Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The SF Universe of Sue Burke's "Semiosis"

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The SF Universe of Sue Burke's "Semiosis" · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Jorge, do you ever feel bad when you eat
0:11
Speaker 1: the fruit? Uh? Not if it's delicious. Well, I'm not
0:15
Speaker 1: going to get into it with you right now about
0:17
Speaker 1: the banana controversy, but don't you ever think that you're
0:19
Speaker 1: like eating part of a living organism? Yeah, but it's
0:23
Speaker 1: a plant. Plants don't mind, do they. I don't know.
0:25
Speaker 1: Have you asked the plant, have you talked to the plant?
0:28
Speaker 1: If you talked to the plants parents, you know. I
0:30
Speaker 1: think the day I talked to banana is the day
0:32
Speaker 1: that I have gone bananas. I'm just saying, there's all
0:35
Speaker 1: kinds of life out there, so it's good to be
0:37
Speaker 1: open minded about what might or might not have feelings.
0:55
Speaker 1: I am more hanmac Organ isn't the creator of PhD comics.
0:58
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle, a physicist, and I'm an
1:01
Speaker 1: advocate for the rights of bananas, but not any other fruit. Daniel,
1:06
Speaker 1: like apples, eat them. No, bananas are the tip of
1:09
Speaker 1: the spear, and once we win that battle, we will
1:11
Speaker 1: extend those rights to other fruits. What are we gonna eat, Daniel?
1:16
Speaker 1: Where are we going to get our protasis? We're gonna
1:17
Speaker 1: learn to photosynthesize Eventually we'll just all become biological solar panels. Wow,
1:23
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're a physicist, because your biology is
1:26
Speaker 1: a little off. That is not a biology part. I
1:29
Speaker 1: just need some biologists and some engineers, and then I
1:31
Speaker 1: can start a startup, you know, to make that real.
1:34
Speaker 1: Then you need a business person and it's just and
1:38
Speaker 1: some investors. But welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge
1:41
Speaker 1: explain the university production of our Heart Radio in which
1:44
Speaker 1: we explore all the amazing and crazy things about the universe.
1:47
Speaker 1: We bring you to the forefront of scientific knowledge and
1:50
Speaker 1: scientific inquiry and scientific ignorance to show you what scientists
1:54
Speaker 1: do know and what scientists are scratching their heads about.
1:58
Speaker 1: To show you all the mystery and wonder of the
2:00
Speaker 1: universe and explain it to you in a way that
2:01
Speaker 1: hopefully makes you chuckle. Yea, all the stuff that's making
2:04
Speaker 1: scientists confused and curious, but also all the things that
2:08
Speaker 1: make scientists cratch their chins and go hmmmm, I wonder.
2:11
Speaker 1: And one thing we love to do is think about
2:13
Speaker 1: the way the universe works as we see it, and
2:15
Speaker 1: wonder if there are other ways the universe could work?
2:18
Speaker 1: Are there other kinds of planets out there. Could life
2:20
Speaker 1: be different on those planets, could be dramatically weirdly different.
2:24
Speaker 1: And because there are people out there who actually do
2:26
Speaker 1: this for a living, and not just because they have
2:29
Speaker 1: tenure and they can do whatever they want? Was that
2:31
Speaker 1: a dig? I felt like that was a dig? What
2:33
Speaker 1: do you mean? I did wait till I had ten
2:37
Speaker 1: ure to propose my photosynthesis biostarter to the NSF or
2:43
Speaker 1: to you. To you, I just proposed it to you
2:45
Speaker 1: right now to go fund me for that one. That's
2:49
Speaker 1: my new Kickstarter. No, but there are people out there
2:52
Speaker 1: whose job it is to be creative and to push
2:54
Speaker 1: the boundaries. And it's not just scientists thinking about how
2:57
Speaker 1: the universe is and how the universe might be. It's
3:00
Speaker 1: also artists and writers, and specifically science fiction authors. So
3:05
Speaker 1: today on the program, we'll be talking about another science
3:07
Speaker 1: wicking novel that is out there that is has some
3:10
Speaker 1: pretty interesting ideas, and it's another episode in our series
3:13
Speaker 1: of interviews with science fiction authors where we talked to
3:16
Speaker 1: them about their book, their ideas, and how they came
3:19
Speaker 1: up with it. And I'm especially fascinated with how they
3:22
Speaker 1: built their science fiction universe. A lot of these science
3:25
Speaker 1: fiction novels are fun because the game is to figure
3:27
Speaker 1: out what are the rules in that universe, how do
3:29
Speaker 1: they work? What are the laws of physics, and what
3:31
Speaker 1: are the fascinating consequences. And that's the same game we're
3:35
Speaker 1: playing in this universe. So it's fun to sometimes shift
3:38
Speaker 1: field and work in another universe. I mean, we're playing
3:40
Speaker 1: a game with God or whoever made this universe, Daniel
3:44
Speaker 1: to see who's parter. I don't know who's set up
3:45
Speaker 1: the puzzle, but it is a fascinating puzzle, and I
3:48
Speaker 1: feel like we're in a huge detective mystery. We're trying
3:51
Speaker 1: to figure out what the rules are. We'd be given
3:53
Speaker 1: a few clues, and that's what science is all about.
3:56
Speaker 1: That's why it's so much fun, because occasionally you do
3:58
Speaker 1: learn something fascinating, to have a fly flash of insight
4:01
Speaker 1: and the universe reveals something deep to you. Most physicists
4:04
Speaker 1: just are like criticy, Right, we don't drink as much tea,
4:09
Speaker 1: but essentially, yes, we are trying to solve a big murder. Yeah.
4:12
Speaker 1: So today we're talking with a pretty interesting author who
4:16
Speaker 1: wrote a book that sort of takes a look at
4:18
Speaker 1: intelligent life in a totally new way. Yeah, A lot
4:21
Speaker 1: of listeners right in and wonder what could alien life
4:24
Speaker 1: be like on another planet? Could you have other weird
4:26
Speaker 1: forms of intelligence that it's hard to imagine? And so
4:29
Speaker 1: this one particular writer took on that question very specifically
4:33
Speaker 1: and wondered about different surprising forms of alien intelligence. I
4:37
Speaker 1: like the tagline of her book, it's sentience takes many forms, tantalizing.
4:42
Speaker 1: But you know, I always wondered what intelligence life looks like,
4:45
Speaker 1: because you know, I'm still waiting to We never met
4:47
Speaker 1: any waiting to me except for our listeners, right, and
4:52
Speaker 1: the smartest people on the point, we've never met them technically,
4:55
Speaker 1: I mean, I've only met you, Daniel, and well we
4:58
Speaker 1: met some of them on the live stream, right, that's right. Yeah, yeah,
5:00
Speaker 1: that's right. So today on the podcast, we'll be talking
5:02
Speaker 1: about sci fi universe of Sue Bergs. Semiosis. All right, Daniel,
5:11
Speaker 1: this is a new word for me, semiosis. Break it
5:14
Speaker 1: down for me. What does semiosis means. That's the title
5:16
Speaker 1: of her books. It's the title of her book, and
5:18
Speaker 1: it reveals something about her background. She's a bit of
5:21
Speaker 1: a linguist. In her day job, she does translations, so
5:24
Speaker 1: she's fairly well known in that community for doing translations
5:27
Speaker 1: of like old Spanish texts, like she won an award
5:31
Speaker 1: for a translation of a Spanish text from the sixteen
5:34
Speaker 1: hundreds that was the first analysis of stock markets ever written.
