From the brains behind brains on, this is the Moment of um comes to you from APM Studios.

I'm your host, Nico Whistler, and welcome to my garden.

Um.

Today I'll be planting some carrots.

Let's see.

The packet says to plant the seeds a quarter inch deep and one inch apart. Okay, here we go.

What's happening? It's so dark in here. Can anybody hear me? I can hear you. It tastes like dirt,

but it smells really nice. It's so squishy. What is even in this soil? And how was it made?

Ah, a giant creature is approaching. It has no legs. Get back. Get back. No! It got its slime all on me!

Don't worry, little seeds. That's a worm. It won't hurt you. Actually, worms are a sign that the soil you're in is healthy. And as far as what the soil is made of and how it's made, you're not the only ones wondering that. Listener, Teo, had the same question.

Hi, my name is Teo.

And my question is, how does soil get made?

We went down to the farm to get the answer.

Basically, soil is made when rocks and organic materials break down over time and combine.

My name is Angel Papineau, and I'm a farmer in Philadelphia.

If you imagine a section of the forest,

so underneath the forest floor, like, way down deep towards the center of the earth,

there's a piece of rock called bedrock.

And also on the surface of the ground, there are bigger rocks and stones and boulders. And so over really long amounts of time, the wind and the rain and tree roots are breaking down the rocks that are on the surface and breaking it down into lots of little

pieces. Over an even longer period of time, that bedrock underneath us also has been eroding,

and particles from that are also coming off and mixing in with the whole soil mixture.

On that same patch of land, there also could be leaves that fell from trees, or a hiker could

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