On Being With Christa Tippett is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation,

funding research and catalyzing conversations that inspire people with awe and wonder.

Learn about the latest discoveries in the science of hope and optimism,

forgiveness and free will at templeton.org.

Few books have been more eagerly passed from hand-to-hand with delight in these last years

than Robin Wall Kimmerer's braiding sweetgrass.

I interviewed her in 2015 and it quickly became a much loved show as her voice was just rising in common life.

She is a botanist and also a member of the citizen, Patoatomination.

She's written,

science polishes the gift of seeing,

indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language.

An expert in moss, a biologist, she describes mosses as the coral reefs of the forest.

She opens a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in all kinds of life

that we are used in naming and imagining as inanimate.

I can't think of a single scientific study in the last few decades

that has demonstrated that plants or animals are dumber than we think.

You know, it's always the opposite, right?

What we're revealing is the fact that they have a capacity to learn, to have memory.

And we're at the edge of a wonderful revolution and really understanding the sentience of our beings.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on Beeing.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a professor of environmental biology at the State University of New York

and founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.

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