Some selected quotes from the episode description:

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#catholic parents "they both left the church when they got married"

Raised in a non-religious home

Summers with grand-parents who felt "we need to get a healthy dose of religion because we were missing it from all the other months of the year"

"I was and I still am a very curious, curious kid... I was really fascinated by a lot of the [church] stories and the rituals... but there was no time for asking questions."

Bible stories "some of them are extraordinary - they don't always make sense to a kids mind or an adult mind"

Dad "the Spock in the family", mum an artist

Cousins mostly religious. An argument at ~10 yrs old about evolution and whether He Man has more muscles than Justine :) "No - he has the same number of muscles as me - they're just more developed"

Getting in trouble with grandma for telling cousins we evolved "from something ape-like"

"I'm not somebody that ever talks somebody out of their faith... not anti-religion... I deeply respect people's values and beliefs and faith even though it's different... I find it very easy to co-exist with people who do have a faith."

Enjoying good faith conversations with religious people about nature "I really appreciated how he would give me space to ask questions"

"I'm not religious, I don't believe there's a god, but I am totally open to being wrong about that."

"I practice science with a small 's'... I am someone who loves an elegant experiment tied to field observations - that's what I'm here for."

"Some people could say that I'm a reductionist... reduction is kind of a dirty word... but I can kind of live with it."

"There's definitely been some events in my life that do make me pause... is there something else going on here?"... coincidences vs. something else?

Epistemology: Naturalism vs. fideism (faith), dogmatism or unchallengeable authority or revelation

JW: Even "a naturalistic approach based on evidence and reason... that can be done well and it can be done badly too"

"This naturalistic approach... science... can have some failings... I do think the overall process is robust - but it breaks down because humans are involved... we have some flaws"

The Wood Wide Web story started ~25 years ago from an experiment published in Nature by Suzanne Simard, Melanie Jones and others https://www.nature.com/articles/41557

Mycorrhizal fungi, carbon transfer, trees and plants "an ancient relationship... 400-500 million years ago... they can link the two trees below ground... that in itself is super interesting"... organisms from two completely separate kingdoms connected

"Fungi are more closely related to us than they are to plants"

Non photosynthesising plants can get carbon via the fungal network from a photosynthesising plant

"Someone... nobody knows who... called it the Wood Wide Web... it quickly took off... that was 25 years ago."

Pushback to the paper both technical and conceptual "why would it give it up to another plant?"

"From our review there's been less than 30 experiments done in the field on this topic and no one has definitively shown that this carbon is moving through these... common mycorrhizal networks."

"...never been conclusive... always a lot of uncertainty... but then... about 5 years ago... that one book... 'The Secret Life of Trees'"

"I picked up this book... I didn't really care for it... I found the language really kind of infantile... I've never felt the need to anthropomorphise forest or trees to that extent to get me interested in what they're doing and why we should care about them."

52:30 What and Who Matters?
01:19:15 How to Make a Better World?
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#science #reductionism #fungi #naturalistic #epistemology