Hello friends, Charles W. Chuck Bryan here on a Saturday. Well it's really a Tuesday. Actually it's a Thursday, but in your world it's a Saturday. So let's just pretend it's Saturday. This episode Everybody is about Moss. Is Moss boring? No, not at all. Moss is actually really cool and if you listen to this episode from June, you'll learn it for yourself. So check it out. Everybody, how Moss works. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who now refuses to do the cheeks everyone. So I can't vouch for how good the episodes will be from this point on. Cheeks are done. I don't care about them anymore. We'll see, okay, I mean, if we started nos dive, you're doing the cheaks again. Nope. I will seek to it that you do the cheeks. You can't do it, well, well I will stand on your chest. Ben will grab one cheek, Jerry will grab the other, and the cheeks will be done. That for people who don't know we're talking about and it sounds like really gross. So everybody knows what we're talking about. Chuck does a little cheek poll to start off each episode. It's a little good luck charm. And now he's suddenly decided he's not going to do that anymore. So I have a new good luck charm. What is it? It's called not doing cheeks. It's not it's a bad luck. So I've got a joke for you to open this one up? Do you really? And I made it up today. It's a made up joke. I don't want to hear. What do you call a reproducing sphagnum? What, Randy Moss? That's pretty good? Not bad? No, no, no, that's that's into the realm of pretty good. Yeah, yeah, that's good. I think if I was a tour guided a like a nature, like a firm, bank, science and or something that would be my go to for the kids to try and identify with them. I don't think the kids would like it as much as maybe the teacher. The teacher would be like, that's pretty funny. And by the way, those Brownie high socks you're wearing are great. Um, well, I'm going to give an intro an addition to the joke. The intro joke. Maybe that should be your new good luck thing you tell you make a joke, make up a joke for every That would be welcome back Carter. Did they have a joke for everyone? Yeah? He introde every show by or maybe it was outrode by telling a joke to his wife. Oh yeah, I hadn't picked up on that. I only saw like maybe two episodes of that show. Well then you heard two jokes, yeah, plus all the other jokes. Was his wife one and the same with um Bailey from w carp. Didn't they look alike? Were they the same person? I don't know if they were the same person, but they definitely seem the same. And they both were gasses. They had the feathered hat, long feathered haired seventies ladies. Yeah. I don't think they were the same though, but they were both probably in the love boat. Yes, yes, within five years as like a way to revitalize their career. Um, Chuck, I was going to talk about the ice age, the beginning of the ice age, or of ice ages glacial periods. Remember right now we're in the midst of an interglacial period, right. I want you to think back way back four hundred and seventy million years ago, there was no such thing as a glacial period, and by proxy, there was no such thing as an interglacial period. All we had was one hot, soupy, barren mess of land and ocean, and that was it. That's right. This is what's called the Ordovician period or or Dvichan period, depending on where you come from. Uh and uh. The the beginning of this period is characterized by ice ages, and um paleo geologists I guess you could just call them geologists really, because nobody's studying like present stuff very much. It's mostly paleo geology, right. They were like, where did this ice age come from? Where? Like when did this start? And they figured out that what triggered this was the arrival of the very first basic land plants e g. Mosses, that's right. And they recently figured out, um, that mosses came about about four seventy million years ago, and they triggered these ice ages by latching onto rocks. So these were a certain type of moss as you and I know, called granite mosses, and they would actually leech materials from these rocks to use as nutrients and minerals. Right, these are like wheaties for moss. Early moss, Well, the moss started releasing stuff, releasing uh no, sucking in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere enough to reduce the global temperature mean temperature by eight degrees centigrade, which led to the beginning of ice ages and the ice age periods that we know and love. You can thank moss for. You go outside, you find a little bit of moss, You grab a little piece of it gently and then shake it sand shake it a little, say thanks for the ice ages. Well, we needed ice ages. Yeah, that remains to be seen. No, it's all part of the big soup. We've had some doubt. We've had some chilly, windy weather lately, and it has been getting to me like it's been like just seeing the trees, like getting whipped outside makes me feel chilly and then in turn I feel socially isolated and mad. Wow. Yeah, it's been really windy. Yeah. Crazy. So we're talking about moss. This is no joke. April is over by now. We're in it right now, but by the time it comes out. This is no April fool's joke. We're talking about moss and how it works, because it's part of our long parade of explaining absolutely everything in the no In universe that's right at mosses. Moss is part of that. It's part of that. So let's talk about moss. Well, moss is pretty fun and unique in some ways. If you ask me, uh, because unlike most flowering plants and trees, or let me go ahead and say it, all flowering prants, prants in trees, Um, they don't have roots like traditional root systems. Moss doesn't know mosses don't. They do not. Um, they don't germinate from seeds. Pretty weird. And uh, they don't gush water around through internal systems and systems. Yeah, and that's weird. It is, especially if you're familiar with plants. Then you're like, well, when moss is strangely for somebody, you know, an average bystander like me, I'm like, okay, well, moss doesn't do that and plants do. It doesn't seem particularly weird to me, but I do find it intriguing. It makes me want to know more about moss. Well, you've got about fifteen thousand species. If you want to talk about moss. Uh, Traditionally you were probably going to think of moss as the true moss. Well, let's back up a little bit. They're related to the liver wort and hornwart. Yeah, I've seen I saw other articles on moss, and everybody points that out for some reason. I'm I'm not sure if they're like, I gotta put ten things in about moss, and that's what I got nine until's put that. Uh they are in the phylum uh Brio fida, and they're in three groups. You've got the granite mosses, the pete mosses, and true mosses. Um. True mosses are probably what we're going to think of when you think of the little green carpet like padding that you see every kind of fallen tree, uniforest or something. Yeah, and there are tons of true moss, like fourteen thousand species um. Granite mosses are blackish, small growing Arctic regions in the mountains on rocks. They're the most ancient moss apparently, that's right. And they're only about a hundred species of that. And then the final sub group is the pete moss grows in bogs. Have you ever been in a bog, then you've probably seen some petemas or sphagnum moss, right, And that's the money moss because you can burn it and convert it