Selects: Mangroves: Nature's Best Tree?

Mangroves are incredible survivors and adapters. They're also amazing at lessening the impact of tropical storms and climate change. And heck, they're cool looking. So jump into the brackish waters and have a listen to this classic episode all about these beauts. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bankguy. Capital One, N-A, Member FDIC.

• 0:31Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Ready to upgrade your PC? Shop now during the Dell Top Tech Event and find the award-winning tech the experts trust most, like the Dell XPS 13 Laptop. Study, work, and do more with a thin and light design, a vivid touchscreen, long-lasting battery life, and impressive performance powered by Intel Core Processors. While shopping, you'll also find great prices on monitors and accessories, and perks like Dell Rewards, fast shipping, and financing with flexible payment options. Just visit dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone. I hope you're enjoying your Saturday morning and your weekend so far. And I hope this episode makes it a little bit better because it's about one of my favorite trees, the mangrove. I discovered mangroves in person when I went to coastal Mexico for the first time. And I tell you what, I fell in love with these things. They are amazing. Mangroves, colon, nature's best tree? I think so.

• 2:02Speaker 03

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

• 2:12Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there. So let's get to it while we're talking about mangroves, everybody. Mangroves. Gather around while we talk about mangroves.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  My new favorite tree.

• 2:27Josh Clark?

  It's a great tree. It's a good favorite tree to have.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  It is. And this is one of those, I think this is the second and probably final that was inspired by my recent trip to Mexico because we were surrounded by mangroves, literally surrounded by mangroves. And we couldn't get enough of them. And like riding the bikes around and looking in these mangrove forests and considering what it must be like to try and navigate through them. Nearly impossible, I would say. Because yeah, I mean, you've seen them in person, I'm sure, like just how dense these things are. And you know, we're going to be talking about different kinds, but really sort of the money mangroves.

• 3:10Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Are the ones that we're going to focus on. And they are just, I was knocked out just by how they looked. And I could tell that they were a remarkable wonder of nature and evolution. And then after this stuff, Dave Ruse helped us put this together after learning everything that they're capable of. It's just like, what, what kind of tree is this? It's amazing.

• 3:31Josh Clark?

  It's an amazing tree. Like I said, it's maybe one of the best trees to have as your favorite tree. Because there are very few trees that are this amazing, Chuck.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Man.

• 3:41Josh Clark?

  And we're talking mangroves. And we should say mangroves aren't necessarily like a species or even a family of tree. One of the other things that makes them such a cool tree to have as a favorite, is that there's something like 80 or 90 species of them. And they're not genetically related in every case. Instead, biologists classify them by their ability to survive and even thrive in salty water.

• 4:07Josh Clark?

  That in soil that has little to no oxygen, which are two things that most trees can't do. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in what makes mangrove so amazing.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like I said, we're talking mainly about those amazing trees that sit up above the water with this network of, you know, look like fingers just sort of propping up the tree, which are the roots. They are a woodland tree, also could be called a shrub, and they grow in a pretty narrow area between, well, they're subtropical along the coastlines, first of all, but they grow between, literally between the terrestrial and the marine environment in salty, brackish water.

• 4:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And there's, I want to say a lot of them. It's really not, though. I think they make up like 1% of the forests of the world, mangrove forests are, but it's still 85,000 square miles, which is a pretty decent amount of area for, you know, one kind of tree. It's about the size of the state of Arkansas. And the largest mangrove forest in the world is at the mouth of the Ganges, near the Bay of Bengal. It's called the Sundarbans, and that's where the Bengal tiger lives, which is pretty cool.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Agreed. They exist in 118 countries. And here in the United States, in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. And I thought, oh, surely the Georgia coast, so close to Florida, surely they've got some mangroves.

• 5:41Josh Clark?

  Don't even try.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Not quite. I did see some people that were like, oh, so mangroves. But it's not true. It looks like the closest mangroves are about 40 miles from the Georgia border, near the Georgia coastline. So I was really sad that we don't have our mangroves.

• 5:56Josh Clark?

  That is sad.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  But they do have them in Florida, and Louisiana, and Texas, and in Mexico.

• 6:02Josh Clark?

  That's right. And again, you said that they grow subtropically. And Chuck, I want to share that it was just today that I finally stopped and was like, this subtropical thing is driving me crazy. Like, it's above the tropics on either side. It's either above or below, depending on where your perspective, but it's not below, it's not below the equator. And then I realized if you're on the equator, from the perspective of the equator, it's below the equator on either side. So it's subtropical.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Oh, you've never stood on the equator.

• 6:35Josh Clark?

  I never have. And I think I should.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  You can't be to blame.

• 6:39Josh Clark?

  I've never been to Ecuador.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Well, we should go sometime. We should do a podcast live, live from the equator.

