Hive Mind: The 324th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Summary

DarkHorse Podcast #324: "Hive Mind: The 324th Evolutionary Lens"

Hosts: Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying
Air Date: May 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of the DarkHorse Podcast brings Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying together to explore two major themes through their characteristically evolutionary and systems-thinking lens. First, they analyze the current and future state of American presidential politics as reflected in polling for both parties in 2026 and beyond, focusing especially on the Democratic Party’s apparent stagnation. Second, they take a deep dive into fascinating new research on plant-insect electric interactions, pondering ecological nuance, evolutionary adaptation, and even implications for human health.

The tone is informal, intellectually curious, and, at times, critical of political and scientific orthodoxies. True to DarkHorse's style, the conversation jumps seamlessly between political analysis and natural history, always searching for deeper evolutionary logic.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Political Landscape: Kamala Harris, 2028, and the Democratic "Stasis"

(16:15 – 46:28)

Ross Douthat's Column and Democratic Polling

• Heather introduces a thought-provoking op-ed by Ross Douthat in the NYT—“Slouching Toward Kamala Harris”—which notes that Kamala Harris is the leading candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination according to current polling, despite a lackluster vice presidency and 2024 defeat.
  • “Harris, in the leftmost column, almost routinely outranking everyone else on the board...” — Heather [19:24]

The Democratic Bench

• Discussion covers other Democratic figures: Newsom, Buttigieg, Ocasio-Cortez. Both hosts agree that Newsom, while “perfectly amoral” (Bret [20:30]), is at least an able communicator, unlike Harris.
  • “Gavin Newsom is the perfect vessel because...he lies without any sense that he even knows he’s doing it.” — Bret [21:16]
• Both hosts note the Democratic reliance on identity politics and “empty suit” candidates, warning of long-term consequences.

California as a Case Study

• Heather raises California's dire governance as a challenge for both Harris and Newsom, noting that even reliable Democratic voters there are disillusioned:
  • “Neither Harris, as someone who was a senator in California before she was VP, nor Newsom are held in great esteem by Californians.” — Heather [22:38]
  • The closing of state parks despite record revenues is cited as evidence of policy failure and fiscal mismanagement [25:22].

The Power of Propaganda

• Bret expresses skepticism that failures will matter, noting the power of sophisticated propaganda and massive funding in shaping public perception.
  • “There is a price point to make Gavin Newsom the enthusiastically supported candidate of the party if that’s what they choose to do.” — Bret [29:11]
• Both hosts debate whether money or local experience moves voters more.

What Went Wrong with Kamala?

• Douthat’s points (as summarized and expanded by Heather):
  1. The party was seen as too beholden to progressive activists.
  2. Harris’s VP selection was itself a creation of 2020 identity politics.
  3. Her campaign was marked by “empty rhetoric of just joy and circumlocution” and little by way of achievement.
  • “She's utterly incompetent. She has no track record. ... She couldn't answer questions, she couldn't speak English.” — Heather [33:26]

Deeper Political Pathologies

• Bret diagnoses a deeper pathology: “blue team” voters who cannot process evidence they made a mistake, so double down—hence Harris’s lingering popularity:
  • “I think this is the double down instinct...Making the same error is insane.” — Bret [34:51]

Republican Field for 2028

• The Republican side is seen as presenting a more dynamic and substantial bench (J.D. Vance, DeSantis, Gabbard, etc.).
  • “That just overall, that looks like a more interesting slate of people by a lot.” — Heather [38:03]

Trump’s Second Term and Disappointment

• The hosts (especially Heather) voice disappointment and suspicion about Trump’s second term, noting his coalition’s restiveness at perceived policy betrayals.
  • “He was his own guy, that he wasn’t owned. And I see no evidence that that’s still true.” — Heather [41:13]
  • “There are an awful lot of people who did vote for him who feel betrayed and bewildered by how the very things that we were promised...could be inverted.” — Bret [41:32]
• They contrast the dogmatism in both parties, but find more critical introspection among Trump’s coalition than among Democrats.

The Unrepresentative Two-Party System

• Bret closes this segment with a critique of structural party corruption and the suppression of a party that might directly represent the majority’s interests:
  • “...in what universe is there not a single party that just figures out what people want and then advocates for it and wins election after election? ...the interests that do control our system know that they can't afford to have it exist.” — Bret [45:10]

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2. Plant–Pollinator Electrodynamics: A Hidden Channel of Nature

(46:36 – 72:22)

Discovery of Flower-Bee Electric Fields

• Bret introduces a recent David Attenborough video showcasing a biological phenomenon: flowering plants create negative electric fields, while bees acquire a positive charge from flying (friction). As bees approach, the field helps pollen “jump” onto them; after the bee’s visit, the flower’s charge briefly depletes, serving as a signal to other bees that the nectar is gone.
  • [47:54 – 49:12]: Attenborough video clip transcripted in real time.

Evolutionary and Sensory Implications

• Both hosts are fascinated and explore possible evolutionary pathways:
  • “...a perceptual mode that is totally cryptic to us humans that is apparently an important part of the ecological interaction between apparently all flowering plants and at least bees.” — Bret [50:25]
• Heather dives into whether this positive charge from flight applies to all pollinators.
  • “Does the act of flight cause insects...to lose electrons such that when you arrive, you are effectively positively charged as a flying insect, bee or not?” — Heather [50:25]

Mechanistic Digression: Membrane Voltage vs. Net Charge

• Bret distinguishes between voltage across cell membranes and a net charge detectable from outside the plant; he attributes the negative charge to grounding in the earth, not cell-level processes.
  • “It seems to be a simple extension of the fact that the earth itself is somewhat negatively charged. And so you've got basically a negative antenna sticking up off the earth…” — Bret [54:05]
• Plant structure and hive attachment are discussed as additional variables.

Ecological Disruption, Human Technology, and Health

• Both ponder how human-caused environmental changes (EMF pollution, pesticides, electrical fields) might disrupt this subtle ecology, and how these hidden interactions might play into broader themes like bee decline or even human health and grounding.
  • “...we have almost certainly disrupted the natural relationship that we have electromagnetically to the ground.” — Bret [49:20]
  • “...maybe another potential reason that bees are failing—that if hives are being built in places that actually do not allow them to build up the right charge.” — Heather [55:25]

Active vs. Passive Modulation: Plant “Communication” with Pollinators

• The hosts discuss whether plants can actively modulate the electric field to discourage visits once pollinated or if the decay is simply passive.
  • “I'd be much more compelled by an active turning off of that signal, which I think would be detectable.” — Bret [68:57]

The Broader Evolutionary Game

• Discussion integrates game theory, the evolution of plant rewards (nectar), showy flower traits, and complex signaling to pollinators (visual, olfactory, electrical).
• Role of pollinator social behaviors (like bee waggle dances) in resource signaling.
• Both hosts acknowledge the vast gaps in current scientific knowledge here, seeing this as fertile ground for new evolutionary research.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Medical "Expertise" and Complex Systems (early segment):

  • "If you had to go with the experts versus doing tried and true things and ignoring the experts, ... you'd be way better off avoiding anything that had touched the experts." — Bret [03:03]

• On the Stagnant Political System:

  • “...until it's solved or until the Republic fails. It's one of the two.” — Bret [46:24]

• On Kamala Harris:

  • “She’s utterly incompetent. She has no track record. ... In every debate or every, every interview that we saw her in, she couldn't put together sentences, she couldn't answer questions, she couldn't speak English. Like, how could we possibly be considering this?” — Heather [33:26]

• On Environmental System Complexity:

  • “It’s complex systems, man.” — Heather [71:08]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:04 – 04:56: Seasonal mood, sun and physiology, and critiques of medical/scientific overcorrection.
• 16:15 – 46:28: US politics, Democratic Party’s future, Harris, Newsom, News cycle and propaganda, Republican slate, two-party dysfunction.
• 47:03 – 67:09: Introduction and breakdown of plant-insect electrical signaling, Attenborough clip, implications.
• 67:09 – 72:22: Evolutionary game theory of plant-pollinator signaling, broader questions, and wrap-up.

