it at once.

So I'm a much different person at 10 a.m.

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 purpley peach.

They open in the morning and close in the evening, which is given them the name, the

Shepherd's Clock.

And they do that to preserve pollen and keep that pollen safe for the next day, which

also makes it.

And this is one of my favorite words, a photo nasty.

Oh, that's a great word.

Yeah.

Plants open and close with the setting and rising of the sun.

Yeah.

It's called photo nasty.

Huh.

I saw like a time lapse.

I actually was in a video.

It was 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.

Dandelions, like you said, are edible.

They're used in cooking, their culinary plant, which makes them a pot herb, one word, a

pot herb.

Isn't that awesome?

What a great homey little, like I just imagine, you know, hobbits using that word.

Yeah.

Hobbits in my wife.

Oh, does she call them potterbs?

You've heard that before?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

I told her we were talking about dandelions today and she was just like, oh, are you going

to talk about this, this, this, this, this, this, this, right?

She's like, oh, the same potter.

It's also another kind of clock.

You know, I already mentioned the Shepherd's clock because of opening and closing it, the

sunrise and sunset.

But those little seed heads, they're called dandelion clocks.

And that is from the old, 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 what time it is.

So I can, I haven't tested this out.

I don't know if this is rock solid science, but that's a sort of a thing.

Hmm.

It's pretty neat.

Yeah.

And one other thing about those papuses and the seeds that are attached to them, there's

a long-standing, I guess kind of urban legend or maybe rural legend that they can travel

up to 100 kilometers, 62 miles.

And that does not seem to be the case, even though you'll see that stat absolutely everywhere,

including some legitimate places.

But Kyle helped us with this, our British buddy, and he found that a 2003 study, which

is the most recent you can find on this, is that just one in 7,000 papuses travels more

than one kilometer.

So just leave 100 kilometers out of the whole equation.

Yeah.

And Kyle told us that because he's from England, but for our North American listeners, we're

talking 320 something feet, if it's 100 kilometers, and about three and a half feet for a meter.

Yeah.

And apparently 99.5% of all papuses land just within 30 feet of the parent plant, which

is also 10 meters.

So yes, if you ever hear that a papus can travel 100 kilometers, you can be like, that's

wrong.

What you just said is wrong.

I think like one did, and they framed that, but maybe that's the one you have in amber.

Yeah.

It's like that first dollar bill you make as a business, you put it into amber.

Yeah.

There's also a cool adaptation where after they flower, that little hollow stock that the

flower sits upon goes limp on the ground, and it's 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.

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.

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performance, and the Rumi high-tech cabin keeps you connected on the go.

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So Chuck, a dandelion, I've never stopped and considered why it was called that,

but it turns out that whole, that lion at the end is actually a giveaway for where the name

came from. It's French for lion's tooth, dandelion. Pretty neat.

I love that.

The reason they call it that is it's a reference to the deeply serrated jagged leaves.

I guess somebody was like, that looks like a lion's tooth, and they lived in France,

and that's where they got the name, dandelion.

Yeah, and it's also, if you look at the botanical name, it really gives a good indication

of what it was being used for back then.

The genus name is Teraxacum, and there are a couple of explanations here.

I kind of like the second one.

The first one is a Greek word for disorder, which is ataxia, but it's also,

could have come from Arabic for bitter herb, which is Terax jagog,

and then when you combine bitter herb with the species name, which is,

how do you say that?

Efficientally, I don't know.

Efficientally. That is a word for monastery storeroom.

So, a bitter herb in a monastery storeroom basically is telling you,

hey, we use this plant in a very productive way.

Yeah, the whole disorder thing is totally insensible if you ask me.

Yeah, I agree.

So, one of the other great things, so humans use dandelions, as we'll see,

in a lot of different ways and have for a very long time,

but the, our animal friends love dandelions, too,

those flowers, even though they look kind of flimsy, if you think about it,

they're rich in nectar, packed with it.

So, bees, butterflies, basically, any kind of pollinators love dandelions.

I'm like you said, the reason the stock falls to the ground after flowering,

and as the seed heads 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 basically

flower and seed almost around like the whole year, depending on where you live.

So, at times where there's not a lot of food sources for birds and pollinators,

the dandelions there to kind of keep them going through the, say, you know, late fall.

Yeah, yeah, and I think it's one of the first guys to get going in the spring, too, right?

I believe so, 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 is long been eaten, is now being eaten again,

due to the sort of foraging movement happening in the culinary world.

That's a great time.

I think that kind of kicked off in COVID when people are like,

well, I can't go to the store or what can I eat that's in my backyard.

