Do Plants Think? & Why Dining Out Feels So Expensive - SYSK Choice

About this episode

The episode explores plant intelligence and the economics of dining out.

If you ever feel a wave of anxiety or that vague sense of dread, your first instinct probably isn’t to reach for a pain reliever. But there’s evidence that something you already have in your medicine cabinet may affect more than just physical pain—and the reason why is surprisingly unexpected. https://www.livescience.com/28770-tylenol-eases-existential-dread.html Plants don’t have brains—so how could they possibly be intelligent? Yet research suggests plants can sense threats, communicate with each other, and even change their behavior in ways that seem surprisingly strategic. Zoë Schlanger, award-winning writer for The Atlantic and author of The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth (https://amzn.to/4deE12f), explores this hidden world and explains how plants may be far more responsive and complex than we ever imagined. Dining out often comes with sticker shock. Between rising menu prices, service charges, and tipping, a simple meal can add up quickly. But what’s actually driving those costs? And why do some insiders argue that restaurants may still be underpriced? Andrew Friedman takes us behind the scenes of the…

People in this episode

Host: Mike Carruthers

Guests: Zoë Schlanger, Andrew Friedman

Topics covered

• plant intelligence
• dining economics
• restaurant industry
• anxiety relief
• food pricing

Keywords

• plants
• intelligence
• dining out
• restaurant pricing
• anxiety relief

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Atlantic, OmniCast Media

Books & works: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food

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