James Stewart
speaker
4,486 appearances
22 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 5d ago
James Stewart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 17 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Astrum Space · The Science Fact You've Been Taught for Years Is a Lie | Astrum Earth · 28 Apr 2026
podcast
Now, as I'm sure you're wondering, how did she do it?
Well, the study looked at paper birch and the Douglas fir trees because they are known to make the same type of fungal connections.
Each seedling was given a dose of carbon dioxide gas, which was labelled with different isotopes of carbon, so the team could track where this carbon ended up.
On top of this, the Douglas fir was kept in the shade so that it would make less of its own sugars by photosynthesis.
The experiment ran for two growing seasons and the results were astounding.
Simard found that the labeled carbon dioxide had been converted into sugars by photosynthesis in the paper birch, then transferred to the Douglas fir through their fungal link.
Some carbon had travelled in the other direction too, but since the Douglas fir was struggling to make sugars in the shade, the paper birch had transferred more carbon to it overall, resulting in a net carbon gain in the Douglas fir.
In other words, these trees weren't just going Dutch and splitting their carbon equally, the paper birch was giving extra carbon to the Douglas fir.
The team were shocked by this result and naturally started coming up with some ideas as to why the paper birch was being so generous.
This led them to wonder, could it somehow sense that the Douglas fir wasn't making as much carbon on its own?
This theory was outrageous.
it seemed to tear apart the widely accepted concept of survival of the fittest.
Instead of everyone looking out for themselves, we're talking about two different species helping each other via a shared connection with a third, even more distantly related species.
Though they are different, these tree species are competing for the same resources.
Light, space, water and nutrients.
So why don't they just keep everything for themselves?
Could it be that they share because their generosity will eventually be returned by another member of the forest?
Simard's findings suggested that trees formed far closer-knit communities than we once thought, and that resources were shared to boost the overall health of the forest, aided by some seriously helpful fungi, of course.
And the idea that trees had beaten us to the punch with their own internet, with wooden servers and fungal routers, really caught on.
There were articles on the hidden language of trees, manuals on deciphering tree feelings, documentaries, TED Talks, and bizarrely, even a name drop for Simard in the hit show, Ted Lasso.
Showing 3081–3100 of 4,486 · page 155 of 225
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