Listener supported WNYC Studios.

This is Science Friday.

I'm Ira Flato.

And I'm Flora Lichten.

Today on the podcast, we'll take a look at how AI might be coming for baseball.

But first, how does a brainless

fungal thread make decisions? If that doesn't keep people up at night, I don't know what does.

As the leaves start to pop out, it is natural to look up and admire the trees. But actually, there's a lot of action

happening underneath your feet. Beneath you is a complex network of fungal trade roots, carrying

essential nutrients to the roots of plants mined from the soil by fungus. It is a subterranean

supply chain. But how exactly do these complex

networks form? How does the fungus decide where to ship which resources or where to build roads?

Basically, how does a brainless thread make decisions? Here to help us leaf through these questions

is Dr. Toby Kierz, professor of

evolutionary biology at Free University in Amsterdam, an executive director of the Society for

the Protection of Underground Networks. Toby, welcome to Science Friday. Such an honor to be here.

Okay, I read a quote from you that said, this is the kind of research that keeps you up at night.

Please tell me why fungal networks keep you awake. Well, we really wanted to understand the inner lives of these

fungi. We studied a group of network forming soil fungi, and these are known as microisal fungi, and they're really defined by their

trading relationship with plants. And it's not just some plants, but it's 80% of all plant species

form trade relationships with these microizal fungi. And you just have to think about what they do

to create these trade infrastructures. They have to actually grow out into the soil

...