Bonus Ep: Suzanne Simard and the Social World of Trees

What if, instead of competing with each other, trees work together? What if they even communicate? Renowned forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has spent her life digging into the "wood wide web"—the mycorrhizal network of fungi and roots through which trees share resources and information. Her work has transformed the way we understand forests and inspired everything from the Tree of Souls in "Avatar" to the scientist character in "The Overstory."

We talked with Simard about her new book, "Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest," for her book launch at Powell's Books. Prepare to have the way you view forests and trees flipped on its head.

The scramble to meet the energy demands of AI and data centers is leading to what some are calling a "Nuclear Renaissance," and the Pacific Northwest is at the heart of it. Oregon and Washington are the sites of the world’s first full-scale nuclear power plant (Hanford), the world’s then largest pressurized-water nuclear reactor (Trojan Nuclear Power Plant), the only company with regulatory approval to build small modular reactors (NuScale), and a growing number of power-hungry data centers — and yet Oregon has a constitutional amendment banning new nuclear projects. Why? It all comes back to the region's history with nuclear, and the legacy of the environmental movement in the Northwest.

"Trojan Wars," from OPB and 30 Minutes West, tells the story of how our grand plans for cheap, reliable, carbon-free power in the 20th century ended up in a heap of concrete and barrels of nuclear waste on the banks of the Columbia River. And we ask: What went wrong the first time around? And is it possible to get it right this time?