1 00:00:00,960 --> 00:00:04,879 Okay, welcome to the crime Pace of Bodany Doesn't Podcast. Uh. I'm 2 00:00:04,919 --> 00:00:10,679 excited for this interview. And it took you know, it took a while 3 00:00:10,759 --> 00:00:13,839 to get around to it, but uh, but yeah, it's with an 4 00:00:13,880 --> 00:00:17,440 author for a book, the author of a book that just came out called 5 00:00:17,480 --> 00:00:22,760 The Light Eaters, And so we'll just launch right into it. Zoey Schlang, 6 00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:27,079 is it Shlanger? Okay, all right, just making sure. I 7 00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:29,800 guess I should have done that before we started, but whatever. Anyway, 8 00:00:29,879 --> 00:00:33,719 So Zoe Zoey Schlanger. So you're anyway, you're in New York right now 9 00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:36,560 this book. I'll be honest with you. Man. When when I got 10 00:00:36,600 --> 00:00:38,920 when I first got the email about it, I was like, ah, 11 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:42,520 what is this? I just kind of you know, I because I normally 12 00:00:42,719 --> 00:00:45,759 have a short attention span for my emails. Anyway, when I opened the 13 00:00:45,799 --> 00:00:50,000 inbox, I just want to lay down in traffic. But but I got 14 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:52,359 it and I was like what And then you know, they were like, 15 00:00:52,399 --> 00:00:53,960 do you want to, you know, take a look at it. Was 16 00:00:53,960 --> 00:00:56,399 like yeah, sure, and they sent me a copy and then when I 17 00:00:56,439 --> 00:00:58,600 opened it, I was like, oh, wow, this is okay. 18 00:00:58,679 --> 00:01:03,520 I'm sold this is some pretty interesting stuff. And so, you know, 19 00:01:03,520 --> 00:01:07,680 I'm sure writing this you got probably you know, and I'm sure a lot 20 00:01:07,719 --> 00:01:11,400 of people have a similar reaction when they get it. Initially, they're a 21 00:01:11,439 --> 00:01:14,200 little wary and they're like, what is this? You know, it's because 22 00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:17,719 you know, I lived in California for twenty years. I've got my own 23 00:01:17,799 --> 00:01:22,680 trauma from living out there, the New Age scene whatever, for sure, 24 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:25,359 and so and you mentioned that in the book. I mean, you talk 25 00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:27,760 about that. But god, this stuff is so fascinating, and at some 26 00:01:27,799 --> 00:01:33,280 point I think I just decided, I mean, I Revere and basically worship 27 00:01:33,319 --> 00:01:36,920 plants says it is. I mean, they've you know, there's so much 28 00:01:36,959 --> 00:01:42,439 more there than just something that's pretty to look at. There another life form 29 00:01:42,480 --> 00:01:46,920 that basically makes life for everything else possible. So I just I just, 30 00:01:47,200 --> 00:01:49,000 you know, kind of dove into it. And now I'm all about it. 31 00:01:49,040 --> 00:01:53,000 But but I guess starting off, tell everybody what this book is about 32 00:01:53,040 --> 00:01:57,439 and what made you decide to write it. Yeah. Cool, Well I'm 33 00:01:57,439 --> 00:02:02,120 glad you thought that it was not the Lulu traumatizing version, which is exactly 34 00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:06,480 what I'm going for. All that's par reviewed. But so this book is 35 00:02:06,519 --> 00:02:12,960 about the sector of botanists right now who are considering whether or not plants might 36 00:02:13,400 --> 00:02:16,400 be intelligent or conscious. And that's a pretty small circle of botanists, if 37 00:02:16,400 --> 00:02:21,639 we're honest, that are sort of fighting with each other in botany journals. 38 00:02:21,639 --> 00:02:27,039 But there's a much larger circle of botanists who are asking questions more quietly about 39 00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:32,840 plant behavior and just basic questions about what plants can do and finding pretty remarkable 40 00:02:35,199 --> 00:02:39,719 outcomes of that research. And this is a it's been about thirty forty years 41 00:02:39,759 --> 00:02:44,879 of kind of plant behavior research going a bit underground after the whole Secret Life 42 00:02:44,879 --> 00:02:49,080 of Plants debacle. If they're talking about New Age stuff in California, that 43 00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:53,159 was, you know, the apex of it nineteen seventy three, where people 44 00:02:53,199 --> 00:02:57,479 got the idea to start talking to their plants and that they liked classical music 45 00:02:57,520 --> 00:03:00,360 and should read your mind. All of these things wait really quick. So 46 00:03:00,639 --> 00:03:02,960 how I went Secret Life of Plants is there was a book that came out 47 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:08,120 in seventy three that was really kind of out there, yeah, totally height 48 00:03:08,280 --> 00:03:13,800 of New Age culture, and it was the first time a book about botan 49 00:03:14,919 --> 00:03:17,599 took the kind of popular market by storm, and there was a feature film 50 00:03:17,639 --> 00:03:21,560 made out of it. Stevie Wonder wrote the soundtrack, which I have. 51 00:03:22,080 --> 00:03:28,280 It's a very good soundtrack, but it was maybe half of it was fairly 52 00:03:28,879 --> 00:03:34,840 robust plant science and sort of the history of plants and human interactions, and 53 00:03:34,879 --> 00:03:38,520 then the other half of it was just basically pseudo science or citizen science that 54 00:03:38,560 --> 00:03:44,960 couldn't be reproduced. Maybe you've heard about the polygraph test being applied to plants 55 00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:51,759 by the guy who actually invented the polygraph, former CIA agent, where you 56 00:03:51,759 --> 00:03:55,319 know, he thought about lighting his houseplants on fire and claimed that the polygraph 57 00:03:55,400 --> 00:03:59,639 test went wild in response to that, suggesting that the plants were reading his 58 00:04:00,319 --> 00:04:05,599 his mean thoughts. So, as you can imagine, we all know research 59 00:04:05,719 --> 00:04:12,000 the research world is pretty conservative institution or does not like being associated with these 60 00:04:12,039 --> 00:04:16,120 kinds of things. And from what botanists told me of that period, the 61 00:04:16,199 --> 00:04:23,279 NSF sort of clamped down and ceased funding a lot of plant behavior research that 62 00:04:23,360 --> 00:04:28,680 had any with actually talk about plants as behaving organisms. And it took a 63 00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:31,959 long time for that taboo to wear off, but it really mostly has now 64 00:04:32,040 --> 00:04:35,879 non tired, but enough to let a lot of cool research through. Yeah, 65 00:04:35,959 --> 00:04:40,600 so what made you because you're not a botanist by trade. I mean, 66 00:04:40,639 --> 00:04:44,639 did you have interest in plants before this or how what made you decide 67 00:04:44,639 --> 00:04:46,959 to write a book on this. Yeah, I'm definitely not a botanist. 68 00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:51,680 I don't have any advanced degrees in any hard sciences. I'm a science journalist 69 00:04:51,680 --> 00:04:57,759 and I cover climate change. And I had been covering the environment climate change 70 00:04:57,879 --> 00:05:03,720 mostly like Aaron water pollution is well for about ten years and I was feeling 71 00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:08,759 pretty burned out. I think this is like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. 72 00:05:09,360 --> 00:05:14,120 And I've always been interested in plants. I have a lot of plants. 73 00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:18,600 I'm sitting in my Brooklyn apartment no outdoor space, sadly, but and I 74 00:05:18,720 --> 00:05:21,759 grew up around a lot of people who appreciated plants, but no one in 75 00:05:21,759 --> 00:05:27,839 the hard sciences. I started looking at botany journals as a way to sort 76 00:05:27,839 --> 00:05:31,079 of refresh myself. And I think what really set me down this path. 77 00:05:31,399 --> 00:05:36,120 The first little instance was I decided to cover the first case of a Ferm 78 00:05:36,160 --> 00:05:42,040 genome being sequenced in twenty eighteen. And you know, fur genomes are enormous, 79 00:05:42,040 --> 00:05:45,360 so this is a big deal. And I called a fer and scientist 80 00:05:46,439 --> 00:05:49,040 and he was like, you know, I'm actually at a botany conference. 81 00:05:49,079 --> 00:05:53,480 Do you want me to get like a bunch more fer and scientists on a 82 00:05:53,480 --> 00:05:59,240 conference call? And so he got he gathered like six people and put them 83 00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:01,199 in a room and which had this had them all on speakerphone and just had 84 00:06:01,199 --> 00:06:06,120 this incredibly delightful call where you know, as a reporter, I talked aside 85 00:06:06,120 --> 00:06:12,360 this all the time, and this is another category of reporting call. Everyone 86 00:06:12,480 --> 00:06:17,240 was just enthusiastic in this way. That was totally infectious and totally infected me. 87 00:06:17,279 --> 00:06:19,759 And I got quite obsessed with ferns for a short period of time. 88 00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:27,519 Got a tattoo of the fern that got ex geno secrets what species? Oh 89 00:06:27,560 --> 00:06:30,959 cool? Yeah, I actually got to find some for my little pond outside. 90 00:06:30,199 --> 00:06:35,399 So nice. Yeah, they're good at sequestioning a lot of too. 91 00:06:35,560 --> 00:06:40,839 Yeah, and I have the cool pocket for the cyanobacteria. Yeah man, 92 00:06:41,079 --> 00:06:43,519 Yeah, it's a cool it's a cool organism. So anyway, so you 93 00:06:43,519 --> 00:06:46,839 got in the ferns and so I mean that that was kind of like your 94 00:06:46,879 --> 00:06:48,959 gateway into plants, and then you just started paying more attention to them or 95 00:06:48,959 --> 00:06:53,079 what. Yeah, there was that, and then I also had the chance 96 00:06:53,120 --> 00:06:58,480 to go to Kauhai National Tropical The tende of garden out there, if you 97 00:06:58,560 --> 00:07:01,360 have not seen it is I mean, I hope I get to see it 98 00:07:01,360 --> 00:07:06,759 again in my lifetime. Is an incredible place, and they do a fellowship 99 00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:11,680 for environmental journalists. So I happened to get a spot on that fellowship and 100 00:07:11,720 --> 00:07:14,920 it was like a week where you just spend the week hiking around with their 101 00:07:14,920 --> 00:07:18,279 botanists and they just talked you about their work. And I met Steve Perlman, 102 00:07:18,319 --> 00:07:23,120 who is one of their rare plant botanists, one of two, and 103 00:07:23,160 --> 00:07:26,759 he was part of his team that he's you know, in his late sixties, 104 00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:33,759 jumps out of helicopters repels down cliffs to find these ultra rare species where 105 00:07:33,759 --> 00:07:40,319 there's sometimes like five individuals left, and it's his job to gather, you 106 00:07:40,360 --> 00:07:43,040 know, to hand pollinate them. A lot of them have you know, 107 00:07:43,160 --> 00:07:49,120 separate sex plants, so he's waiting for one to open, hiking out four 108 00:07:49,199 --> 00:07:53,560 days to it. Maybe it's not open yet. He has to do it 109 00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:58,639 all over again a week later and then carry the pollen over and pollinate the 110 00:07:58,680 --> 00:08:03,319 other plant. And it's incredible and such a labor of love and it was 111 00:08:03,319 --> 00:08:07,079 the first time I think I really spoke to someone who cared for plants in 112 00:08:07,079 --> 00:08:09,920 a way that I had never seen before, about these ultra rare plants that 113 00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:13,720 maybe we didn't even know existed a decade ago. But here we are putting 114 00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:16,639 all this effort into trying to save them. Not really changed something for me 115 00:08:16,720 --> 00:08:20,399 too. Yeah, it's it's it's infectious. I mean I could say, 116 00:08:20,439 --> 00:08:24,959 I could say as someone who's you know, traveled all over the world studying 117 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:28,439 them. I mean, this has been my life for the last five years. 118 00:08:28,439 --> 00:08:30,560 I mean it was my life before that too, when I worked for 119 00:08:30,600 --> 00:08:33,480 the railroad. I was, you know, reading research papers in the locomotive 120 00:08:33,480 --> 00:08:37,159 cab and you know, textbooks and shit. I mean, it's but that's 121 00:08:37,200 --> 00:08:39,840 what I love about your book is because I think, uh, I think 122 00:08:39,919 --> 00:08:43,519 most well. First off, I want to say, when most people think 123 00:08:43,519 --> 00:08:46,960 of plant consciousness, you know, humans are inherently short sighted. In my 124 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:50,720 opic, we're going to think in terms of in human terms about this. 125 00:08:50,879 --> 00:08:54,879 We're gonna expect it to be just like us, and that we you know, 126 00:08:54,519 --> 00:08:58,679 you can't do that, you can't have this narrow frame of reference. 127 00:08:58,759 --> 00:09:01,279 I mean, and I think that that's What I like about it is my 128 00:09:01,399 --> 00:09:05,559 hope is that maybe it will make it'll suck people out of this this narrow 129 00:09:05,799 --> 00:09:09,480 frame of view that we have and get them to think about maybe other ways 130 00:09:09,519 --> 00:09:16,759 that that you know that these things, these organisms, which I basically composed 131 00:09:16,759 --> 00:09:22,120 of the living skin of the earth, how they're interacting with each other, 132 00:09:22,279 --> 00:09:26,279 with the environment, and how you know, basically, how they behave. 133 00:09:26,360 --> 00:09:30,200 I mean, I was writing something a while ago and I mentioned something about 134 00:09:30,240 --> 00:09:33,759 plant behavior, and to me, it's I mean, plant behavior is just 135 00:09:33,279 --> 00:09:37,240 it's it's obvious that they behave. They behave in an ecosystem, they behave. 136 00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:41,480 It's on a slower time frame than humans are used to, but you 137 00:09:41,519 --> 00:09:45,240 know, you have again, you got to think and you got to shake 138 00:09:45,279 --> 00:09:48,840 out of this this really narrow, myopic human world. And that's basically what 139 00:09:48,840 --> 00:09:52,679 I've been doing over the last fifteen years of my life is slowly leaving that 140 00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:56,399 world and looking at the rest of the world around us, the living world 141 00:09:56,480 --> 00:09:58,080 around us. You know, I don't even like the word nature. It's 142 00:09:58,120 --> 00:10:03,360 just the real world what it is. Yeah. Yeah, we're incredibly bad 143 00:10:03,399 --> 00:10:05,320 at looking outside ourselves. And it takes so long. And we said fifteen 144 00:10:05,399 --> 00:10:09,039 years. Like, I don't know, it took me more than a year 145 00:10:09,080 --> 00:10:13,600 into doing a research of this book to start to really shift enough to see 146 00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:18,200 plans as behaving in the way that they actually are, not just the way 147 00:10:18,200 --> 00:10:20,639 they interact, the way they interact with everything around them. I mean, 148 00:10:20,679 --> 00:10:26,440 a plant that that mimics rocks is behaving. A plant that secretes a pheromone, 149 00:10:26,440 --> 00:10:31,799 an orca that secretes a pheromone that attracts you know, horny male searfed 150 00:10:31,799 --> 00:10:35,919 flies is behaving. It's that, And that's what I love about this book, 151 00:10:37,039 --> 00:10:39,759 is it? It's again because I think the fact that humans have been 152 00:10:39,799 --> 00:10:45,879 so myopic and we've so completely our civilization has severed ourselves from the rest of 153 00:10:45,879 --> 00:10:48,960 the living world. That's kind of what got us into this predicament that we're 154 00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:54,639 in today, where you know of mass extinction and habitat loss and just we're 155 00:10:54,679 --> 00:11:00,360 so off the rails as a civilization. So anyway, so what made you 156 00:11:00,399 --> 00:11:05,360 finally decide to write a book about plant behavior and you know, plant intelligence? 157 00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:09,200 Well, so, as I said, I just started like looking through 158 00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:13,279 botany journals, and I feel like the timing was really fortuitous because there was 159 00:11:13,320 --> 00:11:18,039 this debate sort of happening in the pages of trends in plant science, and 160 00:11:18,799 --> 00:11:22,600 someone who was not involved in this back and forth with these very salty response 161 00:11:22,600 --> 00:11:31,120 papers being published about plant consciousness termed it the tips Ruckus, and it really, 162 00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:35,480 I mean set off alarm bells as a reporter, because knowing that scientists 163 00:11:35,519 --> 00:11:39,879 are conservative people, certainly when they're publishing in journals that they were using, 164 00:11:39,919 --> 00:11:45,279 even using words like intelligence consciousness, even the response papers that were saying this 165 00:11:45,399 --> 00:11:50,960 is absolute bullshit and we shouldn't even be talking about it. We're still down 166 00:11:50,080 --> 00:11:54,240 to like it was clearly worth their time to engage, and so I thought 167 00:11:54,279 --> 00:11:58,480 there must be something here, and there is there was, and it had 168 00:11:58,840 --> 00:12:03,759 just felt like this moment where there was all of these fascinating papers coming out 169 00:12:03,799 --> 00:12:09,600 about plant acoustic sensing, plant communication, you know, with chemical synthesis and 170 00:12:11,320 --> 00:12:15,039 plant memory. I mean, these are pretty provocative terms that we're making into 171 00:12:15,039 --> 00:12:18,919 peer aview papers. So it did seem like the best story of my career 172 00:12:18,960 --> 00:12:22,799 and certainly more fun than covering like wildfires and ice sheets melting really well and 173 00:12:22,960 --> 00:12:28,879 back to that now unfortually but totally are are are slow or not so slow, 174 00:12:30,159 --> 00:12:33,279 you know, degradation into climate chaos, which the oil companies have been 175 00:12:33,320 --> 00:12:39,559 so good at convincing half the population isn't even real. Yeah, so exactly, 176 00:12:39,600 --> 00:12:41,720 you're in Texas, right, Yeah, it's yeah. I mean obviously 177 00:12:41,799 --> 00:12:48,759 I'm not here for a culture or the lack thereof, but wonderful, wonderful 178 00:12:48,840 --> 00:12:52,120 you know, plant communities that here though, wonderful flora. So let's talk 179 00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:54,360 about a couple I mean, let's talk about a couple of case studies from 180 00:12:54,360 --> 00:12:58,519 the book. First off, I want to talk about this, this mimic 181 00:12:58,600 --> 00:13:01,320 vine in Chile. I mean, this, this is really fucking weird, 182 00:13:01,440 --> 00:13:07,679 man. This is like a bolkila what is it? Bolkila trifoliata, Yeah, 183 00:13:07,759 --> 00:13:11,879 trifoliolata. I felled that trifoliata through every draft of this book and did 184 00:13:11,879 --> 00:13:16,519 not realize I spelled it wrong. There's a burberous out here, that's berberous 185 00:13:16,559 --> 00:13:20,320 trifoliolata, same thing. I was like, trifolia. Yeah, anyway, 186 00:13:20,879 --> 00:13:24,120 syllable. Yeah. So anyway, So what you went did you went down 187 00:13:24,120 --> 00:13:28,840 and saw this thing in situ or what? Yeah? Exactly. I maybe 188 00:13:28,879 --> 00:13:33,200 the best reporting trip in this book was to the temperate rainforest in southern Chile 189 00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:39,279 with this researcher named anstro GIANOI who was the one to discover that this fine 190 00:13:39,320 --> 00:13:43,840 which otherwise looks incredibly plain and is very small, and it's abstolutely everywhere in 191 00:13:43,879 --> 00:13:48,200 this forest that you know it's always been there. He realized in twenty fourteen 192 00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:56,200 that it was adjusting the size and shape and color and texture and vein pattern 193 00:13:56,240 --> 00:14:01,559 of its leaves to mimic whatever, virtually whatever growing beside. Sometimes it can't 194 00:14:01,600 --> 00:14:05,279 quite hack it, if it's a really complicated looking beleef, but most of 195 00:14:05,320 --> 00:14:09,720 the time it can make itself look remarkably similar to whatever it's growing beside. 