radiolab smarty plants
And then someone has to count. Because I have an appointment. Was it possible that maybe the plants correctly responded by not opening, because something really mad was happening around it and it's like, "This place is not safe.". As abundant as what was going on above ground. Pretty much like the concept of Pavlov with his dog applied. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah. ROBERT: But she's got a little red headlamp on. ROBERT: They're father and son. It's the equivalent of a human being jumping over the Eiffel Tower. MONICA GAGLIANO: The idea was to drop them again just to see, like, the difference between the first time you learn something and the next time. LARRY UBELL: Me first. Except in this case instead of a chair, they've got a little plant-sized box. Actually, Monica's dog leads perfectly into her third experiment, which again will be with a plant. So its resources, its legacy will move into the mycorrhizal network into neighboring trees. And why would -- why would the fungi want to make this network? And so of course, that was only the beginning. ROBERT: A little while back, I had a rather boisterous conversation with these two guys. ROBERT: Truth is, I think on this point she's got a -- she's right. No question there. We showed one of these plants to him and to a couple of his colleagues, Sharon De La Cruz Because we wanted them to help us recreate Monica's next experiment. The idea was to drop them again just to see, like, the difference between the first time you learn something and the next time. This is the fungus. So that voice belongs to Aatish Bhatia, who is with Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. So we went back to Monica. I don't know if you're a bank or if you're an -- so it's not necessarily saying, "Give it to the new guy." And I remember it was Sunday, because I started screaming in my lab. And so I don't have a problem with that. The bell, the meat and the salivation. I mean, it's a kind of romanticism, I think. 2018. JENNIFER FRAZER: And his idea was to see if he could condition these dogs to associate that food would be coming from the sound of a bell. ROBERT: But then, scientists did an experiment where they gave some springtails some fungus to eat. ALVIN UBELL: And I've been in the construction industry ever since I'm about 16 years old. Different kind of signal traveling through the soil? View SmartyPlantsRadioLab Transcript (2).docx from CHEM 001A at Pasadena City College. ROBERT: I know -- I know you -- I know you don't. Is your dog objecting to my analysis? So I don't have a problem. Fan first, light after. So it's not that it couldn't fold up, it's just that during the dropping, it learned that it didn't need to. Are going to make me rethink my stance on plants. ROBERT: And then those little tubes will wrap themselves into place. What was your reaction when you saw this happen? So Monica moves the fans to a new place one more time. Nothing delicious at all. So it's not that it couldn't fold up, it's just that during the dropping, it learned that it didn't need to. Sep 28, 2020 - Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. Or SUZANNE SIMARD: No. So we're really -- like this is -- we're really at the very beginning of this. So we went back to Monica. Because if I let you go it's gonna be another 20 minutes until I get to talk. It's a costly process for this plant, but ROBERT: She figured out they weren't tired. I was, like, floored. Then of course because it's the BBC, they take a picture of it. So there's these little insects that lives in the soil, these just adorable little creatures called springtails. MONICA GAGLIANO: So then at one point, when you only play the bell for the dog, or you, you know, play the fan for the plant, we know now for the dogs, the dogs is expecting. It's an integral part of DNA. If you get too wrapped up in your poetic metaphor, you're very likely to be misled and to over-interpret the data. You found exactly what the plants would do under your circumstances which were, I don't know, let's say a bit more tumultuous than mine. ROBERT: And when you look at the map, what you see are circles sprouting lines and then connecting to other circles also sprouting lines. There's -- on the science side, there's a real suspicion of anything that's anthropomorphizing a plant. Enough of that! JAD: So today we have a triptych of experiments about plants. But when we look at the below ground structure, it looks so much like a brain physically, and now that we're starting to understand how it works, we're going, wow, there's so many parallels. The last kind of part of the root gets tangled just around the edge. All right. They don't do well in warm temperatures and their needles turn all sickly yellow. And every day that goes by, I have less of an issue from the day before. It's okay. So there seemed to be, under the ground, this fungal freeway system connecting one tree to the next to the next to the next. ROBERT: Ring, meat, eat. Thud. But we are in the home inspection business. Two very different options for our plant. Does it threaten my sense of myself or my place as a human that a plant can do this? Maybe each root is -- is like a little ear for the plant. [laughs] When I write a blog post, my posts that get the least traffic guaranteed are the plant posts. They're switched on. ROBERT: But she's got a little red headlamp on. JAD: Where would the -- a little plant even store a memory? Join free & follow Radiolab. Five, four, three, two, one, drop! And the salivation equivalent was the tilt of the plant? JAD: The plants have to keep pulling their leaves up and they just get tired. ROBERT: And we saw this in the Bronx. ROBERT: That there was a kind of a moral objection to thinking this way. It's now the Wood Wide Web? They may have this intelligence, maybe we're just not smart enough yet to figure it out. And that's just the beginning. 