Radiolab - The Fellowship of the Tree Rings

At a tree ring conference in the relatively treeless city of Tucson, Arizona, three scientists walk into a bar. The trio gets to talking, trying to explain a mysterious set of core samples from the Florida Keys. At some point, they come up with a harebrained idea: put the tree rings next to a seemingly unrelated dataset. Once they do, they notice something that no one has ever noticed before, a force of nature that helped shape modern human history and that is eerily similar to what’s happening on our planet right now. With help from pirates, astronomers and an 80-year-old bartender, this episode will change the way you look at the sun. (Warning: Do not look at the sun.) Special thanks to Scott St George, Nathaniel Millett, Michael Charles Stambaugh, Justin Maxwell, Clay Tucker, Willem Klooster, Kevin Anchukaitis EPISODE CREDITS Reported by - Latif Nasserwith help from - Ekedi Fausther-Keeys and Maria Paz GutierrezProduced by - Maria Paz Gutierrez and Pat Walterswith help from - Ekedi Fausther-Keeys and Sachi MulkeyMixed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Natalie Middletonand Edited by - Pat Walters CITATIONS: Books: Tree Story (https://zpr.io/ULX279uzgW9q) by Valerie TrouetSweetness and Power (https://zpr.io/cUEGqGGWMSaQ) by Sidney Mintz Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Duration: 32m
Broadcast on: 14 Jul 2023
Audio Format: other

Special thanks to Scott St George, Nathaniel Millett, Michael Charles Stambaugh, Justin Maxwell, Clay Tucker, Willem Klooster, Kevin Anchukaitis

EPISODE CREDITS

Reported by - Latif Nasserwith help from - Ekedi Fausther-Keeys and Maria Paz GutierrezProduced by - Maria Paz Gutierrez and Pat Walterswith help from - Ekedi Fausther-Keeys and Sachi MulkeyMixed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Natalie Middletonand Edited by - Pat Walters

CITATIONS:

Books:

Tree Story (https://zpr.io/ULX279uzgW9q) by Valerie TrouetSweetness and Power (https://zpr.io/cUEGqGGWMSaQ) by Sidney Mintz

Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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To radio lab from WNYC okay I'm just gonna start tree walks into a bar okay bartender asks what do you have? Well no I'm just I'm already I'm already dismayed by your concept because trees as I last check can't walk they're rooted to the ground they just go with it Lulu just go with it come on okay tree walks into a bar okay yeah bartender says what do you have I've got a branching decision ahead of me but I'll go with a logger anything but a logger oh anything but a logger okay that's right another one okay three dendrochronologists walk into a bar and okay wait yeah dendrochronologists are people who look at dendroids in your brain no they there are people who study tree rings oh they just look at the rings inside a tree stump that's what they do that's what they study okay so three dendrochronologists walk into a bar and I mean that's that's that's not a joke that's the beginning of the story okay the rest of the story is basically three tree ring scientists walk into a bar and as the night goes on and as the talk gets a little boozier they come up with this kind of hairbrained idea to take this one particular set of tree rings to put it next to a seemingly unrelated thing but in doing that they start to see all kinds of new things that they've never seen before that maybe nobody has ever seen before including an invisible hand shaping the history of our planet and the history of of us all right well before we take off on this wild tail should we do that who we are anything I'm Latif Nasser I'm Laila Miller this of course is radio lab all right so set it up for us where does it all start okay so we're in Tucson Arizona at a bar called Tiger's Tapra hey it's more than 100 years old and it's sort of famous locally for its very old bartender who has been serving drinks there since 1959 cool all right now I'm picturing Gandalf like serving drinks to these three tree ring scientists sitting there looking at the bar counting the rings on the bar we're not freaks we go to a bar we go and drink we don't kind of race this is Valerie Valerie Truay scientist number one and I'm professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona which is in Tucson where you would not necessarily expect a tree ring lab because there's not many trees around but kind of weirdly she says this is actually where the modern field was born because the first dendrochronologist was actually an astronomer who was studying the Sun and to Ellicott Douglas that happened because he thought to himself well trees they're sensitive to the Sun you know they eat sunshine and they get to be very old so maybe I can learn something about the Sun from the rings in trees like trees are the original astronomers recording their solar observations yeah exactly huh but what could you actually learn about the Sun from the rings isn't it just like each year the tree grows it gets a ring and you learn how old it is by counting them like is there a thing beyond the counting the rings yes so here it's a very good question so Valerie explained yes it's true most trees grow in new ring every year but what fewer people know is that not every ring is equally wide not every ring is equally dense not every ring has the same chemistry and it's in those differences Valerie says where you can learn all kinds of stuff about the tree and even stuff not about the tree exactly so like what like what well you could learn about the weather how hot or how cold it is you can see how much it rains or didn't droughts you could see trauma yeah you know which could create a very skinny ring you can see fires which leave scars or bugs which leave these red or blue stains human history as well all kinds of stuff okay continue so back to Tucson Valerie's at this bar to meet up with two other scientists because they're all in town for this big conference an international tree ring conference for all of the dendochronologists in the Americas is it like four people so okay how many people is it oh it's total yeah i don't know maybe 200 250 people a lot and among them were Valerie's barbuddies Marta Marta Dominga del Mas Spanish scientists specialized in dendro archaeology studies the wood in shipwrecks what yeah like she dives down and examines the rings in the wood of the halls of the ships that wrecked hundreds of years ago oh yeah the threshold is the wood third one uh it's my name is Grant Harley Grant originally from Florida he's a paleoclimatologist associate professor of geography at the University of Idaho uses tree rings to study past and future climate

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