Botany (with James Wong) - Part 2

James Wong:

I don't necessarily feel that you should tell anyone what they should and shouldn't do, but maybe you could just tell them what the reality of food production is, and then they can make their own decisions.

 

Rob Bell:

Very good.

Wise words, wise words.

Thank you, James.

And it's good to get passionate, isn't it?

 

James Wong:

Sorry, I get a bit, having told not to be moral, I'm always so preachy about stuff like that.

 

Rob Bell:

Don't apologise, James, we love it, we love it.

We're back with the second instalment of our botany episode, exploring another three sketches on plants with celebrated and, let's be frank, very entertaining botanist, James Wong, imparting logical truth bombs like this.

 

James Wong:

If you have a limited amount of income, the most possible expensive way to get hold of food is to grow it yourself.

 

Rob Bell:

No need to mess about with an intro then, back to the conversation with James.

And the next sketch we're gonna talk about is The Hungry Gap.

 

Jono, what's The Hungry Gap?

 

Why is this something you wanted to communicate through Sketchplanations?

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, The Hungry Gap was, you know, I was interested, like there's obviously a movement and it makes a ton of sense to eat local.

 

And so it's like, okay, well, what grows locally at different times of the year?

 

In my mind, you know, which was completely naive, I was like, okay, well, not much, you know, summer is amazing, loads of stuff's coming to harvest, winter, not so much, and it will probably increase until then.

 

So I was quite surprised to learn that actually, there are a lot of plants that you can eat in winter, you end up eating a lot of the same ones potentially, but actually as you come into spring, this is in sort of temperate latitudes, like an obviously relevant for the UK, that period of April, May, June, you have this period where the winter crops are not as productive, but you haven't yet got to the summer crops.

 

And so there's this name for that period called the hungry gap, where actually there's much less stuff you can harvest in this climate where you've got.

 

And so if you're trying to only eat local, or things that are grown, let's say in the UK, that's quite, it's a harder bit to bridge in that spring thing.

 

Whereas my media reactions, oh, it's getting sunnier, it's getting nicer.

 

Of course there's gonna be more food, but that's actually not the case.

 

So that's what The Hungry Gap is.

 

James Wong:

I think The Hungry Gap should be taught in schools for a number of reasons.

 

So I think it's great to talk to engineers about this because plants are basically just living solar panels, except there's a lag, exactly as you described.

 

So they're capturing energy from the sun, but it takes them a while to do that.

 

And in winter, they're storing all of this energy as a battery, usually in root vegetables, so that's why a lot of the things in winter are roots, or they're storing them in leaves.

 

So they're grabbing hold of those calories they had in the summer, and like putting them down in a form that they can hide away to live off of themselves.

 

That means if you're a human that wants to come along and eat something, winter's not too bad a time, because you've got all of these calories that are stored up.

 

By spring, they've run out of it, but I think there's, I mean, it has implications on world history, it has implications in trade, but it also has implications in terms of just basic nutrition.

 

So I'm often hearing people say things like, you know, in the past, our diets were so much better.

 

No, they really, really were not.

 

There was a lot of nostalgia when it comes to food.

 

People lived horrible, miserable and very short lives.

 

We now live apart from maybe the last 20ish years in a season, in a condition that we've never had as humanity with the most plentiful, the most affordable and safest food supply.

 

That has changed quite recently, but for a long period of time, the trajectory was going up.

 

And I think it's important to understand that, you know, like I've often heard people say, for example, using this appeal to nature narrative, that you shouldn't eat fruit.

 

Fruit is really high in sugar and therefore terrible for you.

 

And in our deep evolutionary past, when we were really healthy and had lovely lives, fruit was only available for a short period in summer.

 

I'm like, if one was the one time you probably wouldn't have got fruit for.

 

Fruit was available in temperate latitudes, like apples, for a huge proportion of the year.

 

I remember I was wondering at my local supermarket in June, and there's a lady who was really kicking off.

 

She was furious about why there were New Zealand apples on the shelves of British supermarkets and why they weren't British.

 

I was like, yeah, it's June.

 

You harvest them in like September.

 

You can store them for a really long period of time.

 

You can probably with all the carbon induced refrigeration and modified atmosphere, probably just about get them to do, but there's a good reason for that.

 

So if we were to teach kids about that, we would be able to teach them to be a little bit more literate in terms of where their food comes from.

 

And that sometimes a lot of the fatty promises that diet gurus show you, which we know can be really damaging, are both in terms of that their advice doesn't make sense, but also because their advice is often tied up with morality.