37 minutes Posted Jul 8, 2021 at 7:35 am. He was a -- what was he? Like, if you put food into one tree over here, it would end up in another tree maybe 30 feet away over there, and then a third tree over here, and then a fourth tree over there, and a fifth tree over there. And if you don't have one, by default you can't do much in general. Maybe just a tenth the width of your eyelash. [laughs]. Picasso! ROBERT: And then later, scientists finally looked at these things under much more powerful microscopes, and realized the threads weren't threads, really. Here's the water.". ROBERT: So these trees were basically covered with bags that were then filled with radioactive gas. Like, if you put food into one tree over here, it would end up in another tree maybe 30 feet away over there, and then a third tree over here, and then a fourth tree over there, and a fifth tree over there. Like for example, my plants were all in environment-controlled rooms, which is not a minor detail. ], Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. JENNIFER FRAZER: Finally, one time he did not bring the meat, but he rang the bell. Robert, I have -- you know what? LINCOLN TAIZ: I think you can be open-minded but still objective. But maybe it makes her sort of more open-minded than -- than someone who's just looking at a notebook. ROBERT: By the way, should we establish -- is it a fact that you're ALVIN UBELL: He's on the right track. ROBERT: So that voice belongs to Aatish Bhatia, who is with Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. You know, they talk about how honeybee colonies are sort of superorganisms, because each individual bee is sort of acting like it's a cell in a larger body. ROY HALLING: Like, I say, it's early in the season. ROBERT: Two very different options for our plant. And so the whole family and uncles and aunts and cousins, we all rush up there. Just the sound of it? On the outside of the pipe. Take it. ROBERT: So she takes the plants, she puts them into the parachute drop, she drops them. ROBERT: So we strapped in our mimosa plant. Fan, light, lean. And we dropped it once, and twice. ROBERT: The Ubells see this happening all the time. Her use of metaphor. Is there anyone whose job it is to draw a little chalk outlines around the springtails? 28. Along with a home-inspection duo, a science writer, and some enterprising . Wait. Then she takes the little light and the little fan and moves them to the other side of the plant. Let him talk. And if you don't have one, by default you can't do much in general. MONICA GAGLIANO: My reaction was like, "Oh ****!" Smarty Plants. So they didn't. If a plant doesn't have a brain what is choosing where to go? You're doing the -- like, okay first it was the roots under the ground all connected into a whole hive thing. JENNIFER FRAZER: The fungi needs sugar to build their bodies, the same way that we use our food to build our bodies. ROBERT: She determined that you can pick a little computer fan and blow it on a pea plant for pretty much ever and the pea plant would be utterly indifferent to the whole thing. ROBERT: For this part of our broadcast, I'd like to begin by imagining a tall, dark, dense, green forest. And after not a whole lot of drops, the plant, she noticed, stopped closing its leaves. Yes, because she knew that scientists had proposed years before, that maybe there's an underground economy that exists among trees that we can't see. If I want to be a healthy tree and reach for the sky, then I need -- I need rocks in me somehow. Coming up on the Plant Parade, we get to the heart -- or better yet, the root -- of a very specific type of plant. Little fan goes on, the light goes on. Never mind. Hopefully I tied that into cannabis well enough to not get removed. They somehow have a dye, and don't ask me how they know this or how they figured it out, but they have a little stain that they can put on the springtails to tell if they're alive or dead. JAD: What is the tree giving back to the fungus? No, I guess that I feel kind of good to say this. It's a family business. ROBERT: And she was willing to entertain the possibility that plants can do something like hear. MONICA GAGLIANO: I don't know. ROBERT: I have even -- I can go better than even that. Here's the water.". He's not a huge fan of. Yeah, plants really like light, you know? ROBERT: And he starts digging with his rake at the base of this tree. It doesn't ROBERT: I know, I know. How do you mean? Fan, light, lean. Would you say that the plant is seeing the sun? No boink anymore. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of Science and Technology in the modern world. LARRY UBELL: You got somewhere to go? If I want to be a healthy tree and reach for the sky, then I need -- I need rocks in me somehow. Well, I asked Suzanne about that. And might as well start the story back when she was a little girl. Today, Robert drags Jad along ona parade for the surprising feats of brainless plants. So I don't have a problem. Like, they don't have ears or a brain or anything like, they couldn't hear like we hear. Connecting your house to the main city water line that's in the middle of the street. Ring, meat, eat. MONICA GAGLIANO: I wonder if that was maybe a bit too much. ROBERT: So that's what the tree gives the fungus. ROBERT: There's -- on the science side, there's a real suspicion of anything that's anthropomorphizing a plant. It should have some. Just a boring set of twigs. So we're really -- like this is -- we're really at the very beginning of this. ROBERT: Wait a second. She's working in the timber industry at the time. Let me just back up for a second so that you can -- to set the scene for you. I'm a research associate professor at the University of Sydney. SUZANNE SIMARD: Not a basset hound, but he was a beagle. These guys are actually doing it." ROBERT: That is actually a clue in what turns out to be a deep, deep mystery. Where would the -- a little plant even store a memory? ROBERT: I know -- I know