Hi, everybody. I'm Joe Lampel, the Joe behind Joe Gardner, and welcome to the Joe Gardner show.

What if the flowers around us aren't just beautiful? What if they actually made the world we live in?

That's the question at the heart of our conversation today. And there's nobody better to explore it with than my guest, David George Haskell.

David is a biologist and writer whose work

lives in the intersection of science, poetry, and deep attention to the natural world. He earned

his degree in zoology from Oxford and his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Cornell. And he's a

Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the Leneian Society of London.

He's also the author of several acclaimed books, and when I say acclaimed, I mean twice shortlisted

for the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times once wrote that he thinks like a biologist,

writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention

one expects from a Zen monk. His newest book is How Flowers Made Our World,

and it's a mind-expanding conversation, so let's get into it, and as we do, thanks to soil cubed and the ultimate gardening sheath.

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