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Closing Remarks

The episode closes with a return to warmth, camaraderie, and an encouragement for listeners to embrace both critical engagement and physical connection with the natural world—“Be good to the ones you love. Eat good food and get outside.” [72:55]

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Recommended For:
Listeners interested in evolutionary biology, ecological complexity, and honest, contrarian discussions on both science and politics. The episode typifies the intellectual playfulness and cross-disciplinary curiosity that defines the DarkHorse Podcast.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Hey, folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast live stream. It's 3:24. Can't be prime for at least several reasons. I'm Dr. Brett Weinstein. You are, of course, Dr. Heather Hying. And we briefly had an amazing glimpse at what summer will bring. And it has receded and we're back in sort of.

[A]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's a little gloomy. It's not so cold, but it's, it's remarkable what the mood of a hairless ape will respond to.

[B]

You talking about me?

[A]

I'm talking about all of us. I'm talking about all of us. That, that when the sun is out, it's just easy to, to be optimistic and to see a future that looks like the present, which is sunny.

[B]

Yeah. It's amazing what a powerful impact it has.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And even just the feeling of the sun on one skin. Oh, yeah. Just unignorable for reasons that we are incre. Finding out are deeply physiological.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Who would have thunk?

[A]

Who would have thunk? And you know, can we please stop imagining that? What we need to do is eradicate all the natural variation and then add back it, Add it back in titrated drop by titrated drop and villainize those who would not accept the titrated drops. Like for instance, and I have not done a deep dive on this yet, but the, you know, you need to give your newborns vitamin K at birth debacle, I think that is happening in, in real time now where I think Bobby Kennedy was just, you know, asked to please just put your support behind vitamin K drops at birth. And he's. And I think he said, like, look, I've literally never said anything about this. I'm not going to start now while I'm being hounded by you, but no, I'm not going to say yay or nay until I've looked into it. My brief look into it is, oh, and we've talked about this, I think a little bit on a Q and A before is this is one more place where we have taken a system about which we know something in one developmental stage. In this case, adults have asserted that the same things must be true across all developmental stages. In this case, newborns, when we don't find the same thing, we say, ah. What we need to do is raise the levels to that of adults. Like, hold up, you know, it's quite possible that a newborn does not actually have the same physiology, the same. We know, we know it doesn't have the same anatomical considerations and Maybe that's an adaptation, not a problem that needs to be solved. And if it is a problem that needs to be solved, as opposed to either an adaptation or maybe a trade off, wherein if you mess with it, you're going to mess with the upside of something, of something else. Maybe it's a problem because of something else that we are doing in modernity that we could fix.

[B]

Yeah, it's side effects all the way down. And we see this across every domain where we are told, avoid salt and then keep track of your electrolytes. You may be low, it's like, okay,

[A]

you looked at what's in electrolytes, that's, it's salts.

[B]

Yes. You really need to cut down your cholesterol, which turns out to be a profoundly important set of molecules that you absolutely depend on for proper functioning. Yeah. You know, there's no question in my mind at this point that if you had to go with the experts versus doing tried and true things and ignoring the experts, as long as you did it from the beginning, you'd be way better off avoiding anything that had touched the experts than you would going with their latest and greatest, which is not surprising in light of the fact that they're talking about us complex systems and all of the interventions that they've figured we need to make. But it is, it's a sobering lesson about this, the difference between the Enlightenment process, which is fantastic, and operationalizing it based on the very partial picture that you have at any given moment, especially so early in our understanding of biology, especially of the humankind.

[A]

Well, and it's one of the errors is mistaking the incredible gains both theoretical and empirical and just sort of like toolkit wise of the Enlightenment, mistaking that, conflating that with all that science is all that human understanding and flourishing can be, as opposed to saying, okay, the rigor and the logic and the reason of the Enlightenment are, you know, absolutely helped us move out of a darker, witchier, more superstitious time. But that's not to say that some of the witchier, superstitious stuff didn't turn out to be right. And it also doesn't suggest that reason is sufficient. Reason is not going to be sufficient. And reason isn't sufficient even within a scientific framework, much less a human one.

[B]

Yes, reason. Reason ultimately gets you there. But it is sort of the instantaneous desire to figure out, based on what we know at any given moment, what the advice ought to be. And, you know, obviously I don't think

[A]

it does what I don't think it's Sufficient

[B]

reason might well be sufficient if you were at a very advanced stage of understanding some system. And what reason would tell you is here are all the feedbacks that are working in you that you have to be cautious not to disrupt. And, you know, every so often there's something that needs a disruption for some reason, usually, as you point out, for because of some prior disruption. But the wisdom of the experts, if the experts persist, will ultimately involve extreme caution about disrupting things that were built to work and disrupting the environments in which they evolved.

[A]

True.

[B]

All right, shall we, I don't know, pay the rent?

[A]

You mean the ads?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yes. All right. So we always, as always, have three at the top of the hour here, but we also have our Locals Watch party going on. So join us at Locals. Consider that. And let's just get started. Our first sponsor this week is brand new to us. It's Ridge, which makes fantastic wallets like this one right here. Brett's got one, too. We are now using these amazing wallets. Most wallets, as you know, because you're a human being who watch podcasts, so you're familiar with. Wallets are soft and pliable, made of leather or synthetic materials. They fold and bend and they wear. And a new wallet made in that style looks new just a few months in. It can look quite worn, depending on how you use it. A few years in and there's no mistaking your wallet for anything elegant or refined. And it's probably not that functional anymore either. It's also true that what we need to carry in our wallets is changing. Men tend to carry smaller, more compact wallets that you can put in your back pocket. And then when you sit down, you sit asymmetrically. It's not good for your posture or the stuff in your wallet. Traditionally, women tend to carry larger wallets with more pockets, maybe a change purse, lots of room for lots of things. Women's wallets can be a purse unto themselves. A couple years ago, I switched to a small metal wallet, something that just holds a few cards. That's all. I appreciate its simplicity and its compact size, and I liked it enough that Brett got one, too. But they're flawed. They're. They're not Ridge wallets, but they're in a similar but not identical vein. And these other ones that we had are flawed. They just don't have quite enough capacity. They're just too small. And as such, I have an accessory pouch. I had now have like two wallets where or I did until we got these Ridge wallets where I keep extra cards like a backup credit card, a debit card, pass, spark card, AAA card, Costco card, cash. That little metal wallet just didn't hold enough on its own. Then Ridge came into our lives again. Check this out. It holds up to 12 cards. And the tight elastic band on the back holds cash or receipts or whatever else you might want it to hold. It's compact, it's beautiful. And maybe most important of all, it's got RFID blocking technology. While your cards are in your Ridge wallet, your data are safe. Ridge makes other stuff too. Suitcases, power banks, key cases. But for us, it's the wallets that really stand out. Ridge has over 50 beautiful designs made out of materials like aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber. They've even got a limited leather edition. And all Ridge products come with free shipping, a 99 day risk free trial, and a lifetime warranty. If you've been thinking about a new kind of wallet, try Ridge. Seriously, they're amazing. For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off at Ridge by using Code Darkhorse at checkout. Just head to ridge.com and use code Darkhorse and you're all set. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. That's ridge.com use code dark horse at checkout. And seriously, they're such amazing set of options and, and beautiful and functional.

