Selects: Plant Migration

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – "Selects: Plant Migration"

Release Date: July 25, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark, Chuck Bryant
Theme: How and why plants move (migrate), the mechanisms, history, and urgent climate context for plant migration, and what new research tells us about the survival of plant species in a changing world.

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Episode Overview

In this selected episode, Josh and Chuck provide an in-depth and irreverently fun examination of plant migration—how sessile organisms like trees and ferns manage, over time and long distances, to "move" their populations in response to environmental changes. They break down the science behind migration by spores and seeds, the effects of past and present climate change, and the emerging science (and controversy) around “assisted migration” by humans. The hosts interweave natural history, current climate challenges, and philosophical musings, all while maintaining their signature comedic and conversational tone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Plant Migration?

• Plants Move?

  • Despite plants being sessile, they migrate as a species by dispersing seeds/spores over time and distance, allowing populations to shift their geographic range.
  • "Plants are what are known as sessile organisms. They don't move from place to place individually as organisms, but as a species, they can actually move around like inchworms." — Chuck (04:03)

• Example: Ferns as Pioneer Migrators

  • Tasmanian tree ferns can send spores 300–500 miles away, with a single frond producing more than 750 million spores (03:36).
  • Ferns mature quickly and can survive wide climate ranges, often among the first large plants to colonize new areas after disturbance.

• Seed & Spore Dispersal Mechanisms:

  • Wind (anemochory), water (hydrochory), and animal (zoochory) dispersal help overcome the limits of slow “fall and grow” migration.

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2. The Mystery of “Rapid” Plant Migration

• Reid’s Paradox (09:09):

  • Fossil records indicate trees can migrate much faster than would be expected based solely on average seed dispersal.
  • Sometimes, rare events (animal transport, storms) move seeds far beyond typical distances, accelerating migration.

• Pollen Fossils & Plots:

  • Pollen grains in sediment tell the story of shifting forests over thousands of years (09:49).

  • Permanent vegetation plots and journals from explorers (like Alexander von Humboldt) allow scientists to check plant ranges over decades/centuries (13:42).

    "Based on this information, the 2012 Danes were able to... note what plants were where and they found that everything, all species on average had moved up the mountain by about an average of about 500 meters, which is significant." — Chuck (14:04)

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3. Plant Migration and Climate Change

• Historical Context:

  • Major climatic events, like the periodic “Green Sahara” (21:01), drove huge migrations—tropical plants, savannahs, and associated animal life would shift by hundreds of miles every 23,000 years (21:01).
  • Post-glacial North America saw southern trees move north as the Laurentide glacier retreated (22:17).

• Modern Acceleration:

  • Since the Industrial Age, Earth’s temperature has risen 1°C (1.8°F), with over a third of that since 2011 (23:48).

  • The rate of warming now (~1 degree every 200 years) is 7x faster than after the last glaciation (~1 degree every 1,400 years) (24:32).

    "So we've achieved one degree in 200 years. And after the last glacial period ended, the earth heated one degree every 1,400 years." — Chuck (24:32)

• Plant Migration Pace vs. Climate Change Pace:

  • Example: Red oaks move 0.1–0.3 miles/year, but the climate is marching north at 4–6 miles/year (25:27).
    • "The climate is really kind of showing up as kind of the Usain Bolt of this race. And I don't know, the plants are like me racing Usain Bolt." — Chuck (25:46)

• Not All Plants Go North:

  • Some species (e.g., red maples, magnolias) have moved west as the Midwest gets wetter, while softwoods trend north — directions depend on their specific climate needs (26:14).

• Implications for Forest “Communities”:

  • Community associations (like beech-hemlock forests) may “break up”—species migrate at different rates or directions, destabilizing ecosystems (27:28).
  • New ecological combinations may form, but instability and less time to adapt raise risk of ecosystem collapse.

• Mountain Migration "Trap":

  • Plants fleeing up mountains may find better climate, but soils are poorer at elevation; this creates “bottlenecks” that can lead to local extinction (29:07).

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4. Real-World Impacts

• Maple Syrup at Risk:

  • Sugar maples moving north for cooler climate, but hit a “brick wall” when they reach inhospitable boreal soils in Canada (31:27).

    “The climate might be better, but… they get up there and the soil pH and the microbe content… is not what they're used to and… they're not doing well up there.” — Josh (31:25)

• Tropical Species Moving In:

  • By late 21st century, southern U.S. is expected to be fully tropical, akin to Guatemala or Ecuador today. Long-term, this erodes familiar temperate biodiversity, impacting food, forestry, and ecosystem services (35:07).

    "Alabama and Arizona are going to be like Guatemala by the end of the century." — Chuck (35:54)

• Invasive Species and Positive Feedback:

  • As trees migrate (or die), less carbon is stored, accelerating warming (33:00).
  • Expansion of dark boreal forests north replaces reflective ice, trapping more heat (33:23).

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5. Human “Assisted Migration”

• Forest-Assisted Migration:

  • Humans—especially scientists—are now intentionally moving species ahead of their expected natural range to help them keep pace with climate change (43:16).

  • Highly controversial (potential for new invasives, disease, unforeseen consequences), but many argue it’s necessary with climate moving so quickly (44:01).

    “It’s not a great, perfect solution, but it’s way better than doing nothing.” — Chuck (44:01)

• Varieties of Assisted Migration:

  • Assisted Range Expansion: moving within a species’ future predicted range
  • Species Rescue: moving species to entirely new regions (very risky; e.g., Monterey pine became a weed/invasive in Australia) (46:48–47:22)
  • Scientists stress extreme caution; “not out there with a seed cannon blasting stuff all over the place like Dolph Lundgren” (45:04).