196 00:14:09,759 --> 00:14:16,000 And there's no other case of mimicry in plants where the mimicry is this plastic 197 00:14:16,080 --> 00:14:18,879 and spontaneous. I mean, you have mistletoe and various other things that have 198 00:14:18,879 --> 00:14:24,960 one to one relationships where they mimic some one other species quite well, and 199 00:14:24,519 --> 00:14:31,799 they've had this long evolutionary relationship. But bokila has now been shown to mimic 200 00:14:31,879 --> 00:14:35,240 something that was just introduced to this forest within the last two decades. So 201 00:14:35,320 --> 00:14:39,960 this is not These are not deep evolutionary relationships. There's something else going on 202 00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:43,480 here. God, that's so weird. Yeah, it's a it's a weird 203 00:14:43,600 --> 00:14:46,039 family. I forget the name of it. It's like lith Litha. I 204 00:14:46,080 --> 00:14:52,519 wasn't familiar with de Sibala. I'm not gonna remember. But but so, 205 00:14:52,559 --> 00:14:58,360 how did you so? I mean, what what are theories that that have? 206 00:14:58,679 --> 00:15:00,679 I mean, why is it doing this? Is it some of them 207 00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:05,360 to avoid presumably avoid being eaten or what is it? Totally? Yeah, 208 00:15:05,360 --> 00:15:09,080 you got it. I mean there's only one so okay, First of all, 209 00:15:09,159 --> 00:15:11,559 er Nesta is the only one who studies this. Him and his team 210 00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:15,399 only one who studies this where the vime actually grows. There's also a team 211 00:15:15,440 --> 00:15:20,240 in Bond that is studying in greenhouses, but this is a side project for 212 00:15:20,279 --> 00:15:22,039 all of these researchers. Researchers, I mean, I think something else I 213 00:15:22,159 --> 00:15:28,039 learned in the course of talking to all these botanists is like how extremely tragically 214 00:15:28,080 --> 00:15:33,519 underfunded botany is as a discipline, and they're all just doing flashier research and 215 00:15:33,559 --> 00:15:39,600 have to you know, think about Bokeila and they're off time even though this 216 00:15:39,720 --> 00:15:43,720 is like a huge thing, this is like a huge discovery. Anyway, 217 00:15:43,679 --> 00:15:48,919 what was your question? I forgot it. I mean, I just the 218 00:15:48,279 --> 00:15:54,840 reason the theories yeah, So, I mean one theory that the Bond group 219 00:15:54,960 --> 00:16:00,879 or the group that kind of like centers on these people in Germany are suggesting 220 00:16:00,919 --> 00:16:03,240 that this is evidence that plants can see, like in a very literal sense, 221 00:16:03,240 --> 00:16:07,960 that this is some form of plant vision, and they're sort of resurrecting 222 00:16:07,360 --> 00:16:11,879 this theory that was put forward by a German scientist in like the late eighteen 223 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:22,000 hundreds, I think, around them that there was some sort of primitive eye 224 00:16:22,080 --> 00:16:26,519 spot on plants, or that because they were so receptive to light and so 225 00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:32,600 sensitive to variations in light, that there must be some vision capacity. Now, 226 00:16:32,720 --> 00:16:37,399 I mean, plants don't have brains, so we do know that they 227 00:16:37,399 --> 00:16:40,759 have more photoreceptors on their leaves than we have in our own eyes, and 228 00:16:40,799 --> 00:16:45,200 they can sense they can I mean, other parts of this book talk about 229 00:16:45,200 --> 00:16:49,120 how plants can sense whether or not a plant growing beside them is a genetic 230 00:16:49,559 --> 00:16:53,080 relation by the great ant of light passing through their leaves. So we do 231 00:16:53,200 --> 00:16:57,279 know there's a lot of incredible light sensitivity. But how they would turn that 232 00:16:57,320 --> 00:17:03,640 into an image enough to mimic something growing beside them is one reason a lot 233 00:17:03,720 --> 00:17:10,440 of other researchers are dismissing this bond group's idea as plant vision, but they're 234 00:17:10,480 --> 00:17:17,680 still working on it, and they claim to have observed plants growing Bookila plants 235 00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:22,720 mimicking plastic plant leaves, which would obviously be like, there's nothing else here 236 00:17:22,759 --> 00:17:29,000 to work with besides the visual, right, But that was a pretty shoddy 237 00:17:29,039 --> 00:17:34,200 paper and there's issues with it. And then Ernesto, the researcher who's done 238 00:17:34,200 --> 00:17:41,799 there doing this work, has a more sci fi concept, which I'm more 239 00:17:41,839 --> 00:17:45,519 in favor of you, I know, I mean, no way to verify 240 00:17:45,519 --> 00:17:52,160 anything myself, but he feels that he has observed this effect to be very 241 00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:59,160 patchy, so the mimicry only happens about seventy percent of the time, a 242 00:17:59,200 --> 00:18:03,160 big chunk of time, and the vines just look like their standard shape, 243 00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:07,759 even if they're growing alongside something else. And he's like, this looks to 244 00:18:07,799 --> 00:18:15,799 me like the pattern of infection. Could this be some sort of microbial infection 245 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:21,960 or invasion so to speak, where it's not the plant itself necessarily making this 246 00:18:22,200 --> 00:18:26,400 change in its physiology, it's it's it's genetics are being co opted perhaps by 247 00:18:29,359 --> 00:18:33,359 other organisms. So he was thinking a lot about the microbiome. The idea 248 00:18:33,400 --> 00:18:40,160 that a lot of Also, something like the third of genetic expression might be 249 00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:45,599 bereated by third party microbes, not by the biological individual themselves, And so 250 00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:55,759 maybe maybe plants in general get their leaf shape from their microbial communities dictating sort 251 00:18:55,759 --> 00:19:00,000 of how that gets expressed, and that the boquila would just be more porous 252 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:06,799 than other plants the microbial communities of other plants around it. So instead of 253 00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:10,200 other plants that sort of have their gates up and just you know, work 254 00:19:10,240 --> 00:19:12,880 with their own microbes, the kila is sort of hoovering up all these other 255 00:19:12,960 --> 00:19:18,960 microbes and they're affecting their shape, which that blows my mind as a concept. 256 00:19:18,039 --> 00:19:22,000 I don't know if that is that was that a clear explanation. Yeah, 257 00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:23,680 I mean either way, either way you go at this, it's pretty 258 00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:27,319 weird. Like it's it's pretty weird. It's pretty cool, yeah, for 259 00:19:27,359 --> 00:19:30,759 sure. And it's just you know, it's one of those things you're like, 260 00:19:30,759 --> 00:19:34,720 what the Yeah, it's yeah. The families lard disabil as, I 261 00:19:34,720 --> 00:19:38,359 guess the genus name used to be Lardisa vernuncul ales, so it's in the 262 00:19:38,400 --> 00:19:45,200 Clematis order, kind of an earlier branching angiosperm order. But yeah, that's 263 00:19:45,319 --> 00:19:48,880 that. I mean, it really is. I it seems like the place 264 00:19:48,920 --> 00:19:52,599 to look would be I mean, obviously genetically if they you know, if 265 00:19:52,640 --> 00:19:56,839 you could identify the genes that are doing this or see what the genome looks 266 00:19:56,880 --> 00:20:00,119 like. I mean, hopefully hold genome sequence thing is done on this plant 267 00:20:00,160 --> 00:20:03,359 at some point, because it's I hope. So. It's just such a 268 00:20:03,599 --> 00:20:07,839 it's so bizarre. I mean seeing it in real life is so mind blowing. 269 00:20:07,880 --> 00:20:12,160 I'd seen pictures, but the actual plant doing this. I mean you 270 00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:17,000 see one Bookila plant and one branch of it could be mimicking a plant with 271 00:20:17,079 --> 00:20:21,240 leaves that are like an ace is the standard size of the bookula leaf. 272 00:20:21,640 --> 00:20:25,319 And then on the other side, a different branch of the vine is mimicking 273 00:20:25,400 --> 00:20:30,599 something that's like fifteen times larger leaf size than its standard And this is one 274 00:20:30,599 --> 00:20:36,440 individual and like branch off and mimic several different species and the plants that it's 275 00:20:36,480 --> 00:20:41,160 mimicking. I mean, are they Are they especially toxic to insects sort of 276 00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:45,119 vertebraderb of oars or is there a that's a good question. Actually, I 277 00:20:45,160 --> 00:20:49,480 don't think that's I wonder. I mean, they did put out one paper 278 00:20:49,519 --> 00:20:53,519 that showed that it this mimicry. The plant the Bookila plants that were engaging 279 00:20:53,519 --> 00:20:59,279 in mimicry had lower rates of rebivery. So yeah, like does seem like 280 00:20:59,279 --> 00:21:03,359 they're doing this to avoid being eaten? That's one possibility, but I don't 281 00:21:03,359 --> 00:21:06,079 know if they've asked that question. That's a good question. Yeah, I 282 00:21:06,119 --> 00:21:10,160 think again, I just always come down to this. I guess what I 283 00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:15,400 would you know is the thing I always come down to when I'm thinking about 284 00:21:15,440 --> 00:21:18,240 all these the subjects and the things in the book. I mean, the 285 00:21:18,720 --> 00:21:23,359 relationship that humans have with plants is so often just based on what can it 286 00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:30,400 do for us? So just anthropocentrism and is it pretty or not? Like 287 00:21:30,440 --> 00:21:33,440 that's the only thing, Like oh, what's like there's no bigger picture, 288 00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:37,759 there's nothing deeper for a lot of people because I think just the way we're 289 00:21:37,839 --> 00:21:41,440 raised. You know, it's like the plants that we see. I'man in 290 00:21:41,480 --> 00:21:44,920 New York, Like I know there's a big native plant movement or it's growing, 291 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:48,119 which is thank god, it's about time. But you know, you 292 00:21:48,160 --> 00:21:51,480 go to New York and like what plants do you see? What plants do 293 00:21:51,519 --> 00:21:55,519 you encounter? Like it's everything that's either growing in a crack in the sidewalk 294 00:21:55,599 --> 00:21:57,559 so like a ruber plant, like a weed, or it's a something that 295 00:21:57,640 --> 00:22:02,519 was planted and you know, intentionally by people. And normally in that case, 296 00:22:02,599 --> 00:22:07,279 like normally what's been planted at least up until the native plant movement has 297 00:22:07,319 --> 00:22:10,440 started to grow in the rest of the country the last five ten years. 298 00:22:10,799 --> 00:22:15,000 Normally what's planted, it's just what's whimsically attractive. Doesn't matter if it came 299 00:22:15,039 --> 00:22:18,680 from six thousand miles away. There's no context for ecology, there's no context 300 00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:22,640 for relationships that it has with soil fungi, with pollinators, with birds, 301 00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:26,400 with any of that. It's so it's so like tone deaf, you know, 302 00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:33,319 it's just again this anthropocentric worldview, this human myopia. But yeah, 303 00:22:33,880 --> 00:22:36,680 that's we've got a lot of I'm in Brooklyn and there's a lot of tree 304 00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:41,480 of Heaven that's been planted here as an ornamental and now it's the spotted lantern 305 00:22:41,559 --> 00:22:45,640 flave like loves that. Yeah, yeah, well have this tree of Heaven. 306 00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:48,839 I was I kind of I fell in love with that before I knew 307 00:22:48,839 --> 00:22:51,960 anything about botany, because it was always I used to you know, be 308 00:22:52,079 --> 00:22:55,119 in the just I mean, I was like running around Chicago paying graffiti, 309 00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:57,079 breaking into abandoned buildings when I was a kid, and that that tree would 310 00:22:57,119 --> 00:23:02,839 be like growing out of second story windows of abandoned buildings. So you know, 311 00:23:03,200 --> 00:23:06,640 yeah, it's I mean, it's it's an invasive, it's a pain 312 00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:08,279 in the ash. The wood's weak and breaks, it's kind of smells, 313 00:23:08,319 --> 00:23:11,799 the leaves kind of smell like piss. But you know, in its in 314 00:23:11,839 --> 00:23:15,519 its home ecosystem, it's probably I'd love to see how it behaves there, 315 00:23:15,759 --> 00:23:18,400 you know, like how does it behave in it's home? Does it form 316 00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:22,920 these monocultures? Does it just is it? Is it relatively controlled there? 317 00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:27,400 I'm sure it probably is. I mean that's how ecology works. But but 318 00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:33,559 on that note of you know, ecology and how plants behave in an ecosystem, 319 00:23:33,599 --> 00:23:40,640 there's a passage in here you got about you know Robin Wall Kimmera who 320 00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:44,559 wrote, uh, Braiding Sweet Grass and uh well the name of the other 321 00:23:44,559 --> 00:23:47,160 book. But anyway, there's a passage in there about how she mentions, 322 00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:52,720 you know, I always see Cynthia trichum and golden Rod or whatever it asked 323 00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:56,359 her the common name Cynthia Tricham in Golden Rod Growing Together, and she kind 324 00:23:56,359 --> 00:24:00,079 of, you know, asked mentions how she she asked, why is that? 325 00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:04,400 You know? And it's kind of dismissed by her professors or whatever when 326 00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:08,319 she's younger, and then she notices later that, I mean there's obviously a 327 00:24:08,319 --> 00:24:11,200 benefit. I mean, you know, it's in terms of attracting pollinators. 328 00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:15,279 It's you want more of that diversity. It's the same thing I tell people 329 00:24:15,319 --> 00:24:18,680 who you know, are growing one plant and how do I get pollinators? 330 00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:22,839 And you got to plant other stuff too that's going to bring them bring them 331 00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,400 in. I mean totally when you mentioned that in the book, I mean, 332 00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:27,839 I guess what was your angle, like, what was the context that 333 00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:34,400 you were talking about that in well So she mentioned wanting to ask this question, 334 00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:40,039 and uh, starting out in academia, and her academic advisor telling her 335 00:24:40,079 --> 00:24:42,440 that that was not a rigorous enough question. Her question was why do they 336 00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:47,839 look so good together? Why the yell, you know, the yellow golden 337 00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:52,720 rod and the incredibly purple aster, Like, why are they together and why 338 00:24:52,799 --> 00:24:56,640 is it so beautiful? And she was dismissed. And of course she's an 339 00:24:56,640 --> 00:25:03,720 indigenous person, she's a member of the Patawa Tommy Nation, and she couldn't 340 00:25:03,759 --> 00:25:07,200 find someone in academia to support that question, but she realized that people in 341 00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:11,480 indigenous sciences found that to be a perfectly reasonable question, and later on, 342 00:25:11,559 --> 00:25:18,720 after she got her PhD and became a professor, she returned that question and 343 00:25:18,839 --> 00:25:22,960 found that there was a reason for those things to be growing together. It 344 00:25:23,039 --> 00:25:30,640 was that be eyeballs also found those two colors together incredibly attractive, and like 345 00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:33,920 you said, it pulled in these pollinators. So there was a way to 346 00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:37,720 look at this as a rigorous scientific question that was dismissed just because the idea 347 00:25:37,759 --> 00:25:41,599 of beauty being kind of a mushy concept that was didn't belong in science. 348 00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:47,759 So I guess I brought that up for multiple reasons, but partly to suggest 349 00:25:47,839 --> 00:25:52,240 that, you know, science is one amazing way of understanding the world, 350 00:25:52,279 --> 00:25:56,160 but as it stands now in this moment in time, it's not the only 351 00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:00,400 way, and science is always changing, but has this tendency to think of 352 00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:04,400 itself in its current form as sort of like the be all and end all 353 00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:10,400 of questions that can be asked. So we are in a moment of botany 354 00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:14,400 changing of science in general. You know, every field is in a revolutionary 355 00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:18,319 moment at all times, but botany especially. I think as it gets closer 356 00:26:18,319 --> 00:26:22,079 to these questions of how plants actually experience the world and asking these plants centered 357 00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:27,559 questions, it is going through this kind of revolution that will lead to more 358 00:26:27,599 --> 00:26:33,039 interesting questions like this. And it's kind of also a nod to the fact 359 00:26:33,079 --> 00:26:34,880 that, I mean you mentioned this, that we're not raised to see plants 360 00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:41,559 as maybe more than ornamental things, rather than being this totally I mean, 361 00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,519 the primacy of plants is so totally absolute. I mean, they've made every 362 00:26:45,559 --> 00:26:52,559 single molecule of sugar that has ever sustained our own lives for starters, and 363 00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:59,839 certainly indigenous cultures have not had an issue with that human centric thinking in this 364 00:27:00,079 --> 00:27:07,880 same way and actually recognize the supremacy of plants and the fact that we are 365 00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:11,920 all descended from them, actually quite literally, rather than it being some afterthought. 