Fan, light, lean. ROBERT: So that voice belongs to Aatish Bhatia, who is with Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. Exactly. Artificial Plants Aquarium Substrate Backgrounds Gravel, Sand & Stones Live Plants Ornaments Plant Food & Fertilizers Heating & Lighting Heaters Hoods & Glass Canopies Heating & Lighting Accessories Lights Live Fish Goldfish, Betta & More Starter Kits bird Bird Shops Food & Treats Pet Bird Food Treats ROBERT: No. Enough of that! Little fan goes on, little light goes on, both aiming at the pea plant from the same direction. And so we're digging away, and Jigs was, you know, looking up with his paws, you know, and looking at us, waiting. LARRY UBELL: Or it's just the vibration of the pipe that's making it go toward it. Like a human would. ROBERT: Two very different options for our plant. But what I do know is that the fact that the plant doesn't have a brain doesn't -- doesn't a priori says that the plants can't do something. ROBERT: This final thought. JAD: Couldn't it just be an entirely different interpretation here? I'm 84. ROBERT: His name is Roy Halling. Like trees of different species are supposed to fight each other for sunshine, right? MONICA GAGLIANO: Light is obviously representing dinner. Did Jigs emerge? JAD: The part where the water pipe was, the pipe was on the outside of the pot? But I wonder if her using these metaphors is perhaps a very creative way of looking at -- looking at a plant, and therefore leads her to make -- make up these experiments that those who wouldn't think the way she would would ever make up. 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. He's looking up at us quite scared and very unhappy that he was covered in And toilet paper. So we're really -- like this is -- we're really at the very beginning of this. Or maybe slower? Wilderness Radio. So she decided to conduct her experiment. JAD: Where would the -- a little plant even store a memory? Okay. 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. So she decided to conduct her experiment. Ring, meat, eat. SUZANNE SIMARD: Well, when I was a kid, my family spent every summer in the forest. I don't know. ROBERT: Oh, hunting for water. So we're up to experiment two now, are we not? They play with sound and story in a way that's incredibly intriguing, I was instantly hooked with More Perfect. Yeah, it might run out of fuel. Big thanks to Aatish Bhatia, to Sharon De La Cruz and to Peter Landgren at Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. I'm a professor emeritus of plant biology at UC Santa Cruz. So if a beetle were to invade the forest, the trees tell the next tree over, "Here come the --" like Paul Revere, sort of? She's working in the timber industry at the time. It's condensation. JENNIFER FRAZER: An anti-predator reaction? MONICA GAGLIANO: Again, if you imagine that the pot, my experimental pot. And it was almost like, let's see how much I have to stretch it here before you forget. They're called springtails, because a lot of them have a little organ on the back that they actually can kind of like deploy and suddenly -- boing! MONICA GAGLIANO: So, you know, I'm in the dark. Thanks to Jennifer Frazer who helped us make sense of all this. And if you don't have one, by default you can't do much in general. Huh. ROBERT: The Ubells see this happening all the time. All right, my hypothesis is that what happens is You got somewhere to go? MONICA GAGLIANO: Picasso, enough of that now. So Monica moves the fans to a new place one more time. Pics! You know, it goes back to anthropomorphizing plant behaviors. Because if I let you go it's gonna be another 20 minutes until I get to talk. 36:59. ROBERT: And she says she began to notice things that, you know, one wouldn't really expect. Pics! Like, from the trees perspective, how much of their sugar are they giving to the fungus? Okay? I mean, couldn't it just be like that? I've been looking around lately, and I know that intelligence is not unique to humans. And I'm wondering whether Monica is gonna run into, as she tries to make plants more animal-like, whether she's just going to run into this malice from the scientific -- I'm just wondering, do you share any of that? He's not a huge fan of. Well, it depends on who you ask. It didn't seem to be learning anything. ROBERT: Is your dog objecting to my analysis? And we can move it up, and we can drop it. And then what happens? So we've done experiments, and other people in different labs around the world, they've been able to figure out that if a tree's injured ROBERT: It'll cry out in a kind of chemical way. I mean, couldn't it just be like that? That's a parade I'll show up for. And so on. Just the sound of it? This is the headphones? They run out of energy. I'm not making this up. This is the fungus. You have to understand that the cold water pipe causes even a small amount of water to condense on the pipe itself. ROBERT: Fan, light, lean. Now, you might think that the plant sends out roots in every direction. Have you hugged your houseplant today? Jad and Robert, they are spli The little threads just wrapping themselves around the tree roots. And we saw this in