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6. Notable Quotes & Moments

• On rapid migration and climate change:

  “Plants are used to migrating... but these conditions are different…we’ve achieved one degree in 200 years, and after the last glacial period ended, the earth heated one degree every 1,400 years.” — Chuck (24:32)

• Modern climate change & species leapfrogging:

  "They can't go any further. Like they're not adapted... and those sugar maples will just run into that boreal soil and just... it'll be like hitting a brick wall for their species.” — Chuck (32:55)

• On the idea of “kill frost”:

  "Kill frost is definitely a band name." — Josh and Chuck (36:17)

• The tempo of change:

  “In 77 years, climatologists expect all of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California...to be tropical.” — Chuck (35:07)

• The challenge of assisted migration:

  "They're not just out there with a seed cannon blasting stuff all over the place like Dolph Lundgren or something, wearing bike coach shorts." — Josh (45:04)

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7. Memorable Side Tangents & Chemistry

• Ferns at Josh’s camp, referencing his “fern forest” sign (03:01)
• Amusing confusion over Andy Samberg and Anders Sandberg (07:34)
• Music asides: New Pornographers, Dungeon Synth (37:15–38:52)
• Running jokes: “Kill Frost” as a band, “digital sounds” aversion, custom ringtones (36:17, 48:25)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Stat on fern migration: 03:36
• Reid’s Paradox explained: 09:09–12:04
• Humboldt revisited, evidence of altitudinal migration: 13:42–15:17
• Green Sahara and historical migrations: 20:49–21:43
• Modern climate change acceleration: 23:48–24:45
• Red oak migration rate vs. climate change: 25:27–26:04
• Breakdown of assisted migration: 43:16–47:22
• Boreal forest “trap” & positive feedback: 33:23–34:07
• Sugar maples and the maple syrup problem: 31:13–32:55
• US going tropical: 35:07–35:57
• Invasive species risks (Monterey pine): 47:07–47:22

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Summary Takeaways

• Plants migrate as populations, even across continents, thanks to seed and spore dispersal by wind, water, and animals—sometimes at surprisingly rapid rates due to rare, long-distance events.
• Climate change is dramatically speeding up, leaving most plant migrations unable to keep pace—resulting in fragmented forests, loss of ecosystem stability, and knock-on effects on carbon storage and warming.
• Humans are now debating and beginning to intervene with “assisted migration,” moving key species to places they might not reach naturally in time—as a risky but perhaps necessary effort to conserve plants and ecosystems.
• The episode combines scientific explanation with friendly banter, making a complex and urgent topic both accessible and memorable.

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“If you're in New Mexico and you see a palm tree growing, then watch out. That's right. It means that you've gone tropical and you're in trouble now.” — Josh & Chuck (50:04)

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For a deep, accessible look at one of the most underappreciated ways climate change reshapes the world, this episode is Stuff You Should Know at its best.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Price void in Florida hey guys, it's me, Josh. And for this week's select, I've chosen our August 2023 episode on plant Mig. This one makes me a brainy boy, what with its earth science and something that goes on under our noses without us really realizing that it's happening. And we figure out that there's a lot to learn about plants on the move, which makes it even sweeter. I hope you love this one as much as I do.

[Josh Clark]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck. And Jerry's here, too. And this is stuff you should know that We're All Melting edition.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm just a. Just a migrating fern.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's a good one to be

[Josh Clark]

blowing through the forest looking for a new home. Sure, I'm a spore.

[Chuck Bryant]

What happens when you get there? Spore?

[Josh Clark]

Well, I'LL probably grow into a beautiful new fern because ferns are pretty hardy.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's awesome. And I'll bet you'll contribute to society in all sorts of beneficial ways that ferns that were already there couldn't necessarily do.

[Josh Clark]

I hope so. There is fern stuff in here. And I have a wonderful fern scene at my camp on the other side of the feeder creek that goes into the main creek, I call it. I even have a sign. This is fern forest, and it's a forest of ferns. It's quite lovely.

[Chuck Bryant]

God knows where they're from because those things can travel quite a bit, as we'll see.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they could be from Alabami easily.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not kidding. Easily. Man, I've got a stat that's going to blow your mind in a second.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, boy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Actually, I'll just bust it out now. You ready?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. How far can a fern travel?

[Chuck Bryant]

A fern can travel. The Tasmanian tree fern in particular can send its spores 500 to 800 kilometers. That's 300 to 500 miles from the mother plant. And get this, a single frond. A frond produces more than 750 million of those spores.

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[Chuck Bryant]

So you can understand that. Ferns, I mean, you find ferns everywhere. They're really hardy. They can actually survive colder temperatures than you would think. They also thrive in the tropics. They're like a really great pioneer plant. They usually are among the first large plants that show up in a newly cleared part of Earth. Right.