• 6:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and see if we melt.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  I know I will.

• 6:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I would too.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I'm melting this week. As far as the money mangroves that I was talking about, we're talking about red, black, and white. And for my money, I love those red mangroves. Those are the ones that grow along the water's edge. They have those prop roots that, and if you've never seen a mangrove, please just look up red mangrove. And they're called prop roots because they prop that tree up off the ground. They're fully, well, not fully exposed because they also go into the water and to the soil, but they're largely exposed and they are just tangled, gnarly, beautiful roots that, again, I can't imagine trying to navigate through a mangrove forest. You probably had to go around.

• 7:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it can be really, really thick, both above water and below water because of those roots. So those roots, if you see them, that means that it's low tide. At high tide, they're usually covered up with water. But it's like you said, they prop the tree up. And so for that reason, because at low tide, you can see the bottom of the tree and it's above ground, they're sometimes called walking trees. But they're pretty neat. And the red mangrove is, I think, anyone who knows about mangroves or has seen a mangrove probably is what they're thinking of as a red mangrove because there's just those, those roots are just so characteristic and unusual, you know?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, the black mangroves are still really cool looking because they have these protrusions coming up out of the water called pneumatophores and just, you know, put a pin in this, but they allow the plant to basically breathe and we'll talk about that later. But if you look at a picture of these, it looks sort of like, almost like little just spiky roots sticking up out of the ground all around the tree.

• 8:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, almost like stalagmites.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:38Josh Clark?

  And I got that right, too, by the way.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:41Josh Clark?

  White mangroves are, it's weird, I don't understand fully why they're considered mangroves, aside from the fact that they must still thrive in brackish or salty water and poor oxygen soil.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 8:56Josh Clark?

  But I guess so, but they grow inland and they have normal shallow root systems like any other terrestrial tree, but they're still considered mangroves.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't think I've mentioned the black mangroves do grow a little bit further inland than the reds.

• 9:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so if you are, you know, looking at a cross section of the ocean hitting the land and going inland, you would see at the ocean, or at the bay, or wherever, red mangroves on the shoreline actually growing into the ocean, depending on where the tide is. Behind them, you would have the black mangroves on slightly higher ground, and then behind those, on the highest ground, you would have the white mangroves. And that's what it would look like. You put it all together, what you have is a mangrove forest, also known as a mangol.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  A mangol, which is one of the more amazing, we're going to be talking about a lot of amazing things about mangroves and mangols, but it's the only species of tree that can grow in saltwater. And big time, they grow, it's not like they love the salt, we'll see in a minute, they have some great ways of getting rid of it, but they figured all that stuff out. But they can grow in salinity levels of Seventy-five parts per thousand, which is about twice as salty as ocean water.

• 10:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's pretty impressive because, I mean, where are they growing that that's twice as salty as ocean water? You know, I think it's just kind of showing off at that point.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't know if like that inland water like just accumulates salt or something.

• 10:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I would, yeah, you might be right. Yeah, yeah, I think you've hit upon it. Okay, so they're not showoffs. They're just doing what they've got to do.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  I mean, that's a guess.

• 10:39Josh Clark?

  They're making lemonade out of the lemons that that they were handed by natural selection for where they grow.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  So what about the salt? How do they get rid of it?

• 10:48Josh Clark?

  So you would think like they've just, they can drink saltwater and use it like, you know, terrestrial trees use water. Not true. There's actually two techniques where they can either keep salt from entering their roots or they can take the salts in and then get rid of it in certain ways. And so that means that there's two types, secretors and non-secreters. And black mangroves are secretors, I believe, right?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  That's right. Those are the ones with the little nubby, they look like sticks almost sticking out of the water. They filter it out and they secrete it on the leaves. So that means if you see a black mangrove and you see some, you know, kind of chalky white stuff on the leaf, that is salt. Like go, I don't know if I should say go lick it because I don't know if that's dangerous salt, but it's it's salty. Just trust me.

• 11:36Josh Clark?

  It tastes like salt and DDT.

• 11:40Josh Clark?

  Red mangroves, they're they're non-secreators. So they actually just don't allow salt to be taken up by their roots. Now that's easier said than done because their roots are planted in the water, right? So there's water, they're taking up water from the ocean, from saltwater. And what they do is they have cell walls that actually act through reverse osmosis. It lets water through, but it doesn't let solids through, which is quite a trick. I mean, that's something that humans have only recently figured out how to do. Mangroves have been doing it for who knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of years. But they do it in part because they have this hydrophobic lipophilic material called suberin that really serves them well.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  That's right. It allows them to get rid of more than 90% of the salts in the water. Uh, which also means, which I didn't really think about until just now, that they can, they can literally tolerate, I guess, about 10% salt content.