 

That's one of the many contributing factors towards eating disorders.

 

If we were to tell them where food came from and how it works and how plants work, they would have a bit of a bulls**t detector against them.

 

You might have to bleep that out.

 

Rob Bell:

We're right in your wheelhouse here, James.

 

This is ethno-botany, isn't it?

 

This is right in there.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah, it's a really good point about at school as well because I was a little bit embarrassed with my kids in supermarket in January.

 

And I was like, you know, what would you like?

 

And they're like, strawberries, raspberries, you know?

 

And it's like, okay, well, you know, they, so we went over and of course Sainsbury's had them and they'd come from Chile or Egypt or something like that.

 

So therefore they were like five pounds for a very small punnet.

 

And they just sort of went to grab them because, you know, strawberries are strawberries.

 

I was like, whoa, whoa, those are, you know, and why are they so expensive daddy?

 

It's because they've come thousands of miles because it's January, you can't just grow these sort of things all year round in this country.

 

And I was a bit embarrassed with my lack of education to my kids that I felt that.

 

But then when I saw Jono's sketch of the hunger gap, hungry gap, I was like, oh, I'm not sure I really realized that either.

 

So there's still a lot to learn.

 

James Wong:

You shouldn't feel guilty about that because you just taught them that.

 

And partially, they're gonna be more expensive at the time of year because of that input.

 

But also we also know that in general, flavor is subjective, but flavor and nutrient compounds can be reduced as a result of that transport because growers have to get fruit that will survive that level of transport.

 

So they're breeding for things that are harder, that are not necessarily sweeter, that basically will survive being bashed around.

 

And in that breeding process, the flavor is not really a marker.

 

Appearance often is.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, size and appearance.

 

James Wong:

And durability is.

 

Yes.

 

Yeah, no one's paying for like you tasting them because once you go home.

 

So if your kids really want them, buy them once and then ask them if they can really notice the difference.

 

Are they rock hard?

 

Were they really worth it?

 

Rob Bell:

So societally, are we saying that by better education around the hungry gap, that we should be much more accepting of what foods should be available at different points of the year and adjust our diet to that?

 

James Wong:

I don't think there's a should about that.

 

I think, you know, I try not to be morally about food.

 

Rob Bell:

We also try not to be moral on the podcast as well.

 

Not morally up on our pedestals.

 

We try not to.

 

James Wong:

So this happened during the pandemic, right?

 

One of the things that really upset me, I was on Twitter and I saw a whole bunch of people, and I don't mean individuals, I mean companies saying, you know, if you're worried about food security, here's our home food security kit, where you have like, you know, some compost, two packets of seed and a big raised bed.

 

And you had all of these people who'd write below it, you know, my family will not go hungry.

 

And I kind of thought, pandemic or not, if you have a limited amount of income, the most possible expensive way to get hold of food is to grow it yourself.

 

I'm saying this as someone who'd like, I earn my living by telling people how to grow plants.

 

But I think it's to know how, like one of those growing kids, let's say you had all the skills in the world and all the attention in the world to be able to know how to do all of that stuff.

 

You're still gonna get probably three meals of carrots out of that growing kit.

 

If you were to buy them, that would probably cost in a discount supermarket less than a fiver.

 

Whereas the kit probably cost you a couple of hundred quid.

 

And I think it's important that we, not to tell people what they should and shouldn't eat, but to be able to tell them what can and can't be done, and also to value what farmers do.

 

Farmers have done this miracle of being able to provide the cheapest food really in the history of our species, and how amazing that is and how we should celebrate that.

 

And I don't necessarily feel that you should tell people what they should and shouldn't do, but maybe you could just tell them what the reality of food production is, and then they can make their own decisions.

 

Rob Bell:

Very good.

 

Wise words.

 

Wise words.

 

Thank you, James.

 

And it's good to get passionate, isn't it?

 

James Wong:

Sorry, having told not to be moral, I'm always so preachy about stuff like that.

 

Rob Bell:

Don't apologize, James.

 

We love it.

 

We love it.

 

Right, I'm gonna keep moving us along, because all of these, we could sit and talk around the phrase, because James-

 

James Wong:

Yeah, sorry.

 

Rob Bell:

No, do not apologize.

 

It's absolutely fascinating, and we are all learning.

 

There's so much nodding and smiling going on.

 

Onto the next sketch though, Phoenix Trees.