366 00:27:12,079 --> 00:27:17,160 I mean, you know, the kind of hierarchy of beings is quite 367 00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:22,839 inverted in indigenous cosmologies compared to ours. Well, I mean also too, 368 00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:26,240 like our society tends to think that unless something directly benefits us, it doesn't 369 00:27:26,279 --> 00:27:29,640 have a right to exist. You know. I mean it doesn't right, 370 00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:32,640 it doesn't come out and say that, But you look at the way we 371 00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:36,519 treat every other living thing, you know, we just kind of get rid 372 00:27:36,559 --> 00:27:38,599 of it, just scrape it off the table, bulldoze at whatever, unless 373 00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:44,160 it directly benefits us. And that's kind of like again that anthropocentric thinking that 374 00:27:44,279 --> 00:27:45,440 I did with that all the time when I was first getting in the body, 375 00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:48,119 and I'd be telling people about these plants I was in love with, 376 00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:52,079 just they're so fucking cool. I've observed them in different habitats, like plants 377 00:27:52,079 --> 00:27:56,720 that only grow on serpentine soil, plants that can grow out of rock walls, 378 00:27:56,759 --> 00:28:00,960 plants that have evolved these incredibly wooly lea eaves because they grow in the 379 00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:04,480 Mohave desert out of you know, cracks and limestone cliff faces. And the 380 00:28:04,559 --> 00:28:08,000 first thing people would say, not everyone, but there'd always be that person, 381 00:28:08,079 --> 00:28:11,359 Well, what does it do? It medicinal? It gives a fuck 382 00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:15,599 if it's medicinal or not. It doesn't. It doesn't really like take a 383 00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:18,279 fucking tile and all, what do you what ailment do you have that you 384 00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:22,680 need medicine for? Like it's medicinal, it keeps me from you know, 385 00:28:22,799 --> 00:28:25,880 driving my truck into a fucking bank. I mean, that's that's what It's 386 00:28:25,920 --> 00:28:29,359 medicinal. It's I get little shots of dopamine when I'm sitting there on a 387 00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:34,319 cliff overlooking a three hundred foot deep canyon, wondering how does this thing reproduce? 388 00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:37,359 You know, how does how do seeds get established? And in this 389 00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:41,960 crack and a cliff face. It's it's just that, it's just uh. 390 00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:45,200 I mean, I'm a lot nicer about it now, but I again, 391 00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:48,240 I think it's just that like ah, like wake up, you know, 392 00:28:48,319 --> 00:28:52,240 come on. And I think it always drives me nuts when people talk about, 393 00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:56,200 especially on the American left, like the American quote progressive left is always 394 00:28:56,240 --> 00:29:00,440 obsessed with and I think it's it's better than the opposite. But they're always 395 00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:03,440 talking about like, oh, Indigenous, Indigenous, that they're a monolith whatever. 396 00:29:03,599 --> 00:29:07,759 But the thing that's great about it, the thing that I admire about 397 00:29:07,759 --> 00:29:12,119 some indigenous cultures was that that reverence for the living world, and they they 398 00:29:12,279 --> 00:29:18,640 kind of like they it's the complete opposite of this human anthropocentrism that I'm talking 399 00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:22,559 about, you know, and it's kind of believing everything's alive, and it 400 00:29:22,599 --> 00:29:26,160 wasn't put here for us. We're part of it. You know, this 401 00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:30,599 weird, deranged, you know, modern Abrahamic religion view that everything is put 402 00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:33,799 here for us. I think that is just it's like almost embarrassing that that's 403 00:29:33,799 --> 00:29:38,839 a tenet of our culture. Like that's just so selfish and unenlightened and simplistic, 404 00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:42,960 you know, versus the idea that like everything is alive, everything has 405 00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,920 a right to exist, and if you have to take life, give thanks 406 00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:51,440 for it, you know, that innate humility and respect. I wish that, 407 00:29:52,279 --> 00:29:53,720 like God, we could just stand to use more of that. And 408 00:29:53,799 --> 00:29:59,759 I think going back to that idea about you know, science, like science 409 00:29:59,759 --> 00:30:03,160 can't handle everything. I don't think it's necessarily I'm not against science. I 410 00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:06,279 just think science has to get a little bit more loose, and I think 411 00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:11,720 science has to allow more room for things like passion and beauty, you know. 412 00:30:11,799 --> 00:30:14,039 And maybe that's not the way I would have put it, like why 413 00:30:14,079 --> 00:30:18,519 do cynthio trichum and golden rod always looks so good together? But but I 414 00:30:18,799 --> 00:30:21,880 you know, I think seeing like there's something there, like when you see 415 00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:26,440 two species always growing together, when you see a certain plant species that's always 416 00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:29,880 growing the same way. You know, in like I grew where I live, 417 00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:34,759 it's a super hot area with really weird geology, calcareous like limestone based 418 00:30:34,759 --> 00:30:41,119 geology, and we get a couple of different geologic formations that generally run north 419 00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:47,319 to south, and as you move west, the age and the you know, 420 00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:51,559 name of the strata layer changes and the composition of the strata layer changes. 421 00:30:51,559 --> 00:30:53,480 I've noticed that, you know, there's certain plants, whether it's peyote 422 00:30:53,960 --> 00:31:00,160 or star cactus or something else, always grow, you know, beneath a 423 00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:03,880 certain plant, beneath a certain nurse plant, like a certain shrub, and 424 00:31:04,319 --> 00:31:07,960 generally they're associated with a certain geology. You know, Like we get these 425 00:31:08,079 --> 00:31:12,920 these pebble planes out here, like they're basically these pebble beds that were dumped 426 00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:17,519 by an ancient Rio grande. And I'll notice that, you know, star 427 00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:21,079 cactus, it is really cool, super rare cactus that kind of looks like 428 00:31:21,119 --> 00:31:26,000 a sand dollar will always be growing surrounded by these pebbles and low lying areas. 429 00:31:26,039 --> 00:31:29,839 I mean, I think, you know, and it's like, is 430 00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:32,640 there a way to concrete, you know, put a draw a box around 431 00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:36,079 that and make it a thing no, but it's something I've noticed and if 432 00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:40,799 you know, you, I think science needs to allow for for more of 433 00:31:40,839 --> 00:31:45,039 that, you know, and and instead of just and I think definitely things 434 00:31:45,039 --> 00:31:48,799 are a lot different now than probably when you know, good old Robin was 435 00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:51,400 coming up. I'm sure that you know, especially in the East Coast, 436 00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:56,200 I've noticed the scene can be a little bit more stiff. But yeah, 437 00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:59,359 I don't know. I just read that article and I was like, wait, 438 00:31:59,359 --> 00:32:00,799 why why did this guy shoot her down for that? Like that's a 439 00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:06,759 perfectly good question, Like that's a perfectly relevant thing to look at, and 440 00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,039 yeah, talk about I mean, I kind of heard this narrative over and 441 00:32:10,079 --> 00:32:15,880 over though from botanis like this botanist to discovered kin recognition in plants, Like 442 00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:22,680 the first paper on kin recognition came from this woe at McMaster University forgetting Susan 443 00:32:22,759 --> 00:32:28,400 Dudley turning and she was talking about how she was studying American Sea rocket on 444 00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:35,880 the shores of Lake Michigan's and the dunes and she was like she decided to 445 00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:37,640 do this radical departure, which was radical at the time. This was two 446 00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:43,039 thousand and seven, where she didn't want to ask anything about the fitness outcomes 447 00:32:43,039 --> 00:32:45,880 for a plant of a given thing. She just kind of wanted to see 448 00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:51,680 what the plant was up to, and she described that as like something that 449 00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:55,759 got her chided quite a bit by peers, but it did result in her 450 00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:05,000 recognizing that plants treat their kin, their genetic siblings or offspring with preference, 451 00:33:05,279 --> 00:33:07,160 at least in the case of sea rocket, in the case of almost anything 452 00:33:07,279 --> 00:33:12,640 else that people are asking these questions of, that's weird. So, I 453 00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,599 mean, that's true, the frame of questions is evolving, but there's still 454 00:33:16,599 --> 00:33:21,359 a lot of you know, there's this paper from the seventies or eighties that 455 00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:28,559 the title of the paper is scientists Resistance to Scientific Discovery or something like that. 456 00:33:28,759 --> 00:33:30,000 I think about that a lot. I think it's I think I think 457 00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:37,279 it's good to be skeptical, obviously, but it makes rigorous work absolutely totally 458 00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:44,519 huge responsibility on scientists not to mess up and give us some inaccurate stuff we 459 00:33:44,599 --> 00:33:46,160 then go and base a bunch of other stuff on. So they have a 460 00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:50,519 huge responsibility and they know what was this though, I mean, let's go 461 00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:53,200 back to that. The the kN what did you call it? Kin? 462 00:33:53,319 --> 00:33:59,400 What? Kin recognition? Yeah, that's what is what's what is this? 463 00:34:00,319 --> 00:34:02,920 Yeah, so this is a pretty new field and it's still i would say, 464 00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:07,199 in flux, but it's a field of looking at whether or not plants 465 00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:15,000 respond differently if they're planted the side non related individuals or related individuals, And 466 00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:20,000 I think the results kind of run the gamut at the moment. They don't 467 00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:23,960 always find the same effect. But there have been papers like this really cool 468 00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:30,119 paper out of China about rice, and if I remember correctly, they planted 469 00:34:30,199 --> 00:34:37,639 rice in different cultures with like the side plants that were differing degrees of relatedness 470 00:34:37,679 --> 00:34:43,280 to each other, and it was very much this very Kin effect, where 471 00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:51,039 whereas rice when planted beside stranger rice would compete the low ground grow roots very 472 00:34:51,079 --> 00:34:58,559 aggressively shade each other out when placed with their closest kin would avoid doing that 473 00:34:58,599 --> 00:35:02,119 and then would avoid doing it but to a lesser degree when placed beside effectively 474 00:35:02,199 --> 00:35:08,840 like their cousins or you know, slightly less related individuals. So this Kin 475 00:35:08,920 --> 00:35:15,920 effect seems to happen on a gradient of relatedness, which tells us that plants 476 00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:21,360 are incredibly aware in their own way of who they're growing beside and how related 477 00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:25,360 those other plants are, and it totally fits with or mostly fits with what 478 00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:30,000 we know about animal behavior and like kind of group fitness concept of the animal 479 00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:37,159 behavior where there's lots of kin recognition and kin preference display in animals, and 480 00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:43,800 it makes sense, you know, the genetic preservation. What was I guess 481 00:35:44,639 --> 00:35:47,239 one of the things that was notable to me too that you talk about in 482 00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:51,880 the book was I mean the whole in just the concept overall. I mean 483 00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:57,639 the plants being able to sense touch and sense I guess what would be a 484 00:35:57,719 --> 00:36:01,960 human equivalent of pain. I mean, what's going on there? Yeah? 485 00:36:02,199 --> 00:36:09,239 Yes, So plant touch research is fascinating and totally changes how I'm like looking 486 00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:14,039 at some of my passeplants right now, and I used to like kind of 487 00:36:14,079 --> 00:36:15,519 pet the new leaves, you know, how nice and salt they can be. 488 00:36:16,199 --> 00:36:21,920 I don't really do that anymore. But plant touch research, let's see 489 00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:23,559 where to start with this. Wait, wait, you stop? You stop 490 00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:28,039 doing that because you stop touching the leaves because you were like, oh, 491 00:36:28,119 --> 00:36:30,320 it's probably bowing them out a little bit. I mean you think that's what's 492 00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:35,119 going on or what? Yeah? Absolutely, I mean maybe like a gentle 493 00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:38,960 pet is okay, But everything we seem to know now is just that plants 494 00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:45,239 respond to repeated touch or you know aggress, you know, wounding, ripping, 495 00:36:45,519 --> 00:36:51,880 bending, with boosting their immune system and producing often the flurry of protective 496 00:36:52,039 --> 00:36:57,239 compounds that you know in some plants turn their leaves bitter, or you know, 497 00:36:58,119 --> 00:37:02,960 in a tomato plant, apparently they summon predator wasps to come like pick 498 00:37:04,039 --> 00:37:07,719 off whatever's bothering them, whatever caterpillar is eating them. So they have this 499 00:37:08,079 --> 00:37:12,400 range of ways to respond to it, but they can all be triggered by 500 00:37:13,519 --> 00:37:19,199 touch. And I went to this lab in Wisconsin where the researchers had imviewed 501 00:37:19,199 --> 00:37:30,400 plants with fluorescent proteins from jellyfish gluping green fluorescent proteins and bound them to calcium 502 00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:37,760 in the cells, and calcium in this case they are assuming is a kind 503 00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:43,440 of proxy for electricity moving through the cell. And then so I went to 504 00:37:43,519 --> 00:37:46,519 this dark microscope lab and they kind of meat tweezers and told me to like 505 00:37:46,599 --> 00:37:52,880 pinch this rabidopsis plant that had these fluorescent green proteins in them, and I 506 00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:58,559 did that, and you could just see this kind of green glow emanating out 507 00:37:58,599 --> 00:38:02,920 from the place where I them and traveling down the mid rib of the leaf 508 00:38:04,039 --> 00:38:07,039 and then making its way throughout the vein system of the rest of the plant 509 00:38:07,199 --> 00:38:12,679 in like two minutes, which is incredibly fast. The plants, and their 510 00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:19,320 hypothesis is basically that there's electrical signaling going on inside the plant that me you 511 00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:24,039 know, essentially assaulting of these tweezers was triggering a full plant signaling cascade, 512 00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:32,559 and the plant would then respond to that with defensive compounds, business immune system 513 00:38:32,679 --> 00:38:36,800 and all of that. So it's a very little thing they're they're experiencing. 