32: The Secret Lives of Plants and Fungi with Merlin Sheldrake and Zoë Schlanger

If we understood the true complexity of the natural world, would we call it conscious? Would we begin to question the boundaries we put between ourselves and everything around us?

We explore these questions with biologist Merlin Sheldrake and science journalist Zoë Schlanger. Their bestselling books, "Entangled Life" and "The Light Eaters", required monk-like study and deep immersion in the natural world. What they discovered quietly dismantles some of our most basic assumptions about intelligence, memory, and what individuality really means. 

Recorded during Harvard Divinity School's "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" conference, this special episode brings together Merlin, Zoë, host Elizabeth Rovere, and guest co-host Rachael Peterson, the "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" Initiative Program Lead at Harvard, to explore:

✦ Whether plants have personalities and why they might be kinder to kin 

✦ How a brainless slime mold can navigate its way out of an IKEA faster than a human

✦ How flatworms put into question where memory actually lives

✦ Whether it's possible to ferment a book and drink it

When we stop centering the individual and truly reckon with the entangled nature of all living things, something shifts. The question stops being how do we include more-than-human perspectives… it starts being whether that separation even makes sense to begin with. 

Chapters:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:01:10 How to Write About the Hidden World

00:04:45 The Myth of the Individual

00:09:53 We Are Polluting Our Own Home

00:15:14 The Problem Isn't Science. It's Language.

00:18:18 The Plant That Can Copy Anything

00:24:25 As Temperatures Rise, Fungi Are Evolving

00:28:31 Do Plants Have Personalities and Prefer Their Family?

Follow Merlin Sheldrake:

Website: https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merlin.sheldrake

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/merlinsheldrake 

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566795/entangled-life-by-merlin-sheldrake/ 

Follow Zoë Schlanger: 

Website: https://www.zoeschlanger.com/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/zoeschlanger.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeschlanger/ 

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-light-eaters-zoe-schlanger?variant=41096248295458 

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