Plants As Persons
Wonder Cabinet
Wonder Cabinet Productions
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2021
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over the past decade, plant scientists have quietly transformed the way we think of trees, forests and plants. They discovered that trees communicate through vast underground networks, that plants learn and remember. If plants are intelligent beings, how should we relate to them? Do they have a place in our moral universe? Should they have rights?
Human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. In partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, To The Best Of Our Knowledge is exploring this theme of "kinship" in a special radio series.
Original Air Date: December 19, 2020
Guests:
Robin Wall Kimmerer — Matt Hall — Monica Gagliano — Brooke Hecht
Interviews In This Hour:
We've Forgotten How To Listen To Plants — We Share This World With Plants. What Do We Owe Them? — Guided by Plant Voices — The Botanical Medicine Cabinet
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi friends, it's Anne. |
| 0:07.0 | And this week on to the best of our knowledge, I have two words for you. |
| 0:14.0 | Plant, consciousness. Emerging science is confirming what some cultures have always known, |
| 0:20.0 | that plants are intelligent beings, and may even have wisdom to impart if we know how to listen. |
| 0:28.1 | On today's episode, what would it mean to think of plants as persons? |
| 0:35.2 | Keep listening. |
| 0:47.3 | Music Keep listening. Wisconsin. Wisconsin Public Radio. |
| 0:53.3 | It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strangeamps. |
| 0:57.0 | Every day, we see dozens of other living beings. Humans, yes, but also dogs, birds, trees, insects, |
| 1:06.6 | all our fellow creatures on this planet. Now what if we considered all of them persons? |
| 1:13.6 | Human people are only one kind of person. |
| 1:18.6 | There are maple people, right? |
| 1:20.6 | And there are Oriole people, and there are cloud people. |
| 1:24.6 | And that changes everything. |
| 1:31.5 | This is Robin Wall Kimmerer, plant scientist, award-winning writer, |
| 1:36.2 | an enrolled member of the citizen Potawatomi Nation. |
| 1:39.2 | And this is her land. |
| 1:42.1 | Seven acres in the southern hills of Onondaga County, New York, near the finger legs. |
| 1:49.0 | We could walk up here if you've got a minute, huh? |
| 1:51.1 | Yeah, I'd love to. |
| 1:58.4 | So I grow a big vegetable garden that I can eat out of most of the year. |
| 2:03.6 | And then the rest of my seven-acre piece I honestly think of as a garden as well. |
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