to electricity and charge money for it. That's why it. Sphagnum is the money moss. And oddly or not oddly but remarkably moss. The sphagnum moss do you use as a soil conditioner. We do that in our garden because some of it can hold twenty times it's dry weight and water. It's pretty amazing. That's very amazing. That's some strong moss. You're gonna find moss all over the place, including places where you won't find any other living plants, like the bottom of an Arctic or Antarctic lake. That is pretty impressive. Like the only multi cellule or plant growing down there is moss. And it grows really slow. I think as little as one centimeter per year, this aquatic moss at the bottom of these frozen lakes. And that is the slowest growing and longest living a fresh water plant ever recorded, I would guess. So it's kind of like um putting somebody on ice, right, slowing down the cellular processes, but they're still active. So you could by by in theory extend their lifespan, right, that's right, same thing with moss. Yeah, it's probably even easier with moss. And by that same token, um, the zombie moss. I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah, you could dry some mosses out for nineteen years without water, and if you add water to it, it'll you knows itself, it'll turn into a big dinosaur. It's pretty cool though. They can go dormant for that long. Yeah, it's amazing, And all mosses can go dormant's like one of their defense mechanisms. Still just turn brown and dry out and there an endormant state. Unfortunately, you can't really tell, like what the differences between dead and dormant until you add water and see if it comes back. That's the only way to determine the length of a moss's dormancy. Oh so if you add water and it just stays dead, then it was dead. That's sad. Um. So you said there's like fifteen thousand species and they kind of range in size and shape and texture color. Um, some of the I think the peat mosses grow different colors like rose yea, some grow black like the granite moss. You said some are silver, which is amazing. Um. And then there's the smallest mosses, the Ephemorum, which is uh half a millimeter tall. That's crazy, that's adult size. Um. And then there's the Dawsonia, which is up to almost thirty inches seventy centimeters in height, which that's pretty wide variety. Okay, some moss is fairly interesting. So far, let's talk about the individual plants. Because when you look at um moss and you think about moss, you're thinking of a carpet of plants, right, Those are actually like a bunch of little plants put together. Correct. Yeah, okay, yeah, sure, that's that's one way I think of it. So when you're when you're talking about moss um, when you're talking about the individual parts or the individual plants, they're pretty simple. They're pretty basic. You have um something called the gameta fight which is the stem and the leaves. Right, that's right. The leaves are generally arranged in a spiral pattern. Uh. And the leaves are usually um a lance shaped with like a point. Right. That's where you're gonna find your reproductive parts, right. Um. At the bottom, there's rhizoids instead of roots. Remember, these are not roots and um, so they don't anchor themselves to anything necessarily. They will the anchor themselves to like maybe organic material something, but it's not into the dirt um. And they also don't they don't suck up water in the same way that roots do, but they do use rhizoids a lot of it's kind of academic. The difference is really between rhizoids and roots. In my opinion. Sure, I'm going to get some mail about that, but I think that they're very similar. Well yeah, but I mean the fact that it can grow on a rock kind of instead of soil kind of says it all excellent. Okay, So um in the uh gamda fight, you're gonna have, like I said, you're reproductive parts both mail and male um. And then we'll mention this because it comes around later on when we talk about the reproduction emerging from the top of the female gameta fight is a sporta fight and a thin stock called a sita and a little brown ball on top of that known as the um capsule, right, and then on top of that is the a perculum, and it's like a little hat that the capsule wears um and that that comes into play. Uh, well, let's talk about how it gets nutrients. Then we'll talk about the dirty stuff, the Randy moss. Yeah exactly. That was a pretty funny joke. That was silly, Okay. So um, A moss needs a few things to live, and one of those is water, of course, possibly one of the most important ingredients, because it aids in not just the not just photosynthesis, but also in reproduction, which we'll see. Yeah. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Boy, we've really built up this sexy monster. Not as interesting as we're making it. Yeah, there's no like riding crops involved or anything like that. Well, but there are parts. Yeah, all right, okay, so um. Yeah, and I was surprised by the number of parts. I didn't realize they were that involved. I thought it was like, here's a spore and go forth and reproduce. Um anyway, with with that water that moss needs because moss mosses need like pretty much across the board. One of their great characteristics is a moist environment, right, um, And they need this water or they get this water since they lack roots in a number of different ways. Some have very absorbent leaf surfaces where you can pour drop of water on a leaf and it goes. It's just gone. It's pretty amazing thing to watch. Spongey. Sure. Um. And then another way is the rizhoids, which although they aren't roots, still managed to suck up water. And they do this through capillary action in the same way that like a paper towel. If you if you put a drop of paper drop of water in your hitchen counter, ask your mom first before doing this, because someone will freak out on you if you do something like this. Um, put a drop of water on your kitchen counter and take a single thing of paper towel, set it next to it, just barely touching, and the paper towel go suck it up. It's amazing. That's capillary action and it's the result of the UM adhesion. In this case, let's say with rhizomes, the adhesion of water molecule to the rhizome rhizoid is greater than the UM cohesion between that water molecule and all the other water molecules. It's part of it's a quicker picker upper nice. Uh. So once you've got a little water in there, the water is going to be moved between cells um or transported through cells depending on the moss, and then you're gonna get your photosynthesis, which is, you know, part of being a plant. Did you like this analogy? I didn't find it apt necessarily. I just ignored it. So at the end of photosynthesis, you're gonna have sugar and oxygen as a byproduct. Releases the oxygen like a good little plant, and um eats the sugar basically yeah and says give me more, yes, UM, So it converts the sugar into energy to break down. Minerals say that it's leaked from rocks or a tree stump or whatever it's attached to to grow and to reproduce. That's right. I think we're at the sexy moss point. Reproduction occurs can occur in a couple of ways, and the first way is UM. For the reproduction tube. Again, we're gonna have to get a vase shaped um arcagonia. It's getting all like a Georgia O'Keefe painting in here. It is UM and that's gonna produce the eggs. It develops at the tip of the gameta fight, which we talked