[Josh Clark]

This all makes sense then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, so what we're talking about then is that those ferns that showed up in this new place and said, hey, let's get this biosphere going again. Let's get this biome back into shape after this wildfire or something like that. Or there was like a stampede because there was a really great ice cream truck that drove through one of those two. Those ferns have migrated. They came from Tasmania, apparently all the way to wherever the ice cream truck was, and now they're there. And so they actually moved in that sense, which is really surprising because plants are what are known as sessile organisms. They don't move from place to place individually as organisms, but as a species, they can actually move around like inchworms. Pretty good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I didn't really know much about this. We're talking about plant migration and the idea. Well, not idea, the very real fact that just like humans and animals will go to more hospitable climes as the climate may change, or just, I don't know, just to Seek a better place to be. Plants and trees and things en masse do the same thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And there's all sorts of ways that they do that too. So they do it by dispersing their seeds or their spores, in that case. Fern spores are single celled organisms. They're not like a seed technically, but they do the same thing. Right. They show up in a place and set up shop and they start rocking out.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's right. And ferns, you know, it depends. And we'll get all into this stuff, but how fast this happens depends on different factors. How far these plants can migrate depends on different factors. Why this is happening is generally climate change. And plants and trees and things are generally moving north or up in elevation

[Chuck Bryant]

if they hit mountains or south in the southern hemisphere.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So that's sort of the general pattern. And we mentioned ferns because like you said, those spores can really haul. Ferns also mature very quickly and, you know, the wind can just. That's why I got a fern forest at my camp, probably.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So they check both of the boxes that you need to be a fast migrating plant species. They produce seeds or spores at a very young age and their seed or spore can travel very far distances. Right, right. So they can move around. And also, it doesn't hurt that, like I said, ferns are adaptable. The trees and other plants don't move quite so fast, but they move, especially if you look at the fossil record, a lot faster than they actually should. So if you pay attention to a single organism, say an oak, those acorns don't travel terribly far. They may get a little further away from the drip line. If a squirrel happens to bury it somewhere and a new oak tree grows.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it was Anders Sandberg who described acorns as solar powered factories for producing more oak trees.

[Josh Clark]

Whoa, whoa. Andy Samberg said that?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, Anders Sandberg.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's a philosopher at Oxford.

[Josh Clark]

That makes a lot more sense.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. Andy Samberg. He ate his lime accidentally in his Corona bottle. That's what he's got.

[Josh Clark]

You know who he's married to?

[Chuck Bryant]

Patricia Arquette.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's not a Rosanna Arquette. You've been guessing Patricia Arquette for a lot of things lately. I feel like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Have I.

[Josh Clark]

He's married to. Yeah, I feel like that's come up before.

[Chuck Bryant]

Recently. Maybe.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know her name.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just rolls off the tone.

[Josh Clark]

I know a big fan of hers. He is married to. What's her name? Joanna Newsome, the singer and harpist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, neat. Nice.

[Josh Clark]

And if you like, if you're into architecture and homes, you should seek out. I don't know if it was Architectural Digest or something, but someone did a spread on their home and it is really something else.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, so that's Andy Samberg hour.

[Martha Stewart]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That we just checked out.

[Josh Clark]

A quick detour.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wait, wait, I wasn't done.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, no, go ahead.

[Chuck Bryant]

So if you look at an individual tree, an oak tree, those acorns don't go particularly far away from the tree, as the old saying goes. But. But the fact that they do fall away from the tree means that very slowly some of those seedlings are going to grow up a little more northward or a little more southward than its mother plant. And very, very slowly, the whole group of oaks can move southward or northward. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Over hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years.

[Chuck Bryant]

So long. The thing is, if you look at the fossil record, they move way faster than that, than they should. And there's actually a paradox that was named by a guy named Clement Reed.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Reed's Paradox.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he's got a great, great title for it.

[Josh Clark]

Of Rapid Plant Migration. That's the full title.

[Chuck Bryant]

It sounds almost like snake oil from the 19th century.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it kind of does.

[Chuck Bryant]

So what is it?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. I didn't know you were setting me up. We're still tight after all these years, for sure. So what he found from the fossil record like you were talking about, and as we'll see, that's one like, you know, a pretty good way to study this stuff, especially pollen fossils. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because they're so hardy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So he saw that trees were migrating a lot faster than like the rate that you would think. And so he. Like those oaks, I think, was one example you gave on the British Isles after the last glacial period, over a span of like 10,000 years or so, they traveled about 600 miles and it would normally take about a million years if the seeds were just dispersed in a typical way. But what he figured was that what may be happening here is like some weird weather event happens that sent things much farther than usual. Or like some deer or something eats something and then poops out something really far away from where it started. And so all of a sudden this animal has spread it via their poo poo.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And this, this is how like large scale migration happens, or I should say rapid migration over long distances. Right, right. Yeah, it's the, it's the unusual. Not just the acorn falling and hitting the ground. It's not just gravity assisted, it's animal assisted, which is called Zoo cory, or it's wind assisted, which is called the nemachory, or water assisted, which is called hydrochorry. And that's just the way that some plants disperse their seeds. That's kind of on top of the normal way they disperse it, which is just dropping it from their leaves or the spores blowing on the wind, which I guess is one type of cory.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So like, if a squirrel loaded up its mouth full of things and somehow found its way into your camper as you set off for Arizona, that would

[Chuck Bryant]

be a freak event. Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And it probably wouldn't be en masse, but, you know, that's a way a tree could move.

