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LA STAMPA

Some Satisfaction. At 63, Chris Jagger Singing Under Mick’s Shadow

While Sir Mick Jagger rocks the world with the Rolling Stones, his younger brother Chris croons country music in English village halls. The beast of burden being Mick's kid brother.

Andrea Malaguti

SOMERSET - It's a Saturday night in April, in Pitney Village Hall in Somerset, an English county the local tourist office boasts is the jewel of the South West. But this evening, there is a slightly melancholic tinge to festivities. On stage, a man with grey hair that carves two lines along his temple and grows bushy on top, attaches his acoustic guitar to an amplifier and gives some last words of advice to his three partners -- a drummer, a pianist and accordionist -- in his Hedge Fund Band.

The lead singer and main attraction of the evening is named Chris Jagger: yes, the younger brother of Mick, rock god, universal sex symbol, millionaire baronet and lead singer of the Rolling Stones. Essentially they do the same thing: they sing. In reality, they are lives apart, and measure Satisfaction in very different ways.

The hall is pretty full: about 70 people, who have paid £7 a head to get in. Plopping down on black metal seats, three overweight women lay down their shopping bags. A teenager in a blue cotton sweater gulps down a pint of beer.

Chris Jagger asks for silence and starts to twang his country tune. He has a rich, mature voice, and plays pieces that lie somewhere between Joan Baez and Mississippi John Hurt.

Sporting a checked, grey shirt and a white vest, he closes his eyes when he sings, three deep vertical lines forming just above his nose. Sure, it's not Wembley, nor the mythical San Francisco Winterland, but there is a comforting family atmosphere. No bottle throwing or joint rolling roll and when Chris finishes, applause breaks out. Someone cries out: "Come on love, I'll take you home."

Is there anything about the younger Jagger that reminds you of the genius of Mick? The same contagious energy? No, nothing.

Well, the lips, but this is the only visible sign the two brothers have in common. Chris pours himself a light beer. "My music isn't bad. It's just that every time that I made a record there was someone who said: he's decent, but he's not like Mick. It's true, but so what? It's been a burden, there's no point in denying it."

Chris says for many years he has suffered this kind of daily death: You wake up in the morning next to a shadow of a brother who has done what you have always wanted to do. And then you ask yourself: "Why him, and not me?" The only sincere reply that you can give yourself is that he is better than you.

So when the Rolling Stones filled the stadiums, Chris limited himself to dreaming. It's difficult to understand why he still decided to be a musician. "Just because I liked it," he explains. "But to get by I have also been a journalist, an office worker and a taxi driver. People would get in the cab and say to me: oh yeah, you're the brother of that famous guy, why don't you live in a villa or in a penthouse?"

Jagger recalls: When I was 18, I used to suffer. When I turned 40 I stopped. We love each other, but everybody has their own path and I don't regret mine."

The younger Jagger has put out three records, but has never sold much. He is married to former model Karin Ann Moller, and the couple has five children – two fewer than his brother.

As children they would continually come to blows. "Chris was very good, it was always Mick who would pick a fight," explained their mother before she died. In 2000 the two brothers were side by side at her funeral.

The last time they played together was four years ago when Chris had a gig at the Bulls Head in London. Mick showed up in a limo, and took to the stage and hugged his brother before they kicked into some country music duets. About 40 people were watching.

"Who's to say that he has lived better than me?" asks Chris. "What is this distrust of normality?" Money, maybe. Mick has earned £270 million and bought a castle in France and a penthouse in New York. His brother has a farm in Somerset County. Jewel of the South West.

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Green

Forest Networks? Revisiting The Science Of Trees And Funghi "Reaching Out"

A compelling story about how forest fungal networks communicate has garnered much public interest. Is any of it true?

Thomas Brail films the roots of a cut tree with his smartphone.

Arborist and conservationist Thomas Brail at a clearcutting near his hometown of Mazamet in the Tarn, France.

Melanie Jones, Jason Hoeksema, & Justine Karst

Over the past few years, a fascinating narrative about forests and fungi has captured the public imagination. It holds that the roots of neighboring trees can be connected by fungal filaments, forming massive underground networks that can span entire forests — a so-called wood-wide web. Through this web, the story goes, trees share carbon, water, and other nutrients, and even send chemical warnings of dangers such as insect attacks. The narrative — recounted in books, podcasts, TV series, documentaries, and news articles — has prompted some experts to rethink not only forest management but the relationships between self-interest and altruism in human society.

But is any of it true?

The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.

First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.

As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.

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