the Bronx. ROBERT: A tree needs something else. ROBERT: Let me just back up for a second so that you can -- to set the scene for you. JENNIFER FRAZER: With when they actually saw and smelled and ate meat. MONICA GAGLIANO: Or would just be going random? I mean, it's just -- it's reacting to things and there's a series of mechanical behaviors inside the plant that are just bending it in the direction. ROBERT: It won't be a metaphor in just a moment. This way there is often more questions than answers, but that's part of the fun as well. I gotta say, doing this story, this is the part that knocked me silly. That's what she says. She's not gonna use hot water because you don't want to cook your plants, you know? Now, can you -- can you imagine what we did wrong? Eventually over a period of time, it'll crack the pipe like a nutcracker. Because what she does next is three days later, she takes these plants back into the lab. SUZANNE SIMARD: Like, nitrogen and phosphorus. Yours is back of your house, but let's make it in the front. ROBERT: And for the meat substitute, she gave each plant little bit of food. It's doing like a triple double axel backflip or something into the sky. ROBERT: So if all a tree could do was split air to get carbon, you'd have a tree the size of a tulip. 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. Oh! Or it's just the vibration of the pipe that's making it go toward it. So we went back to Monica. That was my reaction. I'll put it down in my fungi. JENNIFER FRAZER: Finally, one time he did not bring the meat, but he rang the bell. ROBERT: Then she placed the fan right next to the light so that MONICA GAGLIANO: The light and the fan were always coming from the same direction. ]. But it didn't happen. LARRY UBELL: Yes, we are related. They need light to grow. She says the tree can only suck up what it needs through these -- mostly through the teeny tips of its roots, and that's not enough bandwidth. This -- this actually happened to me. If you get too wrapped up in your poetic metaphor, you're very likely to be misled and to over-interpret the data. It involves a completely separate organism I haven't mentioned yet. And the fungus actually builds a tunnel inside the rock. So they didn't. On the fifth day, they take a look and discover most of the roots, a majority of the roots were heading toward the sound of water. And she wondered whether that was true. And it's that little, little bit of moisture that the plant will somehow sense. Give it to the new -- well, that's what she saying. I've been looking around lately, and I know that intelligence is not unique to humans. ROBERT: So the beetles don't want to eat them. And a little wind. JENNIFER FRAZER: They're some other kind of category. How does it know which way to turn and grow its roots so that it can find the water? So I don't have an issue with that. She says one of the weirdest parts of this though, is when sick trees give up their food, the food doesn't usually go to their kids or even to trees of the same species. This is the headphones? If a nosy deer happens to bump into it, the mimosa plant Curls all its leaves up against its stem. ROBERT: What do you mean? 2018. MONICA GAGLIANO: Or would just be going random? And it's good it was Sunday. 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. If a plant doesn't have a brain what is choosing where to go? Landing very comfortably onto a padded base made of foam. They still remembered. There are multiple ways of doing one thing, right? We're carefully examining the roots of this oak tree. ROBERT: But what -- how would a plant hear something? But over the next two decades, we did experiment after experiment after experiment that verified that story. Like, would they figure it out faster this time? So I don't have a problem. And every day that goes by, I have less of an issue from the day before. And the pea plant leans toward them. Jennifer told Latif and I about another role that these fungi play. AATISH BHATIA: All right. I mean, Jigs was part of the family. ROBERT: And some of them, this is Lincoln Taiz LINCOLN TAIZ: I'm a professor emeritus of plant biology at UC Santa Cruz. Couple minutes go by And all of a sudden we could hear this barking and yelping. SUZANNE SIMARD: So we know that Douglas fir will take -- a dying Douglas fir will send carbon to a neighboring Ponderosa pine. MONICA GAGLIANO: Again, if you imagine that the pot, my experimental pot. I mean, this is going places. Yeah, plants really like light, you know? ROBERT: So she takes the plants, she puts them into the parachute drop, she drops them. We were so inconsistent, so clumsy, that the plants were smart to keep playing it safe and closing themselves up. She's done three experiments, and I think if I tell you about what she has done, you -- even you -- will be provoked into thinking that plants can do stuff you didn't imagine, dream they could do. Tagged #science #technology #philosophy #education #radiolab. They're father and son. So I think what she would argue is that we kind of proved her point. So otherwise they can't photosynthesize. [laughs]. 