about. And then on the male side you've got the antheridia and that produces a sperm, and the sperm swims through basically fertilizes the eggs, which is why they need to be moist. Like you said, the sperm swims through nearby water to get to the egg. It's pretty remarkable. It's almost like a fish. Yeah, but it's a sperm, that's right, So it's more like a tadpole. Yeah, that's what you mean. Um. And then the egg getspur lies. You're gonna get a spora fight. Um. We already talked about the SPORTI fight. That's the tall, thin stalk with a little uh, a perculum at the top. A perculum is gonna open up at a certain point. That's the hat released. The tip of the hat happens, releases the spores, which are basically like seeds, and uh, there you have it. Well, yes, and then the spore goes and germinates like a seed. This this is what I'm saying, rhizoid root, spore seed. I mean, I know that there's some difference is here, but they're not that great anyway. The spore goes, lodges itself into a It's different than every other plant, every other millions of plants. Okay, I understand I get it. I know that there are differences. I'm just saying, like the difference between the two is not like a wow kind of thing for me. I get you. I wish it was. I understand. I'm not fighting yet. Um. So the the the the spore germinates into another plant and said, and the whole thing happens again, hopefully not with any plant that it's related to though. That's chriss um. So the other way it can reproduce is a sexually which is pretty cool. Um. And basically, if you've got enough moisture and a piece of moss breaks off and floats downstream or gets caught up in the wind and it roots down in a nice and moist place, it'll reproduce. It'll just start growing again. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. But it doesn't root rhizomes, rhizomes, rhizoids. What is the I think I'm confusing riboflaving with something else to get rhizomes. Um. Okay, so we have healthy, sexually active moss everywhere all over the place. We understand them. Um, I mean we understand them now, Like that's moss right there. Oh we left that one interesting fact. I thought, there's their leaves. The tiny little leaves are so small, they're very rarely one cell thick. Yeah that's tiny. Yeah, it's neat um. Okay, So now that we understand moss, if you have said I like moss a lot, I've seen moss before. I want to bring more moss into my life. I happen to have a yard, so I'm going to introduce moss to it. We we we now can say, yes, here's how you do it, because we understand moss, and here is how you do it. Yeah, and I I like the look a moss like to go between plants or like in Japanese gardens, mosses like big, yeah, crazy big. Uh. So if you want to grow some moss, one thing you can do sometimes is just transplant, like gently scrape it off that rock and a you know, sort of like a big chunk of like a carpet squares you can get and just throw it on the ground and water it water, and sometimes that will be important. It is, yeah, not always um if you if you put it in the right kind of place. Mosses require low sunlight basically shade. In fact, if you have low sunlight and you have trouble growing grass, moss is a great alternative. It is very much so um you So they want low sunlight or shade um and they also prefer low acidity um, lower acidity than turf grass prefers. So yeah, if you have a patchy piece of piece of yard, moss might grow there very well. So and just transplanting it like that could work, especially if you keep it water. You can also um try propagating it using a pretty ingenious little method of um taking a clump, a whole bunch of moss um, throwing it in a blender with some buttermilk and then taking that mixture with the paintbrush and painting it wherever you want. Very cool. Yeah, buttermilk it just must be the wonder thing for the moss. Yeah, it's like with the packed with nutrients. You also want to take care of your moss um as as low maintenance as it seems like. There is some things you have to do, like leaves, twigs, that kind of stuff. Since it's in a shady area, it's usually subject to those things falling on top of it, and then actually will um burn it like acid. There won't be a lot of growth in the area of your moss because the leaf is preventing it from doing its thing. Yes, you want to clean it off like with your carpet. Yes, maybe with a very light broom, very light. Yeah, a leafblower on a low setting, which you hate. Yeah, I just don't like the noise. But in this case it makes sense unless you have a very light broom, or you could just pick these things off individually, that's right. If it's got weeds, you don't want to yank the weeds out because that can yank up moss. You don't want to do that, so you just want to like snip it with scissors. And it's no wonder. This is popular in Japan because they're always more like tinder and carrying with their gardens. Anyone who has the patients for like bondsai and oor gami and things like that, well we'll snip weeds with scissors. You mean, I were in Kyoto and witnessed the man cutting the grass at a park with scissors. Yeah, my neighbor used to do that in my old house man, but his lam looked awesome. Oh beat. Yeah, I don't have time for that crap. No one has time for that. Um so yeah, keep it well fed. As in once a year aside from the water, you're gonna want to in mid spring get out your butter milk again, So basically like right now or like last week. Yeah, true, get about a quarter bottom buttermilk, mix it with a couple of gallons of water, and uh spray, yep, spray it all over and missed your moss. They love missed they do. They drink it up literally, yeah, well they use it capillary action to drink it up, no roots involved. Let's say you want to kill moss. Yeah, I thought that this is very interesting. In this article, it's like all pro moss and then all of a sudden it takes a really dark turn with the subject heading how to kill moss. Well, some people don't want it, you know, like they don't want ivy taking over their yard. They don't want moss taking over their yards. Although they point out in the article it's not going to take over your lawn because it's not going to grow where your lawn would grow. It's a lighten up. But if you're one of those people who are prone to slipping things, you may not want that on your sidewalk. Um. You definitely don't want moss on your roof. There's a sign that you have a big problem if you have moss on your roof, unless you are doing that on purpose, like a green roof, well, then you're not going to have the kind of roof that you have to worry about. Exactly. If you have a traditional shingled roof and you have moss, you need to do something about it for a couple of reasons. One, Uh, it's the presence of moss trapped moisture. Moss is designed to do that if you're in an into intelligent design theory, um, and that means that it's going to foster things like fungus that will decay the would beneath, meaning you'll have a hole in your roof. Yea at some point. Um. The rhizomes, right, rhizoids, What is wrong with me? I don't know. The rhizoids also like to get in between shingles and loosen them, that's right. And what else? Uh? Well, I mean you don't want it on your roof, and so one thing you can do to kill it is use pesticides and chemicals. Not pesticide, I guess it would be abide. Yeah, they say pesticide in here. That wouldn't be right now. It's a