And I'll try dandelions.

I've always wondered what it tastes like.

So, yeah, nice.

So, I think we said probably a couple times that people have been using dandelions for all sorts of

reasons, not just as potterbs, for a long time.

One of the earlier mentions we can find was in the Arabic world, a couple of physicians named

Rossi's in Avicena, both wrote about some of the properties of dandelions and dandelion

roots back in the 10th and 11th centuries. And most of what they were talking about was

its use as a diuretic and, uh, 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 names that refer to that, depending on where you are,

four dandelions that refer to the fact that they make you pee, right?

Yeah, that's right. In France, they're called the, apparently more than they're called the

dandelion, they're called the pissinlet, which means, you know, peepee in the night.

And a folk name in England is a pissabed for the same reason.

Yeah. And, you know, apparently it's all the potassium in there that's going to stimulate

your nation. And, you know, because of that, a diuretics are used for a lot of things. And,

you know, medicinally now and historically, uh, if you want to work something through your

system and pee it out, dandelions is a good way to make that happen.

Yeah. And very famously in the American Midwest, they're called peepee weeds.

Oh, that's totally made up. I should say. Oh, that's not true either.

No, I just made it up. Okay. I got you back for the, what was the lateral gene transfer gospel

group that you got me with? Oh, geez. I don't even remember now. It was that.

But I've only gotten you once. The score is Josh 3000.

There was a 16th century book, too. What was the name of that one?

People call it Garden of Health because the full title of it is containing the sundry, rare,

and hidden virtues of all kinds of symbols 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 and industry of William Langham

practitioner of physics. That's the actual title of that book, which is why there's like, we're just

going to call it Garden of Health. I mean, Garden of Health really says what that says. I know,

he didn't need all that extra stuff. That's like the introduction. I think he put the

introduction in the title. Yeah, that's a little, did it say the end at the end? Pretty much.

This is from, like I said, the 16th century and it talked a lot about all kinds of things they

thought it could help back then, toothache, fevers, depression, even baldness. But they also

talked about growing it alongside other vegetables and herbs in the garden and you dug up this

kind of cool fact. It's ethylene gas that they release. So if you actually grow dandelions or

have dandelions growing near fruiting plants like tomatoes, they're going to ripen faster.

Yeah, in that neat. Super cool. Yeah, we're going to cover a lot of actually pretty cool little

benefits, I guess, that they provide. But let's keep going with the tradition of using them

medicinally, shall we? Sure. There's a guy named John Gerard who wrote a book in the 1630s and he's

like, hey, I want to contribute to this too. I've found that dandelions drink things the weak

stomach, which is important because actually if you use the roots of a dandelion, it contains a

lot of inulin, which is an important prebiotic for gut health. So John Gerard wasn't just whistle

and dixie. No, not at all. 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've had heard of. It has triturpeens,

sesquiturpeens, phenolic acids, sterols, and cumerins. And they bestow things like antibacterial,

antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, and anti-tumor properties. And you dug up a lot

of ways that they actually help health, right? Yeah, so I mean, we can talk all day about like

the ways that people thought it would help you back in the, you know, 16th century. But people

might poo poo something like that. But there have been modern studies. I'll just give you a few

examples. There was a study from 2015 in Canada that reported that dandelion extract can block

ultraviolet UVB radiations. When applied to 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.

Those who run a 16 review of studies from a university in Denmark that suggests that dandelion

extracts actually stimulates pancreatic cells, reduce insulin. So it could potentially help control

blood sugar, right? And what about those one on the liver too, right? Yeah, I said it was

hepatoprotective, which means it helps deliver. 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 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. I do want to mention the cancer one because Emily had a very funny,

very Emily line. There was a 2020, I mean, what do I do that lately? 2020, 2012. I did that.

I did that a lot. What is happening? I don't know. It's just a study from the University of Windsor

and Canada about dandelion root extract can induce apoptosis, which is cell death and pancreatic

and prostate cancer in test tube and their cells in the test tubes, potentially preventing their

spread. So this is something Emily knew. And this morning she was like, yeah, it's so like

modern American at the very least to take something that could actually help fight cancer

and spray chemicals on it to kill it that caused cancer. And she stormed out of the room.

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? Yeah, I feel like people are getting a little more

eyes open to stuff like that. Yeah, they're getting on board the dandelion train.