 

I'd never heard of this.

 

I saw the sketch, I got it straight away.

 

That's the beauty of Sketchplanations.

 

Jono, tell us about what a Phoenix Tree is, and you're very careful about this in the sketch as well, and how it's different to a nurse log.

 

And I'll put the sketch for nurse logs in the podcast description down below as well, because they could look similar.

 

James Wong:

They could look almost identical.

 

How did you get to, how would you change the drawing around that?

 

That's hard to do.

 

Jono Hey:

There is a drawing of a nurse log.

 

As a separate one.

 

But yeah, it looks very similar.

 

It looks very, very similar.

 

But they are different.

 

And I mean, I'll just be really quick.

 

So I learned about Phoenix Tree from the sign when I was out on a walk and I was like, oh, there's a Phoenix Tree over here.

 

This is what a Phoenix Tree is.

 

Rob Bell:

It was signposted, what, in a national park or something?

 

Jono Hey:

It was a little information board which talked about Phoenix Trees as a thing.

 

And then it said, there is one over there.

 

And we went over there and they're also brilliant to sort of play on as well, which is lovely.

 

But basically a Phoenix Tree, I mean, a Phoenix is from the mythical Phoenix, a bird that dies and then rises again and then dies and then rises again.

 

Rob Bell:

A Phoenix from the flames.

 

Jono Hey:

Exactly, or rising from the ashes.

 

And so typically where I've seen Phoenix Trees is they've been blown over, a big tree has been blown over and most of their roots are now disconnected, but some of them have stayed connected.

 

And so this tree is now lying, big tree lying horizontally, but has stayed alive.

 

And what happens, which is sort of remarkable, it's like hanging on to life, is that the branches which were before that pointing sideways, some of them are now pointing straight up.

 

And if it lies there long enough, this big tree keeps feeding it, these side branches essentially become their own trees.

 

And more remarkably, this is what I learned, is that some of those trees, which were branches, can then actually put down their own roots sort of halfway along the tree, which is fascinating.

 

Rob Bell:

That's the point that blew my mind.

 

Yeah, that these branches, what were branches, now suddenly start growing roots.

 

How do they know to do that?

 

James Wong:

So trees are like, I mean, I love plants because they're way cooler than animals in like pretty much every way.

 

And yet people don't realize this.

 

There's like 500 animal scientists for every one plant scientist, which is kind of, oh, we know who the cool and popular group is.

 

But I mean, plants are fascinating because they don't have to follow the same rules as animals.

 

So then you don't really see bigger extinction events.

 

We sort of do, but not in the same way that we see, you know, when the dinosaurs were wiped out, not all of the plants were wiped out.

 

In fact, most of them carried on.

 

And in the animal fossil record, you see these like wipeouts and plants can do things like be blown up and split into pieces and then grow from individual tiny fractions.

 

You can chop a tree up into a thousand pieces and each bit will grow.

 

You can't do that with mammals.

 

You can bury seeds for tens of thousands of years or freeze them in a glacier and they'll still come back.

 

You can chop a tree down and it will still grow.

 

And basically plants, unlike mammals or unlike most animals, retain their stem cells throughout life.

 

So they're undifferentiated cells that could basically turn into anything in a moment's notice.

 

We have those as animals in our very early part of our life, but then they become fixed and a skin cell can only become another skin cell.

 

With trees, an undifferentiated cell could become a leaf, it could become a flower, it could become a root.

 

It just has the right stimuli.

 

And the stimuli, there are a few different things.

 

So plants can tell which way is up.

 

So they can tell roots have to go down, usually.

 

Leaves have to go up, so it can tell from that.

 

It can tell from water.

 

It can tell from which area is more moist and which area is less moist.

 

It can tell from light.

 

So which way is up is often where the light source is, but they can also move.

 

Let's say there's a big tree above the tree.

 

A tree can move out and move around that to reach the light.

 

That's why if you have a house plant by a window, it stretches towards the window.

 

So plants can detect lots of information about the world around them.

 

And they can essentially make decisions into changing their body structures to match that.

 

Rob Bell:

Hence making the decision to grow roots.

 

James Wong:

Yeah, and they don't have a fixed body plan.

 

We have fixed body plans that are symmetrical.

 

A plant can just chuck out leaves wherever it wants to, essentially, or most of them can anyway.

 

And that's the really cool thing.

 

I think there's something about resilience and survivability in that.

 

But what I want to know is, Jono, what's a nurse log?

