Radiolab - Smarty Plants

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

In an episode we first aired in 2018, we asked the question, do you really need a brain to sense the world around you? To remember? Or even learn? Well, it depends on who you ask. Jad and Robert, they are split on this one. Today, Robert drags Jad along on a parade for the surprising feats of brainless plants. Along with a home-inspection duo, a science writer, and some enterprising scientists at Princeton University, we dig into the work of evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano, who turns our brain-centered worldview on its head through a series of clever experiments that show plants doing things we never would've imagined. Can Robert get Jad to join the march?We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named one of Venus's quasi-moons. Then, Radiolab teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons, so that you, our listeners, could help us name another, and we now have a winner!! Early next week, head over to https://radiolab.org/moon, to check out the new name for the heavenly body you all helped make happen.Sign-up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hey, happy new year. I'm Latif Nasser. This, of course, is Radio Lab. We have got all kinds of surprises in store for you this year. Not even this year, like in the next few months, including the winner of our big year-long Quasi-Moon Naming Contest. There is a winner, it's just not official yet. We will announce it the moment we are able to. But for now, as we take our first step into 2025, we wanted to rewind an episode we first released in 2018. It's about plants and their incredible roots. And besides the fact that it's just a super fun to listen to, part of the reason we're replaying it is almost as a reminder of our roots as a show in things like humor and wonder, which we are going to be, you know,

working our best to dig up and dish up over the next year. So to set us off on the right footing, here are Emeritus hosts, Jad and Robert with Smarty Plants. Wait, wait, you're listening. Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. You are listening to Radiolab.

Radiolab. From WNYC. Rewind. Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From? WNYC. WNYC. WNYC. Yeah. Rewind. Where do we want to sit? Doesn't matter, one or the other. Dad sits in the back.

Go ahead. Thank you. Testing one, two, this, the headphones, is all right, got that? I'm Chad. I'm Robert. How's that, better? Oh, much better.

This is Radio Lab. Can I interrupt? Yes. But, can I say something now? Me Oh, much better. This is Radio Lab. Can I interrupt? Yes. But can I say something now? Me first, me first. Because I let you go, it's gonna be another 20 minutes till I get to talk. Little while back, I had a rather

boisterous conversation with these two guys. First of all, like who are you? I'm Larry Ubell. Yeah. And I'm Alvin Ubell. So you are related and you're both in the plumbing business? Are we related? Yes, we are related, but we are in the home inspection business.

Yeah. They're father and son, it's a family business. We are the principals of accurate building inspectors of Brooklyn, New York. And I've been in the construction industry ever since I'm about 16 years old, and I'm 84. Okay. I'm not giving my age.

I wanted to talk to them because as building inspectors, there's something they see over and over and over. Yeah. All the time. That is actually a clue in what turns out to be a deep, deep mystery. Which is what exactly? Well, let us say you have a yard in front of your house. Yours is the back of your house, but let's make it in front. Okay. And right in the middle of the yard is a tree. And the tree happens to be a weeping willow. Just for example, and not too far away from this tree, underground, there is a water pipe.

A perfectly good pipe. Connecting your house to the main city water line that's in the middle of the street. The roots of this tree, of course, can go any way they want to go. They can go north, south, east, west, whatever. 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. The tree will wrap its roots around that pipe. Around and around and around in a tangling of

Spaghetti like almost and each one of those lines of spaghetti is squeezing Little bit each one on ounce and ounce and ounce and ounce and ounce and eventually Over a period of time It'll crack the pipe Like a nutcracker. Yes, You both see this happening all the time. I have done inspections where roots were coming up through the pipe into the house. Into the house?

It's amazing. Yes. This actually happened to me. The magnolia tree outside of our house got into the sewer pipes, reached its tentacles into our house, and busted the sewage pipe. It just happens to a lot of people.

It's almost as if these plants, it's almost as if they know where our pipes are. I see what's happening. What? Are you bringing the plant parade again? Is that what this is? Of course I am. You're doing the like, okay, first it was the roots under the ground all connected into

a whole hive thing. I don't know why you have problems with this. No, it's because it's like every time I close my eyes, you're coming at it from a different direction. I do, I do. With the plant parade. And I met a plant biologist who's going to lead that parade. 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. I know you've, I know you shouldn't. But all right, but let me just, let me give it a try. Okay, I'm game. Let's go to the first. This is the plant and pipe mystery. Hello, finally.

