Thus Spoke the Plant
A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants
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Thus Spoke the Plant
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Narrated by:
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Julie Slater
About this listen
An accessible and compelling story of a scientist's discovery of plant communication and how it influenced her research and changed her life.
In this "phytobiography" - a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant - research scientist Monica Gagliano reveals the dynamic role plants play in genuine firsthand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Gagliano encourages us to rethink plants as people - beings with subjectivity, consciousness, and volition, and hence having the capacity for their own perspectives and voices. The audiobook draws on up-close-and-personal encounters with the plants themselves, as well as plant shamans, indigenous elders, and mystics from around the world and integrates these experiences with an incredible research journey and the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that emerged from it.
Gagliano has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on how plants have a Pavlov-like response to stimuli and can learn, remember, and communicate to neighboring plants. She has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own "voices" and, moreover, detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. By demonstrating experimentally that learning is not the exclusive province of animals, Gagliano has reignited the discourse on plant subjectivity and ethical and legal standing. This is the story of how she made those discoveries and how the plants helped her along the way.
©2018 Monica Gagliano (P)2019 North Atlantic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
“In this revelatory new book, we are brought into the presence of gifted storytellers in three different forms: a scientist, traditional plant practitioners, and the plants themselves. Gagliano’s discoveries uproot assumptions about the plant world as insensate, revealing their capacities to listen, learn and remember. This is a compelling story of discovery at many levels, simultaneously personal, scientific, and spiritual. It will change the way you see the world.” (Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, SUNY distinguished teaching professor, director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“Beautifully written and thought provoking, this book brings to light the relationship of an accomplished evolutionary ecologist deeply rooted in Western science and culture, and some plant species, which guide her through dreams and visions with the support of indigenous wise women and men. An inspiration for those willing to listen to the many voices of nature, living as we are in an animated intelligent world we are rapidly destroying.” (Luis Eduardo Luna, author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, and coauthor of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman)
“In part guided by indigenous shamans, in part by the author’s own cultivated receptivity, Gagliano dives into isolation with various plant species which have been recognized as having strong voices that humans can hear. She consults with plants that give specific instructions about how to prove botanical consciousness in both the seen and unseen worlds.” (Kathleen Harrison, MA, ethnobotanist, Botanical Dimensions)
What listeners say about Thus Spoke the Plant
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- matt wallden
- 22-05-19
A brief, insightful and much needed dive Into deeper realities
A brave, insightful and much needed dive into deeper realities of the very fabric of life. Monica Gagliano courageously integrates her doctoral and post doctoral studies on plant intelligence with her shamanic and meditative subjective experiences with the plant spirits themselves. In spite of centuries of anthropologists identifying that Shamans derived medicinal concoctions from their conversations with plants, and even published literature showing that much of the medicine found in westernised pharmacies is derived from these very conversations, there have been few serious academics to explore and publish their findings using a combination of the rational mind and the imaginal,intuitive faculties. Monica Gagliano is to be commended for taking this bold and holistic step.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Jason
- 08-12-21
An interesting hybrid
This book is a bit of a platypus. Quasi-academic meets Carlos Castaneda. Gagliano is telling a story that is part anthropological, part academic, part philosophical. It is in turns, fascinating, captivating and nauseatingly twee. Gagliano's writing style swings from comfortably academic to philosophical and then awkwardly motivational. It is an interesting book (and I have bought a copy for my partner as a gift), but not exceptional. As a first book, it shows a writer trying to find her feet. I do hope she keeps at it. I look forward to seeing her style develop.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- David Thornton
- 19-11-19
Astounding
This is a truly amazing collection of story’s and scientific evidence that will blow away your old pre-formed ideas of what you think plants are and what humans relations can be to them!!
10/10
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- mat
- 02-10-19
not to sure
I actually felt like the writer of the book was high as a kite on drugs for most of her writing and was quite dim to listen to
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Mabulza Ritchie
- 10-10-21
Drug addled author
was expecting to find out more about the science of plant communication. It is real and recently discovered but this book will leave you thinking it's all about a spiritual journey of narcotics. Not an easy listen either.
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