Everyone has read Entangled Life, the wonderfully-written book about fungi that took the world by storm about 5 years ago. Among many other things, it popularised the “wood wide web”—the idea that trees can communicate with one another through networks of fungi at their roots.

But is the wood wide web real? It turns out scientists have some major questions. We air them on this episode.

And just to be completely clear, there are no personal vendettas here! Everyone recording this podcast is 100% free of “beefs” of all kinds. Even the co-host who was beaten in a book contest by the aforementioned mushroom book.

The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. Their most recent article is about the wonderful invention (and history) of the dishwasher, one of several incredible labour-saving devices that have made so many lives just a bit less dull. Read this, and so many more stories about human progress, at worksinprogress.co.

Show notes

* Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

* Winner of the 2021 Royal Society book award

* Rupert Sheldrake and the concept of “morphic resonance”

* Suzanne Simard’s TED talk about “how trees talk to each other”

* Her 1997 paper on “net transfer of carbon”

* 2023 paper by Karst et al.: “Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests”

* Nature piece following the 2023 paper

* 2015 paper on “stress signaling” via fungal networks

* 2023 paper on tree proximity

* Simard’s response to Karst et al.

Credits

The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

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