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. So light is -- if you shine light on a plant you're, like, feeding it? And every day that goes by, I have less of an issue from the day before. ROBERT: Because this peculiar plant has a -- has a surprising little skill. And it can reach these little packets of minerals and mine them. SUZANNE SIMARD: He was a, not a wiener dog. Okay? One time, the plant literally flew out of the pot and upended with roots exposed. Like, how can a plant -- how does a plant do that? It's okay, puppy. You mean you got down on all fours and just SUZANNE SIMARD: Yeah, I would just eat the dirt. Don't interrupt. We've all seen houseplants do that, right? Fan first, light after. Hi. So we went back to Monica. You know, one of those little jeweler's glasses? It's as if the individual trees were somehow thinking ahead to the needs of the whole forest. JENNIFER FRAZER: So Pavlov started by getting some dogs and some meat and a bell. So you can -- you can see this is like a game of telephone. Is it ROBERT: This is like metaphor is letting in the light as opposed to shutting down the blinds. Yeah. Yeah. So there's these little insects that lives in the soil, these just adorable little creatures called springtails. Fan, light, lean. Listen to this episode from Radiolab: Viper Members on Spotify. Because tree roots and a lot of plant roots are not actually very good at doing what you think they're doing. JAD: Well, okay. They all went closed. That's okay. So ROBERT: He says something about that's the wrong season. ROBERT: And the idea was, she wanted to know like, once the radioactive particles were in the tree, what happens next? And the plant still went to the place where the pipe was not even in the dirt? The roots of this tree of course can go any way they want to go. ROBERT: That is correct. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah, I know. ROBERT: That is correct. To remember? ROBERT: And on this particular day, she's with the whole family. Fan, light, lean. Wait. So light is -- if you shine light on a plant you're, like, feeding it? ROBERT: Are you, like, aggressively looking around for -- like, do you wake up in the morning saying, "Now what can I get a plant to do that reminds me of my dog, or reminds me of a bear, or reminds me of a bee?". But now we know, after having looked at their DNA, that fungi are actually very closely related to animals. Yeah. If you get too wrapped up in your poetic metaphor, you're very likely to be misled and to over-interpret the data. No, I don't because she may come up against it, people who think that intelligence is unique to humans. They run out of energy. Or at the time actually, she was a very little girl who loved the outdoors. And then I needed to -- the difficulty I guess, of the experiment was to find something that will be quite irrelevant and really meant nothing to the plant to start with. I guess you could call it a mimosa plant drop box. You need the nutrients that are in the soil. So let's go to the first. These guys are actually doing it." Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. ALVIN UBELL: And I've been in the construction industry ever since I'm about 16 years old. ROBERT: So you just did what Pavlov did to a plant. So today we have a triptych of experiments about plants. 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. Can you make your own food? We are the principals of Accurate Building Inspectors of Brooklyn, New York. On one side, instead of the pipe with water, she attaches an MP3 player with a little speaker playing a recording of ROBERT: And then on the other side, Monica has another MP3 player with a speaker. Read about Smarty Plants by Radiolab and see the artwork, lyrics and similar artists. Never mind.". They will send out a "Oh, no! MONICA GAGLIANO: I wonder if that was maybe a bit too much. You should definitely go out and check out her blog, The Artful Amoeba, especially to the posts, the forlorn ones about plants. Into which she put these sensitive plants. The idea was to drop them again just to see, like, the difference between the first time you learn something and the next time. JAD: If the -- if the tube system is giving the trees the minerals, how is it getting it, the minerals? ROBERT: So we strapped in our mimosa plant. MONICA GAGLIANO: Yeah, tested it in my lab. They don't do well in warm temperatures and their needles turn all sickly yellow. Connecting your house to the main city water line that's in the middle of the street. SUZANNE SIMARD: And so in this particular summer when the event with Jigs happened ROBERT: What kind of dog is Jigs, by the way? The light and the fan were always coming from the same direction. So we went back to Monica. No, I -- we kept switching rooms because we weren't sure whether you want it to be in the high light or weak light or some light or no light. It's a -- it's a three-pronged answer. Then we actually had to run four months of trials to make sure that, you know, that what we were seeing was not one pea doing it or two peas, but it was actually a majority. ], And Alvin Ubell. So for three days, three times a day, she would shine these little blue lights on the plants.