So one thing about those studies that you said, like they're essentially confirming to

our modern tastes, what the Chinese knew all the way back in 659 CE. People like Nicholas Cole

Pepper knew in the 18th century, all these people wrote about this stuff and just how effective it

was. And then now science is going in and saying, these people were right. And here's how it is

effective. I think that's pretty cool. And in part because of that, the dandelion is being

rehabilitated. But first I think we need to mention you said that it came by North America.

I piped up on purpose. I think more than once even I was so excited about that. And it's possible

it was actually on the Mayflower. It arrived that early. And they think that because of plant migration

as we talked about before, the dandelion may have spread ahead of Europeans as they

entered further and further into the North American continent. And so Native Americans that they

encountered may have already been using dandelions in some of their medicines. Oh yeah, absolutely.

They were drinking it in tonics. They were boiling it with fatty meats, which is sounds disgusting.

It does. It really does.

Fatty. Unless you're talking about something like collards with ham hocks or something,

that sounds okay. But in this case, I imagine a pot of boiling water with a skin of fat just

bubbling at the top and some dandelion leaves floating around in it.

And we'll talk about more ways you can eat it. But it's long been used in like corjules and beers,

like the dandelion root. You can grind it up and use it as a copy substitute, kind of like

chickery. So, you know, people are using it for medicine. They were using it for old kinds of

folk remedies and foods and things. Largely because again, it was everywhere. It grows in

not very good soil. They can, it's considered a perennial because they can live well because,

like you said, they're going to grow in year round. But they can live for more than 10 years.

If you don't mess with them, kill them. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's pretty cool too. One of the other things I saw, there is a book called

the economical housewife from the 1850s that it might be the first recipe for dandelion wine.

And people still make that today. And it's actually super easy. You just take some dandelion flowers,

some water. Eventually, you add some sugar and some lemon. Let it sit for a couple of weeks,

strain it out and then let it sit for another week and age. And you've got yourself some dandelion

wine. And it sounds deliciously easy or maybe easily delicious. One of the two. But I'd love to try.

Have you ever had dandelion wine or dandelion beer or anything like that?

No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely thing. Ray Bradbury had a novel called dandelion wine

from 1957. So it's something's been enjoyed all over the world. In France, they use it sometimes.

They take the leaves and blanch them and spread them with bread and butter. It sounds like if there's

not a Brooklyn restaurant serving dandelion toast at this point. Yeah.

What is happening in our I don't know. It sounds like fairy toast like the Australia's love.

But with the end of the lion leaves instead. Yeah. It's also just a salad, a salad green

component. And like we said, it is very bitter. But it's used in all kinds of salads. Sometimes it's

the only kind of leaf uses in a salad. Sometimes it can be mixed in with other things. But in France,

they have one called a salad day piss and lits from that original name that's got bacon in it

and dandelion leaves. It just, you know, sounds pretty good to me. 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. No, I delighted her with that fact as well. So we'll be right back.

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All right, so Josh said that he hadn't heard of this cool fact. I hadn't heard of it.

Emily hadn't heard of it. And I think it may be the fact of the podcast.

But Dandelions are a source of natural rubber. Pretty cool. I would stop.

I would take issue with that. I think it has to do with the vortices over the papi 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, that means we got a good topic if there are several. It's right competitors.

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. That specific one puts out enough latex that it gave rubber trees a run for their money

during World War II, which we've talked about many times. America and Britain were like,

we need more rubber for the war effort and the Japanese control essentially all of the rubber

supply were at war with the Japanese. So we better come up with something else quick.

Yeah. So they literally started screening like thousands and thousands of plants. 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 sent a bunch of those Kazakh seeds,

the Soviet allies at the time in the 1940s. And ultimately we use some of it. Russians,

Americans and Germans did produce rubber from Dandelions. It's very hearty. It can be susceptible

to disease, though, depending on what kind of disease. It also grows everywhere and serves as

a pollinator and it doesn't deforest things. So the big problem, though, and I know where it was

like, oh my god, it's just the miracle we've all been hoping for with rubber. It just doesn't yield

as much as the Russian said it did. And so it's not economically viable as long as the real rubber

tree is around. They released some paper that overstated how much rubber can be gotten from the

Dandelion because they wanted to sound like big shots. So the reason why we didn't just keep

going with Dandelion rubber research in trying to figure out how to increase yields is because

in the meantime, people figured out we could make synthetic rubber from petroleum. It was almost

as good as natural rubber. It certainly was a good enough substitute. And we could just make batch

after batch after batch, rather than have to try to yield it from Dandelion. So that fell to the

wayside. And then by the time the World War II 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 80, almost 100 years, geez, since World War II, I remember when

that was like just like that was firmly like 40 to 50 years in the past. And it just getting

further and further away. It's really awful. But we've kind of figured out in the interim that

synthetic rubber, it's useful. But there's nothing that can match natural rubber for like grip,

heat dissipation, all sorts of other properties. So we're starting to go back to look at sources

for natural rubber, including ones that are more sustainable than the rubber trees, which require

you basically deforest and then plant the rubber trees to create a plantation with Dandelions.