[Chuck Bryant]

All it takes is that one oak to make it sure to just survive and then it starts its own new part of the range.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, absolutely. And we all should point out. When was Reid doing this? This is a while ago, like 100 plus years ago, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He was a geologist, I don't know if we said. But his. Reid's Paradox of Rapid Plant Migration came out in 1899 and it was a smash hit.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So people, I mean, for at least that long, science has been sort of curious about this. This migration happening at a rate that they would not expect.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. The thing is, is it's really hard when you throw in that X factor to calculate how fast an actual species can migrate. And there's a few ways that you can study that kind of thing. One, as you said, is studying the fossil record, which is super helpful, but it's not showing you what's going on contemporaneously or within the last couple decades. This is ten thousand, a million years ago, something like that, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So if you wanted to study something a little closer to home, timeline wise, you would maybe set up what's called a permanent vegetation plot. So you would mark off an area and you would go back there every so often, like every six months or every year or so, and just sort of chart what's happening. That's one really good way. I think they've been doing this for about 100 years, since the 1920s. So we've got a pretty good data set there. Something else you could do is go somewhere like, let's say you dug up some cool scientific journal from a scientist from, you know, 200 years ago that went and explored some island. And while they may not have, like charted everything out exactly like you would in today's science, they may have a really nice diary about all the plant life there and things that they saw there and where it might be and you could go back to that place and it's not quite as tight of a record, but you could still get a pretty good idea of what's happening.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Depending on whose journal you're working from. And back in 2012, a Danish team of scientists followed the record left by a 19th century geologist named Alexander von Humboldt from Germany, who was just an interesting dude in and of himself. He called coffee concentrated sunbeams. So he's my kind of guy.

[Josh Clark]

Oh man, that's great.

[Chuck Bryant]

They went back to Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador, which Humboldt studied in detail. And not only did he study the vegetation there and he classified all sorts of new plants that Europeans didn't know about at that point, he also noted exactly where they were on the mountain as far as the elevation went. Super helpful, super helpful. So based on this information, the 2012 Danes were able to go back and recreate his trip and then they were able to note what plants were where and they found that everything, all species on average had moved up the mountain by about an average of about 500 meters, which is significant. It's like almost a mile. It's like 8/10 of a mile.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. That's the average.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There was a lot of variation within that, but that's, that's a long way for sure. And what we found out, and I guess this comes up a little later, but a plant can find more hospitable climbs going up 500 meters than they might by going, let's just say north, like 90 to 100 miles.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

So like a much quicker road to better climbs if you just go up that mountain.

[Chuck Bryant]

For sure. Yeah. That's kind of two ways they move is longitudinally.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or altitudinally.

[Josh Clark]

You got to be in shape though.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh for sure.

[Josh Clark]

If you're going to climb that mountain. Should we take a break?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think we should. But just to wrap it up real quick, there's a bunch of ways you can study the movement of trees, but it's so slow and it happens over such long timelines, longer than a human timeline, that it's harder to do than you'd think. But we still have figured out some ways to do it.

[Josh Clark]

All right, we'll be right back and we'll talk about all this stuff in more detail right after this.

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[Josh Clark]

One other way we failed to mention. Probably would have been better to just say that before the break. But again, still learning after 16 years. Satellite images is another way that you can study on the short term. You know, the fossil pollen is much longer and those plant plots and things like that. Vegetation plots are shorter term. But satellite images can also help.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, if you want to catch like a Venus flytrap in the act of leapfrogging over some other plant. Satellite image is gonna help you with that. The fossil record won't show you that.

[Josh Clark]

Here's the thing with all this, though. It's not like we're gonna talk a lot about climate change. Cause that's what's spurring a lot of the movement right now. But the Earth's climate has changed a lot over the, you know, over the years. And this is not some new thing. There used to be periods of time where the Sahara Desert was quite green and there was grasses growing there and tropical plants growing there, and elephants roaming the Sahara and wildlife living there. And they've learned that this is actually one of the things that helped move, you know, humans around. Like, humans could actually migrate through the Sahara with much more ease than they could before during these green Sahara periods.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's so fascinating that, you know, who knows when we would have migrated out of Africa into Europe in the ages had the green Sahara not happened. Isn't that just nuts?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, like hundreds of miles. It says here that they would find tropical plants growing where they shouldn't be growing alongside, you know, the desert stuff that survived. So that was this weird sort of mixed up biome for a time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. In the green Sahara period, there were a few of them that have been documented, but they figured out that they happen about every 23,000 years.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We're due for one in about 12,000 years, something like that. And it's based on the tilt in Earth's axis that's neither here nor there. But the point is, during these periods where the Sahara was just a humid kind of tropical forest, there was a mixture kind of what you touched upon of different. Like you said, a hybrid biome of stuff that wouldn't necessarily live together under normal circumstances, but got along just famously in the couple thousand years that the Sahara was green and those plants were growing together.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Just amazing to think about.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then in North America, we have another example too. After the Laurentide Glacier, which is way up in the Arctic right now. Used to be down in Indiana and northern New Jersey.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And when it retreated, it took everything with. Took boulders, it carved out lakes, it did all sorts of neat stuff. But what it didn't leave behind was vegetation. So it left. It was like a giant ice cream truck, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It left nothing behind, and it was just a great place for plants to pioneer and colonize.