• 12:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw 90 to 95%, but yeah, that's still a lot of salt for a plant.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 12:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they have at least adapted in some ways to, to tolerate salt more than other plants. But for the most part, they're just really good at, um, at keeping salt from being taken up by their roots. I just find that fascinating.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Uh, and I love how Dave puts these, uh, he, he, his sections are labeled either mangrove magic tricks. Or, uh, what was the other one? Mangrove superpowers.

• 13:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Which is pretty fun.

• 13:10Josh Clark?

  They're both apt.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  They are. Uh, so this is magic trick number two is we mentioned, you know, I mentioned earlier that they actually breathe through these roots. Um, I think typically you might like to think about plants as, uh, you know, just eating up that CO2, which they definitely do, but plants need oxygen and they need to get oxygen from the roots. And, and, you know, with a regular tree and a regular forest, they're getting that like through the soil and these little gaps between the soil. Uh, in mangrove or mangals, I guess you would say, they can't do that because the tidal sediments come in and it's all waterlogged and compacted.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  So they don't have those air gaps that you have in a normal forest. So they kind of came up with a brilliant little trick to get around that, right?

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So the pneumatophores that black mangroves have, those stalagmites, um, that are coming up in, in spikes around them, those act as snorkels. So they stick up out of the water and they're covered in these little cells called lenicels. And there, that's where oxygen exchange happens. So they actually absorb oxygen through these snorkels. They get taken into the snorkel underground into the other roots of the tree. Um, and used for, um, aerobic respiration, which is converting food into energy, which is pretty nuts.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  And pneumatophore actually is Greek for air carrier, so.

• 14:40Josh Clark?

  Makes sense.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Pretty on the nose.

• 14:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, some of those pneumatophores can reach up to 10 feet tall. Did you see that?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't, um, I looked at a lot of pictures. I didn't see any that tall with my eyeballs, but I looked because I wanted to see that.

• 14:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I didn't see it either. Could be made up.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Uh, so then you've got this, I don't think so. Um, then you've got these red mangroves that we talked about, for my money, like the money mangrove, and those prop roots serve the same purpose as the pneumatophores. They, you know, like I said, they sit up on those long, um, sort of curvy stilts. And they stay above water, like a lot of it stays above water even at high tide, uh, at times. And they are also covered with those linocils and they do the same thing. They allow for that oxygen exchange to take place.

• 15:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so that explains also why there's so many roots and so many pneumatophores that, that spread around these trees. It's like if you dug up a, a tree of roughly the same size, it would probably have a similar sized root structure, maybe a little less, but you don't see it. It's all underground. This is above ground, so it like, looks like a lot of roots and it is a lot of roots, but it's not necessarily more than a terrestrial tree would have. We just don't see them.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a tree that has dropped trial.

• 15:59Josh Clark?

  It is. That's exactly right. It's porky pig in it.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Should we, uh, should we take a break at, uh, mangrove magic trick number two?

• 16:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and we'll come back, yeah, we'll come back with number three right after this.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

• 17:00Speaker 05

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have

• 17:43Speaker 05

  severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 18:15Speaker 06

  First thought is like, wow, how are we gonna do all this?

• 18:17Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fans' experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 18:36Speaker 06

  It was gonna rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 18:44Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day. Through with Alan's whole crew design, we connected to

• 18:54Speaker 01

  ...event visitors to the world. And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 19:00Speaker 06

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing. What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 19:07Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 19:27Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, which mangrove is your favorite kind?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think I've been clear.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I know you're teasing me. Because me and my red mangrove tirades, to me, this is the best part of the episode and the most amazing thing that may, besides, and we'll get to carbon sequestration because that's amazing too. But to me, this just knocked my socks off that mangroves kind of give birth to baby mangroves.

• 19:58Josh Clark?

  I think the only reason you want to qualify it with kind of is because our mind rails against accepting that that's what's going on. But that is what's going on for all intents and purposes that some mangroves are viviparis, meaning that it means live bearing to where they have seeds on their, on their plants that they develop. They're about acorn sized. But then rather than the seed falling off and dispersing and then eventually growing into a seedling, something much more mind blowing happens with mangroves.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  That's right. The seedling is actually produced on the tree itself. And they, they sort of, not sort of, I keep qualifying it. They self-plant themselves.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Eventually, this thing is gonna fall off. You've gotta look up the video on the internet. There are many out there where it shows these, you know, acorn-like things. They grow down to these sort of long arrow, like, you know, green arrows that are pointing down. And eventually, they just go boop, and they snap off, and they go straight down, and they either stick into the ground at low tide, or I saw them in two feet of ocean water, just going straight through and sticking into the sand. And they plant themselves.