You don't have to do that stuff. No, you got a big field. You can have Dandelions. And like I said,

it grows and you didn't have to be great soil. You can grow it hydroponically without soil at all.

You can grow it in the air, which is aeroponically. It's pretty amazing. And I think it's one of the

things where like anytime you have a monoculture plant like that, like the rubber tree, it makes

people a little bit nervous besides a deforestation. Like if anything ever happened, like some kind of

weird blight and the rubber trees were just, you know, not a candidate anymore. You got Dandelions

kind of waiting on deck with their bat. Right. So it's kind of surprising that it went from this

really prized plant in so many ways to a hated weed, especially in Europe in the United States.

And you hit upon why it became a hated weed. You use the word monoculture. And the largest

monoculture here in the United States are people's lawns. And for part of the aesthetic of the lawn,

you cannot have Dandelions breaking up that perfect, unbroken sea of green grass. You got a

Dandelion popping up. The whole thing's ruined basically. That's the way people think of Dandelions

and lawns these days or have since about the 50s, essentially. That beautiful yellow flower. Stop it.

Dig it up. But yeah, that's what happened. And we've gone over this before, but just sort of as

a quick overview. This is the kind of thing that came over from England. Starting in the 17th century

is when British aristocracy really started to get into these perfect sort of croquet playing lawns,

I guess, to switch you a column. And then in America, it was post-World War II when suburbanization

really took hold. lawnmowers really came into their own. Everyone was like, hey, we've got

these great new chemicals that will kill everything except and make the grass grow really, really well.

And it's just modern and tidy and good looking. And that really kind of transformed

the United States, you know, like keep up that lawn, make a perfect green lawn if you want to keep

your property value of everybody. That's a big one. Kyle also dug up another reason too that once

the Cold War rolled around, conformity was equated with safety. So if you weren't keeping your

lawn trimmed like everybody else, what's going on with you? You're making me feel a little bit

nervous because you're not conforming. You must be a red spy hiding out in suburbia, basically,

right? And I think that's a really important kind of overlooked driver for things like

perfectly manicured lawns and everybody having the same kind of thing. Yeah. And speaking of driver,

the other, I don't think we've ever mentioned, contributor to this, was in the 1950s,

golf started being televised. In 1957, you got golf on television for the first time and people

look at Augusta National and these golf courses that were beautifully manicured and aesthetically

pleasing to the eye. And they were like, Hey, I can need to get some of that in my front yard.

Maybe I can practice chipping some balls around in my front yard. 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.

It totally is. But anyway, all that preamble about us pooping lawns in why America did that

brought us to this, which is weeds became enemy number one and dandelions were maybe even near

the top of that list. Yeah. There's a lot of reasons why. For all the reasons that they're valuable,

the pollinators and other kinds of plants and that they can grow in marginal lands and basically

everywhere is it makes them an enemy as a weed if you're trying to create a monoculture lawn,

right? So they can regenerate from like a one inch section of root, which means that if you

cut a dandelion off at the at the even below ground level, it's like good, you know, good

try pal, but it just sprouts right back up. You have to dig them up and even after you dig them up,

you might not get them because one of the things that I didn't know about dandelions is I knew they

grew from a taproot. You have to get that taproot up or else it's just futile. But that taproot

can grow depending on the age of the dandelion over a dozen feet meters, four meters into the ground,

meters. Yeah. And that makes it really hard to get rid of. And so if you're like a groundskeeper

for a golf course or something like that, you have to really keep up with the dandelions because

they'll spread really fast and they're really hard to get rid of once you do start trying to

get rid of them. 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 about how not great a perfect green lawn is

for our society. There was a study in 2005, residential lawns in the United States make up 2%

of the land, but require more irrigation than any domestic agricultural crop. I've got one to

piggyback on that. The US Fish and Wildlife Service says that homeowners use up to 10 times more

pesticides per acre than farmers use on their crops. So we're using this stuff over using it and

we're using it on stuff that's not productively and just to keep up with the Joneses so they don't

think we're communist spies. 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've recently been sprayed and he's smells it and is trying to rub all in that stuff and it drives