 

I love it when engineers tell botanists about plants.

 

Jono Hey:

I learned about nurse logs.

 

And I don't know, maybe they happen all over the world, but I learned about them in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and California, where you have these very tall conifer and pine forests and dead straight trees.

 

They're going way up.

 

And what happens is that you get these really, and some of them are huge trees and they can be really old and they can make the forest floor quite dark as well.

 

So it's actually quite difficult for things to grow along the forest floor.

 

You get a few ferns, for example, which I've got in the sketch.

 

And then what will happen when a giant tree like that dies, maybe there's a storm or it's fallen by lightning or maybe even a fire, but let's say it just gets old, it falls over.

 

Usually it will clear out this big space where suddenly there's some light coming down to the forest floor.

 

But it's also so big that actually, you know, birds might sit on it and leave droppings which have seeds on it.

 

Seeds might fall on this trunk.

 

And it provides above the very base of the forest where there actually is some low plants, a really nice sort of little nursery place for new trees to grow.

 

And so instead of growing straight on the forest floor, they grow along the trunk where they happen to take root.

 

And so the actual original tree has died, but you get the trees growing from the trunk.

 

And of course, as you do that, you end up with like a really straight line of trees.

 

And there are cases also, which I have seen, I think it was in the Olympic rainforest, where the original tree is essentially eventually decayed away.

 

And you just have, you know, it's very unusual to see dead straight lines in that way in nature, particularly with plants, I think, but you have this perfect, perfect straight line of trees.

 

And so, yeah, you're very right.

 

It's extremely similar in terms of a sketch, but I suppose it's different in the mechanism by which it happens.

 

James Wong:

Definitely.

 

I mean, you can read that really well.

 

When I'm wandering around, I was actually wandering around, it's very on brand, a forest just yesterday, plantation forest, and it is quite hard to tell whether it's a phoenix tree, whether it's a tree that's fallen over, and then some of the branches have sprouted and then sprung up in a perfect line.

 

Or if basically, when you have a fallen tree in a forest and it starts to rot, it's basically a big block of compost that doesn't have any weak competing weeds in it that holds loads of water and it's raised up in the light.

 

So it's a perfect place for these new seeds to get competitive advantage and generate.

 

But what you see is exactly the same.

 

And the older it is, the more rotted and broken down.

 

I, because I'm boring, spent a good five minutes trying to wonder if, you know, which was which.

 

So it's kind of cool, the natural world.

 

These two completely different phenomena look almost identical.

 

Rob Bell:

Is it particular types of forest?

 

I mean, Jono, you talked about the forest of the Pacific Northwest there.

 

Is that particularly common there?

 

Or could it be anywhere?

 

James Wong:

The classic example is the Pacific Northwest.

 

I wonder now why that might be the case.

 

I, the Pacific Northwest has a sort of cornish, west of Scotland, temperate rainforest environment.

 

So it's even temperature and loads and loads of rainfall.

 

And that may help create the really wet, soggy environment in rotting wood.

 

That can really facilitate that growing.

 

I think if it was in a drier desert environment, there wouldn't be enough rainfall to soak the log to create that.

 

I actually don't know, but it is a very specifically Pacific Northwest is where you constantly see the best images of it.

 

The thing about plants, you think you know them and then suddenly you get a question you can't answer.

 

Rob Bell:

I'll tell you what though, talking about the survival instinct of plants again there, James.

 

I said it before, I'll say it again.

 

Plants are bad ass.

 

James Wong:

Yeah, I mean, if there was a competition for survivability of plants and animals, I know which team I'm picking.

 

Rob Bell:

Team green.

 

James Wong:

I was never picked for any of the teams in PEE, so I'm the opposite.

 

I'm picking the side that's winning because I know on my own, I'm not going to make it.

 

Rob Bell:

James is a botanist, Glory Hunter.

 

Let's move on to the final sketch.

 

Grow Your Own Fresh Air.

 

Where do we want to start with this one?

 

Because I know Jono as the creator of the sketch and James, you probably both got a lot to say about it, but Jono, you explain first, because you've done this sketch and then you've seen more about it.

 

Jono Hey:

And also since been educated by, one of the things about putting things out on the internet is people tell you whether things are right or wrong.

 

But anyway, I mean-

 

Rob Bell:

Which is a good thing.

 

Jono Hey:

The sketch, which is a lovely idea about how to grow your own fresh air, which was a very short Ted Talk by a guy called Kamal Meattle, in which he describes how they use lots and lots of plants in a New Delhi office park essentially to try and the air in the city wasn't clean.