Hello, hello, at long last. Now, you might think that the plant sends out roots in every direction. One of the roots just happens to bump into a water pipe and sends a signal to all the others, come over here, here's the water. Right. But that scientist I mentioned.

My name is Monica Gagliano. I'm a research associate professor at the University of Sydney. She took that ocean out of the garden into her laboratory. Yeah, tested it in my lab. She took some plants, put them in a pot that restricted the roots so they could only go in one of just two directions, toward the water pipe or away from the water pipe. What kind of pot is this? It's kind of a shape.

Like the letter Y but upside down? So that you get the roots can go to the left or to the right. Oh. Now the plants, if they were truly dumb, they'd go 50-50, be all random. Right. 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.

So the question is. A plant that is quite far away from the actual pipe, how does it know which way to turn and grow its roots so that it can find the water? All right. My hypothesis is that what happens is why... No, I... Can I have a few minutes?

No. You got somewhere to go? No, because I... You got somewhere to go? No. not. Can I have a few minutes? No. You got somewhere to go? No, because I... You got somewhere to go? No. Good. If she's going to do this experiment, most likely she's going to use cold water.

She's not gonna use hot water, because you don't wanna cook your plants, you know, and it's more expensive, why waste hot water? Well, by the way, should we establish, is it a fact in your... No, no, no, no. Okay, go ahead. You wanna contest? He's right track.

You have to understand that the cold water pipe causes even a small amount of water to condense on the pipe itself, on the outside of the pipe. It's kind of like a cold glass sitting on your desk and there's always a puddle at the bottom. The glass is not broken, it's not leaking the glass. It's not leaking, the water is still in there. So there is. The glass is not broken, it's not leaking the glass.

The water is still in there. So there is some water outside of the pipe, it's condensation. 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 and it's that little, little bit of moisture that the plant will somehow sense. 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. Every one of them. And all of a sudden one of them says, I found a little water and then all the other one goes in the same direction.

These sensitive hairs, he argues, would probably be able to feel that tiny difference. Yes. But Monica says, No. Absolutely not. I purposely removed the chance for a moisture gradient. She made sure that the dirt didn't get wet because she'd actually fastened the water pipe to the outside of the pot,

so it wasn't touching the dirt at all. Wait, so the, this branching pot thing, the part where the water pipe was, the pipe was on the outside of the pot? That's right, outside. And the plant still went to the place where the pipe was not even in the dirt? Yeah.

That is strange. Now, let me... Or is it just the vibration of the pipe that's making it go toward it? They would have to have some... You know, you got it. Maybe there's some kind of signal, different kind of signal traveling through the soil. Monika thought about that and designed a different experiment. Again, if you imagine the pot, my experimental pot.

With the forked bottom. Yep. But then have two very different options for our plant. On one side, instead of the pipe with water, she attaches an MP3 player with a little speaker playing a recording of the sound of water and then on the other side Monica has another mp3 player with a speaker but this one plays nothing. So she's got her plants in the pot and we're going to now wait to see what

happens. Remember that the roots of these plants can either go one direction towards the sound of water in a pipe or the other direction to the sound of silence. 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. Exactly. Exactly. So they just went right for the MP3 fake water, not even the actual water, just the sound of it? Just the sound. That's interesting.

It's interesting. That is interesting. But what, how would a plant hear something? Like they don't have ears or a brain or anything like that. They couldn't hear like we hear. Well, maybe. They definitely don't have a brain. No question there.

But they do have root hairs. This is Jennifer Frazier. I am the blogger of the artful amoeba at Scientific American. And she was willing to entertain the possibility that plants can do something like hear. So what do we have in our ears that we use to hear sound? Little hairs. Yes. Right?

And if you go to too many rock concerts, you can break these hairs and that leads to permanent hearing loss, which is bad. So maybe the root hairs, which are always found right at the growing tips of plant roots, maybe plant roots are like little ears. Maybe each root is like a little ear for the plant. I don't know. That is cool. That is definitely cool.