herbicide, um like round up sure, which if you're into spring that kind of junk on your lawn, feel free. I advise not to. But that's just how I play in my yard. What so you don't use scissors, but you don't use pesticides. Huh huh Um, you just kicked back and you're like, grow baby. No, I take care of things, but I just don't like I just don't like spring chemicals all the way. What do you use as herbicides and pesticides white vinegar? Mm hm yeah, like as a spray for what does that work for? Anything? Like pesticide and herbicide or oh I don't know about pesticide, but herbicide, like it'll kill weeds and really that's interesting. Uh yeah, put it in the Hudson sprayer and um or just live with it. Yeah. I guess it depends on the weed for sure. But if you have animals, you don't want to be spraying your yard with chemicals. Even though they say like once it drives, it's fine, I don't buy it. I don't buy that either. Um. But if you do want to get rid of it, um, they say the best way to get rid of it naturally is to you know, make it a not moss friendly environment, so like cut back some some shade cover, maybe make it sunnier. That will help get rid of the moss. Yeah, just make it so it wouldn't want to live there if even if it could, yeah, or scrape it off if it's like on a sidewalk or something that could really or so it may come back. Don't be surprised. But yeah, just a flat shovel or a hoe will take care of moss usually too. That's right. Say yeah I didn't, I didn't know about this strip up on your roof, and it'll keep mosses away. Hate that stuff, that's right. Um. And then the last moss fact of the podcast, if you're ever lost in the woods, you need to get your bearings. Start looking around and see what side of the trees and um, well, pretty much an upright growing tree, what side moss is growing on? And you probably have found something like north, because moss is going to grow on the side that gets the least exposure to sunlight, which would be north. So we just follow that and you will end up in Canada every time, even if you start out in Australia. Hey Australia. All right, well that's moss. Huh, you got anything else. I'm gonna grow a little moss gard in my front yard, are you going to? Yeah? Well I was gonna zero escape it anyway, so they might as well get some moss. Go on. I wrote an article on that deer escaping. Yeah, but the problem is is this isn't zero escaping because that's dry landscaping. This requires water, but it's still be pretty low maintenance. Yeah, in my front yard doesn't get very much sun. Like I failed miserably at trying to grow grass. I'm just gonna like mulch and moss and I put plants and stuff. I'd like to see that. Yeah, one day. Um, if you want to know more about moss, including seeing some very pretty pictures of moss um and to get to the bottom of the what Chuck and I decided was an in apt analogy between photosynthesis and cookie baking. Um, you can type in moss in the search bart how stuff works dot com and noll bring this up and you will be very happy. And you should also be happy because I said search bars means it's time for a listener. Mayal Josh, I'm gonna call this the nicest irishman on Earth. Wow, this guy was super nice. Uh, Josh, Chuck and Jerry. My name is John Keating and I'm writing from Dublin, Ireland. I've been a reasonably long time listener. I started listening to the show over a year ago when I started studying for my leaving cert the Irish University Intrigue exams. On a number of occasions during my exams I was able to recall a topic you guys covered during the series, especially in English in history. Due to this, I feel I owe you a great deal of thanks. As I was accepted to the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin better known as Trinity College and it's go Thunderbolts in case you're curious. During the year in Trinity, it was announced that a fraternity is to be established within the college. In Ireland as well as in the UK, society and clubs take up the role of frats that frats have in the US. However, one exception is normally these clubs societies do not have a particular house associated with them like we do here. Uh. This house concept is something I'll have to deal with the near future, as I shall be staying in the Beta Theta Pie branch of the University of Toronto on in the city in search of work this summer. On this side of the Atlantic, the frat concept is mainly centered around their depiction in such movies as Animal House or how the Winklevoss twins were portrayed in the social networks. Did you see those guys enter in a commercial for like pastachios? I did. It's awful. Hey man, they're gonna make that dollar some way. Huh. Yeah, the multimillion dollar payout wasn't enough. Yeah. Um, they were wealthy already. Yeah, exactly. They seemed like nice enough guy. Oh, they seem like great guys, um and such. We see them as being an alcohol fuelled rich boys club. Yes, except for the College of Pharmacies fraternity. What are they like, It's a pill fueled club. Um. I know that both of you weren't associated with a rat when you were in college, so maybe I'm right on the button there. Also, I'm curious as to why the idea hasn't successfully been exported to Ireland. In the UK and further afield, and what exactly is the association with the Greek alphabet and why did they develop in the US in the first place. So he wants us to do a podcast. Oh, I thought he wanted us to answer now, as this email has already exceeded the limit I felt it would, so I shall end it on this note. I just want to further emphasize my gratitude and respect I have for the s Y s K team and all the individuals involved in how stuff works. Here's hoping for a successful venture on the TV. Best of luck and slam must be an irish thing. S L a M. I never heard of that. Is it like an acronym for something or No, it just says best of luck in slam, So we'll probably hear about that. And that is from John Keating. Thank you John. That is very nice of you. That was a very nice email, wasn't it. Do you want to do frets? Yeah? I think we should at point, well, I guess we have to explain everything. If we did Moss, we have to do frats, right, Um, let's see what should we call for, Chuck. I don't believe anybody could possibly have a Moss story, which makes me want to hear one. Well, that means people go, oh boy, you didn't think you'd get a moss story listen to this, Okay, so we might as well ask for it. I once laid so still for a year I had moss growing on my side. That'd be pretty cool. That would be cool. And then there's the tree man, who I think some people call the moss Man. I don't think I know him. Oh you do. He there's a video on how stuff works with this man who has like some sort of HPV and like he's growing like bark like skin. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, I think he's called a tree man. Though it's not the moss Man, is it. I don't know. It's sad. So we've already heard about that guy. Don't send us any links to that video seeing it. But if you do have an interesting moss story, we want to hear it. Not only that, if it's interesting enough, we'll promote it on the show. The listener mail. You can tweet at least the first hundred and forty characters of your moss story to us that s y SK podcast. You can post a bunch of it on Facebook at facebook dot com slash stuff You Should Know, or you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hello friends, Charles W. Chuck Bryan here on a Saturday. Well it's really a Tuesday. Actually it's a Thursday, but in your world it's a Saturday. So let's just pretend it's Saturday. This episode Everybody is about Moss. Is Moss boring? No, not at all. Moss is actually really cool and if you listen to this episode from June, you'll learn it for yourself. So check it out. Everybody, how Moss works. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who now refuses to do the cheeks everyone. So I can't vouch for how good the episodes will be from this point on. Cheeks are done. I don't care about them anymore. We'll see, okay, I mean, if we started nos dive, you're doing the cheaks again. Nope. I will seek to it that you do the cheeks. You can't do it, well, well I will stand on your chest. Ben will grab one cheek, Jerry will grab the other, and the cheeks will be done. That for people who don't know we're talking about and it sounds like really gross. So everybody knows what we're talking about. Chuck does a little cheek poll to start off each episode. It's a little good luck charm. And now he's suddenly decided he's not going to do that anymore. So I have a new good luck charm. What is it? It's called not doing cheeks. It's not it's a bad luck. So I've got a joke for you to open this one up? Do you really? And I made it up today. It's a made up joke. I don't want to hear. What do you call a reproducing sphagnum? What, Randy Moss? That's pretty good? Not bad? No, no, no, that's that's into the realm of pretty good. Yeah, yeah, that's good. I think if I was a tour guided a like a nature, like a firm, bank, science and or something that would be my go to for the kids to try and identify with them. I don't think the kids would like it as much as maybe the teacher. The teacher would be like, that's pretty funny. And by the way, those Brownie high socks you're wearing are great. Um, well, I'm going to give an intro an addition to the joke. The intro joke. Maybe that should be your new good luck thing you tell you make a joke, make up a joke for every That would be welcome back Carter. Did they have a joke for everyone? Yeah? He introde every show by or maybe it was outrode by telling a joke to his wife. Oh yeah, I hadn't picked up on that. I only saw like maybe two episodes of that show. Well then you heard two jokes, yeah, plus all the other jokes. Was his wife one and the same with um Bailey from w carp. Didn't they look alike? Were they the same person? I don't know if they were the same person, but they definitely seem the same. And they both were gasses. They had the feathered hat, long feathered haired seventies ladies. Yeah. I don't think they were the same though, but they were both probably in the love boat. Yes, yes, within five years as like a way to revitalize their career. Um, Chuck, I was going to talk about the ice age, the beginning of the ice age, or of ice ages glacial periods. Remember right now we're in the midst of an interglacial period, right. I want you to think back way back four hundred and seventy million years ago, there was no such thing as a glacial period, and by proxy, there was no such thing as an interglacial period. All we had was one hot, soupy, barren mess of land and ocean, and that was it. That's right. This is what's called the Ordovician period or or Dvichan period, depending on where you come from. Uh and uh. The the beginning of this period is characterized by ice ages, and um paleo geologists I guess you could just call them geologists really, because nobody's studying like present stuff very much. It's mostly paleo geology, right. They were like, where did this ice age come from? Where? Like when did this start? And they figured out that what triggered this was the arrival of the very first basic land plants e g. Mosses, that's right. And they recently figured out, um, that mosses came about about four seventy million years ago, and they triggered these ice ages by latching onto rocks. So these were a certain type of moss as you and I know, called granite mosses, and they would actually leech materials from these rocks to use as nutrients and minerals. Right, these are like wheaties for moss. Early moss, Well, the moss started releasing stuff, releasing uh no, sucking in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere enough to reduce the global temperature mean temperature by eight degrees centigrade, which led to the beginning of ice ages and the ice age periods that we know and love. You can thank moss for. You go outside, you find a little bit of moss, You grab a little piece of it gently and then shake it sand shake it a little, say thanks for the ice ages. Well, we needed ice ages. Yeah, that remains to be seen. No, it's all part of the big soup. We've had some doubt. We've had some chilly, windy weather lately, and it has been getting to me like it's been like just seeing the trees, like getting whipped outside makes me feel chilly and then in turn I feel socially isolated and mad. Wow. Yeah, it's been really windy. Yeah. Crazy. So we're talking about moss. This is no joke. April is over by now. We're in it right now, but by the time it comes out. This is no April fool's joke. We're talking about moss and how it works, because it's part of our long parade of explaining absolutely everything in the no In universe that's right at mosses. Moss is part of that. It's part of that. So let's talk about moss. Well, moss is pretty fun and unique in some ways. If you ask me, uh, because unlike most flowering plants and trees, or let me go ahead and say it, all flowering prants, prants in trees, Um, they don't have roots like traditional root systems. Moss doesn't know mosses don't. They do not. Um, they don't germinate from seeds. Pretty weird. And uh, they don't gush water around through internal systems and systems. Yeah, and that's weird. It is, especially if you're familiar with plants. Then you're like, well, when moss is strangely for somebody, you know, an average bystander like me, I'm like, okay, well, moss doesn't do that and plants do. It doesn't seem particularly weird to me, but I do find it intriguing. It makes me want to know more about moss. Well, you've got about fifteen thousand species. If you want to talk about moss. Uh, Traditionally you were probably going to think of moss as the true moss. Well, let's back up a little bit. They're related to the liver wort and hornwart. Yeah, I've seen I saw other articles on moss, and everybody points that out for some reason. I'm I'm not sure if they're like, I gotta put ten things in about moss, and that's what I got nine until's put that. Uh they are in the phylum uh Brio fida, and they're in three groups. You've got the granite mosses, the pete mosses, and true mosses. Um. True mosses are probably what we're going to think of when you think of the little green carpet like padding that you see every kind of fallen tree, uniforest or something. Yeah, and there are tons of true moss, like fourteen thousand species um. Granite mosses are blackish, small growing Arctic regions in the mountains on rocks. They're the most ancient moss apparently, that's right. And they're only about a hundred species of that. And then the final sub group is the pete moss grows in bogs. Have you ever been in a bog, then you've probably seen some petemas or sphagnum moss, right, And that's the money moss because you can burn it and convert it