5:38
Speaker 1: And so she's like a real technical grasp of Spanish
5:42
Speaker 1: and English and understanding of linguistics. And I think that
5:45
Speaker 1: motivates the title of the book, semiosis, which is a
5:48
Speaker 1: bit of a technical word in linguistics and reflects like
5:50
Speaker 1: how to communicate through signs, like you take a you know,
5:54
Speaker 1: how to interpret sign language or how to use you know,
5:57
Speaker 1: signs like road signs to communicate meaning. And so it's
6:00
Speaker 1: all about how intelligent creatures communicate to each other. Oh,
6:04
Speaker 1: I guess it's related to semiotics. I think I've heard
6:06
Speaker 1: that word before. It's not related to osmosis or mitosis
6:10
Speaker 1: or meiosis or full on moses semiosis. I'm a big
6:16
Speaker 1: fan of little osis miniosis. But that's pretty cool. I
6:21
Speaker 1: didn't even know they had awards in the translation world. Yeah,
6:24
Speaker 1: does that mean you haven't won any not yet? No,
6:27
Speaker 1: apparently they don't give him for translating physics human language
6:32
Speaker 1: from math to English. And I'm waiting for that. I
6:35
Speaker 1: wonder what the awards are called? Is it the excuse me?
6:38
Speaker 1: This was the Alicia Gordon Award for Word Artistry. Pretty cool. Yeah,
6:43
Speaker 1: it's pretty impressive. And so I had the great pleasure
6:46
Speaker 1: to read her book Semiosis, which came out very recently.
6:48
Speaker 1: It was also nominated for some awards in the science
6:51
Speaker 1: fiction world. But it's her first science fiction novel. Pretty cool,
6:55
Speaker 1: and so you got to talk to her, Daniel, which
6:58
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. And so later on will play the interview,
7:00
Speaker 1: but first we'll talk a little bit about the book
7:03
Speaker 1: and the science in it and see how it holds
7:05
Speaker 1: up to the reading of a physicist. So Daniel break
7:08
Speaker 1: it down for us. What is the basic idea of
7:10
Speaker 1: the book? Well, the book is really fun because it
7:12
Speaker 1: starts out as humans are exploring the galaxy. They're leaving
7:15
Speaker 1: Earth and trying to find other planets to live on,
7:18
Speaker 1: and so you immediately are on a colony ship and
7:20
Speaker 1: you're landing very rapidly on a new planet, and there's
7:23
Speaker 1: this joy of exploration where you're like, what is this
7:25
Speaker 1: new planet like? And they very rapidly discover that this
7:28
Speaker 1: new planet has life on it, and it has life
7:31
Speaker 1: that sort of seems similar to Earth at first, like
7:34
Speaker 1: there are plant like structures and their animal like structures,
7:37
Speaker 1: but they soon come to learn that these plant like
7:40
Speaker 1: structures are pretty different from earthbound plants in one very
7:44
Speaker 1: important way. Okay, so I guess I have a question already,
7:47
Speaker 1: which is when they go down to these planets, do
7:50
Speaker 1: they have to wear space suits? Where is it like
7:52
Speaker 1: Star Trek where they can just automatically breathe the air
7:55
Speaker 1: in those planets. They have been selective about the planets
7:57
Speaker 1: they visit, and they have like the ability to scan
7:59
Speaker 1: these things as far in advance so they can guess
8:01
Speaker 1: what the atmosphere is like. So on this planet they
8:03
Speaker 1: can walk around without space suits. I mean they're looking
8:06
Speaker 1: to establish colonies, you know, permanent colonies. They don't want
8:09
Speaker 1: to be living under bubbles or in space suits. So
8:12
Speaker 1: they specifically went to planets that had non toxic atmospheres, right,
8:15
Speaker 1: And so what's the real science behind that? Is that
8:18
Speaker 1: likely that there are planets that we can where we
8:20
Speaker 1: can breathe the air. It's fascinating. Actually, we're just on
8:23
Speaker 1: the cusp of the ability to study exoplanet atmospheres. It's
8:27
Speaker 1: an amazing field and we think that it's likely that
8:29
Speaker 1: there are exoplanets and that they have atmospheres, and some
8:33
Speaker 1: of them have water, vapor and carbon dioxide and stuff
8:36
Speaker 1: like this. But it's very difficult to get significant amounts
8:38
Speaker 1: of oxygen in those atmospheres without some form of life,
8:42
Speaker 1: without microbes for like a billion years pumping out oxygen.
8:46
Speaker 1: And so it's actually very scientifically accurate that if you
8:49
Speaker 1: find a planet that has oxygen, it probably already has
8:52
Speaker 1: microbes on it. Interesting, but I guess I always wonder, like,
8:55
Speaker 1: what's the probability that will find a planet with an
8:58
Speaker 1: atmosphere with the exact same composition, you know, of the
9:01
Speaker 1: gases that humans need to breathe comfortably, Because isn't it
9:05
Speaker 1: isn't it a very fine balance, Like like, at the
9:08
Speaker 1: oxygen level in our atmosphere drop by a certain percentage,
9:11
Speaker 1: we we would all die, Or if the dioxide level
9:14
Speaker 1: went up by a certain bit, we would all die.
9:16
Speaker 1: Isn't it really hard? It's not that though. It's not
9:18
Speaker 1: that hard. I mean, you can most of the atmosphere
9:20
Speaker 1: is nitrogen, and that's pretty much a nerve to us.
9:23
Speaker 1: So you could replace that with a lot of different
9:24
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. But you're right, there are bounds if
9:27
Speaker 1: the oxygen level dropped too far and then we couldn't
9:29
Speaker 1: breathe the air. We can tolerate a range of oxygen,
9:32
Speaker 1: but not a huge range. I mean, Earth has a
9:34
Speaker 1: like twenty one percent oxygen, and if it dropped into
9:37
Speaker 1: the teens you feel pretty sluggish, and if it dropped
9:40
Speaker 1: into the single digits, well then you die. And if
9:43
Speaker 1: the carbon dioxide level was too high, it would be
9:45
Speaker 1: toxic for humans. But there are certainly are bounds there.
9:49
Speaker 1: But we don't know very much about the distribution of
9:51
Speaker 1: atmospheres on exoplanets. Were like at the very beginning of that,
9:55
Speaker 1: So it's a fair question, But it's also totally not
9:58
Speaker 1: implausible to find an exo planet with non toxic atmosphere.
10:02
Speaker 1: What we don't know is if there are any exoplanets
10:04
Speaker 1: out there with microbes producing oxygen for us to breathe.
10:07
Speaker 1: That's a huge unanswered question because because oxygen doesn't happen
10:12
Speaker 1: naturally in planets, you need something to to break out
10:16
Speaker 1: break it out. Well, Oxygen is around in the universe,
10:19
Speaker 1: but it's not nearly as abundant as hydrogen. It's there,
10:22
Speaker 1: but without microbes it's all bound up like in carbon
10:25
Speaker 1: dioxide and stuff, So what you need for breathing is
10:28
Speaker 1: oxygen by itself. That's just o too. I see, I
10:30
Speaker 1: guess there are maybe there are a lot of planets
10:32
Speaker 1: out there, and so it's technically possible to find some
10:36
Speaker 1: that I would have the same exact atmosphere is our Yeah. Yeah,
10:39
Speaker 1: but the microbes are sort of sticking point there all right,
10:41
Speaker 1: So not implausible. So that's good enough here, not implausible.
10:46
Speaker 1: And so the plot is they go to a planet
10:48
Speaker 1: and it has an interesting new kind of intelligent life, yes,
10:51
Speaker 1: and that new intelligent life is not an animal. Now,
10:53
Speaker 1: there are animals on this planet. They are like weird
10:56
Speaker 1: birds and weird ground creatures and predators and all sorts
10:59
Speaker 1: of stuff that seem that's smart though, But the most
11:02
Speaker 1: intelligent creature on this planet is a plant. It's one plant. Well,
11:06
Speaker 1: there are actually a variety of plants with varying intelligence,
11:09
Speaker 1: but there's one specific kind of bamboo, a grove of bamboo,
11:13
Speaker 1: like an extended grove of bamboo, which turns out to
11:16
Speaker 1: be very intelligent. So it's like a complex organism. So
11:20
Speaker 1: it's not is it one organism is like one bamboo
11:23
Speaker 1: or like a a bunch of different bamboos that talk
11:25
Speaker 1: to each other. Well, it's both. There are different groves
11:28
Speaker 1: of bamboo. Each one is its own individual, and so
11:31
Speaker 1: it's not like one bamboo plant, one shoot is its
11:33
Speaker 1: own individual. It's like a whole grove communicate. They have
11:36
Speaker 1: like tangled roots, the way aspen do here on earth.