 

And so they wanted to make the air inside as clean of chemicals and as fresh to breathe as possible.

 

And so they filled it with all these plants.

 

And in his talk, he covers a few different types of plants, which have different functions, which is what he says about how they operate.

 

And I think as a sketch it was really, I think it's really interesting.

 

It's a really appealing concept.

 

And it's a lovely idea to fill a house or a building with plants and think that you're now breathing fresh air created by these plants, right?

 

You know, that's plants make oxygen, that's what we breathe.

 

So we're gonna fill it up and we're gonna make our own air.

 

And so that's where he explains in the talk.

 

And I think as a sketch of what he said in the talk, I think that's fair.

 

Now, a number of people have since mentioned to me that, well, that it's not necessarily exactly true and there are better ways to make your own fresh air.

 

But I'll let James tell me about the nuances of this sketch and maybe the, I don't know, I think twists and turns of people figuring this out.

 

James Wong:

You're so nice and supportive, Rob.

 

You're like smiling, helping him along.

 

I'm gonna come and ruin it for you.

 

So, okay, here's the thing.

 

Plants do clean the air, that is true.

 

Like on a global context, and even if in a big outdoor context, we know that plants can remove particulates from the air, for example, so solid bits of pollution get trapped in their leaves.

 

And of course, plants photosynthesize.

 

They're constantly taking in carbon dioxide, which we're breathing out, and converting it into oxygen for us to be able to breathe in.

 

We even know that their roots can absorb toxins.

 

So plants like sunflowers are often used on contaminated land to draw up heavy metals through their roots concentrated into their branches.

 

They're removed offsite and burnt, and then those ashes can be disposed of as toxic waste.

 

But then the soil is, so plants do do that.

 

Where the houseplants do it is a different thing.

 

Now, in the 80s, there were some really famous trials run by NASA and what they were trying to figure out is as space stations get further and further away from Earth in a planned future, what's going to happen is they're not going to be able to get supplies sent back from Earth.

 

So what they need to have is some way of creating new spare parts.

 

And wouldn't it be great if plants could do that?

 

So currently, they have air filters that get rid of, you know, toxins in the air and then make the air pure and breathable.

 

And plants do do that on Earth, and plants are self-healing.

 

So wouldn't it be great if we could do that?

 

And there was a series of experiments set up where they created these tiny little chambers.

 

They shoved a large plant in this perfectly sealed chamber and measured its effects on the air.

 

And what they found is that they did reduce lots of the contaminants from air and produced lots of oxygen.

 

And that was really the only really solid trial.

 

It was kept around for years.

 

I've reported on it and sort of parroted it as if it must be relevant because there weren't a huge amount of other trials.

 

What we now know, according to the much better, more solid trials, does one of these hermetically sealed chambers really translate to the reality of living in a living room?

 

Not so much.

 

Partially because rooms are not hermetically sealed.

 

So constantly, air is moving around in the building, underneath doors, in cracks in windows, and it's moving around a lot more than you might think.

 

And plants don't actually produce that much.

 

So firstly, you would need the room to be sealed.

 

And to mimic the experiment, you would have to have so many plants in your room that you had no furniture and would have to constantly be stood in one place and couldn't move to replicate the density of plants in that environment.

 

One trial basically figured out you would have to have 500 average size plants, I don't know what that means, per square meter of apartment to replicate the same benefit of cracking a window now and then.

 

For plants to be able to draw carbon out of the atmosphere, to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, what they do is they convert it into the carbon of their bodies.

 

So to be able to really be doing a lot of that, there has to be a lot of physical plant matter.

 

I'm almost 100 kilos.

 

I'm kicking out a lot of CO2.

 

Plants, to have enough plants to do that, you'd have to have several hundred kilos of plants.

 

And that's actually very difficult if you think about the weight of your average house plant.

 

So house plants, we know that they have loads of benefits in many, many ways.

 

Just purifying the air really isn't one of them.

 

And opening a window now and then would do a much better job.

 

On the planetary context, it's different, but in the living room context, it doesn't really work.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, so theoretically, there is a case, but practically, it's irrelevant.

 

That's not going to happen.

 

You can't apply it to practical life.

 

James Wong:

Correct.

 

When you see this, there's a film called Sunshine.

 

I'm terrible for picking holes in all the botany of any film.

 

They have an Asian botanist who works on a flight.

 

So I was instantly like, oh my God, identify.

