13. Products made from plants: surprising stories with Jonathan Drori скачать в хорошем качестве

13. Products made from plants: surprising stories with Jonathan Drori

You might look at everyday items in a different light after this episode, as we hear best-selling author and Woodland Trust ambassador, Jonathan Drori CBE, reveal some of the fascinating things we make with plants. From the well-known coffee bean to the tree bark that's used in spacecraft, he shares some of the amazing relationships between familiar objects and the natural world as we meet beneath a beautiful beech tree on Parliament Hill in London. These stories and more feature in Jonathan's latest book, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, which aims to spark an interest in nature for younger readers. He explains how discovering the wonder of nature in a fun, exciting way as a child can inspire a lifelong connection, just as it did for him. We also discover why fruit is sweet, the value of the mandrake plant, how beech is thought to resist lightning and more. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk (https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/) Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. Adam: Jonathan Drori CBE, is a man of many talents. He's a trustee of the Eden Project and of Kew Gardens, a member of the Royal Institution, a man who used to be a senior commissioning editor at the BBC, and he's also an ambassador for the Woodland Trust and a best-selling author of books such as Around the World in 80 Trees and his latest, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, a book for younger people about the plants in their lives and the things they make which are all around them. And whereas these podcasts often take me on long journeys, this time, well, it's just a hop, skip and a jump away in London at Parliament Hill, where we met to talk about his book and the things we didn't know about the stuff around us all. Right, we are... it's a bit windy right here. It actually sounds windier than it is, but we are in Parliament Hill, or thereabouts, with Jonathan Drori, who has written the stuff that stuff is made of, and is also a big noise, essentially, in the Woodland Trust itself, of which we can talk lots about. But we're standing by a beech tree. So, Jonathan, why did you write this book? Jonathan: I wanted to do something that would make kids kind of interested in the natural environment. Starting with the things they're interested in, which are kind of ice cream and chocolate and sport and dinosaurs and all that kind of thing. And use their own interests to sort of spark other interests in nature, in trees and plants, and also actually in history and folklore and culture, which are all sort of bound up with those things. One of the things I've tried to do with the book is to explain things from the plant's point of view as well as from a human point of view. So there are all these qualities that we desire plants for, whether that's sort of sweet things to eat or things to build with or things to make musical instruments out of. And they're all in the book and that's fine. But I've also tried to explain, you know, why has bamboo evolved in the way that it has? And why has a beech tree evolved the way it has? Why does chocolate have sweet mush around the seeds? You know, why do the grasses feed us? Why is sugar cane sweet? And why do we love it? Adam: And so through this book, you're trying to attempt to do that by explaining stuff like tea and chocolate, indeed, where it comes from. Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, there are 30 different species that I deal with in the book. And on the right-hand side of the page, there's a whole lot of information about the way that the plant grows, how it's cultivated, the relationships that it has with other plants, with the little critters that might pollinate it or disperse the seeds. And on the left-hand side, there's a whole lot of stories about the plant, all kinds of kind of fascinating facts and really about the human relationships with that plant. Adam: Do you think we have lost that connection with the plants around us. So that this sort of stuff might have been really obvious a few generations ago or not. Jonathan: laughs A leading question, m'lud! Yes, I mean, you know, with urban living and things being in packets at the supermarket, you know, we perhaps don't think very much about where the basic materials for our existence come from, whether it's things we eat or things we build with or things that we just sort of like looking at and playing with. Adam: Is it important to know those connections? I mean, you as someone who likes nature, I can understand why you might feel that's important. But is it important for us all to rebuild that connection? Jonathan: I think that my love and interest in nature came from my parents, actually, at the time, dragging me around Kew Gardens and Richmond Park and telling me stories about t...