[Martha Stewart]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, that's why you have pine trees in New Jersey, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I would think so, yeah. Or in the south, because they were too far. They were trapped below or. Yeah. Below the Laurentide Glacier down in the southeast. Even though they normally would have been growing in the north. Right. And as the glacier retreated, the climate changed in that area, and so the trees just moved on up. So that's an example of migration as well.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Oh, wait, I thought it was more hospitable in the south for these trees, and that migration sent them north.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's what I said. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. I'm pretty sure maybe I heard you wrong.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

The other thing we should talk about, as far as climate change goes. Cause like I said, we're gonna mention that a lot is the rate of change of the climate is increasing, as most people agree on. And that is kind of where we are now in discussing this, is like, is the rate of climate increasing too fast for the plant migration to catch up? Or in some cases, are the plants migrating ahead of that pace? And that's really sort of. You know, a lot of this episode is about this rate of change in the 200 years since the beginning of the Industrial age. No coincidence. The temperature of the Earth has increased more than 1 degree Celsius. And again, yeah, we. We all know now that, you know, one degree is, like a huge, huge deal.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. But 0.37 of that change over the past 200 years has come since 2011.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

So it's. People have. You know, someone has stepped on the gas here.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it's happening much, much faster, and seemingly, in many cases, fasting faster than these plants can catch up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So plants are used to migrating, like they've been migrating Earth's history, but these conditions are different. It's not like it was before. Even when the Earth was heating up after the last ice age, I think. Did you say that it took about an average of 1400 years to increase by one degree after the last glacial period?

[Josh Clark]

No, no, that was the setup. That would have been very helpful, actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, think about it. So we've achieved one degree in 200 years. And after the last glacial period ended, we, the earth heated one degree every 1400 years.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's called a rapid increase.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like you said, somebody's put their foot on the gas. And that somebody is western industrialized nations. Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's. That's one thing that's really kind of putting the heat on plants, literally, is their southernmost ranges or their northernmost ranges, depending on what. What, I guess their equatorial pointing ranges, the words hotter. Those are the ones that are really at stake. So are those plants ranges big enough that they'll be able to survive that change in climate and just keep moving northward, or are they going to be outpaced by the movement of the climate because the climate is racing toward the poles just like the plants are, Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So who's faster? Well, it turns out if you talk about New England's trees, they move something. I think red oaks is what it was that this University of Vermont group was studying. They move something like a tenth to three tenths of a mile a year, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

The climate is moving something like four to six miles a year. So the climate is really kind of showing up as kind of the Usain Bolt of this race. And I don't know, the plants are like me racing Usain Bolt.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That lab group in Vermont, they all have T shirts that just say, you do the math.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

It's very smart, me, but they get

[Chuck Bryant]

their point across for sure.

[Josh Clark]

There's another example of. And you know, we've kind of been talking about northern movement, which is generally the pattern, but not always. There's a researcher at Purdue named Songlin Thomas Fay. I think Fay or Fi. I don't know, Fei. I bet it's fi who studied 86 species of trees in the eastern US over about 30 years from the mid-80s to 2015. And it depends on what the tree is. Hardwoods, scarlet oaks, red maples, magnolias, are moving west at about 1 1/2km a year because the Midwest is becoming more wet and the conditions are good for those trees to grow. Softwoods, shortleaf pines, red pines, bald cypress. They're actually moving north about a kilometer of the year. A kilometer a year. So different plants and trees are moving in different directions at different rates.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's very much akin to a neighborhood that's this old, settled in neighborhood with a bunch of mix of people that's being gentrified, it's being pushed out and separated. Not everybody, just the whole neighborhood doesn't Just move. This neighborhood breaks up and goes in different directions.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so to ecologists and arborists, like, this is very concerning because for a long time we've looked at groups of plants as communities. Like some. Some plants go with other plants. Like, I think. What is it? Beech and hickory. Where is it?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. I like hickory, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

We can't leave that in there. Oh, yeah, hemlocks. I knew it was an H tree.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Beech and hemlocks go together like peanut butter and chocolate. So too do like firs and spruces. Right. So when you find one of these, you usually find the other one, and there's also a bunch of other plants that kind of interact and usually some types of animals that hang out in those same types of forests. So if you've got the hemlocks going north and the beech going west, who are the hemlocks going to mix with and who are the beech going to mix with when they start to set up these new communities? And that was really troubling to ecologists, but I think palynologists, these fossil pollen scientists have said it's always been this way. Communities aren't permanent, they're kind of unstable. They just seem permanent to us because our life years, our lifespans on the order of like 70, 80 years. Right, right. This is much. It's a much slower process, but it's a constantly changing turnover. So it's not that big of a deal. But again, because of the pace of climate change, when these hemlocks get further north and the beach get further west, they're going to have far less time to develop new connections and networks with the new plants that they set up communities with.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And the other thing too, you know earlier when I mentioned that a series of trees might move up a mountainside because it's a way quicker way to get to a more hospitable climate than moving that 90 miles north. And this happens in other cases as well. It's not just like up a mountainside, but when they get to the place where they're going, it may be a better place, maybe more hospitable climate wise, but other things aren't so great. So if you move up that mountain slope, let's say you have shallower soil, and so those trees move up there because the climate's better, but then they get there and the soil isn't as great, so they get squeezed into where they can grow maybe into like a tiny little narrow band that's, you know, potentially choking off the rest of the forest.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I figured out it's kind of like hiding in a closet during a house fire. Like, you're gonna be safe in the short term, but in the long term, it's not a great strategy. But it's not like the trees have any choice. They can't go back down. It's too hot there. They can't move further up. The soil's inhospitable. So they're trapped. And they're eventually going to become a thinner and thinner band until they just pop out of existence.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. And the other thing that can happen too, when, like you said, when they get to a new place and they don't have enough time to make new friends, all of a sudden, that can open the window for bad friends to show up. And all of a sudden, invasive species are there, and then you've got a whole other set of problems.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. The ones that wear, like, leather jackets with the little silver studs on their shoulders, Those are the ones you gotta watch out for, those plants.