• 21:14Josh Clark?

  They do. They, they plant themselves in that sandy bottom, and then they sprout roots really fast. I saw that they can start growing roots within hours, um, which means that also, if they don't fall straight down, if they fall and they land on their side, they can actually stand themselves up by growing roots on the ground-facing side, and then grow roots on the other side as well, which is pretty amazing. What's even more amazing is that if they, they fall, they happen to fall at like, high tide, and it's pretty deep, and they never touch the bottom in any way, they'll float along. They'll go out to sea. And as they're out to sea, they're a little tree, growing, like, growing leaves, getting water, um, from the, the ocean, and doing photosynthesis in the sunlight,

• 21:58Josh Clark?

  and they can float around for up to a year before they make land, and stand themselves up, and grow roots wherever they land.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  It's just unbelievable, because this was an evolutionary adaptation. Uh, cuz my first thought was, well, why don't, why doesn't the acorn-like seed just fall into the water and float around, but it must have just not been able to survive, and got waterlogged and died, and, and adapted to grow on the tree itself, and get that little seedling started.

• 22:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because think about this, Chuck. A seedling is a small, viable tree. All, it has everything it needs to grow, so it's an individual organism. And when the, um, the, the, the mangrove is growing the seedling on its tree, on itself, that's gestation, cuz when it drops off, it's like a giraffe dropping a baby out, like, three or four feet above, above the ground. It's the same thing. It's gestation. It's a live birth of a plant. It's nuts, man. I love it.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  And the baby giraffe, uh, sticks its nose into the ground, and is, and grows from there for months and months.

• 23:05Josh Clark?

  Plants some roots out of its head, and there you go.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Let's talk about the mangals a little bit. We've talked about the fact that these forests are very dense, but it is a dense ecosystem that is dense in more ways than one. It's not just all these gnarly roots that you see everywhere. There are all kinds of fish habitats and wildlife habitats that exist in these mangals.

• 23:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of the reasons why these like root systems and why the above water parts of the trees are all just so thick, like you were saying, is so hard to get through, is because of the way that they drop seedlings right off of their tree, right around them. So these mangals develop into these really thick deposits of trees and shrubs, above water and below water, because they grow so closely together. And as they grow, they migrate one way or another, or they just spread out one way or another, sometimes toward the ocean, sometimes behind them, sometimes to either side of the shore. But that's how they grow, and that's why they're so dense, too.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  And that provides a lot of protection for these habitats. They're all manner of fish. If you're in Florida, you're gonna see gray snapper in there, or you probably won't see them. Snook, tarpon. This is pretty remarkable. The goliath grouper, which is actually endangered, spends their first six years in that mangal before it goes to open water.

• 24:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it's not just like a few kinds of fish, like things like octopi, sharks, shrimp, mollusks, just tons of different kinds of fish. Like, this is their nursery ground, because these roots, these tangle of roots, provide a place for juveniles to like hide out of reach of predators and get bigger and bigger, because it's also a very nourishing place for them to eat, too. So they're really, really important as nurseries for all kinds of sea life.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if you're talking about eating seafood, the commercial fishing industry, and this just sort of shows you how important these mangals are. A one-square-mile loss of mangrove forests would lose about 275,000 pounds of fish every year. And then, that's not even to speak of all the indigenous communities that rely on these fish to provide their sustenance.

• 25:26Josh Clark?

  Right, and so that's just the below-water part of the mangol. The above-water part of the mangol basically does the same thing, but for terrestrial and arboreal animals like monkeys, insects, reptiles, birds, they make their home in their nurseries in the mangals, too. The branches, the leaves, the trunks, those are really just as important for above-ground animals as they are for below-water animals.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you mentioned that Bengal tiger. This was also in the Sum Darbins, right?

• 26:00Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  And this is the largest single population of Bengal tigers on planet Earth, and it's only about 100 of them, but they live in these mangals.

• 26:10Josh Clark?

  Yes, and also, attention, Kristen Bell. If you are ambivalent about mangrove forests, prepare to care, because in Panama, the pygmy three-toed sloth, critically endangered, by the way, only makes its home in mangrove forests down there.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 26:30Josh Clark?

  So you gotta care now.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  I still watch that video of her and that sloth about once every two years.

• 26:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's a good one.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  It's just one of the great human reactions to something.

• 26:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I remember how heartened we were when we realized that she didn't touch it, even though she clearly wanted to more than she's ever wanted to do anything in her life, but she didn't do it, you know? So good for her.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  That's pretty great. I think we can move on to some superpowers, right?

• 26:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, mangrove's superpower number one, which is coastline protection, which is pretty important if you live along the coast.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a big one. One great benefit of all those above-ground gnarly messes of roots that are everywhere is, and it just makes perfect common sense when you look at them, is they make great wave breaks. Any kind of wave, even like a tsunami, is that a word?