11:39
Speaker 1: You can think of them as one individual. But then
11:41
Speaker 1: you know, one grove over here has one name, and
11:43
Speaker 1: then another grove on another hillside might have another one,
11:47
Speaker 1: and so and so there's same. Like yes, they actually
11:50
Speaker 1: have a consciousness like they think. They think they plan.
11:53
Speaker 1: They communicate. They talk to each other using pollen for example.
11:58
Speaker 1: They can, you know, send those signals to the groves
12:00
Speaker 1: or they are ascensioned. They talk to each other. They
12:03
Speaker 1: send little pollen messages to each other. They have points
12:06
Speaker 1: of view, they have personalities. Parts of the book take
12:10
Speaker 1: place from the point of view of this bamboo growth.
12:13
Speaker 1: It's the first person narrator for part of the book.
12:15
Speaker 1: They speak English. They do learn to communicate with humans.
12:20
Speaker 1: How do they write or speak to us? You know,
12:22
Speaker 1: it's it develops slowly. First, the plant on one of
12:25
Speaker 1: its stems learns to control the coloring of the stem,
12:28
Speaker 1: and so we can form words on the stem of
12:30
Speaker 1: the plant so that people can like look at it
12:32
Speaker 1: like a screen. What And it develops all these new
12:35
Speaker 1: abilities to like hear what people are saying or to
12:38
Speaker 1: smell them. You can control its development in this amazing way.
12:42
Speaker 1: Has a real grasp of like the biochemistry of what's
12:44
Speaker 1: going on inside it, so we can do its own
12:47
Speaker 1: biological engineering. Like genetically, it can change itself. I don't
12:50
Speaker 1: know if it's genetically didn't get down to that level
12:53
Speaker 1: of detail, but it has a lot of control over
12:55
Speaker 1: how it wants to grow and what capabilities it wants
12:58
Speaker 1: to produce. And it's highly intelligent. And it's fascinating because
13:02
Speaker 1: the relationship between the plants and the animals on this
13:05
Speaker 1: planet is sort of inverted. Like the plants are kind
13:07
Speaker 1: of in charge and they train the animals. They were
13:11
Speaker 1: like produce a fruit the animals want. If the animals
13:14
Speaker 1: do what the plants need them to do, like disperse
13:16
Speaker 1: their seeds or protect them from from aggression from other
13:20
Speaker 1: plants and stuff, they grow these fruits pretty quickly. Yeah,
13:23
Speaker 1: and so when they when the humans land on this planet,
13:27
Speaker 1: they unbeknownst to them land right in the middle of
13:29
Speaker 1: a great war between two plants, and they end up
13:32
Speaker 1: eating the fruits from one plant and eating the fruits
13:34
Speaker 1: from another plant, and that this one produces poisonous fruits
13:37
Speaker 1: and this one doesn't. And so they slowly figure out
13:40
Speaker 1: that there's something complicated going on here, and they learn
13:43
Speaker 1: to interact with the plane. It's like landing in the
13:44
Speaker 1: middle of a flame war on Twitter or something like
13:47
Speaker 1: what's going on? I don't I don't understand. Yeah, and
13:49
Speaker 1: the plants on the planet are bewildered. You know, when
13:52
Speaker 1: these humans show up, the plants wonder like where are
13:55
Speaker 1: their plants? You know, you can't just have the animals
13:58
Speaker 1: wandering around with that without plants. It's like you kids
14:00
Speaker 1: out in the street without their parents or something, because
14:03
Speaker 1: on that planet, the plants are in charge. Well it
14:05
Speaker 1: sounds pretty interesting, but but I guess, and my question
14:07
Speaker 1: is what happens in the book, Like the humans land
14:09
Speaker 1: and then what happens they just the whole book is
14:12
Speaker 1: used sort of an exploration of this organism or is
14:14
Speaker 1: there is there some drama going on? No, there's some drama.
14:16
Speaker 1: Turns out that this planet, while it has a good atmosphere,
14:19
Speaker 1: is a real challenging planet for humans to live on
14:22
Speaker 1: because there's almost no iron available on the surface. You know,
14:26
Speaker 1: we need iron for our blood, we need iron for
14:28
Speaker 1: lots of things in our body, and also iron is
14:30
Speaker 1: pretty important for our technology. But on this planet, the
14:34
Speaker 1: way the tectonics happened and the way iron settled, or
14:36
Speaker 1: the amount of iron that was available when the planet formed,
14:39
Speaker 1: means that there's almost no iron available on the surface.
14:42
Speaker 1: The only iron you get is from like the occasional meteorite,
14:46
Speaker 1: and so it's a real challenge. And when the humans land,
14:48
Speaker 1: they initially struggle, well they struggle for lots of reasons,
14:51
Speaker 1: this is just one of them. And what they learned
14:53
Speaker 1: to do is learn how to survive on this planet
14:55
Speaker 1: essentially by forming a relationship with these intelligent plants. You know.
15:00
Speaker 1: First humans show up and they want to be in charge,
15:01
Speaker 1: and they want to establish their own colony and be independent.
15:04
Speaker 1: But eventually they learned that if they want to survive,
15:07
Speaker 1: they have to build a relationship with these plants. They
15:09
Speaker 1: have to learn to work together, all right. So it's
15:12
Speaker 1: it's more sort of like a colonization novel. Yeah, yeah,
15:16
Speaker 1: except that the you know, the colonized waves. Yeah. In
15:19
Speaker 1: this case, though, the natives win because by the end
15:22
Speaker 1: of the novel, the humans essentially give up and put
15:25
Speaker 1: the plants in charge. Really at the end, they think
15:27
Speaker 1: the plans are more intelligent than them. Yeah, the plants
15:29
Speaker 1: are better at making decisions that long term planning. They
15:33
Speaker 1: have a better grasp of the details that those humans
15:35
Speaker 1: also elect the carrot as president. I feel like you're
15:37
Speaker 1: inviting me to compare politicians to fruits here, but I'm
15:40
Speaker 1: gonna avoid being political and just say that they all
15:43
Speaker 1: seem in bananas to me. All right, Well, let's get
15:46
Speaker 1: into the science a little bit more and whether or
15:48
Speaker 1: not it's plausible for me physics point of view to
15:50
Speaker 1: have a planet like this or a plant that's intelligent
15:53
Speaker 1: from a biology point of view, and then we'll get
15:55
Speaker 1: into the interview with super But first let's take a
15:57
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, we're talking about the sci fi
16:12
Speaker 1: universe of superb novel semios Is, and in it, plants
16:17
Speaker 1: are intelligent. So is that, Daniel, Is that even plausible?
16:21
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, like I wonder, like, if you
16:23
Speaker 1: look at a neuron, you wouldn't think a neuron is intelligent.
16:26
Speaker 1: But if you get a whole bunch of them, a
16:28
Speaker 1: few billion, then you get a human brain. So is
16:31
Speaker 1: it is this kind of what's going on here with
16:33
Speaker 1: the plants, Like if you get enough simple plants, you
16:35
Speaker 1: might get some sort of complex consciousness out of it. Yeah.
16:39
Speaker 1: And it's a really hard question because we don't really
16:41
Speaker 1: understand the rise of intelligence or what's critical about it,
16:44
Speaker 1: or consciousness or all this stuff. So of course I
16:46
Speaker 1: turned to my local expert. My wife is biologist, and
16:49
Speaker 1: I asked her, Hey, do you think plants could ever
16:51
Speaker 1: be intelligent? I didn't tell her the context or anything.
16:54
Speaker 1: So she first said that's ridiculous, absolutely not. Why did
16:59
Speaker 1: she say that, Well, this a whole history of studying
17:01
Speaker 1: plants here on Earth where people try to understand like
17:04
Speaker 1: do earth plants feel pain? Do they have responses? Do
17:08
Speaker 1: they have any sort of nervous system at all? And
17:11
Speaker 1: there were some labs about ten fifteen years ago they
17:13
Speaker 1: claimed that they had evidence that plants could feel things
17:16
Speaker 1: and respond, maybe even feel pain. And Uh, it's a
17:20
Speaker 1: complicated question because plants do have sophisticated reactions to stimuli. Right.