[B]

Yes, you can definitely get something that matches your particular ethos. I will say I have switched over from my mechanical wallet with which I struggled for several years because when you open it, you have to get the right purchase on it to get it to flick open. The mechanical thing is way better on the drawing board than it is in in real life. The Ridge wallet is great in this regard and I would point out that

[A]

because there's no such mechanical.

[B]

There's no such mechanical thing. So you just learn it and it works. I would also point out that that strap on the back is perfect when you are traveling because you've been paying attention to Dark horse and you know that real ID isn't the way to go. And you have to have your passport card therefore with you instead of your driver's license. If you put the passport card on the outside, then it's right there when you get to tsa. So anyway, it's a cool wallet and it really works.

[A]

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[B]

It's the plants outside, you'll see later in the podcast that are keeping me

[A]

from being able to enunciate.

[B]

No, no, but they. Well, if it's the electromagnetic fields, they are making a small contribution to that.

[A]

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[B]

I am not the guy teach any lessons about spelling or reading.

[A]

Not spelling or reading vowels, pronouncing them.

[B]

Yes, I can help with that.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

I'm telling you, the vowels are gonna be a problem.

[B]

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[A]

It's so good.

[B]

It's spectacular. Really.

[A]

All right, where do you want to start?

[B]

Why don't we start with I don't want to step on your. Your. Your. Step on your thunder. Steal your thunder. Step on your punch lines. Any of those things would be untoward.

[A]

I don't have many today, so. So do. Do what you want to do. I don't know where you're. Where you're headed.

[B]

Go ahead. Oh, yes.

[A]

Wow. This is not professional this week at all. We're gonna be back on Saturday. Like, we're gonna do this today. We're gonna be back on Saturday. We're gonna be better prepared. That's a promise.

[B]

That is a promise.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So this week, Ross Duthat in the New York Times published an opinion piece that was titled I don't know by him, but you know, by the New York Times op ed team slouching toward Kamala Harris, of course, a reference to slouching toward Bethlehem. And that caught my eye sufficiently that I read the piece. I liked you. That I like. I like his thinking. He's a great writer and his thinking. And sure enough. Well, I didn't know actually, that Harris was actually looking like she might be the nominee for 2028. So that, like, that is what he reveals in this piece. Let's just read a little bit of it and. And then riff. So also, this picture is pretty remarkable.

[B]

It's a great picture.

[A]

It's a great picture. I also don't quite understand where the light must be coming from to make a shadow that looks like she's doing this when she's actually only got one arm in the air. So that's itself sort of a question in physics and lighting.

[B]

It makes me wonder if it's even real.

[A]

It could be coming from down below. And what looks like the it wouldn't be the orchestra pit because she's not. But I don't know. It's interesting. For those of you just listening, it's a great picture. That is surprising with regard to the shadow. But it's Kamala, presumably. I don't know. I guess at the Democratic National Convention in which she was anointed, appointed, declared, installed, installed for the 2024 Democratic Congress nominee for president, Ross Duthat writes, There are three polling numbers you can use to understand the condition of the Democratic Party in 2026. The first is Donald Trump's approval rating, which has dropped into the high 30s, a terrain usually associated with dramatic public rebukes and mandates for the opposition. The second is the generic congressional ballot, which is promising Democrats decent midterm election results, but is stubbornly refusing to promise a sweeping mandate or a clear shot at flipping all the crucial Senate states. And the third is polling for the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries, in which the leading Democratic candidate is consistently Kamala Harris, the face of the party's 2024 debacle. I want to read a little bit more of this, but let me just click through on his evidence that Harris is consistently leading in the polls. And here indeed we have. This is from Real Clear Polling. This is what's linked to in the do Fat op ed the New York Times from this week. 2028 Democratic. That's what I said. 2028 Democratic presidential nomination in which we have names that will be familiar to everyone and some that aren't necessarily familiar. But Harris, in the leftmost column, almost routinely outranking everyone else on the board, with the exception of in a few places, like in the Emerson Poll, Newsom, Gavin News and Buttigieg. How do you pronounce his name? Buttigieg.

[B]

Buttigieg, I think.

[A]

But in general, Newsom is the second highest ranking guy. But Harris is across the board on average in the lead and then in sort of fourth overall is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who, you know, I think she would be a disaster as a president, but she does seem to stand for something and have some competence to her.

[B]

I think actually she'd make a pretty remarkable candidate. Hesitant to say that. I feel like what I should do is attack Kamala Harris as a foolish choice, which would then of course have the inverse reaction to the extent that anyone's paying attention. Yeah. But no, I think, you know, Cortez would at least be fascinating to watch. And, you know, it, it would at least be an interesting campaign.

[A]

Put up an interesting fight.

[B]

She would put up an interesting fight. As would Newsom, I would say.

[A]

Would you think so?

[B]

Well, the thing about Newsom, I read him as a perfectly amoral creature.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But he's very smart, he's very articulate, he's very presentable. And it, you know, if you're going, he's a shapeshifter, of course, but if you're going to take some sort of, you know, you're going to have two things. There's the policy that this demonic party wants, for whatever reason it wants it, and then you have the package that it has to be put in to sell it to the public.

[A]

Well, this. And this ends up being. I'll keep keep going, but we'll get back to the do that piece. And this is part of what he's. He, as I believe a Democrat who will vote Democrat, is arguing essentially this point.

[B]

But if you're going to, you know, take some anti American, evil package of policies and you're going to try to dress them up to look like they're public spirited and patriotic, Gavin Newsom is the perfect vessel because for one thing, he lies without any sense that he even knows he's doing it. I mean, I think he must because

[A]

he's pretty good at Willy 2.0.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

He's super smooth.

[B]

He's super smooth. And so, I mean, you know, that's the job. How do you take something that is hostile to the public and sell it to the public as health food? Gavin Newsom has one liability. As I see it, the liability is California is not in good shape and he has a lot to do with

[A]

that, which his liability being his entire track record, that would prepare him for the job.

[B]

Right. But he has a hidden advantage in this regard, which is that he'd be running in the Democratic Party where what actually happens as a result of your policies is not taken as evidence. In fact, if things that you do do not produce the outcome that you wanted or more likely produce the inverse outcome, the answer is, well, we didn't do enough of it. Did so if that's your game. Gavin Newsom's a great choice.

[A]

But I think. And, you know, it's possible that we just aren't tuned in to as much of the thinking in California as we used to be. But what I hear from people who continue to vote blue in California is that neither Harris, as, you know, as someone who was a senator in California before she was vp, nor Newsom are held in great esteem by Californians that, you know, the very place where they came from, see what they did and. And reject it. Now, that may not matter for, you know, California is still not going to go red, but it. It feels like. Feels like a big hurdle.

[B]

Yeah, except that there's a dynamic here, which is so unfortunate, where effectively, there's a price point for changing. I mean, Kamala Harris was an empty suit who was invented into a political candidate almost overnight.

[A]

And, yes, we'll get to that.

[B]

But my point is, if the point is you've got Gavin Newsom, who, as a human being is capable of doing the job of putting a human face on something inhuman, and the problem is that the people who've lived under his governance are beleaguered. Well, the question is, how much money do you have to throw at that problem to revise how they feel? And the answer should be that there's no price because, you know, frankly, the lived experience of Californians ought to tell them that this guy has no business being in the White House. On the other hand, if you look at something like the campaign to dislodge Thomas Massie from his seat in Kentucky, the point is, well, what's at work there? This is a guy who's actually stood up for Americans. And what is working against him? The antipathy of the president and a huge amount of money. Right. There is just money being flooded into that campaign against him. And he's actually got a real race on his hands where that shouldn't be the case. Right. The president deciding to override the will of Kentuckians by, you know, by primarying Massey with, you know, just an endless stream of propaganda that shouldn't work, but it works. And so my sense is, it's just a question of how many. How many would it be hundreds of millions of dollars do you need to spend to make Gavin Newsom fresh and new?

[A]

Well, I don't know. I guess I have two reactions to that that feel like they are their rebuttals. One is here in the state of Washington, we are seeing simultaneously revenue grab from taxpayers and an absolute squandering of the Money that the state holds. No amount of money is sufficient, and no amount of money seem like almost none of the money that is had seems to be going to actually fund the right things. Like literally, they are closing down state parks for the summer because they don't have the staffing just to clean up the garbage at a moment when, you know, the estate tax and the capital gains tax and now the millionaires tax, which won't go into effect for a few years, have all been passed in the last few years. The state has more funds than. Than it's ever had, and they're closing down state parks at the beginning of the summer, which is like, what is the west about? What are the western states known for other than at this point? Insane politics. It's the natural beauty. It's the outdoor lifestyle. It's knowing that people, rain or shine or snow, are interested in going out and climbing and walking and running and cycling and kayaking and being on the water and in the mountains and on trails. And yeah, we're going to close down the state parks because we don't have enough money. So there's that, which is that actually money doesn't seem to be the solution inherently. And then I guess the second thing that I was feeling as you were talking about Newsom and what could be done to change the opinion of Californians who've been living under him. Well, California is obviously a giant state. Last I checked and I haven't looked in a while, it was the fifth largest economy in the world. It was something incredible. Like if it were a nation state, it would be the fifth largest, largest economy in the world. And that may well have changed a lot. That's. That's been a few years since I looked into that. But, you know, the, the economics and the politics of the Central Valley and of the coast are wildly different. Of, you know, far Northern California, which has been trying to secede as the state of Jefferson forever, is wildly different even from that in, say, Eureka or no more. Yeah, Eureka and Kelsey and Humboldt. Right. So, you know, just lots and lots of different areas within, within California. But some of the most, like, most dedicated blue parts were so, for instance, ravaged by the fires of 16 months ago. Now, both. So, you know, we talked about the Palisades fire because that's where I grew up in the neighborhood that I grew up was just, you know, burned literally to the ground and the Pasadella Altadena fire at the same time. It's been over a year and the mitigation efforts are stalled. They're terrible. There's toxins in the soil and many people aren't being allowed to even consider rebuilding or doing anything to reclaim any of their lives. And this is being stalled not just at the county level, but I think at the state level as well. So those people who would otherwise be absolutely dedicated blue voters are having this experience of having had their amazing upscale lives lives torn from them by a natural disaster that was absolutely made worse by tens of at least of years of bad fire wildlands fire management in in Southern California at least but now by very bad policy from from on high which includes Newsom.

[B]

Well, I, I don't disagree with that at all and I you know one would like to imagine that that there's a level of failure that is so great that propaganda can't overcome it. But I think we constantly underestimate the sophistication of propaganda increasingly good at understanding our individual blind spots sympathies and we personally, I believe there is a price point to make Gavin Newsom the enthusiastically supported candidate of the party if that's what they choose to do. Why they would choose to do the same or attempt the same with Kamala Harris I don't really know because she can't hold up her end of the bargain.

[A]

Yeah. So let's actually see what what do that has to say about her. And then I mean we've talked before during the last election about her. But he says there's these three reasons. There are three polling numbers you can use to understand the condition of the Democratic Party. And the third being that Kamala Harris is routinely leading in the polls for 2028. He says all three numbers are linked to the dominant mode in Democratic politics right now. It's not the rebellion or radicalism manifest in say Hassan Piker's twitch streamer Marxism or Zoran Mandani's tele Democratic socialism. Notable as those tendencies may be, the Democrats fundamental condition is a late Trumpian stasis in which the president's stark unpopularity encourages his opponents to imagine that they can keep everything basically as it was in the Biden era with the same broad priorities in deference to activists and interest groups and float back to power automatically. And then just a little bit more here. The continuing appeal of Harris is a useful indicator of this stasis. Yes, she is unlikely to be the 2028 nominee. Me, I'm not sure why he says that but. And part of her support is name recognition. Mitt Romney did well in such polls in 2013 and 2014, but she seems to want a second run more than Romney did. And if she goes for it, she will have one notable advantage. The fact that many Democrats who find her renomination unthinkable are nonetheless incapable of knowledge. Acknowledging the real reasons that she lost, I, Ross duthat, will list some of those reasons. First, her party was seen as too beholden to progressive activists on a range of issues, including immigration, crime, education, energy, and the transgender debate. Second, Harris's vice presidency was itself a creation of the 2020 identity politics movement, without which Joe Biden never would have picked her. And she succeeded him without a fight, in part because no one wanted to acknowledge her painful limits as a politician. Just a reminder, before she was picked, Biden said, I will choose a black woman. That's what he said.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Finally, she tried to solve both the policy problem and the identity politics problem through evasion and distraction and yet more identity politics with empty rhetoric of just joy and circumlocution about her past positions and a mediocre Midwestern white guy running mate. It's way worse than that. She's utterly incompetent. She has no track record. I went again and we talked about this at some point, but I remember finding, like, a USA Today article that was lauding all of what she had done, and its list includes, you know, visiting a Planned Parenthood clinic, you know, considering a such and such. Like, she's, she's actually affected almost nothing at all. There are a tiny, like, less than a handful of Senate bills that she pushed through that involve, like, increasing by a few acres the size of existing conservation areas. Cool. But really, like, that's, that's the basis. And obviously we all lived through, and some people may have managed to forget it as soon as they saw it, but other than her one surprisingly competent performance in the debate against Trump, in every debate or every, every interview that we saw her in, she couldn't put together sentences, she couldn't answer questions, she couldn't speak English. Like, how could we possibly be considering this? And how could we possibly imagine that the party that would put her up there is claiming to be the party that wants to empower women. Women, when all they have managed to come up with is this utterly, palpably incompetent woman?