• 27:22Josh Clark?

  It is now. I think it's a great word.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Right. Tsunami's wave is gonna be cut down big time when it hits this stuff. It's just gonna, you know, just cut through and disperse it in a really profound way.

• 27:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because there's so many different like roots and individual things to bump into on the way to the shore that it's gonna reduce its energy, which means that it reduces one of the pernicious effects that waves have on shore, which is erosion. And not only does it reduce erosion, because the waves don't have enough energy to take stuff back out to sea, it actually has them deposit the sediments that they're bringing to the shore in the mangrove swamps. And if you compare, if you combine that, I should say, with the really low oxygen

• 28:10Josh Clark?

  environments that make up the mucky bottom in a mangrove mangol. You, if, I guess you can kind of flashback to our coal, the mystery of coal episode where we talked a lot about how swamps work like that. So mangrove swamps are very much like that as well. But then in addition to that, they have ocean sediments being brought, all this organic stuff being brought from the oceans, layering with the mucky sediment that, from the mangroves falling into the muck, which means that they're like holding on to a lot of stuff and building up soil, as a matter of fact, so much so that they, it outpaces sea level rises in some areas.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, this kind of falls under one of their other superpowers is the fact that they are literally sequestering carbon. But I think that they, they add about, and we'll get to that in more detail in a minute. But in Australia, some mangrove or some mangols in Australian Belize add about 10 millimeters or more of coastal soil each year.

• 29:11Josh Clark?

  A hundredth of a meter.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that doesn't sound like that much, but a sea level rise is coming in at about 3.2 meters a year. So in parts of Australian Belize, it is actually outpacing climate change.

• 29:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's pretty cool. And that's really, really important because the sea levels rise. If the soil level is rising, we don't have to worry quite as much about sea level rise there. But that's only in some spots, as we'll see.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and as far as the waves go, and we're talking about tsunamis, well, with just regular waves, for every hundred meters of a mangrove forest that a wave will hit, its height can decrease by as much as 66%.

• 29:50Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  And if you're looking at storm surges, which is, you know, one of the big dangers, it's not just the wave, it's that water surge. If you've listened to our tsunami episode, there was a study that found that surge depths were reduced about a little over a foot and a half for every little more than a half a mile, 50 centimeters over every kilometer. And that doesn't sound like a ton, but if you've got a mangrove forest that's, you know, several miles deep, then we're talking, you know, six or seven feet of less storm surge happening, and that can make a really big difference in flooding.

• 30:30Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, because the storm surge is what gets you. I mean, it can flood miles and miles inland. It carries all sorts of debris with it. It has so much energy, it can just rip buildings down. It's a real problem from hurricanes, it's that flooding from the storm surge. But because those mangroves are there to absorb a bunch of that energy, it just doesn't have the opportunity to come nearly as far inland. So mangrove forests, especially thick ones, save human lives, and you would guess animal lives, too.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we've seen the sort of this bear out in very sad ways when mangrove forests have disappeared. I think it was in the Indo-Pacific region in the 1950s. They used to have about five miles, like, deep of mangrove forest. By the 1990s, they were depleted because of shrimp farming. We'll talk about that later as well. But basically, you know, human-caused depletion. And in 91, there was a cyclone that hit the coast of Bangladesh, where there were no longer any mangrove forests to cut down on that impact. And there was no buffer, and there was a big 20-foot storm surge, and almost 140,000 people died.

• 31:42Josh Clark?

  Right. I saw, I saw that they had, a lot of those people died because they weren't, they didn't use storm shelters in addition to the mangrove buffer being gone. And that they had built the storm shelters Chuck, after a 1970 cyclone that killed 500,000 people in Bangladesh.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:02Josh Clark?

  Can you believe that? Can you imagine a storm killing half a million people in your country or your little area? That's insane.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  It is. That's devastating.

• 32:14Josh Clark?

  Like it's biblical, you know?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. They did some studies too with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. And they found that the mangroves there were about 100 meters deep and they at least helped reduce those waves between 5 and 30%. So that's, that's a big deal, you know? Six feet of storm surge, up to 30% of wave height and the initial rush in from the ocean is, you're saving a lot of lives in that case.

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I mean, you saw how bad the, the Indian Ocean tsunami was too. It just makes you wonder like how much worse it could have been without mangroves. So I say we take our second break and we come back and talk about carbon sequestration.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  That's right. AKA superpower number two.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trzepatide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains Trzepatide and should not be used with other Trzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain

• 34:34Speaker 05

  or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  You know, you're never done decorating your home. You know what I mean?

• 35:10Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do, or buy, or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.

• 35:21Josh Clark?

