114: La Brea’s Bone Count & Giant Pumpkins

Episode notes

How many bones are in the La Brea tar pits? And what can that teach us about life, death, and oil? And what’s the point of growing giant vegetables? Well, the pure whimsy of it all, as well as some fascinating techniques and tales.

Images we talk about:
(Also available at https://www.letslearneverything.com/114/)
Tom’s Picture from La Brea
2nd Picture from La Brea
Giant Tomatoes
Giant Carrot
Giant Zucchini
Giant Pumpkin
Eating Pumpkin
Pumpkin Race

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:23) La Brea’s Bone Count
(00:49:21) Giant Pumpkins
(01:35:50) Outro

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We also learn about:

Good to be back in the bone zone, how many corners does LLE have? wolf skull wall, untangling all the oil words, life uh dies, Coal Oil & Gas, crude oil has over 350 different hydrocarbons, refining oil is just separating different hydrocarbons, the official stance of the podcast is that fossil fuels are cool, hey kids – see what it was like to be in the asphalt’s deathly grip! Kids Yearn for the Tar Pits, La Brea has the bones of Tigers and Lions and Camels, I’m actually an epoch girlie, um actually it’s the La Brea Woman, it’s 10,000 years ago – women can be fossils too, predator traps and carcass domination, the oily stains on bones, fingers crossed the new museum invents new ways to confront my mortality, Summer’s Jumpret response to Michael, what’s y’alls familiarity with vegetables? I have to tell an asparagus story, perhaps Thoreau’s biggest impact was on the large vegetable world, fuck Leaves of Grass – One Big Pumpkin, big pumpkin at the Chicago World’s Fair, we’re going to need a bigger pub, it’s like very slow horse racing, it’s like a drug dealing community, the LLE ruler goes from Big to Fuck Me, seed auctions, the horror that is giant tomatoes, sorry what the fuck is the giant pumpkin common wealth, I love when a number is so preposterous it makes us angry, Ella is disappointed by carrots, pumpkins are an indeterminate plant, pumpkins are nature’s dyson sphere, auxiliary plants are so creepy, the theoretical pumpkin limit is 20,000 pounds, cheating and skullduggery, put me in a giant pumpkin and throw me in the tar pit, pumpkin regatta, I know you meant – no I meant punkin chunkin, you have to completely lack whimsy to not enjoy these guys.

Sources:
La Brea’s History
UC Berkley La Brea History
Smithsonian Fossil Fuel Breakdown
NHM Tar Pit Travelogue
SmithsonianMag: Animals Trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits Would Take Months to Sink
UC Berkley La Brea History
IUGS on La Brea
La Brea Camel
The carnivoran fauna of Rancho La Brea: Average or aberrant?
La Brea Carnivore Analysis
Playback Carcass Domination Study
Phys.org La Brea
New York Botanical Garden: Origin of the Giant Pumpkin
Youtube: Giant Veg 
Wiki: Giant Pumpkin
BBC: Pumpkin seed bought online for £168
Thompson and Morgan: Pumpkin Payout
Giant Pumpkin Commonwealth
GPC: Newsletter Archive 
Thompson and Morgan Blog: How to Grow a Giant Pumpkin
NPR: Why Vegetables Get Freakish In The Land Of The Midnight Sun
BBC: How I grow my giant vegetables to break records
Science News: Here’s how giant pumpkins get so big
LiveScience: Why Pumpkins Can Grow So Large
2016 Paper: The making of giant pumpkins: how selective breeding changed the phloem of Cucurbita maxima from source to sink
Shropshire Star: Pumpkin Controversy 
Blog: Beyond the Pond: Growing Giant Pumpkins
BBC: What do giant veg growers eat on Christmas Day?
CTV News: Henry the Polar Bear
SciShow
The Guardian: