The Ghaf Tree

Our latest episode looks at sabkhas – seemingly uninhabitable salt flats that might help us fight climate change. These salty ecosystems can sequester four times more carbon (per square meter) than rainforests can. This episode is really timely given that the UAE is gearing up to ...  Show more

Summer in Dubai is intense with relentless humidity and temperatures soaring close to 50°C (122°F). How did people stay cool before air conditioning? We had heard about barjeels – traditional wind towers – but we didn’t quite know how they worked, or if they were still used today ...  Show more

Trees have the remarkable ability to pass knowledge down to succeeding generations and to survive the ravages of climate change, if only we’d let them alone, according to the German forester Peter Wohlleben. In The Power of Trees (translated by Jane Billinghurst) he explains t ...

For much of history, tree canopies were pretty much completely ignored by science. It was as if researchers said collectively, "It's just going to be empty up there, and we've got our hands full studying the trees down here! So why bother?!"

But then, around the mid-198 ...

We pretend to whistle with an acorn cap today, bring our hands near our mouth. Feel free to skip this one and/or make sure everyone has washed their hands right before listening.

Did you know that trees talk to each other? They do! Mother trees can send food to ...

When you’re walking in the woods, you’re often surrounded by trees. But you probably don’t notice them much, and when you do spot some irregularity, like a strange bulge in the trunk of a tree, you likely don’t have any idea how it got there. But my guest says that these trees ...