514 00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:38,239 Touch. I'll buy that, I mean, I will, you know, 515 00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:42,800 I'll be There was a friend, a friend of mine who's a my collogist, 516 00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:45,320 and we'd be out seeing so he's in the plants now too, but 517 00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:51,480 his primary interest is is mushrooms. And say we'd be out and you'd like 518 00:38:51,559 --> 00:38:53,159 pick something, you'd pick a plant and'd be like, don't fucking don't do 519 00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:57,000 that, you know, just leave it, And I could tell you you 520 00:38:57,000 --> 00:38:59,079 get kind of irritated with me, and I'm like, all right, man, 521 00:38:59,119 --> 00:39:00,239 whatever, I just there's don't need to you know, if you're trying 522 00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:05,000 to photograph, just get closer. Like my kid is, I mean, 523 00:39:05,039 --> 00:39:07,559 my whole yard is just dense. You know, yeah, I have to 524 00:39:07,639 --> 00:39:10,679 give it a haircut. That's how I I don't mow a lawn. I'd 525 00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:15,360 like give my yard a haircut so I can walk through it with with hedgers. 526 00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:16,719 But my kid will always be like picking stuff off. I'm like, 527 00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:20,079 leave it alone, leave it alone. Pick up the rocks, don't touch 528 00:39:20,079 --> 00:39:22,840 that. You can pick up the bugs, don't squish them, but don't 529 00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:24,880 stop picking stuff off the plants. They don't like it. You know, 530 00:39:25,039 --> 00:39:28,599 I don't give a shit. It's fine. I mean, with all the 531 00:39:28,639 --> 00:39:30,440 silly shit people believe. I mean, you know, like a human was 532 00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:36,000 created from a fucking rib. I'm fine believing that. You know, it's 533 00:39:36,079 --> 00:39:37,599 it does something for me. In other words, you know, it's a 534 00:39:37,639 --> 00:39:42,159 selfish thing. It's like, if I choose to believe that interacting with these 535 00:39:42,199 --> 00:39:44,559 things, they can feel it whatever, it does something for me. Now, 536 00:39:44,599 --> 00:39:47,360 I mean it's of course a little tongue in cheek, but still no, 537 00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,280 I mean, I think it's pretty backed up at this point. I 538 00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:52,840 mean, there's no pain receptors. I want to be obviously very clear, 539 00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:57,039 not suggesting plants or experiencing pain in the way that that would be a human 540 00:39:57,119 --> 00:40:00,679 way to think about it. Yes, right, but there's the obviously feel 541 00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:04,000 I mean, that's the thing with all this stuff too that gets me. 542 00:40:04,039 --> 00:40:06,239 It's like, well, yeah, duh, Like what kind of fucking idiot 543 00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:08,599 doesn't think that. I mean, they're living, they're living things. They're 544 00:40:08,679 --> 00:40:15,760 living self copying things that you know, interact with all these other organisms. 545 00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:19,000 Like, how can you think that they're just this It just seems like such 546 00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:24,079 a like I don't know, like basic idea tom me, Like, it's 547 00:40:24,119 --> 00:40:28,840 just that it seems so ridiculous to think that they're you know, kind of 548 00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:30,800 brain deed to think that. It seems braineded to think that there wouldn't be 549 00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:37,920 any kind of reaction like that. I mean another go ahead, you go 550 00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:39,039 ahead, No, I mean another way to think about it, or the 551 00:40:39,079 --> 00:40:43,519 way that is useful has been useful to me, is like, if there's 552 00:40:43,599 --> 00:40:51,239 information in an environment through evolutionary through selection, like an organism is going to 553 00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:54,159 figure out how to use that information a lot at the time. And you 554 00:40:54,199 --> 00:40:58,760 know, touch is a huge source of information, so is who you're growing 555 00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:02,159 beside, or sound or any of these other things were now understanding plants are 556 00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:08,079 reactive to It just makes evolutionary sense. That they would find a way to 557 00:41:08,119 --> 00:41:13,440 exploit that, and so did you see I mean with the people you talk 558 00:41:13,559 --> 00:41:17,760 to, did you see was there like a struggle between trying to maintain like 559 00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:22,840 a scientific straight face versus was there like an inner struggle between trying to maintain 560 00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:29,000 a scientific straight face and also expressing you know, that other side where they're 561 00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:30,800 like, yeah, I kind of it's kind of you know, it's it's 562 00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:35,679 spooky to the point that I now kind of have a different way of looking 563 00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:39,400 at these things, like did you see you know, researchers scientists like trying 564 00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:44,679 to balance that out or what for sure? Definitely, yeah, I mean 565 00:41:44,679 --> 00:41:46,880 I think the biggest thing that produced that kind of effect you're talking about in 566 00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:53,800 researchers when I spoke to them was this idea that how does a plant integrate 567 00:41:53,960 --> 00:42:00,360 information throughout its body without a brain? That's the part that becomes like uki, 568 00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:02,440 like what's going on here? Thing? I think for researchers, it's 569 00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:08,840 like they are finding all this incredible receptivity and plastic responses and spontaneous, you 570 00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:15,679 know, multi variable juggling the plants are doing all the time in decision making 571 00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:21,400 and things like that, and still the mechanical basis for that within something that 572 00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:25,519 doesn't have the centralized processing center is pretty much a total mystery. We can 573 00:42:25,599 --> 00:42:30,400 understand how like local effects happen, like how one thing happens within a leaf 574 00:42:30,559 --> 00:42:34,440 or within a branch, but when a whole plant body responds to something. 575 00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,800 I mean, I had this moment of you know, I spent so long 576 00:42:38,079 --> 00:42:45,639 just thinking about this as a layperson and thinking about ideas of network theory, 577 00:42:45,679 --> 00:42:50,440 network intelligence kind of you know, you mentioned to my college's friend, what 578 00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:55,960 we know about my celium now having this kind of diffuse yet integrated processing ability, 579 00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:02,559 And I just remember going up to long researcher in this long conversation she's 580 00:43:02,599 --> 00:43:06,480 at the University of Washington. At the very end, I asked her she 581 00:43:06,679 --> 00:43:09,599 thought that it might be possible that the whole plant was something like a brain, 582 00:43:09,639 --> 00:43:14,320 which was something that I had just become fixated on as an idea in 583 00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:19,079 thinking about this, and she was very much like, yeah, but like 584 00:43:19,159 --> 00:43:23,440 I can't really talk about that, yeah, exactly know how to you know, 585 00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:27,079 I got to get a couple of bloody Mary's to me, you know 586 00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:30,880 I could have I got to like get a cup. I mean, that's 587 00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:34,639 what I would imagine too, because I think, I mean honestly, yeah, 588 00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:37,440 like form my point, like I want to believe this now, like 589 00:43:37,519 --> 00:43:40,280 I'm not this by this. I mean I want to believe. I mean, 590 00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:43,760 I have such an innate respect for them any way, And my whole 591 00:43:44,159 --> 00:43:47,159 learning what I've learned the last fifteen years and seeing what I've seen my whole 592 00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:52,079 world has changed. My whole outlook on the world has changed. It's made 593 00:43:52,119 --> 00:43:58,599 me way more hopeful. It's it's made my perspective on human beings much different 594 00:43:58,679 --> 00:44:01,920 than I've been able to of Like, you know, I guess not, 595 00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,719 I guess cut them a little bit more slack. I'm like, yeah, 596 00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:08,719 it's just a it's just a monkey, like a primate that hasn't you know 597 00:44:09,119 --> 00:44:15,280 really uh that somehow got lost like this weird accident happened at some point, 598 00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:17,679 and you know, we got off the rails and we're kind of, uh, 599 00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:21,880 we're kind of lost in the dark here, and we forgot where we 600 00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,000 came from, and you know, and and and just I mean everywhere I 601 00:44:25,079 --> 00:44:29,000 go, I'm looking at what's growing there, I'm paying attention to it. 602 00:44:29,039 --> 00:44:34,519 I mean, it's so it's definitely changed things for me. But I mean 603 00:44:34,559 --> 00:44:37,039 there's also a part where I'm like, yeah, I want to know what's 604 00:44:37,079 --> 00:44:39,800 going on with this, Like I can't the way some people must view things, 605 00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:45,000 especially where I live in Texas. I mean, where they just bulldoze, 606 00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:47,519 you know, some of the most incredible habitat I've ever seen without a 607 00:44:47,519 --> 00:44:51,119 second thought. I mean they bulldoze land just to clear it. I'm like, 608 00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:53,679 what does it take to do that? To have that kind of mentality, 609 00:44:53,760 --> 00:45:00,000 Like you really have to be completely tone def and ignorant to everything that's 610 00:45:00,039 --> 00:45:04,159 in front of you, Like you have to just think that these things are 611 00:45:04,199 --> 00:45:07,280 not there, that they're just you know, like a plant is just a 612 00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:09,400 fire hydrant basically, you know, or like a cinder block, like it's 613 00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:13,960 the same thing. You know. It's that to me is really weird. 614 00:45:14,159 --> 00:45:19,480 But I think that's how a lot of people still think. Yeah, I 615 00:45:19,519 --> 00:45:22,920 don't know that. I'm so glad. I mean, I just like that 616 00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:27,719 this has made you more forgiving of people because they're just monkeys led astray. 617 00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:30,639 That's kind of amazing. I mean, yeah, out so much thinking about 618 00:45:30,679 --> 00:45:36,199 what constitutes intelligence, you know, and how we find intelligence in a plant. 619 00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:39,320 It's like when you look at people and it's like so much human behavior 620 00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:45,119 so deeply unintelligent ultimately, for you know, if we're defining intelligence as the 621 00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:47,719 capacity to make good decisions for your future, well, so much of so 622 00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:52,239 much of human behavior is just reactions to our neurochemistry. And I think that 623 00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:58,000 the more I learned about you know, evolutionary biology and natural selection and ecology 624 00:45:58,079 --> 00:46:01,159 and everything. You know, the more I learned about all that, the 625 00:46:01,159 --> 00:46:06,639 more it began to shape how I think if people definitely you know, I 626 00:46:06,639 --> 00:46:08,039 mean, they still pissed me off. I still think we're kind of in 627 00:46:08,079 --> 00:46:10,920 a death cult that's headed for the presipice of a cliff. The question for 628 00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:15,760 me is are we going to change our behavior or are we gonna just is 629 00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:17,880 natural selection just going to do what it does, you know? And I 630 00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:22,800 think that would be a shame if we let natural selection do what it does, 631 00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:25,360 because we've got the potential to be so much more. But again, 632 00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:29,239 I think there's a void of leadership at the top, and you know, 633 00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:34,920 we're there's social species, then I think we're inherently conformist. We can snap 634 00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:37,239 out of that, of course, with culture, like we've got the power 635 00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:42,440 to transcend these animal instincts. But you know, I was talking to a 636 00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:45,400 friend of mine about this about men. She's like staunch feminists, like always 637 00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:47,159 talks about how she hates men and shit, and I'm like, well, 638 00:46:47,199 --> 00:46:51,280 I kind of hate everybody, but yeah, men are definitely the worse for 639 00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:52,039 it. And I mentioned something. I'm like, well, you know, 640 00:46:52,079 --> 00:46:54,679 you look at like male chimps. It's the same thing, Like there's just 641 00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:59,480 this stupid neurochemistry that causes them to behave in these ways. And she's like, 642 00:46:59,519 --> 00:47:02,599 you're excusing their behavior. I'm like, I'm fucking not excusing their behavior, 643 00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:08,320 complete opposite. I'm saying this is it's like it's so pathetic that you 644 00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:14,599 know it needs to be transcended. But it's definitely there's a reasoning there that 645 00:47:14,639 --> 00:47:16,280 I understand that it does. I mean, it's not surprising to me. 646 00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:19,800 I mean, you look at other primates, it's the same thing. I'm 647 00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:22,320 certainly not excusing it, but anyway, I yeah, I don't know. 648 00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:25,960 I think just looking at looking at at all this stuff is so important, 649 00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:29,360 and I think that's why I get so sad when I'm like, how many 650 00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:35,800 people are are you know, not given the chance to experience quote nature, 651 00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:40,760 you know, or other living things or like an ecosystem and intact ecosystem and 652 00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:45,119 things like that. Yeah, it just takes a little bit of curiosity. 653 00:47:45,639 --> 00:47:50,000 It all goes a really long way. Yeah, okay, Well so okay, 654 00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,800 Well moving on to I want to talk about orchids too, because this 655 00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:55,960 is something I mean, I've been aware of when I went to Western Australia 656 00:47:55,960 --> 00:48:00,719 in twenty nineteen and a friend of mine is a researcher who's worked on a 657 00:48:00,760 --> 00:48:05,079 lot of the terrestrial orchids there, and as you know, and as you 658 00:48:05,079 --> 00:48:07,880 talk about in the book, a lot of them have really just I mean 659 00:48:07,679 --> 00:48:15,880 like uncanny abilities to uh trick pollinators, trick insects into doing their their bidding 660 00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:22,280 form into doing pollination form. And I guess for me, I mean when 661 00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:23,920 you when you talk about this in the book, like the the what really 662 00:48:23,960 --> 00:48:28,440 spooked me when I first learned about this, you know, five or six 663 00:48:28,519 --> 00:48:35,599 years ago, was the ability to mimic pheromones. That to me is when 664 00:48:35,599 --> 00:48:38,599 you look at the base, how it starts, it's you know, it's 665 00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:44,159 of course can be explained by natural selection. But yeah, I guess what 666 00:48:44,199 --> 00:48:46,119 do you have to say about this, Like some of the orchids using sexual 667 00:48:46,159 --> 00:48:52,159 deception, tricking, tricking mail insects into pollinating them, that kind of thing. 668 00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:57,000 I love thinking about this because it, you know, it's a case 669 00:48:57,039 --> 00:49:00,519 of a plant manipulating an animal to do the bidding, which totally inverts the 670 00:49:00,559 --> 00:49:05,480 way we ever think about this. And they're effectively using insects. These orchids 671 00:49:05,519 --> 00:49:07,840 are using insects as tools in a way to get themselves pollinated, which, 672 00:49:08,679 --> 00:49:12,639 you know, if anything is a judge of intelligence in a way we like 673 00:49:12,679 --> 00:49:16,880 to judge other species, tool used this big one. But so I was 674 00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:22,960 writing a bit about this the work of this researcher named broad people in Australia, 675 00:49:22,039 --> 00:49:27,920 and he was looking at the group of sexually deceptive orchids that make these 676 00:49:28,159 --> 00:49:32,119 semul chemicals to like you said, trick wasps into having sex with them. 677 00:49:32,519 --> 00:49:37,639 And they also make this bulb at the tip of or some species make this 678 00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:43,800 bold at the tip of one of their like this augmented pedal that is basically 679 00:49:43,840 --> 00:49:47,679 the size and shape and color of a female wasp. And the wasp, 680 00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:52,599 the male wasp, you know, is looking around for females and heat which 681 00:49:52,639 --> 00:49:55,880 sort of sit on flowers anyway, and they're flightless, and what happens is 682 00:49:55,920 --> 00:50:00,239 the male comes and kind of bear hugs the female and flies off. They 683 00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:06,320 copulate. He puts her down somewhere. So the last comes, attracted by 684 00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:10,440 both the bulb and the semo chemical, and hugs this little bulb and they 685 00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:15,000 flop around together until he smacks into the middle of the orchid and network glues 686 00:50:15,039 --> 00:50:19,800 its little pollen packet onto the back of the wasp, and the wasp goes 687 00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:24,480 often tries and does this again. But what was so amazing is that, 688 00:50:24,599 --> 00:50:30,159 and this is only like twenty twenty or something, he assumed that a lot 689 00:50:30,199 --> 00:50:35,559 of the semio chemicals, a lot of these compounds would be kind of new 690 00:50:35,599 --> 00:50:40,199 mixtures of floral compounds they already knew about. Almost all of them were entirely 691 00:50:40,239 --> 00:50:51,480 new to science. And the ratios were incredibly subtle of compounds like the cocktails 692 00:50:51,519 --> 00:50:59,519 were complex in other words, and they were incredibly close to female wasp pheromones. 