 

That's the cool job I want to have.

 

Then I saw their oxygen garden.

 

I was like, oh girl, Michelle Yeoh, you've got this all so wrong.

 

It's all tree ferns.

 

Tree ferns put on one canopy once a year.

 

They're one of the slowest growing plants on earth.

 

What you need to have if you were to have an environment like that, probably not plants, you would probably go for algae because they photosynthesize, but you could cram loads of them in tanks and water everywhere and have huge amounts of algae in a small space.

 

But if you wanted to de-use plants, you'd have to go for some kind of grass, maybe bamboo or something that grows incredibly quickly to draw that carbon out of the air and then lock it away in the plant tissues.

 

But tree ferns, I mean, it's literally the worst possible, you know.

 

Michelle Yeoh, you've got to get better.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Well, I must admit, I'm quite relieved to hear that, that I don't have to have Mother-in-law's tongue in my bedroom, especially not six of them.

 

Which, obviously, the names of plants, you mentioned at the beginning how a lot are sort of Latin names and very complicated, but also some of the names are just brilliant.

 

Mother-in-law's tongue.

 

I'm sure you probably know the history of that name.

 

James Wong:

I mean, it's because they're pointy and sharp, basically.

 

Tom Pellereau:

It's that simple.

 

James Wong:

Nowadays, us work people call it something like a snake plant.

 

There's been a lot of changing of traditional names of plants because some of them are very Victorian.

 

Like, that is the soft end of some of the renamed Kamal plants that we've had before.

 

But I always find it because I often only know the scientific name, not the common name, because there are so many common names.

 

And I can get that people worry about the Latin, but I feel that they shouldn't because, for example, people think, oh, to tell kids about plants, you can't ever say their Latin name.

 

I was like, yeah, because kids never hear about Tyrannosaurus and Spagosaurus.

 

They can't possibly pronounce Velociraptor.

 

They're all Latin names.

 

And I think maybe it's because of pronunciation, but Latin is a dead language, and Botanical Latin isn't actually even Latin.

 

It's this weird mix of ancient Greek, some Latin, there's like Polish, there's like Chinese, there's like Norwegian.

 

There's a whole bunch of level words in it.

 

There's no correct pronunciation.

 

The whole point of it is that it's like a international language that anyone can use, like Esperanto.

 

So basically you say it how the hell you want, and people will understand you and don't worry about it.

 

Rob Bell:

Good tip for life generally, actually.

 

James Wong:

Unless you're going to dig up a Roman soldier and reanimate them, and then they wouldn't understand botanical Latin, and even if they did, there would be so much regional accent variation in the Roman Empire that however you say it would probably be correct in one part of the Roman Empire.

 

So just don't worry about it.

 

Rob Bell:

Listen, I will round things off.

 

Is there anything else anyone wants to quickly add before we finish off this week's episode?

 

Jono Hey:

James, can I ask one small thing?

 

You mentioned that plants can reduce crime.

 

I was intrigued about that.

 

Rob Bell:

They're badass Jono.

 

They've got fists.

 

James Wong:

So here is the tricky thing with some of the research that we've had about what plants do in an environment.

 

So we previously have thought that plants like living near a park, for example, was associated with higher birth weight, was lower crime with all these kind of amazing things.

 

And no one stopped to think about when the original research was being done with plants, as they basically just looked at statistics and correlated those with parks.

 

No one stopped to think that rich people live near parks.

 

So of course there's going to be lower crime and higher birth rates because those people have access to better health care and better opportunities in life in general.

 

But we now know that it's actually more complicated than that.

 

So there have been intervention studies, not just correlation studies.

 

So an intervention study basically sets up an experiment where it changes the parameters of a situation.

 

So there have been studies where they planted plants in some inner city blocks and spent money greening up certain areas and haven't done that with areas that are quite close by.

 

And we do know that antisocial behaviour, according to a limited number of trials, goes down in these areas.

 

We also know that things like anxiety and stress are reduced in those areas.

 

So it stands to reason.

 

We know that this appears to be a cause and effect relationship going on.

 

And it may be just to do with reducing that.

 

It may be due to things like when you improve someone's area and the area is cared for, people are more likely to have a sense of identity with that area and start to invest and manage that area.

 

Exactly.

 

You might end up with people doing a bit more neighborhood watch type behavior and that may control it.

 

So it is relatively limited, but it's pretty solid, whereas before it was trying to find correlation where it's just causation, rather, when it's just correlation.