17:25
Speaker 1: There are plants that if you touch them, they will
17:27
Speaker 1: close up or venus fly chapel, like you know, eat
17:30
Speaker 1: an animal. They drive right like they seek out the
17:32
Speaker 1: sun and the water, and if they if you cut them,
17:36
Speaker 1: they actually have some sort of like emergency reaction to
17:38
Speaker 1: being cut. Yeah, And so I called up another friend
17:41
Speaker 1: of mine who was actually a neuroscientist. Here, like my
17:44
Speaker 1: wife didn't have a satisfying as somebody else. Yeah, well,
17:48
Speaker 1: you know, she's a microbiologist. So I called an actual
17:50
Speaker 1: neuroscientist who works on displa like fruit flies and how
17:54
Speaker 1: their minds work. And she said that, you know, plants
17:56
Speaker 1: don't have a central nervous system the way we understand it,
17:59
Speaker 1: but they do have these kind of mechanical reactions. You know,
18:02
Speaker 1: they do respond to stimuli. And so it's really best
18:05
Speaker 1: to think of plants sort of like on a continuum.
18:07
Speaker 1: It's not easy to say, like there's a clear distinction
18:10
Speaker 1: between how plants work and how animals work all the
18:13
Speaker 1: way up to humans. It's sort of you can place
18:15
Speaker 1: them on a continuum. An individual plant, I think, is
18:19
Speaker 1: what you're saying. You can maybe think of him as
18:21
Speaker 1: is intelligent, but not that intelligent. But I think maybe
18:24
Speaker 1: what she's getting to in this novel is like, if
18:26
Speaker 1: you get enough simple plants, maybe you could get consciousness
18:29
Speaker 1: out of here. Yeah, and you also only need to
18:31
Speaker 1: take another step, which is maybe these plants are not
18:33
Speaker 1: just like Earth plants. They have nervous systems. There's no
18:36
Speaker 1: reason why on another planet plant like organisms couldn't develop
18:40
Speaker 1: something akin to a nervous system and even maybe a brain.
18:44
Speaker 1: And in her novel she has sort of nervous systems
18:47
Speaker 1: inside the plant roots. That's where their intelligence resides on
18:50
Speaker 1: her planet, I see, But don't these plant organisms think
18:53
Speaker 1: really slowly? Or do they think at the speed of
18:56
Speaker 1: That's what I was wondering, because I feel like all
18:59
Speaker 1: really intelligent life has brains, and I wonder if that's
19:02
Speaker 1: because of you know, you want to bring all your
19:04
Speaker 1: neurons close together so that you can have things happen quickly.
19:07
Speaker 1: You don't have to wait for the delay as signals
19:09
Speaker 1: transmit from like one side of the hill to the
19:12
Speaker 1: other side of the hill. Right, that would be a
19:14
Speaker 1: slow thought. There, that would be a slower thought. And
19:17
Speaker 1: so in this case, it's sort of like a distributed intelligence.
19:20
Speaker 1: Each plant is intelligent in its route, and then together
19:23
Speaker 1: they form a personality. In the novel, though, the plants
19:26
Speaker 1: are pretty responsive, so you know, sometimes it takes some
19:28
Speaker 1: time to think, but you can have a conversation back
19:30
Speaker 1: and forth with these plants really well. I guess if
19:33
Speaker 1: you have enough of them, maybe you know, it's fast
19:36
Speaker 1: that way because there's so many plants. Yeah, and you know,
19:39
Speaker 1: we do the same thing with our computing, right we
19:41
Speaker 1: have big clusters of computers to answer questions, and you
19:45
Speaker 1: have part of it that's responsive to the user and
19:47
Speaker 1: other parts of it that are off thinking about deep stuff,
19:49
Speaker 1: you know, to provide information later on. And these computer
19:53
Speaker 1: systems are very responsive of the hive mind, you know,
19:56
Speaker 1: like if you have a question, just ask the Internet.
19:59
Speaker 1: I not sure the Internet is intelligence, but but yeah,
20:03
Speaker 1: there are examples of you know, starlings or insects that
20:06
Speaker 1: act sort as one organism. And then I was amazed
20:09
Speaker 1: that neuroscientist friend of mine pointed out that there are
20:12
Speaker 1: other organisms here on Earth that have nerves and sort
20:16
Speaker 1: of mental states, but no brain. There's this organism called
20:20
Speaker 1: the hydra which has like a nerve net, so there's
20:23
Speaker 1: no core brain. It's not like all the nerves are
20:24
Speaker 1: clustered together. They're sort of distributed through the body, but
20:28
Speaker 1: you know, it has a nervous system, it has mental states.
20:31
Speaker 1: It's very simple, but there's an example of sort of
20:33
Speaker 1: distributed brain that can actually have some intelligence. It doesn't
20:37
Speaker 1: have a concentrated processing it's just it's just kind of
20:41
Speaker 1: is as a like a human without a conscious brain. Yeah,
20:44
Speaker 1: Or it's like if your brain was spread out through
20:46
Speaker 1: your body instead of concentrated in your skull. That would
20:50
Speaker 1: be a massive headache if you all right, Well, there's
20:53
Speaker 1: I know, piece of signs here in this book about
20:56
Speaker 1: low iron in the planet. Like it's a planet that
21:00
Speaker 1: is very little iron, and I'm just wondering if that's possible,
21:04
Speaker 1: because you know, are most planets sort of made of
21:07
Speaker 1: rocky iron types of metals. Yeah, it's hard to assemble
21:10
Speaker 1: a planet without some heavy metal at the core. I mean,
21:13
Speaker 1: that's what really seeds the gravitational attraction is a creation
21:17
Speaker 1: of stuff. Remember, solar systems start, you have a blobs
21:20
Speaker 1: of gas and dust and rock, and the heavy stuff
21:23
Speaker 1: starts to gather together. And that's why most of these
21:26
Speaker 1: planets have a heavy core. Even things like Jupiter right
21:29
Speaker 1: has some ice and rock at its core, and that's
21:31
Speaker 1: sort of seeded the creation of those gas giants, and
21:34
Speaker 1: so it's very unlikely to have a planet that doesn't
21:37
Speaker 1: have some iron in it down below. But the question
21:41
Speaker 1: is can the iron be available at the surface, And
21:44
Speaker 1: that's a question of like how quickly did the planet cool?
21:48
Speaker 1: How long did it stay hot? You know, if it
21:50
Speaker 1: stayed hot for a while and there's time for these
21:52
Speaker 1: things to sort of settle through the liquid core, then
21:56
Speaker 1: it's possible that all the heavy stuff goes all the
21:58
Speaker 1: way down and you only get sort of lighter elements
22:00
Speaker 1: near the surface. Oh so it's possible to have an
22:03
Speaker 1: iron rich planet which is not available for the plants
22:07
Speaker 1: and animals up top on the surface. Yeah, all right,
22:10
Speaker 1: so that's also not implausible. It's not implausible, and it's
22:13
Speaker 1: sort of fascinating to imagine like a situation where the
22:16
Speaker 1: only iron you can get comes from the sky and
22:19
Speaker 1: you know, before humans were able to mine the earth
22:23
Speaker 1: and pull out these heavy metals, that was also the case.
22:26
Speaker 1: You know, there are examples of like Vikings that forged
22:29
Speaker 1: swords from meteorites, you know, because that was the first
22:32
Speaker 1: metal that was available, And that's pretty awesome, that's like,
22:35
Speaker 1: and you can imagine how that inspired all sorts of mythology. Right, Well,
22:38
Speaker 1: I guess my question is if these humans had star
22:42
Speaker 1: traveling power and they could go around colonizing, can't they
22:45
Speaker 1: just go and like grab a meteor from the nearest
22:49
Speaker 1: meteor belt or something that has a lot of iron,
22:51
Speaker 1: Or if they have that technology, can they drill down
22:54
Speaker 1: until they get to some iron on the core that. Yeah,
22:57
Speaker 1: they didn't pack for that. They didn't bring deep mining technology,
23:01
Speaker 1: and you know, when they land their technology very pretty
23:04
Speaker 1: rapidly degrades, and so they end up, you know, they
23:07
Speaker 1: start out as a starfaring technological civilization, but then one generation,
23:11
Speaker 1: two generations, five generations deep there at a much lower level.