[B]

Well, I want to argue that there's something deeper here. I hear echoes of it in what du that is saying, but I don't think the diagnosis is right. There is something on the blue team side that cannot process evidence that it had it right. And so I think what's really Driving Kamala is that everybody wants a recount because everybody who convinced themselves that Kamala was a good candidate enough to actually vote for her is feeling like something happened that shouldn't have, that this was not legitimate, that the awfulness of Trump in their minds is so profound that they have to go back and double down. And so I think this is the double down instinct, which, I mean, whatever else the Democratic Party may be, it's a political party. If it can't learn the lesson of a massive political catastrophe and just simply run a better candidate, that tells you something. One, one of the things it tells you is that, hey, blue team, you drove out all your likable people. You really did. And so you don't have a deep bench of people that you could simply not make the same error again. At least make a new error. You'll learn. Learn something new. Making the same error is insane.

[A]

And maybe that's your point about Ocasio Cortez. That would be a new. That would be a new thing.

[B]

None of us have seen that one before. Right, Right. That's a different thing. So that would at least. You know, I don't know how to call that one. Obviously, it depends on who she'd be running against. It depends on what happens through the rest of the Trump presidency, but at least it's not the same error. And even Gavin Newsom, who I think is in some ways as ridiculous as Kamala Harris at a policy level, he has demonstrated his capacity to, you know, to wreck a great state, but it's at least not the same error. And he's at least got a skill set she doesn't have. Right.

[A]

He can answer questions in English.

[B]

Oh, my God. He's good at it. He's actually. He's good at it. And frankly, he's got one of these personalities that's kind of. If you don't know what he is, he's likable. You know, he seems like a guy you could sit down with, that kind of thing. And, you know, I think we as Americans should be livid at this play, which is not just a democratic play, where they take somebody who's likable and they put him in front of us to dress up horrifying things. I mean, this was, you know, George W. Bush, right? He. He was a guy who would be fun at the barbecue, and people couldn't see that he was a front for something. That, boy, you don't want to be at that barbecue. But so Kamala isn't that. That she's not the fun person at the barbecue. She's.

[A]

But I mean, she tried. Right. The brat summer thing, like, she.

[B]

That certainly didn't go well.

[A]

Right. But, but she tried to appeal to, I guess, you know, millennial women and maybe even Gen Z women, but it didn't. It, I think it backfired.

[B]

Yeah. It didn't work. So, you know, if I were them, I would certainly try one of the two promising people who would create a new race rather than trying to rerun the old one when, you know, they won't even have Trump to run against, so.

[A]

Right. Speaking of which, so you can put my screen here back up. This is what, this is the real clear polling data on who's who people think that they would vote for if the election were today in 2028 for the Democratic President Trump presidential nomination. And then here's the equivalent information for Republicans. And you know, this isn't surprising given he's the sitting vice president and usually the sitting vice president is the heir apparent. But Vance is way ahead of all of the other contenders. But some of who's here was interesting to me. It includes Trump Jr. I had no idea that was even in the offing. Rubio. Okay. DeSantis. Interesting. I, I think he could be great. Bobby Kennedy Jr. Is even on here, as is Gabbard. So obviously I, I alighted some people there, but that just overall, that looks like a more interesting slate of people by a lot.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There was literally one person on, on the Democrat side that seemed interesting and not, you know, Ocasio Cortez seems interesting if, you know, terrifying in a way.

[B]

Tucker Carlson and Thomas Massie are not listed.

[A]

Well, I don't, Carlson is on here, but I don't know if I, maybe that is Tucker. I don't know what, what that Carlson is presumably.

[B]

It is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And he, he doesn't pull well here.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, he's, he's pretty far to the right here in terms. And that's, that's just a ranked list left to right, getting about two and a half percent. There's one pole where he got four. And most polls he's not, he's not pulling at all. But that may just be because they're not asking about him. I don't know.

[B]

Right, right. Yeah. Well, he's not running, but.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But he's certainly being talked about. All right. Was there more on the.

[A]

No. I mean, the piece goes on, but I think, I think I have been pleasantly not thinking about presidential politics, about the race for a little while and the Idea that we are at a similar kind of show as we did last time is absurd. Now, obviously, Trump is his own, brings his own circus, and so it won't be exactly the same kind of thing, but I am totally shocked that Harris is. Has the chutzpah to stand up and say, I'll do that again after her showing was as abysmal as it was.

[B]

Yeah, I can't believe she would want it. I mean, she took such a beating. It just seems like a reasonable person would go do something else. But okay. You know, to me, though, this is like the Democratic Party announcing, yep, we're the people you. You thought we were. We haven't learned anything, and we'll do it to you all over again. Which, again, makes things very simple. On the other side, I cannot vote for a cabal that wants to use an empty suit puppet to cloak what it's doing. And, you know, it's not that the Republican Party hasn't done that, but, my God, it seems to be the. The standard MO of this party now. And the party faithful do not seem to be processing the. Either the policy side at all. And they're certainly not processing, hey, that thing we wanted to do did bad things that we didn't anticipate. Maybe it's not such a wise idea. I think the inability to process that is just. It's disqualifying in a political discussion.

[A]

It should be. Of course, some of what we have seen in, in the second Trump presidency has looked like few of us predicted.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

With regard to what appears just to be capture.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Which was exactly. You know, I went back to my thinking, which I published, about why I voted for him in 2024, having not voted for him anytime before. And one of the main reasons, and what was most important to me was that he was his own guy, that he wasn't owned. And I see no evidence that that's still true.

[B]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going on and why. But I will say, on the Republican side, there are an awful lot of people who did vote for him who feel betrayed and bewildered by how the very things that we were promised, like no new wars, could be inverted in the way that they have been. So that's a different thing. And I'm not saying that there isn't a totally committed to Trump quadrant over there. There is. There are people for whom he can do no wrong. And frankly, those of us who are, you know, feeling like we're getting things that we specifically voted against that we are betraying the president by calling him out for these things. I think it's just our responsibility to try to hold him to the promises that he made and, and to try to understand the reason that he's not following through on them. We're. Were they lies when he said them, or has something kicked in? Has the, the dynamics of the politics taken control? But nonetheless, you don't find all of the people who voted for Trump happy with whatever Trump does. That is not what's going on over on the red side.