 

It's quite tricky, but the more recent studies have shown it's probably quite solid.

 

Rob Bell:

Do you know what, from my perspective, as you talk through that, it kind of strikes me as if it looks right, if it smells right, if it tastes right, it's probably right.

 

James Wong:

Yeah, I mean, the challenge, though, is always trying to make sure that you can show you're working at and demonstrate it, particularly if you're a botanist, because you're kind of already sold on it.

 

So you're constantly having to check yourself to see, because sometimes and very often in the world of plants, what's intuitive isn't always the case.

 

So I really, really wanted to believe that plants clean the air, because I feel better around them.

 

I feel I can breathe better, I'm more relaxed.

 

When you actually look at the cold hard data, sadly, you have to admit that's the one thing that they don't do, at least in a room.

 

So it is important to try and, you know, as much as I love plants and want to be on the team that they do everything, you've got to try and maintain that objectivity.

 

Jono Hey:

There's one sketch, one of my favourite ones, I did it ages and ages ago, and it's really simple.

 

It just says everyone's a geek about something and it has a bunch of people doing all these different things with a big heart above their heads.

 

And, you know, it could be bird watching or hiking or reading or ballet or football, like you mentioned, or video games or whatever.

 

When I was actually doing my first draft for the book, which is coming out, my title originally was going to be Everyone's a Geek About Something, because that's, for me in a way, that's part of like the joy of doing Sketchplanations, is sharing all these fascinating bits.

 

And obviously we have touched on some botany related ones today, but there's all sorts of things which are fascinating about the world.

 

And I just love how you've taken all of these things and just added so many interesting layers to it.

 

I love it.

 

Thank you.

 

Thank you.

 

We could have stopped the show at onions, when you explained the onions, that was it.

 

That's done.

 

Rob Bell:

Thank you so much for coming on to the show, James.

 

We've learnt so, so much.

 

You know, I've got a number of actions I'm going to be taking.

 

James, just out of interest, what is on the horizon for you over the next coming weeks, coming months?

 

Anything we should be keeping an eye out for?

 

James Wong:

Hi, what am I doing?

 

I'm working at Chelsea Flower Show soon.

 

I write for New Scientist, doing more educational videos on Instagram, that kind of thing.

 

Spending time looking at the plants in car parks, nearly done taking photos, looking very dodgy.

 

Tom Pellereau:

James, I saw your indoor gardening masterclass looks fantastic.

 

Oh yeah, I should probably talk about that.

 

James Wong:

I've been working on an online course to tell people how to grow plants.

 

Because I think, for me, the fact that I live with 500 houseplants tells you all you need to know about the same.

 

We know from a huge body of evidence how important they can be for your mental and physical health.

 

And if I can share just 1% of what plants give me with everyone else, but be able to do it in a way that they don't have to feel fearful of, they don't have to worry about messing up, that they can have their hand held throughout it and see kind of almost in real time how I put a terrarium together.

 

Because when we filmed it, we literally filmed me, you know, it wasn't the highlights, like three cameras were on me while I made the terrarium in real time.

 

So every messy bit is sort of shown in full glorious technique color, so you can't miss anything out.

 

That's one of the things I've been working on recently that I'm most proud of.

 

Tom Pellereau:

And is that the Indoor Gardening Masterclass?

 

James Wong:

Yes, from Create Academy.

 

Tom Pellereau:

It looks absolutely brilliant.

 

It's my wife's birthday coming up.

 

James Wong:

Oh, I'm sure I can get you a card for that.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Wow, well it looks brilliant.

 

And I think, you know, the things that you've made in the videos about it looks absolutely fantastic.

 

And I'd love her to be making those sort of things for the house.

 

Yes, please.

 

Rob Bell:

I can see Tom's brain working.

 

I can see it.

 

It's happening.

 

Listen, everybody, you can follow James's antics up online and on social media.

 

You can look for Botany Geek up on Instagram.

 

That's probably the best place, is it, James, for your social media activities?

 

And then watch your website, where all the details of the Academy.

 

James Wong:

So if you go to jameswong.co.uk, you have full links to the Create Academy course, but that's also on Instagram.

 

Probably Instagram is the best place, because it's always updated.

 

Rob Bell:

Lovely.

 

And James's Botany Geek up on Instagram.

 

James Wong:

That's right.

 

Rob Bell:

Thank you so, so much.

 

Thank you also to you, our wonderful listeners.

 

I hope there's some new stuff in there for you to digest.