[Josh Clark]

If this all seems very kind of on too long of a timeline for you to care, first of all, you probably don't care much about climate change. Cause that's the whole name of the game there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

But maple syrup is a good example that Livia found. Livia helped us out and she did a great job with this. The maple tree. Which species is it? The sugar maple is one of the two main species that we use to get that delicious maple syrup.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm sorry, just as an aside, sugar maple are two beautiful words that form an even more beautiful.

[Josh Clark]

You are right on the money, my friend. You know, sugar maple. That just sounds nice coming out of my mouth.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They have been migrating north into Canada. And you might say, well, that's great. Canada is a fine place to live, and I'm sure they love their maple syrup there too. But in Quebec, the researchers have found that they're not gonna go beyond their current range up there because they're boreal forests up there. So the soil, again, they. The climate might be better, but then they get up there and the soil ph and the microbe content of the soil is not what they're used to and not what they work well with and grow well with. So they're not doing well up there in the forest?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no. And that's. It's. It's the exact same position as the. The trees that are trying to go up the mountain are running into eventually these trees that are moving into the boreal forest areas, they're like, they can't go any further. Like they're not adapted to that over a long enough timeline.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe those sugar maples could, like, a few of them could land in the boreal forest and end up surviving in that kind of soil, and then they would be adapted for it and they'd start reproducing. And then as the boreal forest moved closer to the poles or the Arctic, those trees would move where the boreal forest used to be. Right. Totally not a problem. Over a long enough time span. Again, climate change has so drastically shortened that time span that there's probably not going to be time for this. And those sugar maples will just run into that boreal soil and just. It'll be like hitting a brick wall for their species.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Another issue that can happen. And I know this all just seems like doomsday stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Kind of is.

[Josh Clark]

It kind of is, though. Let's say, like the Amazon episode that we talked about, when trees are moving out there, they might be replaced by something, and it may not be an invasive species, but it may just be weeds or grasses or something. Those aren't as good at capturing carbon as those trees were. So then that accelerates the problem even more.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And then there's another. If you want to keep talking about doomsday scenarios, those boreal forests, they actually are. If you look at a map or if you look at planet Earth from outer space, they're dark, which means that they absorb more sunlight, more heat, more UV radiation than the polar caps, the ice that reflects it back into space. So as those boreal forests advance further and further north toward the Arctic or the North Pole, and there's less and less ice to reflect it, there's more and more heat for them to trap, which is just going to heat the Earth up that much faster. It's a positive feedback loop. That's super duper negative.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, very negative. Maybe we should cover tropical things moving north and then take a break.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Because I got some good stuff on that, man. I'm super excited.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, it goes both ways. So you can have, like, tropical plants in tropical zones, like Florida, where, you know, the Earth is warming, so they can move further and further north, and all of a sudden these plants that are native to tropical zones are ending up in areas where it's, you know, not necessarily a tropical zone. I can't remember which zone Atlanta is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Atlanta's 7B and 8A7.

[Josh Clark]

I love that you know that stuff. But the point is, like, these, like, kill frosts that you might get that happen To I love that name. Killfrost. Like it'll get really cold and frost over and like kill things. Maybe that shouldn't be there if that's happening less and less. And there's even less in the way of those tropical plants moving northward.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And so I guess climatologists are expecting that by the end of this century, which seems like a long way away, but buddy, that's like less than. That's like eight decades, 70 something years, maybe even 77, you could say, to be exact. But in 77 years, climatologists expect all of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. I'm guessing the southern half to be tropical. Those are subtropical. Now, if you want an example of what a tropical country is, go to Ecuador, go to Guatemala. Those are tropical. And Alabama and Arizona are going to be like Guatemala by the end of the century.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's insane.

[Josh Clark]

I know. It's really. And it's happening. It's not like they've shown that it's currently happening.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. And it's happening because like you were saying, those extreme cold events are becoming rarer and they're becoming warmer. So the coldest day of the year is not as cold as it used to be.

[Josh Clark]

In other words, I think the scientific term is kill frost.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love that. That is definitely a band name.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, for sure. Like what are they though?

[Chuck Bryant]

Kill? Oh, I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

They could be also kind of heavy or something, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. Remember Destroyer? They were great. They didn't really. They had like kind of like a belying name, you know what I mean?

[Josh Clark]

No, that's true.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it could be like that.

[Josh Clark]

I think he named the band that for that reason is a bit of a tongue in cheek thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe. I knew I liked that guy.

[Sean Duffy]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Behar is who we're talking about. Not Joy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Tony. Tony Behar. Todd.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's Dan, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. I don't know. I just know a couple Destroyer songs. I don't have to know the guy's life story, do I?

[Josh Clark]

Well, settle down. No, I wanted to look it up because he's also a part time member of maybe my favorite all time band, the New Pornographers. Like Modern Band. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's on most of their albums, but hasn't done the past few.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who was the singer for New Pornographers? Was it Nico Case?

[Josh Clark]

Well, she sings and Carl Newman sings. And also the great Katherine Calder, who is a Stuff youf Should Know listener.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, neat. Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I found that out And I was like, oh, I gotta get in touch with her. And I did. And now we are email buddies and on the last new Pornographer show in Atlanta, she was kind enough to meet me behind the bus, as they say, in the back parking lot. And we chatted for a while and she's just wonderful. And she also. I'm going to plug her other band because she has put out a great album last year with her band Front Person. So get front person. If you like Cynthia Goodness and like a beautiful angelic voice, then get front person.

[Chuck Bryant]

Speaking of synth y goodness, that's so funny you bring that up. Just today I discovered an entirely new genre of music called dungeon synth. Have you heard of it?