693 00:51:00,519 --> 00:51:05,440 And this part really gets me. They seem to slightly under perfect the 694 00:51:05,519 --> 00:51:10,440 cocktail so that they presumably don't out compete the actual female wasps because they still 695 00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:15,119 want these wasps around to act as they're pollinators. They don't want to out 696 00:51:15,119 --> 00:51:20,239 compete them sexually wasps. It's like, yeah, that's God. It is 697 00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:23,800 like the it's it's what I using a human analogy. It's like with like 698 00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:29,079 internet porn and you know everyone having a phone in their pocket like our you 699 00:51:29,119 --> 00:51:35,119 know what's gonna does that just stop people from procreating? It's kind of God, 700 00:51:35,159 --> 00:51:37,920 that's yeah, it's it's pretty uh, it's pretty hilarious. Yes, 701 00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:39,840 some of these things. I mean, that's what I think. That's what 702 00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:44,119 blew my mind is because I mean looking at them, you could see, 703 00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:46,840 first off, no one really knows what seerfid flies are or some of these 704 00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:53,119 wasps or or it wasn't serifid flies thinted wasps, excuse me, And so 705 00:51:53,199 --> 00:51:57,639 they don't see you see this weird labellum, which is that modified pedal on 706 00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:00,559 some of these orchids, and you're like, that doesn't how does it look 707 00:52:00,559 --> 00:52:02,280 like an insect? But then when you actually see the insect, you're like, 708 00:52:02,320 --> 00:52:05,960 oh, I get it. They really does look like it. I 709 00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:08,360 mean in some of these structures, the cali as they're called the studs, 710 00:52:08,840 --> 00:52:13,599 and like a genus like Caladena is you know, it looks really weird. 711 00:52:13,599 --> 00:52:15,679 It's like why would it go to the trouble of I mean, something's got 712 00:52:15,719 --> 00:52:20,320 to be keeping this around. What's the adaptive benefit? And having these multiple 713 00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:24,719 studs lined up that you know, dark black studs that come off that labellum. 714 00:52:25,199 --> 00:52:30,519 But but then putting the pheromone out there too is like Jesus man, 715 00:52:30,599 --> 00:52:32,360 like, okay, this is this is pretty weird. I mean this, 716 00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:37,880 you know, how does how the hell does that evolve? And it's it's 717 00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:44,920 across numerous you know, different taxa, like numerous species drachea, the hammer 718 00:52:45,039 --> 00:52:49,159 orchids, the the bearded some of the bearded orchids. I mean a lot 719 00:52:49,159 --> 00:52:52,960 of them do this. It's so weird, Like the Australian orchids are so 720 00:52:53,159 --> 00:52:59,760 just so they're spooky man. There. That's you know a lot of it's 721 00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:04,960 yeah, yeah, I mean it's a reminder also of how much longer they've 722 00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:10,320 just been around and been augmenting themselves over time. I mean, you know, 723 00:53:12,039 --> 00:53:16,719 it's millions of years of very finely tuned relationships, yeah, produce these 724 00:53:16,719 --> 00:53:21,039 things, which is I mean, it's beyond my comprehension to you can imagine 725 00:53:21,039 --> 00:53:23,880 that timescale. I mean that that's the other thing I think it's beyond most 726 00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:29,320 people's ability to imagine that timescale or that comprehension. That's why you know, 727 00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:35,920 people have such a hard time understand. I mean when you see like a 728 00:53:36,119 --> 00:53:39,199 I when you see like a clickbait post on social media about a plant mimicking 729 00:53:39,239 --> 00:53:44,519 a rock or a plant using electrical signals to attract a certain b you know, 730 00:53:44,519 --> 00:53:45,960 you always see in the comments that like, oh, it's proof that 731 00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:49,800 there's a god. It's no, it's not. It's proof that you have 732 00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:54,400 no concept of geologic time and how natural selection works and the many you know, 733 00:53:54,840 --> 00:54:00,119 in sexual genetic recombination and all this stuff. I mean, it's we 734 00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:04,239 think our lives are so short, and we think on that scale and we 735 00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:07,559 use that as our gauge for everything. You can't do that. Yeah, 736 00:54:07,599 --> 00:54:13,000 you would not believe how many emails I've gotten of people saying, you really 737 00:54:13,079 --> 00:54:17,079 think this is evolution? I think again really reading this, Yeah, I 738 00:54:17,119 --> 00:54:22,079 mean, because you read some of these things and it feels so inconceivable to 739 00:54:22,199 --> 00:54:28,000 our little human brains. As you said, but yes, it's I don't 740 00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:34,599 know how to go. Yeah, it's speaking of little human brains. I 741 00:54:34,599 --> 00:54:37,880 mean, I think that is not knocking anybody who's religious too much. But 742 00:54:38,199 --> 00:54:42,159 still, I mean, I'm religious, just not about the same things they 743 00:54:42,159 --> 00:54:46,280 are. They are necessarily you know, or I'm spiritual as they say. 744 00:54:49,159 --> 00:54:51,800 Yeah, it's I don't know. That's always so frustrating for me because natural 745 00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:53,719 selection and evolution are so cool, but you've got to, you know, 746 00:54:54,039 --> 00:54:57,679 broaden your horizons so much. And I think, you know, all the 747 00:54:58,199 --> 00:55:00,760 any evolutionary biologist obviously he's going to say, we don't have all the answers. 748 00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:02,639 It's yeah, it's a theory, but it's not, you know, 749 00:55:02,639 --> 00:55:06,920 we don't. Absolutely there's a lot we don't know. I mean, the 750 00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:09,840 booquila vine is a huge example of that. We have no idea how something 751 00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:14,280 could mimic, how a plant could spontaneous mnemic like that. Yeah, that's 752 00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:16,880 pretty wordly. Well this orchid thing, I mean, I love how they're 753 00:55:16,880 --> 00:55:22,440 called sexually deceptive orchids, and yet does the term deception even apply here? 754 00:55:22,599 --> 00:55:29,519 If they're slightly underperfecting the pheromone and lots also have a really good eyesight. 755 00:55:30,079 --> 00:55:34,360 So this like little black bowl at the end of a pedal, Like, 756 00:55:35,119 --> 00:55:37,719 is that really tricking them? Like maybe they are in on it? This 757 00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:40,440 like we don't even know if the nature of the relationship is. Yeah, 758 00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:45,199 yeah, that was an interesting thing I read too. I mean I when 759 00:55:45,199 --> 00:55:47,559 I was reading this, it was an interesting thing that struck me, was 760 00:55:47,639 --> 00:55:51,960 like, yeah, maybe you know, is it really as simple as I 761 00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:54,719 mean, is it as simple as it's just a it's just straight trickery, 762 00:55:54,800 --> 00:56:00,159 Like are the insects kind of in on it too? Is there something thing 763 00:56:00,199 --> 00:56:04,920 else going on here? Is there? You know? It's it's really cool. 764 00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:08,519 I think the way we think about paras plant parasitic relationships too, or 765 00:56:08,559 --> 00:56:13,840 like micoheterotrophs, like plants that steal from Michael Riseel fungi in the ground. 766 00:56:13,880 --> 00:56:17,239 There was a paper I read, I forget I think it was just on 767 00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:21,559 ghost pipe. I think it was just on monotropia. But but they mentioned, 768 00:56:21,599 --> 00:56:23,400 like, you know, you can't you can't think of it as just 769 00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:29,000 the plants is necessarily stealing from the fungus, Like there might be something else 770 00:56:29,039 --> 00:56:32,360 going on that benefits the fungus. Uh, so that it's maybe a little 771 00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:37,320 bit more of a mutualism that we just don't understand, you know, right, 772 00:56:37,079 --> 00:56:40,280 So again it's all just you gotta we gotta, we gotta snap out 773 00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:45,000 of this. We have to get loose with our the ways of thinking about 774 00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:49,280 these things and the analogies we make, you know, instead of just trying 775 00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:54,079 to think from this this anthropocentric viewpoint. Okay, so what I guess? 776 00:56:54,119 --> 00:56:58,320 Yeah? What other? What other? Is there anything else in the book 777 00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:00,719 you'd like to talk about, like other case studies? Is that really? 778 00:57:00,199 --> 00:57:05,480 Like? What was your favorite part of writing this? Like your favorite example? 779 00:57:06,599 --> 00:57:10,559 Oh? God, I do I have a favorite? There's a few. 780 00:57:13,519 --> 00:57:16,599 Well, I like thinking about how plants use sound. I think that 781 00:57:16,599 --> 00:57:21,039 that's an interesting one, especially because there was so much controversy around this whole 782 00:57:21,039 --> 00:57:23,559 idea that plants could enjoy classical music more than rock and roll or whatever in 783 00:57:23,599 --> 00:57:30,960 the seventies, which has no ecological relevance obviously, And like, actually, 784 00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:35,159 the question I get asked most Optimate book events is whether or not it's good 785 00:57:35,159 --> 00:57:37,880 for your plants to talk to them? And I think my answer is always 786 00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:44,639 that there they are actually receiving sound as a physical, physical stimulus. I 787 00:57:44,639 --> 00:57:46,639 mean, it's vibration. It's just vibration to a plant. But there's no 788 00:57:46,679 --> 00:57:52,840 reason that they would have had any capacity to you know, understand speech or 789 00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:57,559 anything that showed up so late in their evolutionary history. I mean, people 790 00:57:57,599 --> 00:58:00,119 talking to their plants has been like, I don't know, I think it's 791 00:58:00,199 --> 00:58:04,199 good for people. I think it's good for the humans to talk to It's 792 00:58:04,199 --> 00:58:07,239 good for me to talk to them, you know, and you're probably giving 793 00:58:07,400 --> 00:58:10,039 better care to a plant if you're right that interested that you're talking to it's 794 00:58:10,039 --> 00:58:15,639 probably good for them on that level. Yeah, But thinking about sound and 795 00:58:15,719 --> 00:58:22,039 vibration in a plant's life is super interesting to me. There's this one case 796 00:58:22,239 --> 00:58:30,559 of researchers clipping guitar pickups to arabadosas and tuning them to the same frequency as 797 00:58:30,639 --> 00:58:34,679 a caterpillar chewing and them sort of responding in time. I mean, I 798 00:58:34,679 --> 00:58:38,679 think it was. The setup is actually they put real catapult, They put 799 00:58:38,719 --> 00:58:44,559 real caterpillars on the arabadopsas, let them lunch a little while, then took 800 00:58:44,559 --> 00:58:49,039 them off, and then you know, plant can respond in the moment, 801 00:58:49,159 --> 00:58:52,119 or they can be primed to respond more forcefully at the second time something like 802 00:58:52,119 --> 00:58:58,159 this happens. So then they put these little guitar pickups and played the frequency 803 00:58:58,239 --> 00:59:02,440 of the caterpillars chewing through them, and that vibrated the leaf like one ten 804 00:59:02,559 --> 00:59:07,880 thousandth of an inch hut and down, and the leaf responded as though it 805 00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:13,920 had been primed and produced all these defensive compounds as it was being eaten by 806 00:59:14,039 --> 00:59:21,440 catapults. And they didn't respond when they played the frequency of a different insect 807 00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:27,119 thing their leaf hopper meeting sounds that actually sounded very similar. I had this 808 00:59:27,199 --> 00:59:31,599 for the same frequency but had a different rhythmicity. And leaf hoppers don't eat 809 00:59:31,599 --> 00:59:37,760 your rabbit opses, so the rabbit apps is very clearly responding only to an 810 00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:42,360 actual threat, an actual predator at chewing, which I thought was so cool. 811 00:59:42,639 --> 00:59:45,360 Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. But I mean that's you know, 812 00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:50,000 I've seen it with you know certain God, there's an Iris. I always 813 00:59:50,000 --> 00:59:53,159 talk about it. I just I just put it in my book Babyana Cuneata 814 00:59:53,239 --> 00:59:58,239 and then Babyana Flabella folio. It's to Iris. They're in the Iris family 815 00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:02,360 or they see their front so that Africa and they they produce leaves that and 816 01:00:02,400 --> 01:00:07,000 there's not been a paper on this, so it's not again it's gotta be 817 01:00:07,119 --> 01:00:09,480 someone's got to do it. Hopefully someone tackles this, but it's one of 818 01:00:09,519 --> 01:00:14,280 those things. They're in South Africa. You talk to any South African botanists 819 01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:16,039 about it, and you're like, these things are mimicking leaves that have already 820 01:00:16,039 --> 01:00:20,800 been chewing on. It's it's the most bizarre thing. And they're like, 821 01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:22,719 oh, yeah, that's what they do. That's what they're doing, and 822 01:00:22,760 --> 01:00:24,679 it's you know, and you go out there. I remember, I guess 823 01:00:24,719 --> 01:00:28,159 I pissed off some old guy on Twitter because I put it out. I 824 01:00:28,199 --> 01:00:30,599 put I showed photos of them and explained, you know, just said they're, 825 01:00:30,639 --> 01:00:32,760 yeah, they're mimicking leaves that have been not on. He's like, 826 01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:36,840 you can't prove that. There's I couldn't find any paper on this. So 827 01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:38,840 I'm like, all right, okay, it's just something every botan is down 828 01:00:38,840 --> 01:00:43,239 there talks about. You could clearly see. I mean, there's no other 829 01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:46,199 reason. And all the other species of Bobbyana, I mean Bobbyana's I don't 830 01:00:46,239 --> 01:00:50,760 know how many you know species are in this genus, but you know, 831 01:00:50,760 --> 01:00:53,800 their flowers are below their flowers are kind of basal. It's like a rosette 832 01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:59,119 of leaves, and some of them are really spine tips, like they've got 833 01:00:59,119 --> 01:01:02,440 this defensive mech because they've been under such selective pressure, you know, over 834 01:01:02,519 --> 01:01:09,000 eons by herbivores by you know, ungulates and whatever in South Africa, and 835 01:01:09,039 --> 01:01:14,119 so there's a you know, other Bobbyana species have these these spiny leaves, 836 01:01:14,159 --> 01:01:16,079 spiny stiff leaves, and the flowers are just below the leaves so they can't 837 01:01:16,079 --> 01:01:21,519 get noaed off. But this one Flabella folio and Cuneiana they produce these there 838 01:01:21,719 --> 01:01:23,880 looks like a fan shape, like almost like a palm, like it's trunkate. 839 01:01:23,920 --> 01:01:28,000 It's just flat topped, you know, it goes shoots up two or 840 01:01:28,000 --> 01:01:30,719 three inches above the ground and then looks like it's not off. And in 841 01:01:30,840 --> 01:01:37,800 the along the margin of that that trunkate in that that flat end, it's 842 01:01:37,840 --> 01:01:40,159 it like browns a little bit too, like it's mimicking a leaf that's been 843 01:01:40,159 --> 01:01:45,199 eaten. That's obviously the benefit of that was I think herbivores obviously, No, 844 01:01:45,480 --> 01:01:47,920 I mean fresh. If you've got a chance to eat fresh tissue and 845 01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:52,639 something that's already been chewed on, the chewed tissue is probably gonna have already 846 01:01:52,800 --> 01:01:59,199 responded and produced alkaloids or whatever bitter compounds in response to having been eaten, 847 01:01:59,519 --> 01:02:01,239 and the fresh tissue is going to be fresh, you know, green, 848 01:02:01,920 --> 01:02:07,239 not destroyed yet. And also will probably taste a little bit better. Wow, 849 01:02:07,280 --> 01:02:09,800 that's just amazing. Yeah, it's nuts. I saw when I noticed 850 01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:12,880 that, I was like, how is this not? Like? Why is 851 01:02:12,960 --> 01:02:15,480 no one? Why have not I not heard about this anymore? Like this 852 01:02:15,519 --> 01:02:19,320 seems like such a it's so it's so obvious what it's doing, and it 853 01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:22,400 seems like such an easy clickbait article for someone to write. You know, 854 01:02:22,519 --> 01:02:28,159 I'm totally And do you know about that whole group of plants that not remembering 855 01:02:28,239 --> 01:02:32,000 what does this, but produces leaves that appear as though they've been shipped on 856 01:02:32,039 --> 01:02:37,880 by birds. Maybe it's like white spots that are like kind of splattered and 857 01:02:37,920 --> 01:02:44,480 in a random pattern. And that's because you know, animals aren't going to 858 01:02:44,559 --> 01:02:47,679 eat something that's been defecated. Oh god, I can't find that there's a 859 01:02:49,519 --> 01:02:52,360 it might be fitting note in here somewhere, but do you remember reading about 860 01:02:52,400 --> 01:02:58,840 that? Yeah, just incredible. There's another there's another group of plants making 861 01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:04,800 me remember all this, like protective mimicry that produces leaves that have spots that 862 01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:08,239 are two D but look three D as though they're orange spheres, So they're 863 01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:14,079 made to look exactly like a plant had already over positive like already put its 864 01:03:14,239 --> 01:03:16,280 eggs. Oh yeah, it's made to look like an insect is already the 865 01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:21,800 positive eggs in that spot, so that other flies or whatever looking for a 866 01:03:21,800 --> 01:03:24,679 place to put their insects don't put them there. Yeah, it's already embossed. 