 

Again, pun intended.

 

Let us know.

 

Email us on hello at sketchplanations.com.

 

We'll be back almost immediately with this week's post bag.

 

But for now, thank you.

 

Go well, stay well.

 

Goodbye.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Goodbye.

 

Cheers, everyone.

 

Rob Bell:

And just like that, I am back.

 

It's just me again this week to go through the post bag from quite a lot of your correspondence.

 

As this is part two, we've got a bit of time.

 

Let's indulge a little bit.

 

So where to begin?

 

We had a number of messages from people confirming that they're unfazed, shall we say, by the new fortnightly episode regime.

 

So that's nice.

 

In fact, Billy from Toronto said, it's his new go to every two weeks podcast.

 

Great stuff.

 

Thank you, Billy.

 

And so on to the subject of the previous episode, the ambiguity of the word biweekly and by proxy by monthly and by annually, I had to say that by proxy by monthly and by annually, it just worked.

 

Sorry, yes, so the ambiguity of those words and how the word fortnightly can be a useful replacement for biweekly.

 

So John Johnson Allen on LinkedIn simply says, I agree.

 

Great.

 

Thanks, John.

 

At Sheila M Wilkinson on Instagram said she got around this in the intro to her podcast by saying every other week.

 

Yeah, that's another useful term.

 

Thank you, Sheila.

 

At Five Minutes Better on Instagram disagrees with the premise we put forward in the sketch and says it's bi-monthly.

 

They didn't actually go on to define what frequency they use bi-monthly for.

 

So I am a little confused with that still, but thank you for your message.

 

What else we got?

 

Again, on Instagram, Kelly Nicholl says bi-weekly is every two weeks, twice a week is semi-weekly.

 

Whatever works for you, as long as it does work and as long as you're understood.

 

Just Keith on Instagram says bi-weekly means every other week for me, but less frequently can mean twice a week.

 

I mean, here we go.

 

As I live in London, I use fortnightly for bi-weekly and twice a week for other to save confusion for many.

 

I'm not quite sure where what living in London has to do with that.

 

I'm interested to know more about that, Keith, whether there is some local set definition on that.

 

If there is, I don't know about it.

 

So thank you for your message.

 

Alex on Instagram says, what about bi-annual and bi-annual?

 

Which is a very good question, Alex.

 

And I'm annoyed actually that I didn't pick this up with Jono and Tommy whilst we were recording this episode.

 

Because by my understanding, bi-annual does have a set definition that means once every two years.

 

Whereas as discussed, bi-annual is ambiguous.

 

So where fortnightly might be, as we suggested and in the sketch, fortnightly can be a really useful term without ambiguity for bi-weekly.

 

I think bi-annual can be a really good term to substitute for bi-annual where you do mean once every two years.

 

Does that make sense?

 

To kind of prove the point we were making though, I put a poll up on Instagram asking if people interpreted bi-weekly to mean twice a week or once every two weeks.

 

And without any manipulation whatsoever, I was absolutely delighted with the result.

 

And I can't remember the exact number of people who responded to the poll, but it was, you know, dozens, let's say.

 

So the results were, drumroll please, 48% said twice a week and 52% said once every two weeks.

 

Q-E-D.

 

Okay, and to round off the postbag for this episode, on the topic of different cultural representations of timelines that Jono was telling us about in the episode on bi-weekly and fortnightly, we've had an email from Niall O'Donovan.

 

He says, hi lads, similar to the Aboriginal use of the cardinal directions, when kayaking, we reference things relative to the clock face.

 

So the person, or the bow of the boat, or the bow of the kayak is 12 o'clock, and the sighted object is relative to that.

 

So he gives an example, dolphins at three o'clock.

 

Great, you know where they are.

 

Niall goes on, he's sure there are other groups that might use this, and he suggests that could be in orienteering, or in the military perhaps, and he finishes.

 

He's really enjoying the podcast, and he is also happy with the fortnightly drops.

 

So that's great, all is well.

 

Thank you Niall, and thank you all for your correspondence, and thank you for listening.

 

We would love to know what you have to say about all the stuff we talked about in this double header episode on Botany with James Wong, the wonderful James Wong.

 

So keep your correspondence coming in, either on our social media posts about it, or at our email address, hello at sketchplanations.com.

 

Until next time though, I'll leave it there.

 

All music on this podcast series is sourced from the very talented Franc Cinelli.

 

And you can find loads more tracks at franccinelli.com.