  Well, Chuck, whether you need a rug or whatever is next for you, you can go to Wayfair. It's the smart place to get it.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  That's right. Whatever your style, whatever your budget, whatever you're looking for, Wayfair makes it easy to find it, and you can feel good about your purchases too because Wayfair verified products go through a thorough 10-point quality inspection.

• 35:39Josh Clark?

  And with over 20 million 5-star reviews, Wayfair must be doing something right. You can find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  All right, we had promise of superpower number two. And we teased a little bit early, earlier I did, about carbon sequestration. So we need to talk a little bit about what people are calling a blue carbon ecosystem. Blue, sort of referencing the ocean.

• 36:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's, it's basically the same thing, like, you know, trees inland capturing carbon and storing them in their, their bits and parts. This is, this is just coastal vegetation doing the same thing. And the thing is, is like, trees, they're really efficient at capturing carbon and storing it, but because of our friends fungi and rot, when the tree dies, that carbon gets released back into the ecosystem and even possibly back into the atmosphere if, say, like a wildfire happens.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Atmosphere?

• 37:11Josh Clark?

  Hot wheels.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  That is right, but you know how we mentioned before that with that soil that the water is basically the ocean water is just sitting on top of. It is not, it's just building up to that salty peat. And that carbon is not being released like it does in a terrestrial forest.

• 37:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  And it's not breaking down, so it is a champion at storing carbon. Not only good at it, but really good at it.

• 37:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's like the Judah Friedlander of forests as far as carbon sequestration goes.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  I love Judah Friedlander. We actually met him once, but I don't get the joke.

• 37:50Josh Clark?

  Oh, he always wore a hat that said world.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 37:54Josh Clark?

  And he was always boasting about stuff like that.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I love that guy. When we we met him at a event with Jesse Thorne and Hodgman many years ago, and this was kind of during his run on.

• 38:04Josh Clark?

  Thirty Rock.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Thirty Rock. And this is when I was also wearing my Last Chance Garage hat all the time, which I haven't put on in a couple of years, I hate to say so. Probably a few years. But he, I remember when I met him, he went, and in that face of his, he kind of peered up at my hat and that patch, and he went, all right, okay, cool.

• 38:26Josh Clark?

  That was a great Judah Friedlander.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  I was like, hey, I got the stamp of approval from the hat guy.

• 38:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, definitely the hat guy for sure.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  It was cool.

• 38:33Josh Clark?

  So, but yeah, so mangroves are the champion of carbon sequestration, so much so that they are four times more efficient than terrestrial vegetation at storing carbon, which makes them like a bona fide carbon sink, mangrove forests are. And again, it's because there's just no decay, there's no fungus, there's no rot, all the stuff, all the vegetation that dies and falls down into the muck just gets stuck there and covered over and doesn't get a chance to break down. So, as long as you don't dig up or destroy a mangrove forest and cut up the peat to use it as as cheap fuel, you've got a really good carbon sink on your hands.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, to the tune of worldwide mangals account for about 6.4 billion tons of carbon that's being held in check. That means when you do do something, like you hinted at, it can have devastating effects for the world. Surprise, surprise. If you cut down a mangrove forest, that carbon is going to be released. That sequestered carbon is slowly going to creep back into the atmosphere. From 2000 to 2015, roughly 122 million tons of carbon, extra carbon were released into the atmosphere because of the destruction of mangrove forests.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Between 80 and 2000, 30% of the mangals of the world have been stripped away. And it is outpacing like the tropical rainforest destruction.

• 40:05Josh Clark?

  That's mind boggling because if you just hear the figures on how frequently and how much rainforest is cut down, the idea that mangrove forest is outpacing is pretty nuts. But apparently Myanmar is the current hotspot for mangrove deforestation. Between 1996 and 2016, Myanmar cut down 60% of its mangals.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Ugh.

• 40:30Josh Clark?

  Just gone. And part of the problem is, is like you can restore mangrove forests fortunately. We'll talk about some people who do that, but it can take a while. And sometimes when you restore some mangroves, you put the seedlings in and a typhoon or a cyclone or hurricane comes along and just washes them all away. So if your timing's wrong, it might take a very long time for you to restore a mangrove forest. So it's not something you want to cut down willy nilly, basically.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  No, shrimp farming is something we mentioned earlier in passing, but they are the biggest culprit, responsible for 35% of mangrove forest loss. And, you know, people love shrimp all around the world and in Thailand in the 80s and 90s and other places as well, but especially Thailand. They cut down a lot of mangrove forests to make these shrimp farms along the coastline. And then you've also got the sea level rise that's causing destruction. We mentioned parts of Australia and Belize that those soil deposits are outpacing it, but that's only in a couple of those places. It is, it is not doing that in other areas.

