The Overstory
Novel by Richard PowersWikipedia
39
MENTIONS
10
EPISODES
10
PODCASTS
Search complete. 39 mentions across 10 episodes found for "The Overstory".
Nov 2, 2026
Emily LitseyGUEST
Some book suggestions.
Emily LitseyGUEST
So right now I am reading The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Emily LitseyGUEST
I'm about halfway through, so I cannot...
Emily LitseyGUEST
I guess, give a full recommendation yet.
Emily LitseyGUEST
It was one of the most amazing experiences.
Emily LitseyGUEST
So beautiful.
Emily LitseyGUEST
And in the national park gift shop, they had this book, the overstory there, and I didn't buy it from the gift shop, but I made a note of it.
Emily LitseyGUEST
I was like, Ooh, this might be interesting.
John BatchelorHOST
I welcome Jim Robbins, the author of The Man Who Planted Trees, a story of lost groves, the science of trees, and a plan.
John BatchelorHOST
This book has been a revelation to me over the years, and it's a pleasure to welcome Jim because we're going to update everything we know about David Miller, his work at several projects that have all come together now in the Archangel Project, which you can find online.
John BatchelorHOST
There's a website, a very attractive website, called the Ancient Tree Archive.
John BatchelorHOST
But this is the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, formally.
John BatchelorHOST
Jim, congratulations again and good evening.
John BatchelorHOST
And ten years later, we come to your book for revelations about David Millar, his work, and how the story of trees have been embraced from my reading in these last ten years.
John BatchelorHOST
First, Born 1949.
John BatchelorHOST
A near-death experience takes him to a mission in life.
KerryHOST
Clare's suggested two books worth looking out for.
KerryHOST
For adults, there's The Overstory by Richard Powers.
KerryHOST
which changed the way she thinks about protecting the environment.
KerryHOST
For younger readers, she recommends What Do You See When You Look at a Tree by Emma Carlyle, which she describes as quite profound and really rather lovely.
Tobe AllenHOST
They don't have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read, and most certainly not the attention span to finish.
Tobe AllenHOST
For them to sit down and try to read a book like The Overstory might as well be me attempting an Iron Man triathlon.
Tobe AllenHOST
Much suffering with zero chance of success.
Tobe AllenHOST
Students are not absolutely illiterate in the sense of being unable to sound out any words whatsoever.
Anish CharyanHOST
The story has genuinely evolved as more scientists have tested it, you know.
Anish CharyanHOST
Simon's work became hugely popular, inspiring bestseller book, the character of a scientist in Richard Powers' novel, The Overstory, and even elements of the movie Avatar.
Anish CharyanHOST
But as more researchers try to independently verify the, the oldest claim that these networks are essentially universal across forests, that they directly benefit seeding other older mother trees deliberately favor their own related offspring.
Anish CharyanHOST
The picture got more complicated in twenty twenty-three.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
And so a lot of people were saying it.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
How are you going to follow that? And I had very good advice from a writer friend, Richard Powers, who had had a similar experience with The Overstory.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
And I said, how did you handle it? And he said, well, I decided to follow that with something that was so different it wouldn't be compared.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
That was such good advice.
Quinn EmmettHOST
Within fifty years, the fungus killing it had wiped out about four billion American chestnut trees from Maine all the way down to Georgia.
Quinn EmmettHOST
In 2018, Richard Powers wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Overstory, which I loved.
Quinn EmmettHOST
He set it in the early 20th century and made the American chestnut tree the main character.
Quinn EmmettHOST
This fabled tree, which most of us had probably never even heard of at that point, was a tree that fed families and wildlife for generations.
7 MINS LATER
Quinn EmmettHOST
Four billion trees in the native range vanish into myth.
Quinn EmmettHOST
Aside from a few secret pockets of resistance, the only chestnuts left are those that pioneers took far away to states beyond the reach of the drifting spores.
Quinn EmmettHOST
One of those, of course, is the, the pillar of this beautiful novel.
Quinn EmmettHOST
Let's go talk to the people trying to bring the chestnuts back.
Andrew KeenHOST
Mm
Janet ReitmanGUEST
... amazing writer, and he's, his book, um, The Overstory was in- really beautiful and a wonderful, um...
Janet ReitmanGUEST
It was about, ultimately, you know, it was about the environmental movement.
Janet ReitmanGUEST
It was about radical environmentalists, who I in fact, like, we all sort of covered them back in the day, these, these, like, the ELF and these, like, radical environmentalist types.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
The writer Richard Powers is a wonderful friend.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
His amazing novel, The Overstory, did, I think, in his career, what Demon Copperhead has done for mine.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
It bumped him into another orbit.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
The Overstory... is a magnificently large novel in its time frame.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
It brings you as a reader into the mental time frame of a tree, which is hundreds of years.
Barbara KingsolverGUEST
It's a remarkable thing that a novel could do that.