867 01:03:24,719 --> 01:03:28,440 I've seen that in Streptanthus, and I think I've seen that in passive 868 01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:30,239 floor it too. Yeah. It's weird, and it's one of those things 869 01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:34,719 you're like, why the hell would you do this? Like this is there's 870 01:03:34,760 --> 01:03:36,559 got to be something going on, Like, you know, it's one of 871 01:03:36,559 --> 01:03:38,719 those things like it doesn't make any sense to go to this trouble, you 872 01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:43,519 know, to expend calories on this for this whatever's coding for this, whatever 873 01:03:43,679 --> 01:03:45,679 genes are coding for this, to stick around unless there's a benefit in it, 874 01:03:45,719 --> 01:03:50,639 you know, right. Yeah, leaf that mimics bird poop. Let 875 01:03:50,639 --> 01:03:52,039 me see, did you get a I'm so curious about this now. I've 876 01:03:52,039 --> 01:03:58,400 seen insects that mimic bird shit, but uh, yeah, I don't know 877 01:03:58,920 --> 01:04:02,280 that mimics the mimic grease stuff drives me nuts. There's another plant called gravel 878 01:04:02,320 --> 01:04:08,639 ghost Atracosceris platophyla that grows in the Mojave desert that has leaves that are all 879 01:04:08,679 --> 01:04:14,280 speckled and they kind of grow completely almost oppressed to the ground. It's got 880 01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:17,239 a leaf rosette, and then it sends up a inflorescence. It's like two 881 01:04:17,360 --> 01:04:21,199 or three feet tall, and the leaves resemble gravel because where it grows, 882 01:04:21,280 --> 01:04:28,400 that's all this decomposed granite that's weathered up the surrounding mountains. But cases like 883 01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:30,280 that are just got it. They're so cool to see. You're like, 884 01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:36,159 this is you know, it's natural selection, perfect example, natural selection to 885 01:04:36,239 --> 01:04:45,880 play the environment selects for traits among an organism. Oh yeah, what is 886 01:04:45,920 --> 01:04:50,119 it hot? Well, this case, this one case is common lungwork photo. 887 01:04:50,159 --> 01:04:55,039 I'm from southwest England. Leaf patterns on this plant and on several other 888 01:04:55,119 --> 01:04:58,079 members of this genus may mimic bird droppings. But there's a great photo. 889 01:04:59,079 --> 01:05:05,840 What's the genus some species pulm Fishus orange and okay, yeah, so it's 890 01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:11,039 a bores weird. Oh yeah, god, what is that? Why is 891 01:05:11,039 --> 01:05:15,079 it doing that? That's weird. That's gotta I guess it's gotta look it's 892 01:05:15,199 --> 01:05:20,039 yeah, there's gotta it's gotta make it look untasty as something that might eat 893 01:05:20,039 --> 01:05:27,360 it, for sure. That's cool. Did you did you touch upon like 894 01:05:27,440 --> 01:05:31,719 fly pollinated flowers in your book at all? I didn't really, that's another 895 01:05:32,079 --> 01:05:38,760 that's just an I've just noticed, you know, among pollination syndromes among plants 896 01:05:38,760 --> 01:05:42,119 that fly pollinated, flowers normally tend to be kind of speckled and have this 897 01:05:42,280 --> 01:05:47,000 mottling, like a mahogany or purple mottling. You know, whether it's like 898 01:05:47,079 --> 01:05:54,000 some of the pipe vines, the aristolochias, or especially with a thing that 899 01:05:54,079 --> 01:05:59,039 does a lot or a lot of those carrion pollinated flowers in the milkweed femic, 900 01:05:59,039 --> 01:06:02,719 the succulent milk weed, the the peliads in South Africa. But you 901 01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:06,559 notice these things among plants that are pollinated by fly, I mean, a 902 01:06:06,559 --> 01:06:10,679 lot of aeroids do it too, like they've got I mean, aside from 903 01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:15,559 smelling like absolute hell uh, they also do that kind of burgundy mountling and 904 01:06:15,679 --> 01:06:20,000 polka dot. I mean, I can I can to the point where I 905 01:06:20,000 --> 01:06:23,679 can look at a flower and see that and be like, okay, that's 906 01:06:23,679 --> 01:06:28,079 what that's probably what pollinates this, you know, So you're thinking they're the 907 01:06:28,159 --> 01:06:32,079 Kane flash or some kind Yeah, yeah's Yeah, it's like either either that 908 01:06:32,239 --> 01:06:36,119 or sometimes funk. You know, plants that are polinate by fungus nats will 909 01:06:36,119 --> 01:06:39,440 have that starchy smell too. I mean, fungus nats are just a fly, 910 01:06:40,239 --> 01:06:43,920 kind of fly. But but I've noticed that among a lot of you 911 01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:47,760 know, these these syndromes, these these similar traits among unrelated plants that are 912 01:06:48,320 --> 01:06:55,480 pollinate, you know, pollinated by the same same things. What else would 913 01:06:55,480 --> 01:06:58,480 you what else would you I guess what else would you like to talk about? 914 01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:03,239 Uh? In terms of the case the facts? Yeah, let's think 915 01:07:03,679 --> 01:07:14,719 what guy, I mean, I always like to talk about the did I 916 01:07:14,760 --> 01:07:18,719 were talking about this the summoning predatory wasps that tomatoes can do may Verrey you 917 01:07:18,800 --> 01:07:21,000 mentioned it. Yeah, but I mean, let's go into that because there's 918 01:07:21,039 --> 01:07:25,760 a couple of different plants that do that. That will you know, figure 919 01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:32,320 out a way to summon the predators of whatever microbervors. Yeah, this was 920 01:07:32,719 --> 01:07:38,119 a series of discoveries in the late nineties. I can slowly the Marias and 921 01:07:38,159 --> 01:07:44,480 her team and she found I think it's tomatoes, corn, wild tobacco, 922 01:07:45,280 --> 01:07:48,920 maybe also cotton, but that so at least the corn study, the corn 923 01:07:48,960 --> 01:07:54,440 tae study, went like this where she found that the corn would be showed 924 01:07:54,519 --> 01:08:00,280 on by caterpillars. The corn would then sample the combination of regurgitant and sova 925 01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:06,599 that the caterpillars were leaving behind, and then know what species a caterpillar they're 926 01:08:06,639 --> 01:08:12,440 working with, or at least what species of wasp is necessary to summon to 927 01:08:12,559 --> 01:08:18,199 come prey on these caterpillars. And then of course the genius of chemical synthesis 928 01:08:18,359 --> 01:08:25,079 goes on inside this plant. They emit this compound that summons the predatory wasp, 929 01:08:25,680 --> 01:08:30,600 and then the wasp has this appendage it's like a hypodermic needle and pierces 930 01:08:30,840 --> 01:08:36,680 the caterpillar body and injects its eggs inside the caterpillar. And this all happens 931 01:08:36,720 --> 01:08:40,880 within like an hour. Actually, like these wasps get summoned sort of within 932 01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:45,600 an hour of the caterpillar munching starting. Some of these eggs are inside the 933 01:08:45,640 --> 01:08:50,760 caterpillar. They eventually hatch, and the larva eat the caterpillar from the inside 934 01:08:50,760 --> 01:08:58,319 out and then glue their cocoons, these like white silky little cocoons, to 935 01:08:58,439 --> 01:09:02,520 the outside of the caterpillar husk. And this is like this very slow and 936 01:09:02,600 --> 01:09:08,399 elaborate way that presumably this plant, its corn plant, is attempting to save 937 01:09:08,439 --> 01:09:13,239 itself. So what what do you so, what do you think is I 938 01:09:13,279 --> 01:09:15,399 mean, how is it? What is it doing? It's secreting some kind 939 01:09:15,439 --> 01:09:20,560 of airborne pheromone or something or what? Yeah, totally, it's yeah, 940 01:09:20,680 --> 01:09:25,600 chemical, it's all chemical signaling of plants, it seems like. But yes, 941 01:09:25,680 --> 01:09:31,760 I think they figured that out that it's it's compounds released, airborne compounds, 942 01:09:32,399 --> 01:09:35,000 because it seems for you know, reading the book, it seems like 943 01:09:35,039 --> 01:09:40,800 that's something that's been that that's a recurring theme, is that these these I 944 01:09:40,880 --> 01:09:45,720 guess, just just airborne chemicals that plants are releasing, both to communicate with 945 01:09:46,039 --> 01:09:51,039 each other and you know, also with other insects. I mean, is 946 01:09:51,079 --> 01:09:57,199 that is that a thing? Oh? For sure? I mean it constitutes 947 01:09:57,239 --> 01:10:02,359 this entirely other sense really that that we don't have any control over it all. 948 01:10:02,439 --> 01:10:06,319 In ourselves, I guess we do produce smells that probably cause reactions in 949 01:10:06,680 --> 01:10:12,960 other people and stuff like that. But this seems to be something where plants 950 01:10:12,960 --> 01:10:18,600 are approaching a complicated scenario and making the ideal cocktail for something to happen that 951 01:10:18,720 --> 01:10:24,319 they need to happen in real time like summoning the right species of loss or 952 01:10:25,039 --> 01:10:28,880 communicating. I mean, that's a whole other world of research looking at. 953 01:10:30,119 --> 01:10:34,159 I spent some time in mammoth Likes kind of Northern is Ish, California with 954 01:10:34,279 --> 01:10:41,279 a UC Davis researcher who is looking at chemical signaling in sagebrush. And of 955 01:10:41,399 --> 01:10:45,560 course sagebrush smells fantastic to us, but there's obviously a lot more going on 956 01:10:45,720 --> 01:10:51,039 than just the compounds we can possibly smell. But he's characterized the same field 957 01:10:51,079 --> 01:10:58,159 of sagebrush for like twenty years and knows how they all kind of signal, 958 01:10:58,199 --> 01:11:01,439 the kind of cocktail of their signals, And he's looking at a bunch of 959 01:11:01,520 --> 01:11:09,880 different things, including the possibility for regional dialects among kind of isolated plant communities, 960 01:11:10,640 --> 01:11:14,920 meaning that the compounds, the kind of cocktail of compounds used for communication 961 01:11:15,039 --> 01:11:18,760 between plants will be first of all, consistent in a geographic area, and 962 01:11:20,199 --> 01:11:27,560 in a geographically isolated population be kind of a strange variation on the more general 963 01:11:29,000 --> 01:11:34,760 compound syntax that plants and that species would normally use. So yeah, regional 964 01:11:34,840 --> 01:11:39,640 dialects, and that I mean he uses the term dialect in pure of new 965 01:11:39,680 --> 01:11:44,119 papers. So I feel completely that's cool. That's so weird. It's such 966 01:11:44,159 --> 01:11:46,159 and it's such a thing that I think is off so many people's radar. 967 01:11:46,319 --> 01:11:51,920 Is that, you know, you basically communicating by air you know, by 968 01:11:53,600 --> 01:11:56,840 airborne scent. So what is a more appropriate way to think of these then? 969 01:11:56,840 --> 01:12:00,439 I mean, are they smells? Is it more just the I mean 970 01:12:00,000 --> 01:12:03,319 they're not really. I guess there's smells that are picked up by the plate. 971 01:12:03,359 --> 01:12:06,840 I mean they're emitted through stomata and then picked up be a stomata on 972 01:12:06,960 --> 01:12:13,640 other plants or what exactly. Yeah, and I'm assuming you've seen these great 973 01:12:14,039 --> 01:12:16,439 like videos or where you've just been in microscope birms yourself to see this. 974 01:12:16,600 --> 01:12:20,840 But stomata opening closing is like the most delightful, weird little fish lip thing 975 01:12:20,920 --> 01:12:25,920 in the world. Yeah, but yeah, they're I mean they're going out 976 01:12:25,960 --> 01:12:30,439 through those pores and being hoovered up by other plants pores. Oftentimes, this 977 01:12:30,600 --> 01:12:34,800 is a lot of just like alarm calls being passed around, like I'm getting 978 01:12:34,840 --> 01:12:42,239 eaten, You're probably gonna get eaten soon. And for a long time it 979 01:12:42,399 --> 01:12:45,680 was thought that any effect this might have was not actually a communication. It 980 01:12:45,760 --> 01:12:50,760 was actually like a plant trying to signal with other parts of its own body, 981 01:12:51,119 --> 01:12:56,199 like between branches. So one branch is getting chewed on, that branch 982 01:12:56,279 --> 01:13:00,479 releases these alarm calls to trigger immune response and other branches, and if another 983 01:13:00,560 --> 01:13:05,920 plant responds as well, they're just eats dropping with thinking. But it's now 984 01:13:06,079 --> 01:13:14,840 been determined that it is in fact communication that is meant for other individuals to 985 01:13:14,880 --> 01:13:21,319 pick up on, and that it will actually sometimes the kind of cocktail will 986 01:13:21,399 --> 01:13:30,279 be changed to just communicate with close kin or communicate more broadly when there's the 987 01:13:30,359 --> 01:13:34,560 threat is extremely high with like anyone in the vicinity, So there is the 988 01:13:34,680 --> 01:13:40,199 receiver does seem to matter to planets, I mean it makes sense when you 989 01:13:40,319 --> 01:13:44,039 think about that, Like why you know, the benefits of cooperating, I 990 01:13:44,079 --> 01:13:46,560 mean, that's why. That's one of the reasons humanity is, you know, 991 01:13:46,880 --> 01:13:51,039 it has an eight billion strong population now and has taken over most of 992 01:13:51,119 --> 01:13:55,600 the planet for better or worse. Is our ability to cooperate with each other 993 01:13:56,800 --> 01:14:00,920 when we want to. So to cooperate for the sake of even though you 994 01:14:00,000 --> 01:14:03,960 know you might be your life might be ending soon, you're going to be 995 01:14:04,560 --> 01:14:11,439 potentially extending the life or the survivability of your species. You know, and 996 01:14:11,520 --> 01:14:15,560 then so if a neighboring plant gets the message and then can start producing these 997 01:14:15,600 --> 01:14:20,000 alkaloids or whatever phytochemicals are, you know, hopefully going to reduce whatever, 998 01:14:20,279 --> 01:14:25,880 reduce the damage from whatever's eating you, right, makes sense, But that 999 01:14:26,239 --> 01:14:30,159 it's such a bizarre field. I mean, I don't know, it's I 1000 01:14:30,239 --> 01:14:34,119 guess just you know, how you would test that. I've got friends that 1001 01:14:34,239 --> 01:14:41,560 are friends that you know, teach at Cornell and study chemical ecology, and 1002 01:14:42,000 --> 01:14:45,239 you know, we're all about flower sense and just the the methods they have 1003 01:14:45,359 --> 01:14:49,960 to go to to trap to trap these sense to be able to study them. 1004 01:14:50,000 --> 01:14:54,439 I mean, it's such a yeah, and it's something that you can't 1005 01:14:54,479 --> 01:14:58,520 see. It's off most people's radar completely. I don't know, it's a 1006 01:14:58,840 --> 01:15:03,079 pretty remarkable thing. Yeah, I mean there's also scientists who talk about, 1007 01:15:03,359 --> 01:15:09,560 you know, plants are constantly emitting and making compounds that are meant to cause 1008 01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:15,680 a reaction in like the body of another creature with sew chemicals. And at 1009 01:15:15,760 --> 01:15:20,239 least this one researcher and bom was sort of jokingly but not quite jokingly, 1010 01:15:20,319 --> 01:15:23,920 being like, we don't really know what they're doing for us either, you 1011 01:15:24,000 --> 01:15:26,640 know, you eat an apple. It's like chok full of compounds that maybe 1012 01:15:26,680 --> 01:15:30,279 haven't even been characterized, that are like made for something but we don't know 1013 01:15:30,359 --> 01:15:33,319 what. And I love it. I love that idea. There's so much 1014 01:15:33,359 --> 01:15:36,239 stuff for like a good sci fi novel here too, Like the plants are 1015 01:15:36,800 --> 01:15:41,000 the plants are using us. I'm okay with that, you know, because 1016 01:15:41,039 --> 01:15:45,119 I get it's a mutualism for me. You know, it's totally that's so 1017 01:15:45,319 --> 01:15:48,399 good. But that's real though, too. I mean you look at especially, 1018 01:15:48,439 --> 01:15:55,119 I mean certain species have drastically you know, increased their population and broadened 1019 01:15:55,119 --> 01:15:58,600 their range because of human activity. I mean, look at all the invasive 1020 01:15:58,680 --> 01:16:02,800 plants that are that exists around the world. Yeah, are like corn, 1021 01:16:03,359 --> 01:16:09,680 like most widely planted and cared for plant in the world. I'm pretty sure 1022 01:16:10,319 --> 01:16:13,520 I got a good deal out of whatever's going on. Yeah, I know, 1023 01:16:13,800 --> 01:16:15,920 it's it's kind of a shame so much of it just gets fed to 1024 01:16:16,000 --> 01:16:21,760 Kyle's But uh right, yeah, So how long were you right? You 1025 01:16:21,840 --> 01:16:25,880 were writing this for what like three or four years or what three years? 1026 01:16:26,039 --> 01:16:30,039 Yeah, exactly. I was at another newsroom for the beginning of it, 1027 01:16:30,159 --> 01:16:35,600 but I mean probably like four total, four years of deficated work on this 1028 01:16:35,840 --> 01:16:41,319 and just research. Yeah, talking about this and what's your opinion on plants 1029 01:16:41,399 --> 01:16:43,560 now? I mean, is this kind of made a botanist out of you? 1030 01:16:43,760 --> 01:16:45,279 Is this made? Is this something that you're going to It's gonna be 1031 01:16:45,399 --> 01:16:47,680 like a side thing that you're always because that's what it was like. I 1032 01:16:47,720 --> 01:16:51,560 mean when I worked for the railroad, I was dedicating all my time to 1033 01:16:51,640 --> 01:16:55,800 this. I mean, are you still did it? Like aff I do 1034 01:16:55,880 --> 01:17:00,640 that much that it's now something that you're going to stick with or what I 1035 01:17:00,720 --> 01:17:03,640 mean? Yeah, hopefully totally. I mean I have the utmost respect for 1036 01:17:03,720 --> 01:17:09,680 botanists. I don't think I'm cut out for actual field research or lab research 1037 01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:14,640 in the just like sheer hedium of it, and so in awe of all 1038 01:17:14,720 --> 01:17:17,439 of the scientists who do that and bring us this new information because of it. 1039 01:17:18,239 --> 01:17:21,239 But I do want to keep talking to them because I also think this 1040 01:17:21,399 --> 01:17:26,560 is just an exciting period to be a plant scientist, and the kind of 1041 01:17:27,159 --> 01:17:30,560 findings will see over the next I don't know five ten years are going to 1042 01:17:30,880 --> 01:17:38,119 for sure make us seem totally kind of ignorant in this era of history. 