to electricity and charge money for it. That's why it. Sphagnum is the money moss. And oddly or not oddly but remarkably moss. The sphagnum moss do you use as a soil conditioner. We do that in our garden because some of it can hold twenty times it's dry weight and water. It's pretty amazing. That's very amazing. That's some strong moss. You're gonna find moss all over the place, including places where you won't find any other living plants, like the bottom of an Arctic or Antarctic lake. That is pretty impressive. Like the only multi cellule or plant growing down there is moss. And it grows really slow. I think as little as one centimeter per year, this aquatic moss at the bottom of these frozen lakes. And that is the slowest growing and longest living a fresh water plant ever recorded, I would guess. So it's kind of like um putting somebody on ice, right, slowing down the cellular processes, but they're still active. So you could by by in theory extend their lifespan, right, that's right, same thing with moss. Yeah, it's probably even easier with moss. And by that same token, um, the zombie moss. I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah, you could dry some mosses out for nineteen years without water, and if you add water to it, it'll you knows itself, it'll turn into a big dinosaur. It's pretty cool though. They can go dormant for that long. Yeah, it's amazing, And all mosses can go dormant's like one of their defense mechanisms. Still just turn brown and dry out and there an endormant state. Unfortunately, you can't really tell, like what the differences between dead and dormant until you add water and see if it comes back. That's the only way to determine the length of a moss's dormancy. Oh so if you add water and it just stays dead, then it was dead. That's sad. Um. So you said there's like fifteen thousand species and they kind of range in size and shape and texture color. Um, some of the I think the peat mosses grow different colors like rose yea, some grow black like the granite moss. You said some are silver, which is amazing. Um. And then there's the smallest mosses, the Ephemorum, which is uh half a millimeter tall. That's crazy, that's adult size. Um. And then there's the Dawsonia, which is up to almost thirty inches seventy centimeters in height, which that's pretty wide variety. Okay, some moss is fairly interesting. So far, let's talk about the individual plants. Because when you look at um moss and you think about moss, you're thinking of a carpet of plants, right, Those are actually like a bunch of little plants put together. Correct. Yeah, okay, yeah, sure, that's that's one way I think of it. So when you're when you're talking about moss um, when you're talking about the individual parts or the individual plants, they're pretty simple. They're pretty basic. You have um something called the gameta fight which is the stem and the leaves. Right, that's right. The leaves are generally arranged in a spiral pattern. Uh. And the leaves are usually um a lance shaped with like a point. Right. That's where you're gonna find your reproductive parts, right. Um. At the bottom, there's rhizoids instead of roots. Remember, these are not roots and um, so they don't anchor themselves to anything necessarily. They will the anchor themselves to like maybe organic material something, but it's not into the dirt um. And they also don't they don't suck up water in the same way that roots do, but they do use rhizoids a lot of it's kind of academic. The difference is really between rhizoids and roots. In my opinion. Sure, I'm going to get some mail about that, but I think that they're very similar. Well yeah, but I mean the fact that it can grow on a rock kind of instead of soil kind of says it all excellent. Okay, So um in the uh gamda fight, you're gonna have, like I said, you're reproductive parts both mail and male um. And then we'll mention this because it comes around later on when we talk about the reproduction emerging from the top of the female gameta fight is a sporta fight and a thin stock called a sita and a little brown ball on top of that known as the um capsule, right, and then on top of that is the a perculum, and it's like a little hat that the capsule wears um and that that comes into play. Uh, well, let's talk about how it gets nutrients. Then we'll talk about the dirty stuff, the Randy moss. Yeah exactly. That was a pretty funny joke. That was silly, Okay. So um, A moss needs a few things to live, and one of those is water, of course, possibly one of the most important ingredients, because it aids in not just the not just photosynthesis, but also in reproduction, which we'll see. Yeah. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Boy, we've really built up this sexy monster. Not as interesting as we're making it. Yeah, there's no like riding crops involved or anything like that. Well, but there are parts. Yeah, all right, okay, so um. Yeah, and I was surprised by the number of parts. I didn't realize they were that involved. I thought it was like, here's a spore and go forth and reproduce. Um anyway, with with that water that moss needs because moss mosses need like pretty much across the board. One of their great characteristics is a moist environment, right, um, And they need this water or they get this water since they lack roots in a number of different ways. Some have very absorbent leaf surfaces where you can pour drop of water on a leaf and it goes. It's just gone. It's pretty amazing thing to watch. Spongey. Sure. Um. And then another way is the rizhoids, which although they aren't roots, still managed to suck up water. And they do this through capillary action in the same way that like a paper towel. If you if you put a drop of paper drop of water in your hitchen counter, ask your mom first before doing this, because someone will freak out on you if you do something like this. Um, put a drop of water on your kitchen counter and take a single thing of paper towel, set it next to it, just barely touching, and the paper towel go suck it up. It's amazing. That's capillary action and it's the result of the UM adhesion. In this case, let's say with rhizomes, the adhesion of water molecule to the rhizome rhizoid is greater than the UM cohesion between that water molecule and all the other water molecules. It's part of it's a quicker picker upper nice. Uh. So once you've got a little water in there, the water is going to be moved between cells um or transported through cells depending on the moss, and then you're gonna get your photosynthesis, which is, you know, part of being a plant. Did you like this analogy? I didn't find it apt necessarily. I just ignored it. So at the end of photosynthesis, you're gonna have sugar and oxygen as a byproduct. Releases the oxygen like a good little plant, and um eats the sugar basically yeah and says give me more, yes, UM, So it converts the sugar into energy to break down. Minerals say that it's leaked from rocks or a tree stump or whatever it's attached to to grow and to reproduce. That's right. I think we're at the sexy moss point. Reproduction occurs can occur in a couple of ways, and the first way is UM. For the reproduction tube. Again, we're gonna have to get a vase shaped um arcagonia. It's getting all like a Georgia O'Keefe painting in here. It is UM and that's gonna produce the eggs. It develops at the tip of the gameta fight, which we talked