Okay. The thing I don't get is in animals, the hairs in our ear are sending the signals to a brain and that is what chooses what to do. That's true. If a plant doesn't have a brain, what is choosing where to go? I don't think Monica knows the answer to that, but she does believe that we humans... We are a little obsessed with the brain. And so we are under the impression, or I would say, the conviction that the brain is the center of the universe and if you have a brain and a nervous system you are

good and you can do amazing stuff and if you don't have one by default you can't do much in general. It's a very biased view that humans have in particular towards others. But still, I mean, to say that a plant is choosing a direction, I don't know. I mean, like when a plant bends towards sunlight, we've all seen houseplants do that, right? Would you say that the plant is seeing the sun? No, 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 a direction. I mean, couldn't it just be like that?

I think that's fair. And I think if I move on to the next experiment for Monica, you're going to find it a little bit harder to object to. We need to take a break first, but when we come back, the parade that I want you to join will come and swoop you up and carry you along in a flow of enthusiasm. [♪THEME MUSIC PLAYING FADES out of tune, then stops, then stops again, then resumes, then stops again, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then resumes, then R.L. Lutf, Radiolab, back with Jad and Robert. Yep. So today we have a triptic of of experiments about plants that apparently, jury still out, are going to make me rethink my stance on plants. So we're up to experiment two now, are we not?

That is correct. So we are going to meet a beautiful little plant called a mimosa pudica, which is a perfectly symmetrical plant with leaves on either side of a central stem. Yeah, mimosa has been one of the pet plants, I guess, for many scientists for like centuries. Because this peculiar plant has a surprising little skill. Yeah, a reflex. An anti-predator reaction?

Like a defensive mechanism. As soon as it senses that a grazing animal is nearby... If a nosy deer happens to bump into it, the mimosa plant... Folds its leaves. Curls all its leaves up against its stem. The whole thing immediately closes up and makes it look like, oh, there's no plant here. Just a boring set of twigs.

Nothing delicious at all. So the deer is like, oh well, nevermind. Right. And you can actually see this happen. So- Okay, so- You want some food in there? You can get, anybody can get one of these plants, and we did.

We'll do this one here. And if you just touch it- Can I try it? Yeah, go for it. Even just one leaf, like that, you can actually watch this cascade. Whoa. Where all the leaves close in like...

Look at that, they all went closed. It's sort of startling to see. That's so eerie. So that voice belongs to Atish Bhatia, who is with Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. We showed one of these plants to him and a couple of his colleagues, Sharon Dela Cruz and Peter Landegren, because we wanted them to help us recreate Monica's next experiment. Okay.

So maybe could you just describe it just briefly, just what you did? Well, I created this horrible contraption. Apparently she built some sort of apparatus. I guess you could call it a mimosa plant drop box. Picture one of those parachute drops that they have at the at state fairs or amusement parks where you're hoisted up to the top, except in this case, instead of a chair, they've got a little

plant-sized box. Into which she put these sensitive plants. So the plants are now buckled in, minding their own business, and then Monica would ... Drop them. Just about seven or eight inches. Land in very comfortably onto a padded base made of foam, So no plants would actually hurt in this experiment. But the drop was just shocking and sudden enough

for the little plant to close all its leaves. Do its reflex defense thing. Then Monica hoists the plant back up again and drops it again. And again. And again. And after not a whole lot of drops,

the plant, she noticed, stopped closing its leaves. So after the first few, the plants already realized that that was not necessary. The plants stopped, what is it they did? They stopped folding up. She thinks that they somehow remembered all those drops and it never hurts, so they didn't fold up anymore. They'd learned something. Exactly, which is pretty amazing.

Couldn't it just be an entirely different interpretation here? The plants have to keep pulling their leaves up and they just get tired. They run out of energy. Yeah, it might run out of fuel, exactly. It's a costly process for this plant. She figured out they weren't tired because after dropping them 60 times,

she then shook them left to right and they instantly folded up again. It would close up. 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. Yeah. That's a learning is something I didn't think plants could do. They do.