1043 01:17:38,560 --> 01:17:41,760 I do think there'll be a kind of new orientication to the capacity of plants 1044 01:17:43,079 --> 01:17:47,239 through their research. I think for me, there I definitely want to keep 1045 01:17:47,319 --> 01:17:53,039 thinking about ecology. It Actually, in writing this book, one of the 1046 01:17:53,079 --> 01:17:57,760 hardest things was sort of deciding where a plant begins and ends because of how 1047 01:17:58,920 --> 01:18:02,600 totally interfuse it are with other organisms, Sungai being one that you know, 1048 01:18:03,159 --> 01:18:11,359 soil, microbes, viruses, everything, And I'm really intrigued by an enamored 1049 01:18:11,399 --> 01:18:17,920 by with you know, evolution vodevo research and the ways we're just starting to 1050 01:18:18,119 --> 01:18:24,880 understand now how deep ecology goes, like that these kind of community responses and 1051 01:18:24,960 --> 01:18:30,560 the ways compositions of communities change may not be according to the rules that kind 1052 01:18:30,560 --> 01:18:33,199 of early it call it like cologists in the fifties and sixties were coming up 1053 01:18:33,239 --> 01:18:36,960 with as a way to sort of frame the field, but that actually the 1054 01:18:38,159 --> 01:18:44,319 real changes happening in ecosystem are so much there's so many more variables, it's 1055 01:18:44,359 --> 01:18:48,359 so much more complex, and kind of crucially it may not be as you 1056 01:18:48,479 --> 01:18:53,399 can't chalk all of it up to competition in the way that we've kind of 1057 01:18:53,520 --> 01:18:57,680 assumed as shorthand for like a long time. That's such a fucking the competition 1058 01:18:57,800 --> 01:19:00,880 things started to interrupting really quick. You got to interrupt. But the competition 1059 01:19:01,000 --> 01:19:06,239 thing is such a fucking like American capitalist way of thinking, Like there's so 1060 01:19:06,439 --> 01:19:12,800 much mutualism going on too, and I you know, it's again we anthropomorphize 1061 01:19:12,840 --> 01:19:15,199 all this shit. I think that's the completely wrong way to do it. 1062 01:19:15,279 --> 01:19:17,399 If it helps someone understand the concept, I get it, create an analogy, 1063 01:19:17,479 --> 01:19:19,840 create a metaphor. But again, you've got to get loose and you 1064 01:19:19,920 --> 01:19:25,079 got to realize, like we're we're just this semi conscious species of ape. 1065 01:19:25,159 --> 01:19:29,119 You know, there's so many other ways. There's so many other perspectives out 1066 01:19:29,159 --> 01:19:31,960 there in terms of different species. There's so many other ways of existing in 1067 01:19:32,039 --> 01:19:36,119 this world in terms of species besides what we do, you know, yeah, 1068 01:19:36,640 --> 01:19:39,640 yeah. And it's such a reminder that the frame, you know, 1069 01:19:40,119 --> 01:19:44,439 utmost respect for science and the frame of the questions that get asked are based 1070 01:19:44,560 --> 01:19:49,000 on these sort of long, accrude assumptions, things like there will always be 1071 01:19:49,079 --> 01:19:53,760 competition in the system, and they will always like whatever effect is the product 1072 01:19:53,800 --> 01:20:00,399 of useless aggressive behavior between competing individuals for sources. And it's like we are 1073 01:20:00,520 --> 01:20:05,359 finding that's just not quite the case. And also that potentially just even at 1074 01:20:05,399 --> 01:20:13,880 the evolutionary level, like collaboration between species and maybe driving a lot of species 1075 01:20:13,960 --> 01:20:17,479 change in a way that has been sort of underappreciated. Yeah, it's an 1076 01:20:17,560 --> 01:20:20,960 interwoven network. Did you ever see that Werner Herzog clip. It's been going 1077 01:20:21,000 --> 01:20:26,359 around social media for like the last month. It's so funny and it's so 1078 01:20:26,520 --> 01:20:30,560 fucking German. But it's like, you know, he's like in this beautiful 1079 01:20:30,600 --> 01:20:34,439 Amazon rainforest and he's like, I just see misery and suffering every fare, 1080 01:20:34,960 --> 01:20:39,039 you know, and it's like Jesus screams of the parrots. Yeah, what 1081 01:20:39,199 --> 01:20:42,279 the fuck? Man? Take it easy, Jesus Christ, Like the fuck 1082 01:20:42,399 --> 01:20:45,920 is wrong with you? Like you got to talk to a therapist, man, 1083 01:20:45,960 --> 01:20:49,199 You don't have to be suffering like this, totally agony just everywhere. 1084 01:20:50,279 --> 01:20:54,720 I feel like that was the way. That's so many And I wonder about 1085 01:20:54,760 --> 01:21:00,720 early botanists, like a twentieth early twentieth century, late night teenth century, 1086 01:21:00,720 --> 01:21:04,199 because for me, there's just you can't be into this. You can't study 1087 01:21:04,279 --> 01:21:10,399 these things without letting it change you as a person and letting it change your 1088 01:21:10,439 --> 01:21:14,720 worldview and make you, you know, a more humble and like self aware 1089 01:21:14,920 --> 01:21:18,239 and like in a way grateful person. I mean, I'm sure there's exceptions 1090 01:21:18,239 --> 01:21:21,560 to everything, but I wonder I look at some of these guys like mostly 1091 01:21:21,640 --> 01:21:24,960 yeah, like old white guys, and I'm like, what the fuck like 1092 01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:30,600 they just so you know, like the idea of being like a politically conservative 1093 01:21:30,399 --> 01:21:33,439 botanist or a cologist, to me is just like, how the fuck do 1094 01:21:33,560 --> 01:21:38,720 you do that? You know? Or like or you know, the way 1095 01:21:38,840 --> 01:21:44,159 is that they these cold hard ways that they looked at the science that they 1096 01:21:44,199 --> 01:21:48,920 were studying just seems so counterintuitive to me. I'm just perplexed by how that 1097 01:21:49,159 --> 01:21:55,239 worked for them, you know. I guess that's yeah, right. I 1098 01:21:55,279 --> 01:21:59,239 mean it's like everyone's sort of pleasing each other at this point where it's you 1099 01:21:59,319 --> 01:22:01,199 get to love trouble if you go out of line with that. But I 1100 01:22:01,319 --> 01:22:05,720 mean also a lot of people have I mean, I just think about Barbara 1101 01:22:05,800 --> 01:22:14,359 McClintock, who discovered transposons like leaping what is it genes and corn plants that 1102 01:22:15,720 --> 01:22:19,319 could shift their position in a chromosome. What's the transposon? That's what a 1103 01:22:19,399 --> 01:22:24,880 transposon? You know, Yes, that's my basic understanding as a non academic 1104 01:22:24,960 --> 01:22:30,079 person here. But she was looking at corn and corn genetics, and she 1105 01:22:30,720 --> 01:22:38,039 hypothesized that genes could spontaneously change their position in the chromosome. And as far 1106 01:22:38,119 --> 01:22:42,920 as I understand it, this isn't a forties thirties There wasn't actually a way 1107 01:22:43,000 --> 01:22:47,720 for her to verify that at the time with the technology at hand, But 1108 01:22:47,920 --> 01:22:55,079 she wanted a Nobel later because it turned out to be true once they figured 1109 01:22:55,119 --> 01:22:59,760 out how to verify it. And she had this whole explanation for how her 1110 01:23:00,039 --> 01:23:01,880 discoveries came to be, and she was just like, I just sit in 1111 01:23:01,920 --> 01:23:06,640 front of a corn plant for hours and lose myself in it and listen to 1112 01:23:06,760 --> 01:23:10,800 you know, it sounds really woo woo, but she's like describes having this 1113 01:23:10,960 --> 01:23:15,479 like feeling for the organism where she just like sits there. And I'm not 1114 01:23:15,560 --> 01:23:18,880 advocating this as a way, and rigor signs pretty cool work for this person. 1115 01:23:19,119 --> 01:23:21,079 Yeah, it sounds pretty cool, to be honest. I mean, 1116 01:23:21,199 --> 01:23:25,239 Carrie, Carrie, you know, don't forget what is na. Carrie Mullis 1117 01:23:25,279 --> 01:23:30,199 invented PCR when he was on acid. So there we go. There's other 1118 01:23:30,279 --> 01:23:33,920 ways of figuring things out. I guess, yeah, yeah, well I 1119 01:23:33,960 --> 01:23:39,920 don't I guess we can end it soon, and I just there's so much 1120 01:23:40,000 --> 01:23:42,279 more. I I don't know, it'd be cool, Yeah, it'd be 1121 01:23:42,359 --> 01:23:45,239 cool to I could talk about this kind of stuff forever. It's because if 1122 01:23:45,319 --> 01:23:49,800 there's so many cases that I think about of of just yeah, plants communicating 1123 01:23:49,840 --> 01:23:53,720 with each other or just this, I mean reality as we see it, 1124 01:23:54,239 --> 01:24:00,960 the living world as we see it is absolutely an interwoven network of relationships. 1125 01:24:01,000 --> 01:24:04,199 And I think that's you know, if you even if you're talking about like 1126 01:24:04,560 --> 01:24:08,479 when I'm talking about like invasion biology, and I'm like, the reason plants 1127 01:24:08,520 --> 01:24:12,399 are invasive is because plants don't exist by themselves. They exist in ecosystems. 1128 01:24:12,800 --> 01:24:16,319 They exist as a as a product of all these other relationships that have slowly 1129 01:24:16,439 --> 01:24:20,960 eked themselves out or worked themselves out over millions of years. You know, 1130 01:24:21,079 --> 01:24:25,960 we'll never know what extinct, what went extinct, because it couldn't it couldn't 1131 01:24:26,439 --> 01:24:29,880 you know, hold its part in an ecosystem. Whatever or something new evolves 1132 01:24:29,960 --> 01:24:33,720 and takes everything, you know, like a fungus, a fungal pathogen you 1133 01:24:33,800 --> 01:24:36,439 know, reduces a population. What went through what? You know? What 1134 01:24:36,920 --> 01:24:42,399 what genetic bottlenecks have occurred throughout time? But uh, but everything is definitely 1135 01:24:42,960 --> 01:24:45,640 part of an ecosystm. So like when you transport a plant across an ocean, 1136 01:24:45,760 --> 01:24:49,239 because the worst invasives always come from the other side of the ocean or 1137 01:24:49,239 --> 01:24:53,159 the equator. You know, these barriers that have kept ecosism, not just 1138 01:24:53,239 --> 01:24:57,520 species, but entire ecosystems isolated for millions of years. When you bring those 1139 01:24:57,600 --> 01:25:00,399 across an ocean, that's why, you know, the whole checks and balance 1140 01:25:00,439 --> 01:25:03,520 the system gets out a way, and a plant can become extremely invasive and 1141 01:25:03,600 --> 01:25:10,039 then start evolving to its new ecosystem and et cetera. But I mean that's 1142 01:25:10,079 --> 01:25:14,279 the thing that again this myopia is like we tend to think of plants it's 1143 01:25:14,399 --> 01:25:18,680 just these autonomous entities. Uh, And in many ways they are, but 1144 01:25:18,800 --> 01:25:23,760 then in many ways they aren't. They're also parts of these the whole ecosystem 1145 01:25:23,840 --> 01:25:27,399 itself. And you can kind of the way I think of ecosystems is that 1146 01:25:27,520 --> 01:25:33,079 ecosystem itself is its own organism with many functioning parts. And it's not yeah, 1147 01:25:33,079 --> 01:25:38,159 it's not just competition, it's there's certainly a ton of mutualism there too. 1148 01:25:38,359 --> 01:25:42,800 They've they've got there's got to be for these things to work totally. 1149 01:25:43,239 --> 01:25:47,079 Yeah. I had one ecologist U studies grasslands and kind of like community composition 1150 01:25:47,319 --> 01:25:53,199 changes and grasslands describe it as like change just causes more change, which I 1151 01:25:53,279 --> 01:25:56,840 still haven't fully wrapped my head around. But you know, competition being one 1152 01:25:56,920 --> 01:26:00,960 factor, mutualism being another. But no matter what, when there is change, 1153 01:26:00,039 --> 01:26:03,520 that creates a cascade of change, and because things are inconstant change, 1154 01:26:03,560 --> 01:26:09,159 they'll keep changing. This is I mean, that's like kind of galaxy brain 1155 01:26:09,239 --> 01:26:11,279 stuff. And he said it to me for different ways. And I don't 1156 01:26:11,279 --> 01:26:14,560 know if I've still had it had figured out what it really means, but 1157 01:26:15,840 --> 01:26:17,399 that's the kind of thing I want to keep thinking about. I think there's 1158 01:26:17,520 --> 01:26:26,119 very cool work happening there. And you mentioned invasives, and I spoke with 1159 01:26:26,199 --> 01:26:32,119 a scientist at Wesleyan who studies smart weeds, which are I believe related to 1160 01:26:32,239 --> 01:26:36,079 the not weeds, the Japanese not weed that is like super invasive here in 1161 01:26:36,159 --> 01:26:42,640 New York and yeah everywhere now. But that part of their capacity to be 1162 01:26:42,800 --> 01:26:48,439 so good at being invasives is their capacity to pass skills down generationally. So 1163 01:26:48,600 --> 01:26:55,359 like if a plant is exposed to some hardship, it will have offspring that 1164 01:26:55,520 --> 01:27:00,000 have a physiology already better attuned, already set up to better deal with that 1165 01:27:00,039 --> 01:27:06,439 particular hardship, and then you compound that like generationally for under generations or a 1166 01:27:06,560 --> 01:27:12,800 thousand generations, and you end up with like this super plant that just can 1167 01:27:12,880 --> 01:27:16,840 handle the mean streets of New York, even though it's from Japan, let's 1168 01:27:16,880 --> 01:27:21,119 say, in the case of not Need and she actually is. Sony Assault 1169 01:27:21,199 --> 01:27:26,319 in Wesleyan describes some of its monsters as their own making, which I think 1170 01:27:26,439 --> 01:27:29,920 is really cool that they're just really good at evolving. I mean, that's 1171 01:27:30,000 --> 01:27:32,039 yeah. That thing that's a plant is fucking nuts because I've seen it in 1172 01:27:32,119 --> 01:27:36,279 Chicago, always growing in like fucked up industrial areas, which I have a 1173 01:27:36,399 --> 01:27:41,680 soft spot in my heart for because you know, growing up in being around 1174 01:27:41,720 --> 01:27:44,159 cities, those were some of the only places you could get away from people. 1175 01:27:44,239 --> 01:27:46,000 You know, they were kind of like the facto wilderness on their own. 1176 01:27:46,560 --> 01:27:49,279 And also you know, catch some tags or something, do a fill 1177 01:27:49,319 --> 01:27:53,399 in on a bridge or something while you're out there. But uh, but 1178 01:27:53,520 --> 01:27:56,159 I think you know, and I remember seeing it too. Where did I 1179 01:27:56,199 --> 01:27:59,359 see it? I saw it on that I did a video in New York 1180 01:27:59,439 --> 01:28:04,439 last tener on a Newtown creek. Nasty nast bottle of water. Now, 1181 01:28:04,520 --> 01:28:06,159 I mean, I like it. It was nice. I got a friend 1182 01:28:06,159 --> 01:28:10,159 who's living on a house boat illegally out there, and he took me on 1183 01:28:10,279 --> 01:28:12,800 in this dinghy and he's like, let's go check it out. And I 1184 01:28:12,880 --> 01:28:14,520 was like, okay, cool. We went, and we drove up this 1185 01:28:14,680 --> 01:28:17,680 creek, like past the garbage barge and like at least like construction, you 1186 01:28:17,760 --> 01:28:21,640 know, just like illegally dumped construction the place where like the mob is probably 1187 01:28:21,720 --> 01:28:26,760 dumping aspesist shingles, you know. And uh. And then the boat started 1188 01:28:26,800 --> 01:28:29,800 losing air while we're half out there. It was like an inflatable dingy and 1189 01:28:29,840 --> 01:28:31,119 I'm like, fucking hey, PAULI come on man. He's like, no, 1190 01:28:31,199 --> 01:28:34,359 it's okay, I gotta I got a generator pump, like we could 1191 01:28:34,399 --> 01:28:36,479 fill it up while we're floating. And I was like, all right, 1192 01:28:36,560 --> 01:28:39,279 fuck it. You know, I'm like, okay, I'm just rolling with 1193 01:28:39,359 --> 01:28:42,760 it. But I remember seeing Japanese not we're just growing out of like a 1194 01:28:42,960 --> 01:28:48,079 steel uh reinforced. Yeah. But but on that note, do you think 1195 01:28:48,720 --> 01:28:51,920 that's something I forget where I saw this, But do you think like the 1196 01:28:53,039 --> 01:28:57,800 way things evolve, and I just would love to hear your from doing all 1197 01:28:57,840 --> 01:29:00,439 the researcher's in this book, But the way things evolve, it's always like 1198 01:29:00,560 --> 01:29:04,159 you know, it's just natural selection. It's the mutations arise because of phenotypic 1199 01:29:04,279 --> 01:29:09,239 variation, and then there's natural selection that kind of picks them out. Do 1200 01:29:09,359 --> 01:29:12,039 you think there's any kind of do you think there's a potential for any kind 1201 01:29:12,079 --> 01:29:17,520 of like feedback between like there's any kind of communication, I guess, or 1202 01:29:17,600 --> 01:29:23,479 any kind of like feedback that can somewhat within an organism that can kind of 1203 01:29:23,640 --> 01:29:29,560 like this sounds really woo woo, but direct what pheno tip, what phenotypes, 1204 01:29:29,600 --> 01:29:33,520 what mutations pop out in the next generation? Like you're talking like you 1205 01:29:33,640 --> 01:29:41,000 were kind of talking about with with the with not yeah, I mean yes, 1206 01:29:41,239 --> 01:29:45,079 and I'm not saying that in my own like thoughts and feelings capacity, 1207 01:29:45,159 --> 01:29:49,920 but in talking about this lab that's studying these self monsters, I mean part 1208 01:29:50,000 --> 01:29:58,960 of what their feel really is the people researching that is biological agency. This 1209 01:29:59,159 --> 01:30:05,520 concept that plants have more say and probably all organisms have more say quote unquote 1210 01:30:05,520 --> 01:30:11,199 in air quotes in the trajectory of their evolution than we kind of give them 1211 01:30:11,319 --> 01:30:15,319 credit for in that model that you just describe the sort of random variation that 1212 01:30:15,399 --> 01:30:23,880 just gets picked out because yeah, thinking about smart weed and those generational changes, 1213 01:30:25,319 --> 01:30:30,600 that is the future of the species is a plant that has passed down 1214 01:30:30,800 --> 01:30:38,760 a skill or like passed down some kind of intergenerational memory genetically that the situation 1215 01:30:38,920 --> 01:30:42,159 here is harsh, there's not enough water, You're going to have to grow 1216 01:30:42,399 --> 01:30:45,199 thin noodlele roots to handle it. And so then out pops the next one 1217 01:30:45,279 --> 01:30:50,439 with slightly thinner, slightly more nutally roots, and this keeps happening and getting 1218 01:30:50,439 --> 01:30:56,279 reinforced. I mean that there's a geleology to that as a direction to it, 1219 01:30:56,479 --> 01:31:01,640 and over time that that's that's who's going to survive with the species, 1220 01:31:01,800 --> 01:31:05,439 and so that's what gets selected for. But it's kind of being selected for 1221 01:31:05,600 --> 01:31:14,159 in this much more agentive way than the kind of random, passive right model 1222 01:31:14,399 --> 01:31:17,880 would suggest. And I do think biological agency as a field is something that 1223 01:31:18,000 --> 01:31:21,359 will be popping out more in the next years. I know there's been a 1224 01:31:21,439 --> 01:31:27,399 couple conferences on it recently or maybe just like two. And of course this 1225 01:31:27,560 --> 01:31:33,479 is something that is tarnished by eugenics because you know, this is kind of 1226 01:31:33,520 --> 01:31:39,680 all Lamarckian thought in a kind of in a way, and Lamark was used 1227 01:31:39,680 --> 01:31:43,920 by Genesis to suggest that, you know, this is like horrible things like 1228 01:31:44,000 --> 01:31:47,279 why poor people are never going to be smart or something like that, conditions 1229 01:31:47,279 --> 01:31:51,119 of their stupid. That's so stupid, that is such a human I was 1230 01:31:51,239 --> 01:31:55,840 I thought you were going to say it paves the way for intelligent design, 1231 01:31:55,880 --> 01:31:59,319 which is its own twacked out you know, Well, there's that right, 1232 01:32:00,119 --> 01:32:02,840 kind of gets a little dangerously towards that too. But the people doing it 1233 01:32:02,920 --> 01:32:05,760 are very like, or at least the three of them I've spoken to, 1234 01:32:06,039 --> 01:32:10,039 are very like. Yes, we're trying to ward off. We tread very 1235 01:32:10,039 --> 01:32:14,000 carefully here when talking about agency, because it does bring up a lot of 1236 01:32:14,760 --> 01:32:19,800 potential pitfalls that become pretty unscientific pretty quickly. Humans in modern society can ruin 1237 01:32:19,880 --> 01:32:25,560 everything, can't They can ruin anything, Rather like you just put this stupid, 1238 01:32:25,720 --> 01:32:28,720 simplistic twist on it. I think for me though, because it happens, 1239 01:32:29,359 --> 01:32:32,399 I'd say it happens like it's happened a few times a year where I'm 1240 01:32:32,600 --> 01:32:38,199 looking at a plant or thinking about a certain concept or how did this evolve? 