me bonkers. Yeah, it's it's like I would love to just let my lawn and you 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 thumb

from the rest of the neighborhood. So much of their neighbors 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. 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. 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 and try to recreate this stuff that the bugs are

doing for free. The service is there 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 cotton to that. Yeah, there was speaking

of bugs. It was a scientific scientific review in 2019 that found that the global mass of insects

is falling at a rate of about two and a half percent per year. And dandelions is a

high high on the list of pollinators. Caterpillars love, munching on them, moths love munching on them,

and all those bees and butterflies love doing their thing on them. So even, you know, I'm not

trying to to chain people, but let's say you do like your lawn and everything, even waiting in the

spring like longer to cut it, even cutting it higher, letting the dandelions grow up a little bit

before you start whacking them down, even that minimal amount will help out a little bit.

What's interesting is a nonchemical way I saw it a 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.

Because as we talked about dandelion leaves are so low growing that the grass will shade out

and outcompete 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. Yeah, totally. Some

states have actual programs. There's one in Minnesota called lawns to legumes, which is a great

title. They launched that in 2019 where they just basically incentivize people to say get rid

of that lawn, put in flowering plants, put in beds. You can have a rebate if you have a pollinator-friendly

native wildflower scene at your house. Yeah, I didn't look up the amount, but I would guess

at a minimum, the rebate is worth a million dollars. That'd be my guess. You think so? There's

a couple other things that I found that dandelions, I don't know if you looked at it or not, that they

kind of provide services to the plants growing around them, including grass. 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 get to eat those nutrients that they otherwise wouldn't have

had access to. And those same roots also aerate and loosen compacted dirt too, which makes it

easier for the plants around the dandelions to grow. Amazing. Is there anything dandelions can't do?

I don't know. I mean, they're not super fragrant.

No, that's true. They're pretty much useless in that. But they can grant a child a wish.

They sure can, man. They sure can. I remember doing that so many times. I keep trying to do that with

my dandelion puff head in resin and it's not working. I don't have anything else though. I'm

kind of looking over the list here. I know we were kind of all over the place, but it's just sort of

one of those episodes where it's like, well, here's a list of 100 amazing things. And so

sometimes those are a little tougher to organize. Yeah, but they can be pretty fun too.

I had fun at least so much. Yeah, I did too. And that rubber thing? Are you kidding me now?

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.

You know, no listener mail today because what we're going to do is something we haven't done

in a while is help support and bring some attention to a great cause. Our friends from the

Cooperative for Education, aka coed whose mission it is to break the cycle of poverty and Guatemala

through education. And we've been working with them for 15 years and we got a new thing coming

up with them, right? Yes, we do. So first, let me just explain. Over 1.3 million dollars in

contributions have been made to coed thanks to our partnership with them at Stuff You Should Know

for 15 years. That's that's really good, if you ask me. That's incredible. Which means that 160

kids have been given like a huge leg up to escape poverty and create like break intergenerational

poverty and create literally like a new life for their entire family from that point on.

That's right. You know, we went down there I guess 15 years ago when they invited us very early

on in Stuff You Should Know's canon. Yeah. In our history and we went down to Guatemala and those

shows we did some shows on that that trip and that visit where 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 Army has raised 1.3 million bucks for them over the past 15

years is going to be a real proud part of our legacy. But we have a call to action, right?

Yes. So you can join, we're starting a drive essentially right now. That's right.

You can join the cooperative which is a program of theirs for $20 a month and you'll collectively

sponsor a bunch of students in the Rise Youth Development Program, right? 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 can feel

good like five times over with each monthly donation. And then in 2025 more than 1,100 students

will be able to start school in rural Guatemala which will be their biggest class ever.

They need help to make that happen which is why we're saying join the cooperative.

That's right. And as an incentive, if this is for you, if you set up your gifts by Tuesday,

December 3rd, then you are signed up for a chance to do a virtual hangout with Josh and I. We do

this every year around the same time. It's always a lot of fun. We hang out with I don't know if

six or eight people all over the country and they get to just, you know, ask us questions and tell

us that we're cool or dumb or whatever. It's your chance to really hand it to us if that's what

you're after. Right. Yeah, hopefully don't do that but sure, I mean, I guess if you've given

to COVID and you deserve to do whatever you want to us. That's right. So just go to cooperative

for education.org. That's the word cooperative. F-O-R education.org slash S-Y-S-K and start giving

now. A little bit goes a long way down there. Yes. And in the meantime, while you're looking

up cooperative for education.org slash S-Y-S-K, you can also send us an email. Send it off to Stuff

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