[A]

Yeah. And I think, you know, that was certainly a caricature of Trump voters in 2016 and even in 2020 when he did not take office, obviously. But people in the mainstream media in blue team mindset thought that the critique that was coming at Biden was simply because there was totally unnuanced celebration of Trump no matter what. And again, as you, I would say, I'm sure there are some people like that out there, just as there are some people like that out there with the opposite valence over and over in blue team. But that is not how he won. That is, that is, he certainly could not have won on the basis of everything Trump does is going to be a good decision. Voters.

[B]

Yeah. And there weren't. And you know, there are certainly many Trump loyalists, but Trump loyalists on their own were not enough to elect him. A coalition of people got behind him because he seemed to be willing to partner with people like Bobby Kennedy on, you know, values that were not traditionally under the Republican banner. So, you know, that coalition has to figure out what to do in order to not go down with this ship. Yeah.

[A]

To, to continue to be hurt. Yeah. And to demonstrate that we're, you know, we're a real, we're a real coalition with real views who actually, you know, maybe in some ways seem like, you know, hippie granola moms and, and, you know, mothers of vaccine injured children and also two way advocates and hunters and ranchers and outdoors people who want to hike and kayak. And yes, that is one set of people, many of whom have historically voted in opposite directions, but actually have a shared love of, of our planet and don't want to see it destroy for trivial reasons.

[B]

And I will just remind people of the overarching dynamic here, which I've pointed out many times, which is there's something odd about the fact that we don't have a party that simply represents the interests that most people have. It's such an obvious winning strategy. If it was allowed to escape the crib, the Problem is, anything that attempts to do that is strangled in the crime crib. And so what we're left with is two deeply corrupt parties, beholden in many cases to the very same interests, doing the bidding of somebody else at the expense of Americans. And, you know, that's the whole game is you're not going to be allowed to have a reasonable choice, and we will then divide over which of the unreasonable choices is less unreasonable. And that's. That's a blinking red light light. Right. That is nature's way of telling you that something about your democratic Republic is simply not functioning. Because, you know, in what universe is there not a single party that just figures out what people want and then advocates for it and wins election after election? How could that not be a feature of our landscape? And the answer is the interests that do control our system know that they can't afford to have it exist. And so. So they do everything in their power to prevent it from, you know, ever setting seed. And, you know, that's really the problem. Until it's solved or until the Republic fails. It's one of the two.

[A]

Let's hope for the former. Yes, let's try to solve it.

[B]

Yeah, all right, let's try to solve it. Which brings us very direct. No, it does not bring us even remotely to our next.

[A]

I don't know what you're going to talk about, but you have these tells.

[B]

Oh, do I?

[A]

Oh, you do.

[B]

I do. But then, as you know, once you start depending on those tells, you what

[A]

the tells are that you can untell yourself.

[B]

Yes, I can untell myself, even though that's not a thing. All right, so I ran across something that was new to me. I don't know how it had escaped my notice all this time. Apparently it was new in 2013.

[A]

Are you not concerned about getting poop on your computer? Computer. You've got it. Right.

[B]

Oh, the dung beetle.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Sorry. What could possibly be going on that I'm unaware of in this studio? Yes. No, that's just a sculpture of a dung beetle.

[A]

If possible, you could put, you know, point that. That way so that. So the dung beetle doesn't have to.

[B]

All right. We are redecorating in real time.

[A]

I mean, I too, would like to have my computer there, but I just feel like the dung beetle deserves his space 100%. Yeah.

[B]

For one thing, those aren't easy to control. So you don't know what direction exactly.

[A]

I felt like you were going to get that on your computer. And then what?

[B]

Yeah, and then what? Exactly. All Right. Jen, do you want to show the video that I sent? So, I had not seen this, and it alerted me to a biological phenomenon that I was just completely unaware of. I'll be curious if you knew about it.

[A]

Okay. I don't know what we're talking about yet.

[C]

Plants are rooted to the ground and have a small negative charge. The higher up the plant you go, the greater the electric charge. This creates an electric field around the flower. We can't see it, but these electrodes are picking up the energy of this tiny field and converting it into the sound that we can hear. Bees, on the other hand, have a positive charge. Friction whilst flying causes them to lose electrons. As a bee approaches the charged fields around the flower and the bee interact and the sound changes there. And when it lands, the positive and negative fields immediately cancel each other out. As this happens, there are two very surprising consequences. Firstly, the plant's negatively charged pollen actually jumps across onto the positively charged polygon bee. Secondly, the plant has a changed electrical field, and when another bee comes along, it detects this altered electrical signature and avoids the flower. The plant is, in effect, telling the bee that it has no nectar and to come back later.

[A]

I have seen that Attenborough clip shared, actually by our wonderful friend Diane. It's bees. Ground. Grounding.

[B]

Yes. I was going to point out this connection. You have been increasingly intrigued with the idea of grounding. I've been a little uncompelled by it. But I will say this does strike me as consistent with the idea that grounding is not only potentially a significant factor in something like human health, but that we have almost certainly disrupted the natural relationship that we have electromagnetically to the ground. And I was thinking about this as I was coming over here in my, of course, rubber bottom shoes. Right. An insulator that prevents you from being connected to the earth in an electromagnetic way. So, anyway, I was fascinated by a. The fact that you have a perceptual mode that is totally cryptic to us humans. That is apparently an important part of the ecological interaction between apparently all flowering plants and at least bees, presumably other arthropods as well.

[A]

So there's a question about, does the act of flight cause insects who visit plants in order to get nectar and inadvertent to them. But the point for the plant end up pollinating as a result. Does the act of flight cause you to lose electrons such that when you arrive, you are effectively positively charged as a flying insect, bee or not? There's that question. And then there's the question of, do other insects Besides bees, are they able to detect, which is the second part of what Attenborough is talking about in this little clip. Right. That it also acts as a mode of communication between the plant where we would evaluate, using our limited understanding of senses, we would have thought, can they, you know, can they smell? Can they detect? Can they. Can they. Can they smell, can they see? Can they feel through sort of vibratory or tactile methods, the lack of nectar, and thus move on quickly without considering all of these other sensory modalities that actually exist.

[B]

Right. And so I think the answer to the first question is clear. Clear. It seems to be that. That flying insects are naturally positively charged by virtue of the fact that they have lost negatively charged electrons. Electrons being inherently negatively charged, they get stripped off in the same way as

[A]

they fly, by the act of.

[B]

By the act of flying. So it's like rubbing, I think, a feather on a balloon or rubbing a plastic rod with a cloth. The stripping of the electrons creates a static charge, which we've all experience. You can create it as you're scooting across your carpeted floor, and then you touch the doorknob, and the charge you've built up discharges with a little. Little lightning bolt that you can actually see in the dark. But anyway, okay, so the bees are naturally charged by virtue of flight and that I might have seen coming. I didn't realize that the plants were inherently negatively charged, and I did a little digging on why the plants are negatively charged, and I got a lot of bullshit back, I'm sure.

[A]

Yeah. I have not come looking at that.

[B]

Yeah. So the bullshit I initially got back was, well, you know, all creatures, including plants, do a lot of work to get a voltage across their membranes by virtue of ion pumping.

[A]

Okay, sure. That doesn't.

