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Thus Spoke the Plant

A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants

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Thus Spoke the Plant

By: Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard - introduction
Narrated by: Julie Slater
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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 first-hand 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 book 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 re-ignited 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. Biological Sciences Botany & Plants Ecology Nature & Ecology Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts Outdoors & Nature Science Shamanism Consciousness Plant Science
All stars
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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.

An interesting hybrid

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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.

A brief, insightful and much needed dive Into deeper realities

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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

Astounding

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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.

Drug addled author

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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

not to sure

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