Oh, this looks so high tech. So we figured, look, if it's this easy and this matter of fact, we should be able to do this ourselves and see it for ourselves. So, that's where the scientists from Princeton come in, Peter, Sharon and Atish. And this matter of fact, we should be able to do this ourselves and see it for ourselves. So That's where these the scientists from Princeton come in Peter Sharon and Atish they designed from scratch a towering parachute drop in blue translucent

Lego pieces, so this is our plant dropper and we can move it up and we can drop it So we strapped in our our mimosa plant. A little seatbelt for him. Put it right down. And then... And then someone has to count. I'll count. And then we let it drop. Five, four, three, two, one... Drop! Five, four, three, two, one...

And we dropped it once and twice, again and again. We were waiting for the leaves to stop folding. We dropped, we dropped. We dropped, we dropped, we dropped. But it didn't happen. Oh. It was curling up each time? Every time, it just kept curling and curling.

Didn't seem to be learning anything. So you couldn't replicate what you saw? Nothing happened at all. So we went back to Monica. We, as you know, built your elevator. I heard. We told her what we did. What happened to you didn't happen to us. Now, can you imagine what we did wrong?

Like, for example, my plants were all in environment controlled rooms, which is not a minor detail. They're not experiencing extra changes. For example, I don't know if that was the case for your plans. We kept switching rooms because we weren't sure whether you wanted to be in the highlight or weak light or some light or no light. I wonder if that was maybe a bit too much. Was it possible that maybe the plants correctly responded by not opening because something really mad was happening around it and is like,

uh, this place is not safe. Truth is, I think on this point she's got a, she's right. Oh no. One time the plant literally flew out of the pot and upended with roots exposed. It feels like one of those experiments where you just aborted on humanitarianism. Yes! So I think what she would argue is that we kind of proved her point. We were so inconsistent, so clumsy, that the plants were smart

to keep playing it safe and closing themselves up. So actually I think you were very successful with your experiment. 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. 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. Because what she does next is three days later, she takes these plants back into the lab.

The idea was to drop them again just to see like the difference between the first time you learn something and the next time. Like what they figured out faster this time or maybe slower. So she takes the plants, she puts them into the parachute drop, she drops them and she says this time they relaxed almost immediately. Yeah, they'd remember straight away. Straight away. All of them know already what to do.

They remembered what had happened three days before, that dropping didn't hurt, that they didn't have to fold up, so they didn't. Yeah. And then she waited a few more days and came back. They still remembered. Yeah. A few more days. Yeah.

And it was almost like, let's see how much I have to stretch here before you forget. Eventually, she came back after... 28 days. 28 days. Yes. And they still remember. They still did not close when she dropped them. That's what she says.

What was your reaction when you saw this happen? That's producer Annie McEwen. This retention of knowledge. My reaction was like, oh, s***. That was my reaction. Because the only reason why the experiment turned out to be 28 days is because I ran out of time.

So they might remember even for much longer time than 28 days. So she's saying they remembered for almost a month? Yeah, I mean, can you remember what you were doing a month ago? No, I actually, like, even this morning I'm like, poof, gone.

Like, that's a thing. But supposing that she's right, where would a little plant even store a memory? That's what I asked her. I do want to go back, though, to... for something like learning. Like, I don't understand... Learning, as far as I understand it,

is something that involves memory and storage. And I do that in my brain. That's the place where I remember things in my brain. Do you? Yes. I do. You say is a brain, I think is your dog objecting to my analysis. That's okay.

Picasso pigs Picasso enough of that. Pigs. It's okay. It's okay, puppy. It's okay. No, no. Picasso, enough of that now. Sorry. Actually, Monica's dog leans perfectly into her third experiment, which again will be with a plant, but it was originally done with a dog.

So Pavlov started by getting some dogs and some meat and a bell. Science writer Jen Frazier gave us the standard story. 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. So he brought them some meat. They would salivate and then eat the meat. Then he would bring them the meat and he would ring a bell. And again drooling, eating.

And he would repeat this. Ring, meat, eat. Ring, meat, eat. Ring, meat, eat. Ring, meat, eat. Ring, meat, eat. Ring, meat, eat. Ring, meat, eat. Ring, meat, eat. Ring, meat, eat. Finally, one time, he did not bring the meat, but he rang the bell. Sure enough, the dogs began to drool.