23:15
Speaker 1: They're at a farming subsistence to technology, and they have
23:18
Speaker 1: to build up a local infrastructure basically from scratch. They
23:21
Speaker 1: had some bad luck when they landed. Some of their
23:24
Speaker 1: key technology was lost in a crash from some of
23:26
Speaker 1: their shuttles, and so, but I think it's pretty typical
23:30
Speaker 1: to imagine that if you land on a planet, you're
23:32
Speaker 1: not going to be able to benefit from the heavy
23:34
Speaker 1: industry of Earth for very long. You really have to
23:37
Speaker 1: be able to build the stuff up locally. You don't
23:39
Speaker 1: think that this, you know, like history would repeat itself
23:42
Speaker 1: and they would have a bronze age and an iron
23:44
Speaker 1: age and start mining things. You know. Yeah, but history
23:47
Speaker 1: took a long time, right, that's thousands of years. And
23:50
Speaker 1: now even if you know how to do this stuff,
23:52
Speaker 1: it's not that easy. You know. What they should have
23:53
Speaker 1: done is they should have brought Ryan North how to
23:56
Speaker 1: Invent Everything book when he talks about how to create
23:59
Speaker 1: all of humans realization in about a hundred would think
24:01
Speaker 1: they would bring that on a colonizing ship to another planet,
24:05
Speaker 1: you know, a little instruction center in the encyclopedia. But
24:08
Speaker 1: it sounds like to me they forgot. Now they brought
24:11
Speaker 1: a bunch of experts. The experts are always the first
24:14
Speaker 1: ones to die in a sci fi movie, that's right.
24:17
Speaker 1: They lost some of those, and they lost some of
24:18
Speaker 1: their more specialized technology. All right, well, sounds really interesting.
24:22
Speaker 1: And again, if anyone's interested the novels called Semiosis by
24:26
Speaker 1: Sue Burke and so, Daniel, you had a chance to
24:28
Speaker 1: talk to her an interview about her book. I did.
24:31
Speaker 1: We had a lot of fun. All right. Well, here's
24:32
Speaker 1: the interview of Daniel with sci fi author Suber. Could
24:36
Speaker 1: you please introduce yourself for our audience. Hell, my name
24:39
Speaker 1: is Sue Burke and I'm a writer. I'm the author
24:43
Speaker 1: of the science fiction books Semiosis and Interference, along with
24:47
Speaker 1: a bunch of other stuff and short stories. I was
24:50
Speaker 1: a journalist for quite a bit of time, and I'm
24:53
Speaker 1: also a translator from Spanish into English. Well that's amazing,
24:56
Speaker 1: and I read from your website you're also a poet. Yes,
24:58
Speaker 1: I write poetry as well. Wow, quite prolific. So let
25:02
Speaker 1: me get started by sort of getting acquainted with how
25:05
Speaker 1: you view the universe and science fiction universe by asking
25:08
Speaker 1: you about sort of standard science fiction universes that exist
25:12
Speaker 1: out there and your view on them. For example, Um,
25:15
Speaker 1: what's your opinion about the Star Trek teleporter. Do you
25:19
Speaker 1: think that when you step into a Star Trek helporter
25:22
Speaker 1: it tears you apart and kills you reassembling you somewhere else,
25:26
Speaker 1: or that it actually translates you, moves you from one
25:29
Speaker 1: place to another. Actually, as an author, I think that
25:32
Speaker 1: that was a workaround for all of the mechanics of
25:35
Speaker 1: getting someone from hither toojn Um. It's what we're calling
25:40
Speaker 1: the business handwaiting that will tell you that this is
25:44
Speaker 1: this is just fine. Don't look at it too hard,
25:47
Speaker 1: and that's how it works, and it just saves them
25:50
Speaker 1: a whole lot of time and effort and boring things
25:53
Speaker 1: that people wouldn't want to see. So there's realistically it
25:57
Speaker 1: wouldn't work just because it would take too much in
26:00
Speaker 1: formation to build someone rebuild someone. And where would you
26:03
Speaker 1: get the parts anyway? I mean, because there's a lot
26:07
Speaker 1: that goes into our body. And what if you went
26:09
Speaker 1: to a place that didn't have I don't have a
26:11
Speaker 1: lot of calcium, you would have phones, You need a
26:14
Speaker 1: three D body printer with all the supplies exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
26:17
Speaker 1: So then would you be willing to step into one,
26:19
Speaker 1: say I somehow overcame all the technical obstacles and put
26:22
Speaker 1: one together. Would you be willing to use a teleporter?
26:25
Speaker 1: I would be willing to be the million person to
26:27
Speaker 1: do that. That's fair. Um So then in other science
26:33
Speaker 1: fiction universes, what technology that you see there would you
26:36
Speaker 1: like to see become real? Well, let's see the Star
26:40
Speaker 1: Trek communicators of course are now real, and that is
26:42
Speaker 1: just super cool. Also from an author. That makes sometimes
26:46
Speaker 1: plotting very difficult because if you could talk to anybody
26:49
Speaker 1: at any time about anything and look things up at
26:53
Speaker 1: all times that changes the human dynamics in ways that
26:59
Speaker 1: are maybe two settle for us to understand because we
27:02
Speaker 1: just lived through it. Perhaps. Yeah. So then let's turn
27:05
Speaker 1: to your book and the main topic of it. Um. First, congratulations,
27:09
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful book. I really enjoyed reading it. I
27:13
Speaker 1: read a lot of science fiction. I'm frankly a little
27:15
Speaker 1: picky about what I read and what I like, and uh,
27:18
Speaker 1: and I found yours to be really wonderful, very creative,
27:21
Speaker 1: very well executed. So congrats. And in my reading, sort
27:25
Speaker 1: of the main intellectual concept, like the novel idea is
27:29
Speaker 1: coming to a planet where plants or the equivalent of plants,
27:33
Speaker 1: the sessile creatures, have a higher intelligence and have evolved
27:37
Speaker 1: these complex relationships with each other and also with the
27:40
Speaker 1: the equivalent of animals on the planet. Is that a
27:43
Speaker 1: fair way to describe sort of the core nugget of
27:45
Speaker 1: the idea. Yes, in fact, that was the exact idea
27:47
Speaker 1: I wanted to explore. Awesome, So tell me where did
27:51
Speaker 1: that idea come from? Did you start from having that
27:53
Speaker 1: idea and then trying to tell a story in that
27:56
Speaker 1: world or did you have sort of a story you
27:58
Speaker 1: wanted to tell and this is the idea you need. Yea. Actually,
28:01
Speaker 1: it all started when one of my house plants attacked
28:04
Speaker 1: another house plant and killed it. Um. It just grew
28:10
Speaker 1: around it and wrapped itself around the other plant till
28:12
Speaker 1: it died. And then it happened to another plant, and
28:15
Speaker 1: I started to get suspicious, and I began to do
28:18
Speaker 1: some research, and I discovered the plants are very active,
28:22
Speaker 1: even aggressive. We don't think of that because we don't
28:26
Speaker 1: see the move usually, although if you think about carnivorous
28:29
Speaker 1: plants there they can move fast. Um. But between themselves
28:34
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty much a constant state of war. Except
28:37
Speaker 1: when they decided it's better for them to cooperate, they
28:40
Speaker 1: can do all sorts of things. And the more I
28:41
Speaker 1: researched that, the more I realized that what if they
28:44
Speaker 1: could think, because they don't seem to think the way
28:47
Speaker 1: that we do, But if they could, then what And
28:51
Speaker 1: that was the idea I wanted and I want needed
28:54
Speaker 1: to do that in science fiction because obviously it's counter reality.
28:58
Speaker 1: And then what would be the way played to explore that?
29:00
Speaker 1: So I would need a planet where they could do that,
29:02
Speaker 1: because if they started doing it to your on Earth, well,
29:05
Speaker 1: that wouldn't work for technical reasons. So okay, well set
29:08
Speaker 1: up a planet and then we'll put some humans there,
29:11
Speaker 1: and then what could happen? And how could I make
29:14
Speaker 1: those events show what the plants could do and how
29:19
Speaker 1: they would react to things, and build a story around that.
