Last night, as it approached midnight, I settled in, picked up my crocheting, and hit play on the latest episode of In Our Time on BBC Radio 4. I've been listening to this show for more than a quarter of a century, albeit sometimes with a long time in between listens. I'm not interested in every topic, but I can always go back and listen to older episodes that I've missed. There are over a thousand of them on the site, I think.* The latest episode is the one I listened to last night. The topic was slime molds. It was a mind-bending, extremely fascinating discussion. As always, the host, Melvyn Bragg, had three guests, all of them experts in their fields--in this case, slime mold researchers and someone who was not quite as immersed in that world, but was deeply into fungi. Melvyn Bragg always does such a great job of getting them to explain things in language that is understandable to people who have no background whatsoever in whatever the topic is. He will ask again if he feels it necessary to do so for clarity. I also like the way he is often amazed at what he's hearing in the same way I am.The result is a collection of intelligent, highly informative, very entertaining, worthwhile discussions about a whole array of specific topics in the broad categories of history, philosophy, science, religion (as an institution, not as dogma) and literature, music, visual arts. Each episode is around 45 minutes long and when listening online to the podcast, there's a few minutes of extra discussion, so they clock in at around 50 minutes. I get so engrossed in what I'm listening to that the time whizzes by.
So, slime molds--no brain, yet better than humans at some things. Can find their way out of mazes quite adeptly, for example. One of the guests told the story of his friend, who can never find his way out of an IKEA store. He set up a small slime mold sized replica of one in his lab and the slime molds found the quickest way out in no time. Slime molds have memory and will mimic behavior of other slime molds. They know which slime molds are related to them. Someone mentioned flatworms in the discussion and explained that they can be taught to do tricks and they remember what they've learned. If their heads are cut off, they will grow new heads with new brains, yet still remember the tricks learned when they had the previous head/brain. So where is this memory stored? I love learning new things, especially things that stretch my mind, and this definitely did.
*Although I've put the links in above, this show and so much more can also be accessed via the BBC Sounds app, which is a wonderful app to have. I particularly like BBC Radio 4 and 4Extra. They have some really excellent content that ranges from radio drama, comedy, and mystery to science programs to books to news to opinion pieces and more. It's definitely worth checking out.
Another thing I listened to last night was the latest song posted on YouTube by Wendy Jensen, a Canadian musician. I discovered her a little over a year ago when a different song of hers was suggested to me. I listened to it, loved it, sent it to Bill who also loved it. We've purchased some of her music in the year since. It's quite lovely and peaceful to listen to. Here's the one I listened to last night, but there's more on her channel, which I highly recommend. I think her music is only available there and on Bandcamp, which is where we got our albums.
I'm not sure yet what it is I'll be listening to tonight, but I hope it's as good as last night's listening was! Hope you've got some good stuff to listen to as well.