[Josh Clark]

What? No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, okay. It's a really well named genre but it is synth super like synth y synth, like 80s kind of synth.

[Josh Clark]

I love it.

[Chuck Bryant]

But the kind of synth that you would find is like the score to a 70s Hobbit. Like cartoon movie, animated movie, it's super wizardy and fantasy. It just evokes all that stuff and does such a good job of it. But I've only heard one album. I can't remember whose it was. But check out, check out Dungeon Synth. Yeah, Kill Frost is a dungeon synth band. Nice work.

[Josh Clark]

All right, Dungeon Synth and the Front Person album, their most recent one, Parade is great.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very nice. I think it will stop time for a break.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be back with more album reviews right after this.

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[Martha Stewart]

I'm Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. You know what I love about cooking? The endless inspiration, sharing exceptional flavors and of course the best ingredients. I refuse to make a dish without them. McCormick has been and is an essential in the kitchen. Now. McCormick's new line of signature seasonings make bringing fresh inspiration and endless versatility to everyday dishes easier than ever. There's the everyday essential garlic and olive oil, the savory sweetness of caramelized onion, and globally inspired flavors like the herby with a touch of heat chimichurri and chili garlic that elevates everything from ramen to stir fry to even grilled meats. Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious. When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your [e-mail] hey everyone, it's Cal Penn.

[Cal Penn]

I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.

[Ray Porter]

I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great cuz it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too.

[Cal Penn]

Listen to Irsay the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, Chuck, one thing you can say about humans is that we are action oriented. Sure, in a lot of ways. I will give you that. We sit around and bicker and, and complain and moan and undermine one another. But when the chips are down, we can invent our way out of a lot of problems. And invention doesn't have to necessarily mean that we, you know, put some metal on metal and made it go on its own. It can be something like inventing new areas for species that are in danger of being lost to climate change to settle and make another part of their range out of.

[Josh Clark]

Well, sir, it sounds like you were talking about forest assisted migration.

[Chuck Bryant]

By God, I am.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. And that is Basically, and we'll talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of this. That is human beings, scientists getting involved in the ecosystem in nature and spreading seed and sort of getting ahead of the pace, if the pace isn't where it should be to keep up with climate change, saying, well, let me give you a little help forward. And this can be kind of thorny because it's humans, like I said, getting involved in the ecosystem in ways that science has long said, let nature work it out. And that's the best way to do it because you don't know what can happen once you start messing around.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like nature finds a way, it does. These guys are saying, the people who are in favor of this are saying that made sense before July 2023, which is probably the hottest month in Earth's history, at least as far as, since it cooled, basically. And that followed the hottest June ever. Right. So these ecologists that are like, no, we need to take much more of an active hand in this are saying like, it's our obligation to do something. Not doing anything is going to be more destructive. It's like saying like, yeah, we shouldn't move these people out of this house that's being bulldozed over because we don't know what they're going to do in their new neighborhood. So we're just going to stand there and watch them die as the bulldozer crushes them inside of their house. That's the, that's a pretty good analogy if I do congratulate myself here. It's very much akin to that. And so those ecologists have a pretty good point. Like it's like, yeah, it's not a great perfect solution, but it's way better than doing nothing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but, and they're not, they're not doing it willy nilly though. They're very aware of the potential pitfalls, like, you know, spreading disease and introducing something to an area that could be really bad for other things in that area. So they're not just out there with a seed cannon blasting stuff all over the place like Dolph Lundgren or something,

[Chuck Bryant]

wearing bike coach shorts.

[Josh Clark]

There's a couple of different kinds, though. There's forest assisted migration. The one that's really sort of thorny is assisted range expansion. So if you're spreading something within the zone where it might still normally grow in like 200 years, that's one thing. If you're moving something completely out of that range, like, you know, they do forecasting and stuff and they're like, what might this area look like 100 miles from here, 100 years from now. If they're moving something completely out of a range that it would even potentially grow, that gets way, way trickier. And I think there's less of that happening, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, for sure. Like, but you hit it on the head. They're. They're saying, like, okay, by 2100, what is this area going to be like? Is it going to be where these red oaks like to live now in 20, 23? And if so, maybe we can give them a head start and hope that some of them will survive and adapt and start colonizing there. Right. It gets even pricklier than assisted range expansion. There's another even more radical one called species rescue or assisted species migration. And that is where you take a plant completely out of its normal range, out of what you would even predict would be its normal range, and just move it somewhere it would never be.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is considered the riskiest of the three by ecologists because you can easily take something that's totally innocuous and benign under normal circumstances and make it into an invasive species when you move it. And the critics of this typically point to the Monterey pine as a good example.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's right. It's endangered in California. It is native to California, but they have introduced it in Australia. And it's. I don't know about wreaking habit, but it's damaging the. It's an invasive species in Australia.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. They consider it a weed. And when they see it, they pluck it. They do not like those in New South Wales and Victoria, I believe, states now.

[Josh Clark]

That's a weed, right? I don't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's okay.

[Josh Clark]

Wasn't my best.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I'm gonna have to agree with you on that. I think you just. You just came up with a brand new type of accent, frankly.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Can we hear it again?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, I'm just gonna go back and replay it.

[Josh Clark]

You know what's funny, though, is I use the lady on my phone that talks to me. What's it called on Apple?

[Chuck Bryant]

Siri.

[Josh Clark]

Siri. I guess I don't use Siri, but I still have a voice for maps and stuff. And I use a. I usually go between an Irish woman and a Kiwi. A New Zealander.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And the New Zealander says.