[B]

No, that doesn't get you there. It doesn't get you there unless the positive charges, the protons, that is a hydrogen atom without its electron, which is just simply a proton, which is positively charged. Unless they're lost to the environment, it doesn't result in a net charge. It just results in a voltage across the membrane. So even though there's a lot of explaining about the. The work that the plant is doing to get the inside of its cells to be negatively charged, it does not explain.

[A]

It's the beginning of a story, but it doesn't. It doesn't get us there.

[B]

Yeah, it's not even. It's not even really involved as far as I.

[A]

It could be the beginning of a relevant story.

[B]

Yeah, well, if. Yeah, if there was some mechanism where the positive charge is built up somewhere. Of course there's pressure for that not to happen because the positive charges repel each other. But anyway, it seems to be a simple extension of the fact that the earth itself is somewhat negatively charged. And so you've got basically a negative antenna sticking up off the earth. All plants are in effect permanently grounded is what's going on. And that results in the negative charge. Charge. But these negative charges are sensitive.

[A]

That seems that. That seems like happy. Right.

[B]

It's satisfying.

[A]

Pretty simple.

[B]

And it does. It doesn't require all that extra architecture of the cells and their, you know, movement of protons.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But in any case. So this opens up several kinds of questions. A, you've got the plants are negatively charged, presumably always have been. The B bees, as long as there have been bees, have been presumably positively charged after.

[A]

As they fly.

[B]

As they fly as a result of

[A]

their flight in the hive. You might think that they, because the hive itself is attached to the ground, would also be negatively charged. Maybe.

[B]

Kind of depends how it's attached. And it's a really interesting question. I have not delved there. How it's attached and what it's made of and how insulating. I mean, the fact.

[A]

Yeah. What they're on. If they're. If they're on honeycomb which is fully insulating, then they're just of kind going to end up at some neutral. Which might be actually neutral or might be slightly negatively or possibly.

[B]

Right. And you might imagine that there is a whole story to be told. A hives are obviously constructed of different materials. They're constructed in different places. Those may have radically significant impacts on the foraging of those bees. In other words, you might find that bee preference is about places that do allow either the buildup or the dissipation of charges that allow this other system to function because.

[A]

Cause maybe another potential reason that bees are failing that if hives are being built in places that actually do not allow them to build up the right charge.

[B]

Yeah. Although we're doing so many things that have a potential impact on this electromagnetic interaction that who's to say, I mean, you know, you've got pesticides spraying and the pesticides stick to the plants. You know, one of the problems with the early pesticides, if you're interested in this story, I still mean like early

[A]

in history or early applied in the crop.

[B]

Early in history. So early in history. If you're interested in the story, go read the moth in the iron lung. It traces the history of early pesticides Trying to beat an escape of gypsy moth caterpillars from Europe, which began to devastate plants in the U.S. and anyway, the early pesticides, some of them were effective, but they washed off the plant, so every time it rained you had to reapply them. And so the upgraded pesticides were ones that persisted through that, which meant that they were also on the fruit at the point that you consumed it, et cetera, et cetera. So question is, okay, what is the impact of that on the electromagnetism of these plants as they're being sought by bees? And anyway, there's lots of things we're doing in the environment that potentially have an impact. You know, we're also putting up effective giant antennas, right, where we've got these towers everywhere, that and electrical lines. And the electrical lines have fields of their own. And so the number of ways, given that the punchline of this is that it turns out that the bees have evolved sensitivity to this natural charge differential. Not only does it result in, in pollen transfer where the pollen is partially adhered to the bee by this electro, by static electricity and then it jumps.

[A]

That's remarkable. That is a piece of the pollination process that always seemed a little too accidental, like haphazard really. The bee is getting the nectar and has to just be waggling around. Waggle is the wrong word because it's used in a different form in honeybees, but has to be moving around sufficient to get coated in pollen. Everyone presumably seen bees that are coated in pollen, but that seems, that seems really lucky. And it feels less lucky if the pollen is jumping onto the bee on account of the difference in charge.

[B]

Right. And so you can imagine adaptations on both sides. And the digging I did suggests that the adaptations on the B side, I don't think they've been fully explored, but they've at least been somewhat explored. And what has been discovered is that the bees have become sensitive to the, the charge of individual flowers because as Attenborough points out, it conveys information about how recently the flower was visited. And I will just tell you from back when I was a bat biologist, one of the things that emerged in looking at nectariverous bats, that is bats that visit flowers, is that the game played by flowers is, it's game theoretically. Fascinating. It's not just simply that flowers have nectar and animals visit them to collect the nectar, it's that the, the plants have an incentive to keep the insects moving. An insect that stays on one bush all day is not doing the job that the plant is Attempting to pay for, for the plant needs the bee to keep going, or the bat, or the bat or whatever the pollinator might be needs the animal to move on in order to accomplish the job that is being done here. So to put it in somewhat deeper context, when you have pollen covering your car, as we've recently had here, so much that pollen is wind dispersed pollen and in order to be wind dispersed, it has to be extremely light so that it floats on the wind, which it obviously, obviously does very effectively. It is not very efficient in terms of the plant generating the pollen, reaching the plant capable of being fertilized. So the broadcasting of huge amounts of pollen is necessary in order to get the job done and results in a spectacular waste for the plant doing this wind pollination thing. Insects are a solution because an insect has a, effectively a brain that can take it precisely from one plant to a partner plant, which means that one, you need a lot less pollen and two, the pollen can be a lot bigger. It can be a bigger, more durable thing because it's riding on, it's effectively taking an uber between plants.

[A]

And so, and, and, and with that relationship you also get the evolution of showy flowers, of good smelling flowers. You get the evolution of the communication by the plants to woo the would be pollinators, which is to say the insects and the bats and the hummingbirds and such, right?

[B]

But the advertisement does not have to be honest in each case. So the pollinators are looking for plants that are producing a large reward ratio for the amount of searching activity. And the plants are economizing on how much reward they're providing. If they're too stingy, the pollinators will ignore that plant altogether because it knows it's not a good source of profit. So the plants are constantly modulating the behavior of the animals. They're providing enough nectar to get them to arrive, but not so much that the animal could just sit there and drink all day. So it causes the behavior that we see, the hunting behavior for a bear, big cache of nectar. And so that interacts with this system too. The bees are looking for information that says that flower is not worth visiting because it's been recently visited and therefore is at least somewhat depleted in terms of nectar. Of course, it may not be in the plant's interest to convey that if there's still value. So imagine a flower that has been visited and depleted of nectar, but still has pollen. The plant doesn't care that the bee isn't going to get paid. In fact, it may be good for the plant to have effectively a dry flower advertising to a bee. And the bee lands, hunts for nectar, doesn't get it, still gets dusted in pollen and has to fly off to some other flower, which is exactly what the plant is looking for. So the bees have adapted to read these signals. That much is very clear. The bees have adapted and in fact they have hairs that are sensitive to the electromagnetic attraction of the flower. So you can imagine that as a bee approaches a flower, there's almost a magnetic pole that the animal can detect that tells it actually this one hasn't been visited in a while. It's probably a good bet. What's less clear is whether or not the plants are modulating these signals because the plants are naturally negatively charged. And so that's just a feature of the universe. And the fact that it happens to momentarily deplete after a bee has visited is a natural consequence of just the way static electricity works. It dissipates. So the question that I have is, are the plants modulating these signals in a way that is clearly adaptive and

[A]

to them, to the plants? Right? Yeah. Well, and no plant will only have one modality of signal, Right. There will be, if you have a pollinator, as opposed to our wind, dispersed like a fir tree. If you have a pollinator, you have a flower which is a visual signal. And often the visual signal goes beyond the visual spectrum that we can see. So bees, for instance, can see into the ultraviolet. And you have probably many people will have seen images of like ultra, what daisies look like under ultraviolet, which is even more like pointed towards the middle of the floor.