• 41:39Josh Clark?

  No, so that means that sea level rise is outpacing soil deposition there. I want to say one more thing about shrimp farming too. I looked a little bit into it and I cannot decide, maybe it deserves its own episode. Who knows?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 41:53Josh Clark?

  One of the other problems with shrimp farming, in addition to a shrimp farm sharing the same kind of land or a mangrove forest that land it occupies being desirable. For shrimp farm, so you cut down mangrove forests to build a shrimp farm is that when you harvest shrimp, you basically have to refresh the water. So shrimp farmers typically just basically open a dam and let all the water out. And that water is filled with tons of nutrients that overwhelm the carrying capacity of the ecosystems, the mangrove forests around the shrimp farm. And you get what's called an algae bloom, which sucks up all the oxygen, kills off all the fish,

• 42:32Josh Clark?

  and has just this devastating effect on the ecosystem surrounding it. So shrimp farming is really hard on the areas where it takes place, not just from the shrimp farms themselves, but from what comes out of the shrimp farms as well. And there's just so many basic, good, best practices that could be followed, that just aren't followed, that there's almost like a general like duh coming out of the shrimp farming industry as far as I can tell. That really needs to be fixed.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  It's almost as if they just want to continue to make as much money as they can before they're regulated in some way.

• 43:08Josh Clark?

  But I mean, what are you gonna do if you tried to regulate them at all? You've got a nanny state on your hands and who wants that?

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and shrimp farming is just one tiny fraction of the great amounts of harm that are happening to the ocean because of lots of things, but commercial fishing is certainly one of them.

• 43:27Josh Clark?

  I will say though, it's really hard to turn down shrimp on pizza.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Is that your thing or something?

• 43:34Josh Clark?

  No, no, that's that was from years back. I used to love shrimp on pizza.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  All right, talk to me more about this. What are we talking? You just throw some shrimp on a regular cheese or is it like a barbecue pineapple thing?

• 43:46Josh Clark?

  No, no, no, no, no, a regular pizza, but you don't want to use just any shrimp. You certainly don't want to use jumbo shrimp. You want to use the little tiny salad shrimp because they cook just enough with the pizza. A bigger shrimp might still be partially raw. It's gonna be too big to eat.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Oh, you put it on there raw?

• 44:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you just throw some of this. Well, no, I think they usually come already cooked now that I think about it. But you just throw a couple handfuls on your pizza, put it in the oven and there you thank me later, basically.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I love shrimp. I don't know about shrimp and pizza.

• 44:16Josh Clark?

  Well, now I feel bad about eating shrimp, knowing how bad shrimp farming is.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  I know. It's, uh, yeah, it's another wake-up call, isn't it?

• 44:24Josh Clark?

  Well, yes, and I've been awoken because I'm now farming my own shrimp here at home in a very sustainable manner so that I can have it on my pizza.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Ah, bathtub shrimp.

• 44:34Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Delicious.

• 44:36Josh Clark?

  We don't take baths anyway.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, Yumi's like, why do you have an out-of-order sign on our bathroom door?

• 44:42Josh Clark?

  Right. I'm still trying to figure out how to break the news to Yumi. We don't really have a working bathtub anymore.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Uh, so there are also invasive species that can, uh, totally wreck the health of a mangol. Uh, in the seventies in China, uh, they were trying to do the right thing, I think. There were conservationists that, um, transplanted some marsh grasses that were from the United States there to try and slow erosion, but it crowded out mangroves. Uh, and then in Texas, they weren't trying to do the right thing. They, the fish and game officials there, um, they said, hey, people like hunting this, uh, exotic Asian antelope. It's called a nilgai, I guess, N-I-L-G-A-I. So let's put them in Texas so people can hunt them. Um, and it turns out they love to eat mangroves.

• 45:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they're being deforested by the game that was imported to Texas to hunt. Which means I'm sure there's huge bounties on these things now, too.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, isn't that funny how that all works out?

• 45:43Josh Clark?

  So there are people who are like, we really need to, to work on this. We need to get mangroves back. Um, and there are places where, this is the good news. Mangrove deforestation, globally speaking, on average, has actually stopped progressing and is now starting to decline.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:59Josh Clark?

  The deforestation is. So people are, are, you know, kind of getting hip to the idea that we really need these things. They provide countless services for us humans. So even the most selfish human can get behind mangrove restoration, right?

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's about 42% of the worldwide mangols are protected now. But you need that number at like 92, well, at 100. But I would feel much better if it was like in the eighties or nineties, you know?