29:23
Speaker 1: Some of our listeners I told them I'd be interviewing you,
29:25
Speaker 1: and they asked me to ask you how that might
29:28
Speaker 1: change people's relationship with their plants, like in terms of
29:32
Speaker 1: ethical questions, like what is it like to eat the
29:35
Speaker 1: fruit of an intelligent plant? Is it all right if
29:38
Speaker 1: they are giving you consent but otherwise not? How did
29:41
Speaker 1: that sort of change that relationship that was built into
29:44
Speaker 1: the story because plants do sometimes want fruit. They definitely
29:49
Speaker 1: wanted to eat because they may get edible. In fact,
29:52
Speaker 1: they make it very attractive to you, and they do
29:54
Speaker 1: that because that's one of the ways that that they
29:58
Speaker 1: spread their seeds. They have many other ways. True, But
30:00
Speaker 1: is that a want in the sense that there is
30:02
Speaker 1: an advantage to them they have evolved to do that absolutely,
30:05
Speaker 1: or are you attributing you know, an intention a desire
30:08
Speaker 1: to the actual organism. We don't know if it's an
30:10
Speaker 1: intention or not. But we know that is the purpose
30:14
Speaker 1: of the fruit is to be attractive to us so
30:17
Speaker 1: that we eat it and we move their seeds. Some plants,
30:21
Speaker 1: plants and tomatoes, for example, their seeds can actually go
30:24
Speaker 1: right through our digestion unless we cook the tomato. It
30:26
Speaker 1: comes out at the other end and ready to go nicely. Yes, um.
30:31
Speaker 1: And that happens with other things. And wheat grows a
30:35
Speaker 1: whole lot of seeds because they know some of them
30:37
Speaker 1: will be eaten, but not all of them will be
30:39
Speaker 1: eaten because there's just too many. That's why they may
30:42
Speaker 1: make so many. And that's true other grades to One
30:45
Speaker 1: of the interesting things is that human beings discovered this
30:47
Speaker 1: and we start growing wheat fields. And there's a kind
30:51
Speaker 1: of a grain called why. Why just started moving into
30:54
Speaker 1: those fields because it looked like a really good way
30:56
Speaker 1: to live because you've got lots of care and they
30:58
Speaker 1: need to know all of them, and then planted more seeds,
31:01
Speaker 1: and so I volunteered to become domesticated because that was
31:06
Speaker 1: a good way to work. Um. And you can see
31:09
Speaker 1: now oak trees, for example, they just do not cooperate
31:12
Speaker 1: at all. Whole another subject. But yeah, oak trees just
31:15
Speaker 1: don't behave well. Apple trees, on the other hand, apple
31:18
Speaker 1: trees clearly thought it was a good idea. They were
31:21
Speaker 1: quite willing to do that. Think about marijuana and how
31:24
Speaker 1: we can breed that into the little things that basically
31:26
Speaker 1: do nothing but grow flowers since that, and they're very
31:30
Speaker 1: willing to do that too, because it works for them,
31:33
Speaker 1: because they keep getting replanted. So some plants want to
31:36
Speaker 1: do it, some plants don't. They have all sorts of
31:39
Speaker 1: other ways to do that, and some of it is
31:41
Speaker 1: actually very abusive to animals. So it seems to me
31:43
Speaker 1: like this concept of plants having intention and intelligence, that
31:47
Speaker 1: you see it sort of as a natural extension of
31:50
Speaker 1: the sort of continuum of plant relationships to animals now,
31:54
Speaker 1: not something totally distinct, which is sort of like an
31:56
Speaker 1: exaggeration or an extension of what's happening in our universe.
32:00
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we grew up with each other and we
32:03
Speaker 1: depend on each other, and if you could put that
32:05
Speaker 1: where we would all have to think about that, both
32:08
Speaker 1: them and us. Then, as you say, it does cause
32:10
Speaker 1: ethical questions, which I tried to explore in the novel,
32:14
Speaker 1: but it also makes it more clue that that's what
32:17
Speaker 1: we're doing here. We don't think about it enough. I
32:21
Speaker 1: think if you talk to ecologists, and especially farming ecologists,
32:25
Speaker 1: there's we're doing some things that are very scary and wrong,
32:28
Speaker 1: and they're going to come back to get us. But
32:30
Speaker 1: that relationship exists here. We just don't think about it
32:34
Speaker 1: very hard. I mean, have you thought about your tomato
32:37
Speaker 1: is talking to you when it turns red? Well? It is,
32:40
Speaker 1: But we're just so used to that that we don't
32:43
Speaker 1: realize that we are in communication. And some people talk
32:46
Speaker 1: to their tomatoes, are right. People talk to their plans
32:49
Speaker 1: and I don't know if they listen. But I do
32:52
Speaker 1: that too well. I talked to my children and I
32:56
Speaker 1: don't know if they listen. How do I do it? Anyway? Well,
32:58
Speaker 1: let let me ask you this. Do you imagine in
33:00
Speaker 1: that the universe that you described could exist, that those
33:03
Speaker 1: kinds of plants could exist here in our universe, and
33:06
Speaker 1: you imagine that there could be an alien planet out
33:08
Speaker 1: there in which plants do develop intelligence. Do you think
33:11
Speaker 1: they would need to be a different set of laws
33:13
Speaker 1: of physics or that there's some scientific principle that that
33:16
Speaker 1: needs to be sort of handwaves. No, they could do
33:18
Speaker 1: that now, And in fact, there's some debate out where
33:20
Speaker 1: whether they do that here. One of the things is
33:25
Speaker 1: that beyond tomatoes turning red and for showing that that
33:29
Speaker 1: it's right, how much do they really need to talk
33:31
Speaker 1: to us about. We know they communicate with each other
33:33
Speaker 1: a lot, but they might not have that much to
33:36
Speaker 1: say to us. So well, they do communicate here with
33:40
Speaker 1: each other. Um, we haven't deciphered that, but we know,
33:43
Speaker 1: for example, whales communicate with each other and we're not
33:46
Speaker 1: sure what they're saying either. Just because we can't break
33:48
Speaker 1: that code, it could very easily happen somewhere in the
33:52
Speaker 1: university right now the way I wrote about it, give
33:55
Speaker 1: us another million years for the plants to to keep
33:58
Speaker 1: making changes and prep we could enter into a more
34:02
Speaker 1: direct relationship. And so the plants in your novel, do
34:05
Speaker 1: they have like a central nervous system? What is this
34:08
Speaker 1: sort of implementation the strata on which this intelligence is built. Yeah,
34:11
Speaker 1: they have a central nervous system which helps them to
34:14
Speaker 1: communicate with us more like recommunicate with each other. There
34:18
Speaker 1: is a um a neurobotanist named Mancuso, and he says
34:25
Speaker 1: that the way the plants work because they don't have
34:28
Speaker 1: a central nervous system, but they work if you can
34:31
Speaker 1: imagine a flock of startlings and how they all can
34:34
Speaker 1: fly sort of in the same direction. Um and in
34:38
Speaker 1: giant flocks, the way they do that is they all
34:40
Speaker 1: just look out at the birds that are closest to
34:43
Speaker 1: them and follow them and then in an aggregate it
34:48
Speaker 1: looks like they're one giant thing. And he says that
34:52
Speaker 1: it works with plants that same way, as that each
34:55
Speaker 1: cell looks what's going on with the cells around it,
34:59
Speaker 1: just to that and in that way, plants can do
35:04
Speaker 1: things that look very complex, and they are very complex,
35:08
Speaker 1: but they can do it without a central nervous system.