They had learned to associate the sound of the bell, which for dogs has nothing to do with meat, with when they actually saw and smelled and ate meat. Exactly. Now that's a very, you know, animals do this experiment, but it got Monica thinking. Would the plant do the same? Could a plant learn to associate something totally random like a bell with something it wanted, like food?

Yeah. 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? No, really. And I guess that's, I feel sort of kind of good to say this. It's like, no, no, I don't do that. But Monica says what she does do is move around the world with a general feeling of what if.

So she decided to conduct her experiment. Pretty much like the concept of Pavlov with his dog applied. But instead of dogs, she had pea plants in a dark room. And for the meat substitute, she gave each plant a little bit of food, in this case a little blue LED light. Light is obviously representing dinner. So light is, if you shine light on a plant you're like feeding it. Yeah plants really like light you know they need light

to grow so otherwise they can't photosynthesize. So for three days three times a day she would shine these little blue lights on the plants. From a particular direction. And she noticed that unsurprisingly the plants would always grow towards the light. Anyone who's ever had a plant in a window knows that. And the salivation equivalent was the tilt of the plant? Exactly. 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, like the bail for the dog. So after much trial and error with clicks and hums and buzzes, all sorts of randomness, she found that the one stimulus that would be perfect was a fan. A little fan, the same one that they are used in computers, like, you know, really tiny. 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. The plants didn't care. Then she placed the fan right next to the light so that...

The light and the fan were always coming from the same direction. And with these two stimuli, she put the plants, the little pea plants, through a kind of training regime. Little fan goes on, light goes on, both aiming at the pea plant from the same direction and the pea plant leans toward them. Then she takes a little light and the little fan and moves them to the other side of the plant. Turns the fan on, turns the light on and the plant turns and leans that way. Yeah, fan first, light after and moved around but always matched in the same way together.

Fan, light, lean. Fan, light, lean. Fan, light, lean. Fan, light, lean. Same as the problem of the bell, the meat, and the salivation. So then at one point when you only play the bell for the dog or you play the fan for the plant, we know now for the dogs, the dogs is expecting. So it's predicting something to arrive. And Monica wondered in the plant's case,

if there was only the fan, would the plant Anticipate the light and lean toward it? Or would just be going random? After three days of this training regime, it is now time to test the plants with just the fan, no light. So Monica moves the fans to a new place one more time. They're switched on and the pea plants are left alone to sit in this quiet dark room feeling the breeze.

And then the next day I remember going in on at the uni on a Sunday afternoon and she goes into that darkened room with all the pea plants. So you know I'm in the dark. But she's got a little red headlamp on. Yeah. And she moves about the room. To have a look. Peering down at the plants under the red glow of her headlamp. And then I saw that these little plants. My little peas. Had indeed turned and moved toward the fan, stretching up their little leaves

as if they were sure that at any moment now light would arrive. And it's good it was Sunday and I remember it was Sunday because I started screaming in my life, I said, oh, I might disturb my plants. I got out and I thought, there's no one here on Sunday afternoon. I can scream my head off if I want to. And so I was really excited. I was like, oh my God, these guys are actually doing it. And so of course, that was only the beginning.

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. So you just did what Pavlov did to a plant. You got the plant to associate the fan with food. Yeah. Pretty much.

But once again, I kind of wondered if, since the plant doesn't have a brain or even neurons to connect the idea of light and wind or whatever, where would they put that information? Like how can a plant, how does a plant do that? I don't know. I don't know yet. But what I do know is that the fact that the plant doesn't have a brain doesn't a priori says that the plants can do something. The fact that humans do it in a particular way, it doesn't mean that everyone needs to do it in that way to be able to do it in the first place. There are multiple ways of doing one thing, right? So we're really at the very beginning of this.