• 46:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and not only that, like, like areas that have been developed coastally need to replant the mangroves that they cut down to, to, um, to build because they need them really bad. You need mangrove buffers, as we've found. Whatever you can get is helpful.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  That's right, but there's another kind of clever financial instrument, as they call it, called blue bonds. It is a subset of green bonds. Green bonds came around a while ago, and these are basically if you have money and you want to invest responsibly in a way that not only doesn't impact the environment, but can help the environment, you invest in a green bond, or if you're really into the ocean, the subset of blue bonds, which were first introduced in 2018.

• 47:13Josh Clark?

  Right, and so if you want to offset your emissions, you buy a blue bond, and all of a sudden, you've just paid somebody to go plant some mango, or not mango, maybe mango too, but mangrove forests.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Mango forests, that sounds delicious.

• 47:30Josh Clark?

  It would be. I'd be like planting it in my backyard. That's where I want you to plant it with my blue bond.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  So look into blue bonds and green bonds. I saw something depressing the other day when they were, I don't know what they were talking about on the news, but they basically said like, if you have an IRA, like, you are supporting all kinds of companies that you would probably never support in real life.

• 47:51Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, definitely, mutual funds.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, mutual funds, just everything's all lumped in. So they were trying to encourage people, if they're able to, to be a little more selective in what they choose to invest in.

• 48:02Josh Clark?

  Well, there's a lot of sustainable mutual funds too.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 48:06Josh Clark?

  That where they're, you know, very carefully selected. Unfortunately, that means the management fee is going to be higher, but if you care, it doesn't really matter, you know?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Oh, is it really a higher management fee?

• 48:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, anytime it requires any additional thought or effort, the management fee just automatically goes up.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  I had to click on three extra things.

• 48:26Josh Clark?

  Right. I had to find out what these blue bonds were. That's my impression of a mutual fund manager.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, financial advisor. If that's your financial advisor, you're going to the wrong person.

• 48:36Josh Clark?

  I meet him at Burger King every couple of weeks. In the back.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, where else would you meet?

• 48:43Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, nothing else, up with mangroves.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  Up with mangroves. And since we both said up with mangroves, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Uh, this is a thank you from a Satanist. Uh, we had a great podcast that we must have, uh, put this on a select recently, I guess.

• 49:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like two weeks ago.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, hey, guys, discovered your podcast in 2011, have been hooked ever since. Your informative banter-filled episodes remained a welcome constant in my life throughout college, adult years, and now parenthood. It was helping me stay sane during sleepless nights with my newborns. Uh, when I saw the episode on Satanism, I guess I hadn't listened to it previously, um, I was simultaneously excited and nervous. I would, uh, hope you'd give it the usual Josh and Chuck treatment, and I was not disappointed. Uh, over the years, I've been given a lot of grief being a Satanist. Uh, people often assume that I'm a very devout Christian based on the way I look and often go from praising me to threatening my family upon learning that I follow the tenets set forth by the Satanic Temple. Uh, by shedding some light on the true nature of Satanism, I feel that you have given many

• 49:49Speaker 01

  people a look into the practice in a non-threatening way, and hopefully this will help people choose kindness over fear-based hatred when interacting with Satanists in the future. And thank you for being bold enough to put this episode out in the world. I'm sure it wasn't that easy, uh, but this longtime listener appreciates it. Your friendly Satanist, Donna.

• 50:08Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Donna.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Donna the Satanist.

• 50:11Josh Clark?

  Um, yeah, that was, uh, that was a good one, cause, you know, I went back and listened to it, to QA it before it was a select, and I was like, this is a really good episode.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:20Josh Clark?

  But there was one thing at the beginning, Chuck, that now I wish we had back, um, because a couple of people wrote in, and it was that we, we COA'd at the beginning saying, like, if you're, you know, a Christian, you probably don't want to listen to this. And people wrote in and said, no, like, you, you should not have said that, because there's plenty of people out there who should hear this and, you know, change their views on people who hold these views. So, um, if you go back and listen to that, just plug your ears for that first part and then listen to it through again.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was 40-year-old Chuck talking.

• 50:49Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Not, not 51-year-old Chuck.

• 50:53Josh Clark?

  That's right, that's right.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Ew, that's a weird number to say.

• 50:56Josh Clark?

  It is, Chuck. 51 is a weird number, and it's gonna be a weird time in your life, I'm sure of it.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Jerk.

• 51:07Josh Clark?

  That's it, huh?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  That's the one thing I'll always hate is you'll always be younger than me. No matter how much I want you to speed up the aging process, you'll always be younger.

• 51:15Josh Clark?

  You would have to travel to Mars in suspended animation and I would just have to stay here on Earth for, for me to catch up.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  All right, I'm gonna look into that.

• 51:25Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Donna. We appreciate that big time. If you want to be like Donna and send us some kudos, we'll take them. You can send it in an email to [email protected].

• 51:38Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terzepatide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems, to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.