1241 01:32:38,239 --> 01:32:41,720 And I'm like, how it just seems like God, does it? 1242 01:32:42,920 --> 01:32:45,039 I hate I mean hate saying it, but like, does it know? 1243 01:32:45,359 --> 01:32:48,800 Like, is there a way that this is being directed by the organism itself 1244 01:32:48,920 --> 01:32:54,840 somehow? Because it's just too weird, you know, And I always kind 1245 01:32:54,880 --> 01:32:57,119 of bat it away and I'm like, that's fucking ridiculous. No, But 1246 01:32:57,840 --> 01:33:00,560 but then I heard, uh, I forget who, I get the guy's 1247 01:33:00,640 --> 01:33:05,000 name. He was this fuck I wish I My brain just has so much 1248 01:33:05,239 --> 01:33:10,199 shit in it. I can't remember. I can't keep track of stuff anymore. 1249 01:33:10,239 --> 01:33:12,920 But it was maybe a month ago, or maybe two weeks ago, 1250 01:33:13,479 --> 01:33:17,439 some evolutionary biologist or maybe I think he was a started out in medicine or 1251 01:33:17,479 --> 01:33:21,000 something. But now he's behind this theory that there is some kind of feedback, 1252 01:33:21,079 --> 01:33:26,640 there is some what did you call a biological agency. Yeah, one 1253 01:33:26,640 --> 01:33:30,520 of the leading proponents of it. And I guess he's kind of controversial whatever. 1254 01:33:30,760 --> 01:33:32,279 But I had listened to an interview with him, and I was like, 1255 01:33:32,479 --> 01:33:36,239 this guy sounds pretty legit. I mean, it's and it's not he's 1256 01:33:36,279 --> 01:33:41,039 not like an intelligent design thing. He slips. He kind of you know, 1257 01:33:41,279 --> 01:33:45,000 mocks that a little bit too. But I wish I could remember the 1258 01:33:45,039 --> 01:33:47,199 guy's name so listeners could look it up and read about it. But it 1259 01:33:47,319 --> 01:33:49,199 just got me thinking about it. I was like, yeah, man, 1260 01:33:49,239 --> 01:33:53,640 this is pretty weird, Like this is I'm gonna leave some room for this, 1261 01:33:53,880 --> 01:33:56,880 you know, not going to talk about it too much except on a 1262 01:33:57,600 --> 01:34:01,119 large podcast format, but but I'm going to leave some room for it in 1263 01:34:01,199 --> 01:34:05,039 my in my assessment of things. You know. Yeah, I mean I 1264 01:34:05,199 --> 01:34:09,359 think that there's still a lot to be figured out in that field. And 1265 01:34:09,520 --> 01:34:12,279 I'm again, you know, you know how long these things take, and 1266 01:34:12,279 --> 01:34:14,800 I'm it's going to be on the sidelines for the next couple of years watching 1267 01:34:14,920 --> 01:34:18,439 that people fight about it and hopefully some something we can use comes out of 1268 01:34:18,479 --> 01:34:25,119 it. But it is incredibly intriguing. Yeah, and speaks to like intelligence 1269 01:34:25,159 --> 01:34:29,399 on a different scale, Like maybe when we talk about intelligence, we don't 1270 01:34:29,439 --> 01:34:35,560 have to talk about humanoid individual like academic aptitude or something, but like maybe 1271 01:34:35,960 --> 01:34:45,239 just the capacity of a species to better account for difficulties over time through what 1272 01:34:45,439 --> 01:34:50,199 it passes down genetically is kind of a form of intelligence, just like a 1273 01:34:50,319 --> 01:34:54,520 very different wak I kind of have to redefine, I guess intelligence to use 1274 01:34:54,560 --> 01:34:56,760 it. For that right, Well, again, we got to get away 1275 01:34:56,800 --> 01:35:00,479 from these these human ways of thinking about the word, all these anthropocentric views 1276 01:35:00,520 --> 01:35:08,159 of trying to imagine this stuff and think about it. But anyway, uh, 1277 01:35:08,560 --> 01:35:10,560 well, I know you got to get going soon. But lastly, 1278 01:35:10,640 --> 01:35:13,880 I mean, you seem like you probably had a lot of fun writing this 1279 01:35:14,000 --> 01:35:16,239 book. I mean you've got to travel through a lot of places and interact 1280 01:35:16,359 --> 01:35:23,720 with a ton of different researchers and who, I guess, what is there 1281 01:35:23,800 --> 01:35:28,439 one that really strikes you that you know that we haven't talked about yet, 1282 01:35:28,520 --> 01:35:31,920 that that I guess that you got a warm spot for, like a like 1283 01:35:32,000 --> 01:35:38,039 a certain situation or a certain experience that that kind of struck you. And 1284 01:35:40,720 --> 01:35:43,880 I mean I've already told you about Steve Perlman, who the rare plant botanist. 1285 01:35:43,960 --> 01:35:47,159 I mean that really affected me. This guy, like at this point, 1286 01:35:47,199 --> 01:35:50,840 he's in his seventies, like well into retirement age, He's still out 1287 01:35:50,880 --> 01:35:55,760 there, he's still doing it. He's still eating tinfoil packets of tuna fish 1288 01:35:55,800 --> 01:35:58,840 on four eight tracks, so you can like save room in his pack for 1289 01:35:58,920 --> 01:36:04,359 botanizing equipment. Mm hmmm, just amazing. What species was he working with? 1290 01:36:04,560 --> 01:36:11,159 Like some of those libilias like Brighamia or is definitely one of them. 1291 01:36:11,720 --> 01:36:15,479 So there's like some Habisca delphis that are like, uh, you know the 1292 01:36:15,560 --> 01:36:20,399 ones that they have and only in Hawaii that have these tubular flowers that are 1293 01:36:20,840 --> 01:36:26,520 made to kind of fit the hooked beak of honey beeper birds, which are 1294 01:36:26,560 --> 01:36:30,000 now I think going stink. Are very quite rare. Uh. You know, 1295 01:36:30,039 --> 01:36:35,520 they've got all of these incredibly specific vulnerable species out there. What was 1296 01:36:35,560 --> 01:36:40,479 the genus name? What? What is it? Bisca delphus. So it's 1297 01:36:40,520 --> 01:36:45,359 a mellow, it's malevasi Hibisca delphis. Yeah, there we go. You 1298 01:36:45,439 --> 01:36:47,880 have a better handle on yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, that's a 1299 01:36:48,000 --> 01:36:53,399 fucking oh wow. That thing is cool. Yeah. I have not made 1300 01:36:53,439 --> 01:36:55,239 it to Hawai. I've had a ton of people reach out to me and 1301 01:36:55,279 --> 01:36:57,000 be like, man, you should come here. It's really cool. There's 1302 01:36:57,000 --> 01:36:58,560 a ton of you know, and I'm like, oh, that'd be great. 1303 01:36:58,600 --> 01:37:00,279 I'd love to, but you know, I also know it's kind of 1304 01:37:00,399 --> 01:37:05,920 sad too. There's just so much invasive, uh invasive over there, and 1305 01:37:06,000 --> 01:37:11,800 all the really cool endemic taxa most of them are all you know, threatened 1306 01:37:11,800 --> 01:37:16,399 with extinction or where I still love to make it. It's still delightfully weird 1307 01:37:16,640 --> 01:37:20,039 and so cool. I mean, this whole idea of species naivete, like 1308 01:37:20,359 --> 01:37:25,680 one species can evolve without predators as they did. You know, there's like 1309 01:37:25,800 --> 01:37:30,359 no mammals except like a tiny little bat that like blew over storm or something. 1310 01:37:31,439 --> 01:37:35,960 Obviously the situation's drastically different now its invasives, but all the natives just 1311 01:37:36,039 --> 01:37:43,720 evolved into these weird I just remember the first time I went having a boutan 1312 01:37:43,760 --> 01:37:46,840 this like hand me like pluck off some mint something in the Erica family, 1313 01:37:46,880 --> 01:37:51,279 and was like smell it, and it didn't smell like anything because obviously, 1314 01:37:51,399 --> 01:37:57,359 like mint grown with zero predator environments not going to have any mint oil. 1315 01:37:59,359 --> 01:38:02,680 Yeah, that's crazy. And just because the Wine Islands have only been around 1316 01:38:02,720 --> 01:38:06,000 for I think what five or six million years or something like that, so 1317 01:38:08,359 --> 01:38:10,520 or the oldest one is five or six million years old, So in that 1318 01:38:10,760 --> 01:38:15,119 in that short of a time period, they lost their volatility, their their 1319 01:38:15,359 --> 01:38:19,279 smell. That's crazy, right, totally, And like thinking about the fact 1320 01:38:19,319 --> 01:38:23,960 that to even get down in the first place, these are seeds that floated. 1321 01:38:24,279 --> 01:38:27,640 I mean it's a five or six hour flight from the coast of California 1322 01:38:27,760 --> 01:38:31,600 to even get to any of the Hawaiian islands. They floated out there and 1323 01:38:31,760 --> 01:38:36,239 just showed up and started speciating. I just an island ecology in general just 1324 01:38:36,279 --> 01:38:40,600 closed my mind. Yeah, that's a very special place. The silver swords, 1325 01:38:40,960 --> 01:38:45,760 you know, the progenitor that they evolved from on the mainland in California 1326 01:38:45,800 --> 01:38:49,760 are what's known as the tarweeds. They're like these little roadside sticky weeds that 1327 01:38:49,920 --> 01:38:55,720 kind of smell really pungent and have these little you know, capitate tri comes 1328 01:38:55,720 --> 01:38:59,079 down like glands, you know. And then you look at a silver sword 1329 01:38:59,079 --> 01:39:00,479 and you're like, how the fuck how did we get here from this? 1330 01:39:00,760 --> 01:39:04,119 Like how did this tiny thing, you know, a little sea got stuck 1331 01:39:04,159 --> 01:39:06,840 in the plumage of a bird or something made it across the ocean and a 1332 01:39:06,920 --> 01:39:11,159 chance event had to be self fertile or there had to be a number of 1333 01:39:11,239 --> 01:39:14,680 seeds that got dropped off, and then and then it turned into this thing 1334 01:39:14,760 --> 01:39:20,840 that almost looks like it's so cool. Yeah, there's so many examples of 1335 01:39:20,880 --> 01:39:26,000 that where like something that's an herb or whatever on the mainland becomes a tree 1336 01:39:26,159 --> 01:39:30,800 on the island. Yeah. Yeah, classic case of of you know, 1337 01:39:31,159 --> 01:39:36,399 island speciation. So anyway, well, I guess lastly, yeah, was 1338 01:39:36,399 --> 01:39:40,960 there anything else that you wanted to talk about, like any other you know, 1339 01:39:41,159 --> 01:39:48,000 case studies or or or experiences that really hard. Well, I love 1340 01:39:48,079 --> 01:39:51,960 talking to this researcher I mentioned before, could swil it in Maris and she's 1341 01:39:53,319 --> 01:39:56,199 she's in Switzerland, so I didn't go over there, but we talked on 1342 01:39:56,279 --> 01:40:00,439 zoom a whole bunch, and she studies the kind of ca scade of species 1343 01:40:00,479 --> 01:40:06,880 interactions between plants and animals and viruses and fungi, and she's made a lot 1344 01:40:06,920 --> 01:40:13,000 of really cool discoveries. Some of them are around daughter vine cascuda. I 1345 01:40:13,119 --> 01:40:18,399 forgot what the whole thing is, but this parasitic vine that seems capable of 1346 01:40:18,439 --> 01:40:26,479 assessing the nutritional quality of plants it wants to parasitize from afar, which totally 1347 01:40:26,520 --> 01:40:30,319 blows my mind. And it seems also she did this thing where she also 1348 01:40:30,680 --> 01:40:36,760 arranged led lights in the shape of either a grass or a branching plant to 1349 01:40:36,920 --> 01:40:43,600 perfectly mimic either wheat or tomato. And it's known that cascuda doesn't grow on 1350 01:40:44,319 --> 01:40:47,840 wheat, and it does grow on tomato, and presumably that's because it's way 1351 01:40:48,600 --> 01:40:53,680 structurally more sound to go on something with branches if you're just like a little 1352 01:40:53,720 --> 01:40:59,760 wormy plant that needs support. But it was able to assess that from Afar 1353 01:41:00,119 --> 01:41:01,600 afar, and she was like, how does it do that? And she 1354 01:41:01,680 --> 01:41:09,479 found it was actually sensing the silhouette of light made by the plant itself to 1355 01:41:09,560 --> 01:41:13,600 grow on something that would support it. I mean we know, I mean 1356 01:41:13,680 --> 01:41:16,760 because we know we know plants can can sense light or it sense that when 1357 01:41:16,800 --> 01:41:20,840 it's dark, or they've you know, uh, you know, fhio chrome, 1358 01:41:20,880 --> 01:41:25,920 et cetera. But but to make out shapes, man, that's right, 1359 01:41:26,199 --> 01:41:28,960 that's so weird. I mean, that's like what bolkila is doing. 1360 01:41:29,039 --> 01:41:32,680 It's and it's what was the end result of this? I mean and she 1361 01:41:32,800 --> 01:41:38,560 didn't obviously it's still a mystery, right, I mean, oh with that, 1362 01:41:39,039 --> 01:41:41,920 well that is pretty much now now it's understood, like they can assess 1363 01:41:42,000 --> 01:41:47,399 nutritional quality and believe through chemical signals and structural quality through light signals, and 1364 01:41:49,239 --> 01:41:56,199 it does all these other amazing things where like it if it if it does 1365 01:41:56,279 --> 01:42:01,399 start climbing onto a plant and finds the plant inappropriate for its needs, it 1366 01:42:01,479 --> 01:42:09,199 will redirect quite quickly there's one paper that suggests that the number of coils it 1367 01:42:09,359 --> 01:42:14,319 uses to parasitize something how many times it wraps around its stem. Actually it's 1368 01:42:14,640 --> 01:42:18,359 translates to how much energy it expects to use to parasitize it. And so 1369 01:42:18,479 --> 01:42:23,600 this is this is the agricultural test and a lot of farm fields all over 1370 01:42:23,640 --> 01:42:26,439 the world. Yeah, daughter, vine, Yeah, it looks like a 1371 01:42:26,479 --> 01:42:31,720 silly string. It looks like orange silly string that someone just exactly. So 1372 01:42:31,840 --> 01:42:34,960 it's doing incredible things. I didn't get into this in the book because I 1373 01:42:35,000 --> 01:42:40,399 didn't realize it. But other people have come up to me since reading and 1374 01:42:40,560 --> 01:42:43,720 we're like, you forgot the part where they like, help, I believe 1375 01:42:43,760 --> 01:42:45,880 I have to look this up really before I say it was constantly. But 1376 01:42:45,479 --> 01:42:51,560 they create communication networks through their bodies between plants because they're effectively linking multiple plants 1377 01:42:54,279 --> 01:42:58,399 and exchange genetic information. I don't know this. I add a little more. 1378 01:42:58,439 --> 01:43:03,359 But daughters, yeah, God, so in like different individuals will be 1379 01:43:04,279 --> 01:43:10,279 linking up somehow, like physically or is it what is the how are they 1380 01:43:10,720 --> 01:43:15,119 doing this? You know? I'm just going to do Oh yeah, daughters 1381 01:43:15,159 --> 01:43:17,079 and its host plant can talk to each other through the exchange of messenger our 1382 01:43:17,159 --> 01:43:20,479 name molecules. That's on the National Park Service website. That seems like that's 1383 01:43:20,520 --> 01:43:27,359 pretty established. Yeah, god, but I mean there's are there cases where 1384 01:43:27,880 --> 01:43:31,880 Daughter is you know, the parasitism is leading to its host plants succumbing. 1385 01:43:34,039 --> 01:43:40,039 No, So, I mean, I think most good parasitites Jesus, I 1386 01:43:40,119 --> 01:43:45,359 think most good parasites keep their host kind of hobbling along. You don't want 1387 01:43:45,920 --> 01:43:53,119 your host to actually die because Daughter doesn't grow any leaves. It's not even 1388 01:43:53,199 --> 01:43:58,319 green, it's orange or yellow. So it can't make its own it can't 1389 01:43:58,359 --> 01:44:01,239 make its own energy needs these plants to be alive. But the problem, 1390 01:44:01,319 --> 01:44:06,079 and what makes it an agricultural past, is that when a plant is sort 1391 01:44:06,079 --> 01:44:10,479 of yolped into Daughter service, it doesn't really have the energy to make fruit. 1392 01:44:10,920 --> 01:44:13,199 Right. Then you just have a whole field of plants that just are 1393 01:44:13,399 --> 01:44:17,680 like keeping their leaves going. And that's it. That's why we got to 1394 01:44:17,760 --> 01:44:25,079 round up the entire field and just round up and round up. Pretty Oh 1395 01:44:25,199 --> 01:44:28,039 god, that's cool. Yeah, there's a Yeah, Daughter's cool, man. 1396 01:44:28,079 --> 01:44:30,399 There's a there's another plant that looks just like it that's actually more clo 1397 01:44:30,520 --> 01:44:35,239 it's in the same family as avocado's Casscitha that doesn't get as bright orange, 1398 01:44:35,279 --> 01:44:41,159 but just that same. It's just basically a vining stem that uses hostorial roots 1399 01:44:41,239 --> 01:44:44,439 to uh in some in some places i've seen it, it's more in the 1400 01:44:44,520 --> 01:44:47,880 tropics Casitha is but there's place there's places where I've seen it. It does 1401 01:44:48,039 --> 01:44:53,199 look like remarkably like daughter like kind of like orange orang ish. But yeah, 1402 01:44:53,199 --> 01:44:56,920 it's similar racey, that's that's cool. There's a there's a rare species 1403 01:44:57,000 --> 01:45:00,199 of daughter in my region where I live. But uh, never, it's 1404 01:45:00,239 --> 01:45:02,800 one of those generea. I'm always just like, yeah, it's a cuscuita 1405 01:45:02,960 --> 01:45:05,439 whatever, I'm not going to get you know, don't look too close. 1406 01:45:05,520 --> 01:45:09,760 I should. I don't do that with many things anymore. But anyway, 1407 01:45:09,800 --> 01:45:11,720 well, Zoe, thanks a lot for being down to do this. I 1408 01:45:11,800 --> 01:45:16,039 appreciate it. So it's been really fun talking. Wonderful book and where can 1409 01:45:16,119 --> 01:45:20,359 people read? It's officially out now, I know, there's a Yeah, 1410 01:45:20,399 --> 01:45:26,720 it's out everywhere. Audiobook is out there and be out in another thirteen languages 1411 01:45:26,720 --> 01:45:29,239 in a few months. Yeah, my friend you did the reading for the 1412 01:45:29,279 --> 01:45:31,600 audiobook, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was listening to it 1413 01:45:31,640 --> 01:45:36,159 in the car with my friend Easan yesterday we were driving out to Star County 1414 01:45:36,199 --> 01:45:39,239 down here. You mentioned it. He's like, have you heard this book 1415 01:45:39,279 --> 01:45:41,319 The Light Years. I'm like, yeah, I was just I just got 1416 01:45:41,359 --> 01:45:43,359 a copy in the mail like a month ago. I was reading it. 1417 01:45:44,880 --> 01:45:46,880 That's cool. Yeah, I'm all about it, man. I love it. 1418 01:45:46,960 --> 01:45:50,840 So thanks for writing it and thanks for being down to talk. Thank 1419 01:45:50,960 --> 01:45:54,199 you. Okay, all right, have a good rest of the day. 1420 01:45:54,800 --> 01:45:56,199 Thanks you to think you Bye.