#14 A Detailed Description of a Tree That Is Growing

The World's Most Boring Podcast - Bore Me to Sleep, Episode fourteen: A Detailed Description of a Tree That Is Growing. If you have been searching for something to help you fall asleep, something slow and calm and completely safe to miss if you doze off halfway through, this is it. In this episode, we spend a great deal of time describing a tree. Not a famous tree. Not a tree that won any awards or appeared in a film or has a plaque on it. Just a tree, growing, as trees do, continuously and without any particular urgency. We cover the germination of a seed, the quiet work of roots pushing through soil, the process of osmosis, the cambium layer, the annual growth rings that dendrochronologists count to determine a tree's age, the fractal branching patterns of twigs, the chemistry of photosynthesis, the stomata opening and closing on the undersides of leaves, the autumn colours produced by xanthophylls and carotenoids and anthocyanins, the abscission layer that releases leaves in autumn, the antifreeze chemistry of winter dormancy, the swelling of buds in spring, and the underground fungal network, sometimes called the wood wide web, that connects trees through their roots. Along the way, we take several extended detours that have almost nothing to do with trees, including a lengthy meditation on a creaking bicycle, a train station encounter with a man reading a newspaper in a very specific way, and a digression about the Arctic tern and its seventy thousand kilometre annual migration. The episode ends in a long, dreamlike sequence in which the tree gradually dissolves into something that is less a tree and more a feeling, which is probably the most accurate description of what happens when you fall asleep listening to a podcast about trees. This episode is suitable for people with insomnia, people with sleep anxiety, people who use sleep podcasts or sleep audio as part of a bedtime routine, people who enjoy ASMR-adjacent content without the whispering, people who like nature content and forest bathing and the general concept of trees, and people who simply enjoy falling asleep to a calm, unhurried voice talking about something that is perfectly fine to miss. It is also suitable for people who have no trouble sleeping at all but enjoy the sensation of being talked to sleep by someone who clearly finds bark textures and osmosis deeply satisfying in a quiet way. We currently have twenty-five subscribers, which is a number we are very proud of in a very understated way. If you would like to become the twenty-sixth, the subscribe button is close to your thumb and requires very little effort. If you have a topic suggestion, a question, or something you would like to say to someone who will read it and probably not respond but will genuinely appreciate it, you can write to us at themostboringpod at gmail dot com. The World's Most Boring Podcast. Rooted in boredom. Branching into sleep.