Yeah, I know. That's why there is often more question than answers, but that's part of the fun as well. Monica's work has actually gotten quite a bit of attention from other plant biologists. Yes. And some of them, this is Lincoln Tayes. I'm a professor emeritus of plant biology at UC Santa Cruz. Say they're very curious but want to see these experiments repeated. It's a very interesting experiment, and I really want to see whether it's correct or not. We'd love to. He's got lots of questions about her research methods but really his major complaint is

her language, her use of metaphor. Right. For example, words like hearing or learning behavior. And this he's not a huge fan of. Yes, if you get too wrapped up in your poetic metaphor, you're very likely to be misled and to overinterpret the data. I mean, it's a kind of romanticism, I think. It goes back to anthropomorphizing plant behaviors. But I wonder if her using these metaphors.

Again, producer Annie McEwen. 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 and therefore she might in the end see something that no one else would see. Is it, can it be seen?

This is like metaphors letting in the light as opposed to shutting down the blinds. Yeah, kind of even like could there be a brain or could there be ears or, you know, just sort of like going off the deep end there, but maybe it makes her sort of more open-minded than someone who's just looking at a notebook. I think it can be open-minded, but still objective.

I mean, I think there's something to that. I think there are some cases where romanticizing something could possibly lead you to some interesting result. So you're like a metaphor cop with a melty heart. Yes. That would be an interesting thing. Don't interrupt. They have to edit this together. Yeah.

How much longer, because I have an appointment. All right, that's it. I have one thing, just out of curiosity. As we were winding up with our home inspectors, Alvin and Larry Ubell, we thought maybe we should run this metaphor idea by them. On the science side, there's a real suspicion of anything that's anthropomorphizing a plant.

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. And the classic case of this is, if you go back a few centuries ago, someone noticed that plants have sex. That there was a kind of a moral objection to thinking it this way. And I'm wondering whether Monica is gonna run into,

as she tries to make plants more animal-like, whether she's just gonna run into this malice from the scientific, I'm just wondering, you share any of that? No, I don't because she may come up against it, people who think that intelligence is unique to humans. And so I don't have a problem with that. I've been looking around lately,

and I know that intelligence is not unique to humans. Okay, so I don't have a problem with that. I've been looking around lately and I know that intelligence is not unique to humans. Okay, so I don't have an issue with that. And every day that goes by, I have less of an issue from the day before. So I don't have a problem. The problem is with plants. So they may have this intelligence. Maybe we're just not smart enough yet to figure it out.

Well, okay, that's a parade I'll show up for. Okay, let's do it! ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Big thanks to Atish Batyat, to Sharon Delacruz, and to Peter Landergrin at Princeton University's Council on Science and Technology. Also thanks to Kristi Melville and to Emerald O'Brien and to Andres O'Hara and to Summer Rain.

You're thanking Summer Rain? I am. Did the plant sneak that one in? No, no. No, Summer is a real person and her last name happens to be spelled R-A-Y-N-E. I see. This story was nurtured and fed and ultimately produced by Annie McEwen.

She actually trained this story in a rather elaborate experimental setup to move away from the light into a light breeze against all of its instincts. Oh, one more thing. Thanks to Jennifer Frazier, who helped us make sense of all this. You should definitely go out and check out her blog, The Artful Amoeba, especially to the post,

The Forlorn On ones, about plants. Plants are really underrated. When I write a blog post, my posts that get the least traffic guaranteed are the plant posts. No matter how amazing I think that the results are, for some reason people just don't think plants are interesting. And to me, here are three more reasons that you can say, no, really, plants are amazing. And this world is amazing. And that living creatures have this ability

for reasons we don't understand, can't comprehend yet. That's amazing and fantastic. And does it change my place in the world? Does it threaten my sense of myself or my place as a human that a plant can do this? No! Does it threaten your sense of humanity that you depend for pretty much every single calorie you eat on a plant? No! So you think that this is a hubris corrector? Yeah, I mean, so they can't move.

Well, some of them can, first of all, and big deal. Can you make your own food? No. Hey, I'm Lemon and I'm from Richmond, Indiana, and here are the staff credits. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Lots of Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Pressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable,

Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nayanan Sambandhan, Matt Kielty, Rebecca Lacks, Annie McEwan, Alex Niesen, Sara Khare, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vitsa, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, my name is Treza. I'm coding from Colchester in Essex, UK. Leadership support for Radiolab Science science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betsy Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Seymonds Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.