[T-Mobile Announcer]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And it always cracks me up.

[Chuck Bryant]

That sounds like Matthew McConaughey.

[Josh Clark]

It does. the next street. Take a ride.

[Chuck Bryant]

I gotta hear that. I didn't know you could do something that gee whiz to an Apple iPhone.

[Josh Clark]

Make it some regular old thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't do, like, sounds. Digital sounds are one of those. Like, I don't have misophonia, but if I do, it's for digital sounds. Like, when I get a new computer, the first thing I do is turn off all sounds on it. Like, any pings and bongs have to go. Like, I have to change my text sound every month or so because I'll just get, like, anxiety from it. I can't stand text sound, so I have to come up with a new one. I do not like them.

[Josh Clark]

Well, do you know what I do is I record my own text and phone rings and stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I record my voice. Like, when my phone rings, I never have my ringer on, but if it ever does, it's me going, ring, ring, ring, ring.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's awesome.

[Josh Clark]

And if I get a text, it's me going, text, man, that's great. Yeah. And I get strange looks, but who cares?

[Chuck Bryant]

Can I just use yours?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'll send them to you if you want.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thank you.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, or you can, like. You can make one specific for Yumi, which is, like, maybe just her sweet voice saying, hello, my love.

[Chuck Bryant]

I used to have a ringtone with her singing that part from what's love got to do with It? That.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hello. But she just kept saying that over and over again. It's pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I'd love to hear that. It's also kind of maddening.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, no, it never was. Actually. I never got sick of that one. I think that says a lot.

[Josh Clark]

But it's better than doo doo doo

[Chuck Bryant]

doo doo doo doo doo. Yeah, man, you just stressed me out.

[Josh Clark]

Sorry.

[Chuck Bryant]

You got anything else?

[Josh Clark]

No. I had a joke about your dislike of digital sounds, but your love of craftwork flies in the face of that. But I won't even say it.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's more a statement than a joke. Yeah, but it is true. It's quite accurate. I think that's it, Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I got nothing else. This is a good one. Look out. You know, if you're in. If you're in New Mexico and you see a palm tree growing, then watch out.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. It means that you've gone tropical and you're in trouble now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, not in a good way.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you want to know more about plant migration, there's a lot of interesting, interesting stuff out there on the Internet to read. And go do that. And maybe go become an ecologist and figure out how to save the planet. Please agree. Since Chuck said agreed, it's time for listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

This is from William Lloyd. We did a shorty on the NATO phonetic Alphabet, and what we didn't consider was this. Hey, guys, Being a pilot in prior Air Force, I was glad that you did one on this topic. It's not a correction. You guys did a good job, but you missed what I think is the best part, the numbers. The NATO Alphabet is kind of a misnomer because it actually also includes numbers 0 through 9, but you can't really make a word starting from a number, so it's purely pronunciation. Most numbers are the same, with a notable exception of niner. We use niner instead of nine because over garbled radio it sounds like five, but mainly because NATO countries speak German. Nine means no in German.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

Three is pronounced tree to not be confused with the antiquated prefix sri. Sri for is two syllables, rhymes with lower. So you would say foer. Sounds kind of funny to differentiate it from, you know, f o, R. And 5 is Fife to keep the word fire distinct in some dialects.

[Chuck Bryant]

Huh.

[Josh Clark]

This is good stuff. I feel dumb that we missed that. That's all interesting, but you're probably thinking, does anyone actually say it like that? It depends. Niner is pretty universal. Plus we think it makes us sound cool, which it does. Of course, the rest are much less common, but depending where you are in the world and what dialects are involved, they're useful from time to time. Signed Tailwinds. Decker.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's awesome. And also, what a great nickname, too. I hope that's your nickname. Your parents didn't actually name you Tailwinds.

[Josh Clark]

Well, no, no, no. Decker is the name. Tailwinds was the.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, the sign off the Cheers or the one love.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Decker's the first name?

[Josh Clark]

Well, I don't know. It's just Decker. Decker may be a call sign, actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, I love that. Thanks a lot, Decker. Much appreciated. I say niner whenever the occasion arises.

[Josh Clark]

You know, I like that. You know our good friend Joe Randazzo, formerly of the Onion and at midnight fame, our comedy writer friend, he signs his emails yours with a comma. Joe. Joe Randazzo.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's great. That's very warm.

[Josh Clark]

I think yours is. Yeah, it's very, very warm, as is Joe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. It's perfect for him.

[Josh Clark]

And as always, hi to the kids. Yeah, Joe's kids, who listen.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, the Randazzos.

[Josh Clark]

They're listening family.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Flying Randazzos. They're a trapeze artist family just waiting to happen.

[Josh Clark]

They should be.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll see. A lot's gonna happen by the end of the century, apparently, so who knows?

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Decker did and confuse me with your sign off, I'd appreciate it. So would Chuck too. He loves that kind of thing. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

[Josh Clark]

Stuff youf 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.

[Sean Duffy]

I'm U.S. transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. We all get distracted when we drive, whether it's from our phones or kids in the backseat bickering. But how we handle these distractions can be a matter of life or death. Before you get on the road for your next road trip, please put your phones on silent and take a mental note to focus on driving. Paid for by NHTSA I know a

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Based on analysis by UK speed test intelligence data 2H 2025 speeds vary due to local network characteristics and management. Satellite requires hardware installation Clear view of the sky with 36 month commitment, this

[Josh Clark]

is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.