about. And then on the male side you've got the antheridia and that produces a sperm, and the sperm swims through basically fertilizes the eggs, which is why they need to be moist. Like you said, the sperm swims through nearby water to get to the egg. It's pretty remarkable. It's almost like a fish. Yeah, but it's a sperm, that's right, So it's more like a tadpole. Yeah, that's what you mean. Um. And then the egg getspur lies. You're gonna get a spora fight. Um. We already talked about the SPORTI fight. That's the tall, thin stalk with a little uh, a perculum at the top. A perculum is gonna open up at a certain point. That's the hat released. The tip of the hat happens, releases the spores, which are basically like seeds, and uh, there you have it. Well, yes, and then the spore goes and germinates like a seed. This this is what I'm saying, rhizoid root, spore seed. I mean, I know that there's some difference is here, but they're not that great anyway. The spore goes, lodges itself into a It's different than every other plant, every other millions of plants. Okay, I understand I get it. I know that there are differences. I'm just saying, like the difference between the two is not like a wow kind of thing for me. I get you. I wish it was. I understand. I'm not fighting yet. Um. So the the the the spore germinates into another plant and said, and the whole thing happens again, hopefully not with any plant that it's related to though. That's chriss um. So the other way it can reproduce is a sexually which is pretty cool. Um. And basically, if you've got enough moisture and a piece of moss breaks off and floats downstream or gets caught up in the wind and it roots down in a nice and moist place, it'll reproduce. It'll just start growing again. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. But it doesn't root rhizomes, rhizomes, rhizoids. What is the I think I'm confusing riboflaving with something else to get rhizomes. Um. Okay, so we have healthy, sexually active moss everywhere all over the place. We understand them. Um, I mean we understand them now, Like that's moss right there. Oh we left that one interesting fact. I thought, there's their leaves. The tiny little leaves are so small, they're very rarely one cell thick. Yeah that's tiny. Yeah, it's neat um. Okay, So now that we understand moss, if you have said I like moss a lot, I've seen moss before. I want to bring more moss into my life. I happen to have a yard, so I'm going to introduce moss to it. We we we now can say, yes, here's how you do it, because we understand moss, and here is how you do it. Yeah, and I I like the look a moss like to go between plants or like in Japanese gardens, mosses like big, yeah, crazy big. Uh. So if you want to grow some moss, one thing you can do sometimes is just transplant, like gently scrape it off that rock and a you know, sort of like a big chunk of like a carpet squares you can get and just throw it on the ground and water it water, and sometimes that will be important. It is, yeah, not always um if you if you put it in the right kind of place. Mosses require low sunlight basically shade. In fact, if you have low sunlight and you have trouble growing grass, moss is a great alternative. It is very much so um you So they want low sunlight or shade um and they also prefer low acidity um, lower acidity than turf grass prefers. So yeah, if you have a patchy piece of piece of yard, moss might grow there very well. So and just transplanting it like that could work, especially if you keep it water. You can also um try propagating it using a pretty ingenious little method of um taking a clump, a whole bunch of moss um, throwing it in a blender with some buttermilk and then taking that mixture with the paintbrush and painting it wherever you want. Very cool. Yeah, buttermilk it just must be the wonder thing for the moss. Yeah, it's like with the packed with nutrients. You also want to take care of your moss um as as low maintenance as it seems like. There is some things you have to do, like leaves, twigs, that kind of stuff. Since it's in a shady area, it's usually subject to those things falling on top of it, and then actually will um burn it like acid. There won't be a lot of growth in the area of your moss because the leaf is preventing it from doing its thing. Yes, you want to clean it off like with your carpet. Yes, maybe with a very light broom, very light. Yeah, a leafblower on a low setting, which you hate. Yeah, I just don't like the noise. But in this case it makes sense unless you have a very light broom, or you could just pick these things off individually, that's right. If it's got weeds, you don't want to yank the weeds out because that can yank up moss. You don't want to do that, so you just want to like snip it with scissors. And it's no wonder. This is popular in Japan because they're always more like tinder and carrying with their gardens. Anyone who has the patients for like bondsai and oor gami and things like that, well we'll snip weeds with scissors. You mean, I were in Kyoto and witnessed the man cutting the grass at a park with scissors. Yeah, my neighbor used to do that in my old house man, but his lam looked awesome. Oh beat. Yeah, I don't have time for that crap. No one has time for that. Um so yeah, keep it well fed. As in once a year aside from the water, you're gonna want to in mid spring get out your butter milk again, So basically like right now or like last week. Yeah, true, get about a quarter bottom buttermilk, mix it with a couple of gallons of water, and uh spray, yep, spray it all over and missed your moss. They love missed they do. They drink it up literally, yeah, well they use it capillary action to drink it up, no roots involved. Let's say you want to kill moss. Yeah, I thought that this is very interesting. In this article, it's like all pro moss and then all of a sudden it takes a really dark turn with the subject heading how to kill moss. Well, some people don't want it, you know, like they don't want ivy taking over their yard. They don't want moss taking over their yards. Although they point out in the article it's not going to take over your lawn because it's not going to grow where your lawn would grow. It's a lighten up. But if you're one of those people who are prone to slipping things, you may not want that on your sidewalk. Um. You definitely don't want moss on your roof. There's a sign that you have a big problem if you have moss on your roof, unless you are doing that on purpose, like a green roof, well, then you're not going to have the kind of roof that you have to worry about. Exactly. If you have a traditional shingled roof and you have moss, you need to do something about it for a couple of reasons. One, Uh, it's the presence of moss trapped moisture. Moss is designed to do that if you're in an into intelligent design theory, um, and that means that it's going to foster things like fungus that will decay the would beneath, meaning you'll have a hole in your roof. Yea at some point. Um. The rhizomes, right, rhizoids, What is wrong with me? I don't know. The rhizoids also like to get in between shingles and loosen them, that's right. And what else? Uh? Well, I mean you don't want it on your roof, and so one thing you can do to kill it is use pesticides and chemicals. Not pesticide, I guess it would be abide. Yeah, they say pesticide in here. That wouldn't be right now. It's a