you -- I know you don't. ROBERT: But after five days, she found that 80% of the time, the plants went -- or maybe chose -- to head toward the dry pipe that has water in it. Was it possible that maybe the plants correctly responded by not opening, because something really mad was happening around it and it's like, "This place is not safe.". LINCOLN TAIZ: It's a very interesting experiment, and I really want to see whether it's correct or not. There's -- they have found salmon in tree rings. ALVIN UBELL: If you look at a root under a microscope, what you see is all these thousands of feelers like hairs on your head looking for water. ROBERT: So what they're saying is even if she's totally sealed the pipe so there's no leak at all, the difference in temperature will create some condensation on the outside. I remember going in at the uni on a Sunday afternoon. Whatever. And the tree gets the message, and it sends a message back and says, "Yeah, I can do that.". So light is -- if you shine light on a plant you're, like, feeding it? I wonder if that was maybe a bit too much. JAD: That is cool. ROBERT: Monica's work has actually gotten quite a bit of attention from other plant biologists. They learned something. Turns the fan on, turns the light on, and the plant turns and leans that way. So today we have a triptych of experiments about plants. People speculated about this, but no one had actually proved it in nature in the woods until Suzanne shows up. I mean, can you remember what you were doing a month ago? I don't know if that was the case for your plants. An expert. ROBERT: How do you mean? And then Monica would ROBERT: Just about, you know, seven or eight inches. ALVIN UBELL: In a tangling of spaghetti-like, almost a -- and each one of those lines of spaghetti is squeezing a little bit. I've been looking around lately, and I know that intelligence is not unique to humans. And she goes on to argue that had we been a little bit more steady and a little bit more consistent, the plants would have learned and would have remembered the lesson. And she says she began to notice things that, you know, one wouldn't really expect. The roots of this tree of course can go any way they want to go. ], With help from Alexandra Leigh Young, Jackson Roach and Charu Sinha. ROBERT: That is actually a clue in what turns out to be a deep, deep mystery. As abundant as what was going on above ground. I don't know if that was the case for your plants. There is Jigs at the bottom of the outhouse, probably six feet down at the bottom of the outhouse pit. ROBERT: So after much trial and error with click and hums and buzzes MONICA GAGLIANO: All sorts of randomness. The tree will wrap its roots around that pipe. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah, tested it in my lab. JENNIFER FRAZER: And this is what makes it even more gruesome. ], [JENNIFER FRAZER: Our staff includes Simon Adler, Becca Bressler, Rachael Cusick ], [ALVIN UBELL: David -- David Gebel. Five, four, three, two, one, drop! They still did not close when she dropped them. For this part of our broadcast, I'd like to begin by imagining a tall, dark, dense, green forest. Pulled out a is that a root of some sort? What's its job? Big thanks to Aatish Bhatia, to Sharon De La Cruz and to Peter Landgren at Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. They need light to grow. And the tubes branch and sometimes they reconnect. Or at the time actually, she was a very little girl who loved the outdoors. Ring, meat, eat. Again, if you imagine that the pot, my experimental pot. ROBERT: So the deer's like, "Oh, well. Again. [laughs]. They just don't like to hear words like "mind" or "hear" or "see" or "taste" for a plant, because it's too animal and too human. Don't interrupt. Fan, light, lean. ROBERT: So I think what she would argue is that we kind of proved her point. It's gone. They're sort of flea-sized and they spend lots of time munching leaves on the forest floor. ROBERT: Inspector Tail is his name. And again. Jad and Robert, theyare split on this one. And look, and beyond that there are forests, there are trees that the scientists have found where up to 75 percent of the nitrogen in the tree turns out to be fish food. What happened to you didn't happen to us. And lignin is full of nitrogen, but also compounds like nitrogen is important in DNA, right? Yes, we are related. It's doing like a triple double axel backflip or something into the sky. PETER LANDGREN: Little seatbelt for him for the ride down. And again. So no plants were actually hurt in this experiment. JAD: It's like every time I close my eyes, you're coming at it from a different direction. SUZANNE SIMARD: And so my mom always talks about how she had to constantly be giving me worm medicine because I was -- I always had worms. To remember? But the Ubells have noticed that even if a tree is 10 or 20, 30 yards away from the water pipe, for some reason the tree roots creep with uncanny regularity straight toward the water pipe. So you can -- you can see this is like a game of telephone. They may have this intelligence, maybe we're just not smart enough yet to figure it out. ROBERT: And right in the middle of the yard is a tree. ], [JENNIFER FRAZER: This is Jennifer Frazer, and I'm a freelance science writer and blogger of The Artful Amoeba at Scientific American. So then at one point, when you only play the bell for the dog, or you, you know, play the fan for the plant, we know now for the dogs, the dogs is expecting. JENNIFER FRAZER: It is! Each one an ounce, an ounce, an ounce, an ounce, an ounce. But they do have root hairs. And I remember it was Sunday, because I started screaming in my lab. MONICA GAGLIANO: Like a defensive mechanism. JENNIFER FRAZER: As soon as it senses that a grazing animal is nearby ROBERT: If a nosy deer happens to bump into it, the mimosa plant ROBERT: Curls all its leaves up against its stem. 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