[B]

Yeah. There's like little landing strips that we can't see.

[A]

Yeah. And then there's of course, the olfactory signals. So whether or not the plant can modify the electromagnetic signals does not necessarily mean, even if it can't, doesn't mean that it can't modify other aspects of its signal. Although we do not. We know that some flowers close up at the time of day when their pollinators are not out. Right. You have night blooming flowers, but much more often you have day blooming flowers that, that close up when their pollinators aren't around, thus potentially preserving both their petals and their aromas. And for sure there is evidence of modulation of scents, both the, the kind of, you know, floral scents that we associate with how flowers smell as beautiful, but also pheromones that mimic the females of the pollinators that they are trying to attract.

[B]

Right. And so, so the question is, how would you test whether or not the plants are modulating this signal the way they modulate other signals. And I was wrestling with that question and I came up with a kind of a quadrant where there are some predictions, one of which I think is very clear. The flowers have a differential interest in being visited depending upon what kind of life cycle they have.

[C]

Have.

[B]

In other words, you have plants that have both male and female parts. In some of those plants they're both active at the same moment. In some of those plants they're sequential. I've forgotten what the term for that is, but you can imagine that a plant that was switching from its male phase to its female phase, unless those phases overlap, that there would be a period in which they do not want visitation. And then there are two periods in which they want visitation. But even better is the fact that at the point that a plant has been fertilized, at the point pollen has been delivered, the plant actively, if I'm getting the ecology right, has an active interest in not being visited because it has some set of pollinators and it wants to concentrate those pollinators efforts on flowers where there's still a profit from the plants perspective to be made. And so the question is, could you detect something like the shutdown of the electromagnetic attraction the bees are looking for this negative charge. It's depleted. When the plant has been visited, it apparently re establishes itself over time as the nectar refills. At the point that the plant has been fertilized and has nothing left to gain from pollinator, you might expect that effectively faster than the petals would wilt built that you would see a shutting down of this electromagnetic signal. So from the point of view of an approaching B, it can tell that that's already a spent flower and it can spend its time elsewhere, which would be in the interest of the plant.

[A]

I didn't, I don't remember it from the Attenborough video and I don't. I. It's been a while since I looked at anything primary on this. Are you suggesting that the bees can detect the EMF electromagnetic field at some distance, or do they need to be.

[B]

No, it's. It's going to be on approach.

[A]

That's what I like. Very, very close.

[B]

But imagine a bush full of flowers, some of which have already been pollinated, some of which have yet to be pollinated. The plant wants the pollinator to concentrate on the flowers that still have yet to be pollinated, hopefully bringing pollen from somewhere else. And so what I'm imagining is it would take adaptation to cause an active shutdown of that mechanism rather than just its passive decay. And as the plant falls apart, so instead of being over the course of hours or days, it might be in a matter of a minute, just the same way that the visitation causes a quick change in. In that parameter. And you might even be able to see this, you know, at a cellular level, because, of course, the plant does have the capability to move ions around, and so it could neutralize a charge. So anyway, I'd be very interested to know if we can detect the activity of selection having favored the modulation of that signal in some way that is not accidental.

[A]

Well, or even. I mean, I feel like the mechanism could be. B lands on flower, charge gets neutralized between both B and flower, B flies off less. Less positively charged than it was, he was, she was, and flower is at the moment, less. Wait, did I reverse that? The bee came in positively, positively charged, flies away with more electrons. The flower remains at a more neutral state. And so can you. Can the flower effectively block electromagnetic transmission from the rest of the plant and maintain its new neutral charge since being visited by the. By the pollinator?

[B]

Yep, I agree with that. Although in that case, case you have to ask the question of whether the plant is simply not spending energy to rebuild a charge that has no utility to it. Rather than an active shutdown, I'd be much more compelled by an active turning off of that signal, which I think would be detectable. But anyway, it's fascinating. You might also imagine that there are games played by pollinators that, you know, if they can neutralize the negative charge that suggests a fresh flower, then they could maybe retain, you know, especially given the way pollinators work. The pollinators know the specific location of the plants they visit. Generally, they track this. They actually have adaptations that allow them to keep track of it. And so if you've discovered a flower that's putting out nectar, at some rate, you don't necessarily. You know, if you're a bee in a hive, you may very well want other bees to be able to detect it because they're your. Your sisters and even more highly related than normal sisters would be. But you don't necessarily want other insects to detect it. And in fact, I wonder in the case of honeybees. Honeybees famously communicate the location of rich patches of resource pollen and nectar with the waggle dance. And it could be that a beehive that has become aware of a patch of nectar would actually be interested in neutralizing the visibility or the attractiveness of that patch to other insects because it doesn't necessarily need them as much.

[A]

Yeah. Although, I mean, it's complex systems, man. And part of the benefit is that the pollen jumps onto the B, where you have the. The electron differential. So I feel like that's. I can imagine the little B engineers trying to make this happen and then realizing there were unexpected consequences of their engineering protocol.

[B]

Well, that's the beauty of this being natural selection is that it only. It only works if it works.

[A]

Yeah, I just. I. So I. I think it works. It won't. I think it's. I think it won't work because you've got both sides of. Of the trade off.

[B]

Yep. Well, it's an interesting question. And, you know. And you've got both sides of the trade off. Also, if you had like a, you know, a daisy bush, the animal still gets a benefit from knowing which flowers are unvisited, although that advantage is conveyed by the last B. So I don't know. I think it's an interesting question as to whether or not there might be some. I'm. I'm sure we can find systems in which blocking that signal would be to the advantage of the first animal to visit. I'd be curious if it ever happens and whether they.

[A]

Given that information is being transferred, there is the potential for communication to be occurring not just between the signaler and the recipient, but between two asynchronous, synchronous potential recipients of the signal.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, Well, I think we're there.

[A]

All right. All right. Maybe the sun has come out by now. Who knows? How would we possibly know?

[B]

We'd have to install a hole in the wall or something like that.

[A]

Yeah, I said. I say we do it. I. I say we do it. Okay, so we'll actually be back on Saturday in order to accommodate a little more travel next week and chat and we'll do a Q A then. So consider joining us not just for the podcast, but the Q A on Saturday afterwards on Locals, as always. And until you see us next time, be good to the ones you. You love. Eat good food and get outside.

[B]

Be well, everyone.