herbicide, um like round up sure, which if you're into spring that kind of junk on your lawn, feel free. I advise not to. But that's just how I play in my yard. What so you don't use scissors, but you don't use pesticides. Huh huh Um, you just kicked back and you're like, grow baby. No, I take care of things, but I just don't like I just don't like spring chemicals all the way. What do you use as herbicides and pesticides white vinegar? Mm hm yeah, like as a spray for what does that work for? Anything? Like pesticide and herbicide or oh I don't know about pesticide, but herbicide, like it'll kill weeds and really that's interesting. Uh yeah, put it in the Hudson sprayer and um or just live with it. Yeah. I guess it depends on the weed for sure. But if you have animals, you don't want to be spraying your yard with chemicals. Even though they say like once it drives, it's fine, I don't buy it. I don't buy that either. Um. But if you do want to get rid of it, um, they say the best way to get rid of it naturally is to you know, make it a not moss friendly environment, so like cut back some some shade cover, maybe make it sunnier. That will help get rid of the moss. Yeah, just make it so it wouldn't want to live there if even if it could, yeah, or scrape it off if it's like on a sidewalk or something that could really or so it may come back. Don't be surprised. But yeah, just a flat shovel or a hoe will take care of moss usually too. That's right. Say yeah I didn't, I didn't know about this strip up on your roof, and it'll keep mosses away. Hate that stuff, that's right. Um. And then the last moss fact of the podcast, if you're ever lost in the woods, you need to get your bearings. Start looking around and see what side of the trees and um, well, pretty much an upright growing tree, what side moss is growing on? And you probably have found something like north, because moss is going to grow on the side that gets the least exposure to sunlight, which would be north. So we just follow that and you will end up in Canada every time, even if you start out in Australia. Hey Australia. All right, well that's moss. Huh, you got anything else. I'm gonna grow a little moss gard in my front yard, are you going to? Yeah? Well I was gonna zero escape it anyway, so they might as well get some moss. Go on. I wrote an article on that deer escaping. Yeah, but the problem is is this isn't zero escaping because that's dry landscaping. This requires water, but it's still be pretty low maintenance. Yeah, in my front yard doesn't get very much sun. Like I failed miserably at trying to grow grass. I'm just gonna like mulch and moss and I put plants and stuff. I'd like to see that. Yeah, one day. Um, if you want to know more about moss, including seeing some very pretty pictures of moss um and to get to the bottom of the what Chuck and I decided was an in apt analogy between photosynthesis and cookie baking. Um, you can type in moss in the search bart how stuff works dot com and noll bring this up and you will be very happy. And you should also be happy because I said search bars means it's time for a listener. Mayal Josh, I'm gonna call this the nicest irishman on Earth. Wow, this guy was super nice. Uh, Josh, Chuck and Jerry. My name is John Keating and I'm writing from Dublin, Ireland. I've been a reasonably long time listener. I started listening to the show over a year ago when I started studying for my leaving cert the Irish University Intrigue exams. On a number of occasions during my exams I was able to recall a topic you guys covered during the series, especially in English in history. Due to this, I feel I owe you a great deal of thanks. As I was accepted to the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin better known as Trinity College and it's go Thunderbolts in case you're curious. During the year in Trinity, it was announced that a fraternity is to be established within the college. In Ireland as well as in the UK, society and clubs take up the role of frats that frats have in the US. However, one exception is normally these clubs societies do not have a particular house associated with them like we do here. Uh. This house concept is something I'll have to deal with the near future, as I shall be staying in the Beta Theta Pie branch of the University of Toronto on in the city in search of work this summer. On this side of the Atlantic, the frat concept is mainly centered around their depiction in such movies as Animal House or how the Winklevoss twins were portrayed in the social networks. Did you see those guys enter in a commercial for like pastachios? I did. It's awful. Hey man, they're gonna make that dollar some way. Huh. Yeah, the multimillion dollar payout wasn't enough. Yeah. Um, they were wealthy already. Yeah, exactly. They seemed like nice enough guy. Oh, they seem like great guys, um and such. We see them as being an alcohol fuelled rich boys club. Yes, except for the College of Pharmacies fraternity. What are they like, It's a pill fueled club. Um. I know that both of you weren't associated with a rat when you were in college, so maybe I'm right on the button there. Also, I'm curious as to why the idea hasn't successfully been exported to Ireland. In the UK and further afield, and what exactly is the association with the Greek alphabet and why did they develop in the US in the first place. So he wants us to do a podcast. Oh, I thought he wanted us to answer now, as this email has already exceeded the limit I felt it would, so I shall end it on this note. I just want to further emphasize my gratitude and respect I have for the s Y s K team and all the individuals involved in how stuff works. Here's hoping for a successful venture on the TV. Best of luck and slam must be an irish thing. S L a M. I never heard of that. Is it like an acronym for something or No, it just says best of luck in slam, So we'll probably hear about that. And that is from John Keating. Thank you John. That is very nice of you. That was a very nice email, wasn't it. Do you want to do frets? Yeah? I think we should at point, well, I guess we have to explain everything. If we did Moss, we have to do frats, right, Um, let's see what should we call for, Chuck. I don't believe anybody could possibly have a Moss story, which makes me want to hear one. Well, that means people go, oh boy, you didn't think you'd get a moss story listen to this, Okay, so we might as well ask for it. I once laid so still for a year I had moss growing on my side. That'd be pretty cool. That would be cool. And then there's the tree man, who I think some people call the moss Man. I don't think I know him. Oh you do. He there's a video on how stuff works with this man who has like some sort of HPV and like he's growing like bark like skin. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, I think he's called a tree man. Though it's not the moss Man, is it. I don't know. It's sad. So we've already heard about that guy. Don't send us any links to that video seeing it. But if you do have an interesting moss story, we want to hear it. Not only that, if it's interesting enough, we'll promote it on the show. The listener mail. You can tweet at least the first hundred and forty characters of your moss story to us that s y SK podcast. You can post a bunch of it on Facebook at facebook dot com slash stuff You Should Know, or you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.