Tam O'Brien

speaker

28 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 21 Jul

Tam O'Brien’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Science Weekly · Revisited: A Scottish tea mystery, episode one – green shoots · 21 Jul 2026 podcast

When I first came here, I met the fellow community, the agricultural community, and they asked me what I was going to do here.

And I told them I was going to grow tea.

And there was a sort of raising of eyebrows and a few wry smiles, and they just went, hey, right...

My name's O'Brien.

And as you can see, the river that marks out the boundary of our land is the brand, the River Bran, which the whole of the glen's named after.

So they've renamed me.

I'm no longer Tom O'Brien.

I'm Tam O'Brien.

Those plants were originally propagated from three plants we brought in from Italy.

We were told categorically by people who'd been working in the tea industry for 30, 40 years that it couldn't be done.

We surround that heavily plucked plant in a tree guard.

This tree guard contains...

ultraviolet light inhibitors.

So they use retard photosynthesis by holding back 99% of the light spectrum.

Why would you want to retard photosynthesis in a plant?

Well, as I think my father would have been able to tell most people, my dad was quite proud of the fact that he could grow rhubarb underneath the kitchen sink without a drop of soil or water.

I mean, a lot of people know this.

It's been going on for 60 years, if not far, far more.

So we've been able to grow

and force crops to grow.

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