35:10
Speaker 1: And so then the plants in your novel, do they
35:12
Speaker 1: have a nervous system for communication but it's distributed to
35:16
Speaker 1: the plant or is there some sort of like hub,
35:18
Speaker 1: like a brain like thing in the plants that you
35:21
Speaker 1: that you described, Yeah, their brains around their roots, which
35:23
Speaker 1: might not be what we know that their roots do
35:27
Speaker 1: a whole lot of things here too, And I want
35:29
Speaker 1: to point out the plants have personalities. They make different
35:32
Speaker 1: decisions because they have to make decisions when they decide
35:35
Speaker 1: to put out their leaves and spring is a life
35:37
Speaker 1: or death decision. If they get that wrong and then
35:40
Speaker 1: the weather gets screwed up, they can wipe out a
35:43
Speaker 1: whole growing season and that would be fatal. And different trees,
35:46
Speaker 1: even of the same species, even growing next to each other, well,
35:50
Speaker 1: sometimes decide to do things differently. One tree will pick
35:54
Speaker 1: one day, in the next tree next to it will
35:56
Speaker 1: pick the next day. Why did they do that? How
35:58
Speaker 1: do they do that? Well, they make a whole bunch
36:00
Speaker 1: of choices inside of themselves. Do you think some trees
36:04
Speaker 1: like are procrastinators and they just don't get around to it?
36:06
Speaker 1: Um procrastinators. Some seem to be very cautious. They've been
36:11
Speaker 1: described as cautious by botanists. Some trees are willing to
36:15
Speaker 1: take a lot more risks um, And this is true
36:17
Speaker 1: of other plants as well. It's hard for us to
36:20
Speaker 1: notice because they move so slow, and unless you're you're like,
36:24
Speaker 1: like watching them like a scientist every hour, you can't
36:26
Speaker 1: see what they're doing because we have other things to
36:29
Speaker 1: worry about. But different plants make different decisions that are
36:33
Speaker 1: very important, and we can kind of guess that that
36:36
Speaker 1: some of this there's natural variation between them because they
36:41
Speaker 1: have to adjust to changing conditions. All the time, so
36:44
Speaker 1: they try all sorts of different things, and different individuals
36:48
Speaker 1: will be doing things in a different way. They certainly
36:51
Speaker 1: have their own individual personalities. That's right. We're having a
36:54
Speaker 1: lot of fun talking to Suberg. But let's take a
36:57
Speaker 1: quick break and we'll be right back with more. All right,
37:11
Speaker 1: we're back with my interview with Sue Berke, science fiction
37:14
Speaker 1: author of Semiosis. So let me ask you about the
37:17
Speaker 1: sort of spot that you put these folks in. Because
37:20
Speaker 1: you created this wonderful universe. You introduced the humans to
37:23
Speaker 1: these intelligent plants, and then you gave them some hard
37:25
Speaker 1: problems to solve. And one of the challenges in your
37:28
Speaker 1: universe is that the planet they land on has a
37:31
Speaker 1: very low iron content. How much of course iron is
37:34
Speaker 1: something we need to survive. Tell me about how you
37:36
Speaker 1: made that choice and whether you did some sort of
37:38
Speaker 1: like science consulting to talk to folks. Now, I started
37:42
Speaker 1: because okay, I'm going to put them on another planet.
37:44
Speaker 1: Well what do we know about other planets? And I
37:46
Speaker 1: began to do research into that and in books and
37:49
Speaker 1: scient just put things out. One of the things I
37:51
Speaker 1: learned is that when plants planets are formed, um, they're
37:56
Speaker 1: all pretty much seemed to be the iron nickel sort
37:58
Speaker 1: of core that we have, but on our planet iron
38:03
Speaker 1: quite a bit of it a state on the surface.
38:05
Speaker 1: It's very easy to find iron here. It's easy to
38:08
Speaker 1: find iron on Mars. But if a planet was formed
38:12
Speaker 1: in just a few little things went differently, there wouldn't
38:15
Speaker 1: be iron on the surface. And when I read that,
38:19
Speaker 1: that told that that inspired an understanding of a conflict
38:24
Speaker 1: that was going to happen because plants need iron. We
38:27
Speaker 1: think that animals and the iron, and we do, but
38:30
Speaker 1: plants also need iron for some of the chemicals to
38:32
Speaker 1: do photosynthesis, So plants need iron, animals have iron. Plants
38:37
Speaker 1: already eat animals when it's when they need to. If
38:40
Speaker 1: they can't get enough nitrogen and their localized environment, they'll
38:44
Speaker 1: doing carnivorous and start to eat us. So if they
38:47
Speaker 1: need iron and we have iron, and if they can sink,
38:50
Speaker 1: they'll start to think of ways to get the iron
38:53
Speaker 1: out of us, which is a whole until fruits. Yes,
38:56
Speaker 1: we become food for them, which is a whole series
39:00
Speaker 1: of other ethical concerns that appear in the novel. Very quickly, right,
39:05
Speaker 1: I thought that was really fun and uh and fascinating,
39:08
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to imagine how a culture would survive
39:11
Speaker 1: with a very small amount of iron. You know that
39:13
Speaker 1: basically be harvesting meteorites and recycling as much as they could.
39:18
Speaker 1: So I was also really interested in how you got
39:21
Speaker 1: these sentient beings to work together, because not only did
39:24
Speaker 1: they need to work together and to communicate, but you
39:27
Speaker 1: had them actually come to a common understanding, like to
39:30
Speaker 1: actually understand each other to develop relationships and friendships. Do
39:35
Speaker 1: you think that's necessary? Um, that's basically how society works,
39:39
Speaker 1: how a civilization works among humans. Were so close to
39:43
Speaker 1: what we do that we don't always see it, but
39:45
Speaker 1: we work out of human connections, interconnections with different people.
39:49
Speaker 1: We have large organizations that allow us to work under it.
39:53
Speaker 1: So we understand how we have agreements built into how
39:57
Speaker 1: we relate to each other. We are naturally social beings,
40:00
Speaker 1: human beings, just as as other primates are. But here's
40:05
Speaker 1: the thing. Plants are social beings to we know trees
40:09
Speaker 1: like to be around other trees like itself, and that
40:12
Speaker 1: they communicate as as we've noticed, they send messages through
40:15
Speaker 1: their roots. They send messages through the air with chemicals
40:19
Speaker 1: and a tree that is among other trees, like it
40:22
Speaker 1: will be healthier and live longer than a tree that
40:26
Speaker 1: is alone. And that is also true of human beings.
40:28
Speaker 1: If you put a human being in solitary confinement, they
40:31
Speaker 1: suffer terribly physically and mentally. So that you have two
40:35
Speaker 1: groups of social beings that come together and they're going
40:38
Speaker 1: to behaves as social beings and set up social constructs,
40:42
Speaker 1: and all of the hobbs and in other sorts of
40:46
Speaker 1: political philosophers and their thoughts about how we do that
40:49
Speaker 1: remain true. The fact that it's two different species and
40:52
Speaker 1: such different species puts in some some problems but also
40:56
Speaker 1: some solutions. And in your book you try to use
40:58
Speaker 1: beauty sort of appreciation, you know, joy, to sort of
41:03
Speaker 1: connect our experience with theirs, like if we could enjoy
41:06
Speaker 1: the same music, then we had something in common. And
41:09
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you know, some of the probes that
41:10
Speaker 1: we've sent out into interstellar space have had samples of
41:14
Speaker 1: human music on them. Do you think that that will
41:17
Speaker 1: be well received? You think of their aliens out there
41:19
Speaker 1: that received that probe, or here are broadcasts that they're like,
41:23
Speaker 1: you know, thump along too our music and be like, hey,
41:25
Speaker 1: those are folks we can understand they might they might
41:27
Speaker 1: not again. This is a theme that is explored by
41:31
Speaker 1: many writers and in fruitfully and would be a lot
41:34
Speaker 1: of fun? Is it is a lot of fun? How
41:36
Speaker 1: much do we recognize? How much do we have in common?
41:40
Speaker 1: If a rock was alive and they could be, the
41:42
Speaker 1: problem is they would be so slow. They could make
41:45
Speaker 1: music that we could never hear because even over generations,
41:49
Speaker 1: we don't live long enough. If they're too fast, would
41:52
Speaker 1: be here them. So the question you ask is is maybe,
41:57
Speaker 1: And the fun is when would we and when would
42:00
Speaker 1: be not? And why? Or if we hear something and
42:03
Speaker 1: we know it's music, even if it sounds horrible to
42:06
Speaker 1: us and we can't stand it. It's black, it's fingernails
42:09
Speaker 1: on a blackboard, but we know they're making music. Would
42:13
Speaker 1: that be enough they're trying that we have in common? Well,
42:17
Speaker 1: I hope that one day we get answers to those questions.
42:20
Speaker 1: There are questions that I'm very curious about as well.
42:22
Speaker 1: So I was just glad in your book that to
42:25
Speaker 1: see those humans get to meet aliens and connect with
42:28
Speaker 1: them on this deep level, work together and and uh
42:31
Speaker 1: and experience each other's joy. That was wonderful. Um great,
42:34
Speaker 1: So thanks very much, well, thank you. It was a
42:37
Speaker 1: pleasure for me to take care safe. As you can see,
42:40
Speaker 1: no question is too nerdy for me. All right, pretty
42:43
Speaker 1: interesting conversation there about plants and intelligence and my favorite procrastination. Yeah,
42:50
Speaker 1: I did that one for you. I asked her if
42:52
Speaker 1: she thought plans procrastinate, and you know, you can hear
42:55
Speaker 1: in her voice that she really thinks that plants here
42:57
Speaker 1: on earth are part of a sort of tenuum of
43:01
Speaker 1: communication and therefore some effectively some kind of intelligence. You know,
43:05
Speaker 1: tomatoes talk to you by changing color, and plants communicate
43:09
Speaker 1: to you by what tomatoes talk to me. Tomatoes tell
43:12
Speaker 1: you when they're ripe, right by changing color. Oh I see, yeah,
43:16
Speaker 1: I see. They're training me kind of what you're saying exactly,
43:20
Speaker 1: just the way the plants in her novel train their
43:22
Speaker 1: animals to do something or not do something. Apple trees,
43:25
Speaker 1: you know, induce you to eat their fruit by making
43:28
Speaker 1: them tasty and all sorts of stuff. And that's a
43:30
Speaker 1: question about whether you could like attribute any intention to
43:33
Speaker 1: the apple tree or if it's essentially a dumb biological machine.
43:36
Speaker 1: But she's definitely right that they communicate, right, and at
43:39
Speaker 1: the end, aren't we all dumb biological machine. That's a
43:44
Speaker 1: deep question about the universe I certainly don't have the
43:46
Speaker 1: answer to. But she's very pro plant I guess she's
43:48
Speaker 1: really into nature and plants. Yeah, I'm not sure where
43:51
Speaker 1: she would come down on, you know, whether bananas have rights.
43:54
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like it was respectful to ask her
43:56
Speaker 1: that question. I just assume that bananas are in charge.
44:00
Speaker 1: Then why are you eating them and they're not eating you?
44:02
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm um, well, I'm just doing their biddings. This
44:06
Speaker 1: is part of the long game for bananas. But I
44:10
Speaker 1: was also impressed she really thought about the science of
44:12
Speaker 1: her book. She was not trying to create something and
44:14
Speaker 1: a completely alien, made up universe. She was just imagining
44:17
Speaker 1: how life could be different on another planet. You know,
44:20
Speaker 1: she looked at the way things work here and she
44:22
Speaker 1: just tweaked it a little bit. She's like, let's exaggerate
44:25
Speaker 1: this element of it or play out this thing here
44:27
Speaker 1: on Earth, which she didn't think was widely enough appreciated.
44:30
Speaker 1: All right, well, pretty cool. Well, I guess it kind
44:33
Speaker 1: of makes you think about, um, what intelligence could be
44:36
Speaker 1: like in other planets, right, because it doesn't necessarily have
44:39
Speaker 1: to be like we have it here on Earth, you know,
44:42
Speaker 1: like we talked about Last Time, and a lot of
44:44
Speaker 1: Star Trek episodes and movies like Star Wars. They imagine
44:48
Speaker 1: life pretty similar to us with like you know, four limbs,
44:51
Speaker 1: five fingers. But really, I mean life out there could
44:54
Speaker 1: take on any form. It could be like Sentien clouds
44:57
Speaker 1: or blobs of silicone. Right, that's right. And as much
44:59
Speaker 1: as I say I'd like to talk to aliens, there's
45:02
Speaker 1: a good chance that aliens out there have an intelligence.
45:05
Speaker 1: If they are out there and they are intelligence, that
45:07
Speaker 1: their intelligence would be very difficult for us to understand.
45:10
Speaker 1: You know. A key element in her book is that
45:12
Speaker 1: these humans and these plans find a commonality. They find
45:16
Speaker 1: a way to talk to each other. They have things
45:18
Speaker 1: in common, They appreciate things, they both want to survive.
45:20
Speaker 1: They appreciate beauty or something. And so it's a question of, like,
45:25
Speaker 1: will those aliens be able to understand that we are intelligent?
45:28
Speaker 1: Can they see intelligence in us or they whether they
45:31
Speaker 1: think about intelligence the same way we do, they might
45:34
Speaker 1: see it as something totally different, that's right. And you know,
45:37
Speaker 1: we famously sent out signals into space and like on
45:41
Speaker 1: one of the Voyager probes. For example, we put some music,
45:44
Speaker 1: and I always wonder, like aliens get that, Are they
45:47
Speaker 1: even gonna understand that it's music? And if they do,
45:49
Speaker 1: is it gonna make them like us less or more? They?
45:52
Speaker 1: You know, is that the kind of thing that we're
45:54
Speaker 1: have in common with aliens? Did you sound like static
45:57
Speaker 1: to them? You know, an annoying sound. Yeah, it could
46:01
Speaker 1: sound like the annoying music their kids listen to. And
46:03
Speaker 1: then they're like, lets skip that planet entirely. Obviously we
46:06
Speaker 1: should be sending out tomatoes and bananas just in case.
46:11
Speaker 1: We really have no idea what the forms of intelligence are.
46:14
Speaker 1: And so even a book like this where it seems
46:16
Speaker 1: pretty weird to imagine intelligent plants, that's really not very
46:20
Speaker 1: far from what's happening on Earth compared to what could
46:22
Speaker 1: really be out there. Who knows, right? Who knows? And
46:26
Speaker 1: also this book reminded me of one of my favorite comics,
46:28
Speaker 1: Jack Handy, one of his deep thoughts, which is, if
46:31
Speaker 1: trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting
46:34
Speaker 1: them down? We might if they screamed all the time
46:37
Speaker 1: for no good reason. That's a classic for sure. Do
46:42
Speaker 1: you think maybe she had a little bit of that
46:43
Speaker 1: in her motivation, you know, for us to think a
46:47
Speaker 1: little bit differently about plants and not be so cavalier
46:49
Speaker 1: about cutting them down or eating them. Yeah, I think
46:52
Speaker 1: she's definitely pro plant, But I think also her goal
46:54
Speaker 1: is just to make us think about our intelligence and
46:57
Speaker 1: the context of our lives, and to remember that thing
47:00
Speaker 1: is out there in the universe could really be very
47:02
Speaker 1: different from the way they are here on Earth, and
47:05
Speaker 1: they probably are, and let's hope they are, because it
47:08
Speaker 1: would be pretty disappointing if we met aliens and they
47:10
Speaker 1: were just like humans and they had only figured out
47:12
Speaker 1: what we have figured out, and so we basically learned
47:14
Speaker 1: nothing from them, and they're like, we thought you guys
47:16
Speaker 1: had the answers to everything. What have you been doing
47:18
Speaker 1: all these years? Come on, I'm going to write the
47:21
Speaker 1: most boring, disappointing science fiction novel ever. In our version
47:23
Speaker 1: of The Hitchhiker Chalacter Galaxy, the answer is thirty seven.
47:27
Speaker 1: What's your answer? All right? Well, we hope you enjoyed
47:32
Speaker 1: this episode, and we hope you check out Superberg's sci
47:35
Speaker 1: fi novels Semiosis. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think
47:38
Speaker 1: you'd like it as well, thanks for joining us, see
47:40
Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
47:50
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
47:53
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcast for my heart Radio, visit
47:57
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or or whatever.
48:00
Speaker 1: You listen to your favorite chise