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Thus Spoke the Plant

By: Monica Gagliano,Suzanne Simard - foreword
Narrated by: Julie Slater
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Publisher's Summary

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 firsthand 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 audiobook 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 reignited 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.

©2018 Monica Gagliano (P)2019 North Atlantic Books

Critic Reviews

“In this revelatory new book, we are brought into the presence of gifted storytellers in three different forms: a scientist, traditional plant practitioners, and the plants themselves. Gagliano’s discoveries uproot assumptions about the plant world as insensate, revealing their capacities to listen, learn and remember. This is a compelling story of discovery at many levels, simultaneously personal, scientific, and spiritual. It will change the way you see the world.” (Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, SUNY distinguished teaching professor, director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)

“Beautifully written and thought provoking, this book brings to light the relationship of an accomplished evolutionary ecologist deeply rooted in Western science and culture, and some plant species, which guide her through dreams and visions with the support of indigenous wise women and men. An inspiration for those willing to listen to the many voices of nature, living as we are in an animated intelligent world we are rapidly destroying.” (Luis Eduardo Luna, author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, and coauthor of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman

“In part guided by indigenous shamans, in part by the author’s own cultivated receptivity, Gagliano dives into isolation with various plant species which have been recognized as having strong voices that humans can hear. She consults with plants that give specific instructions about how to prove botanical consciousness in both the seen and unseen worlds.” (Kathleen Harrison, MA, ethnobotanist, Botanical Dimensions) 

What listeners say about Thus Spoke the Plant

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eye-opening, heart-opening

this book opened a possibility for me and for our planet... that maybe all is not lost, but that plants may be out allies in wanting to save the Earth, but we just need to learn how to listen... thank you Monica for your courage to walk in both worlds at once...

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One of the best books I have ever read

Monica Gagliano addresses both mind and deeper layers of us with this book. Here experiments are really interesting and her results clearly asking for a change of our approach to plants and all life on this planet in general. The messages she got from the plants directly have touched me deeply. Give it a go!

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Brilliant book

loved this book. A great story also very educational in a simple way to understand

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incredible

an amazing personal account of the interconnectedness of life.
brilliantly narrated humble words of wisdom

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Amazing

Brilliant inspiring awkening and wholesome. Thankyou for deepening my connection with the plant kingdom. Now the journey begins

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Challenging

Challenging in the sense that you either walk away (tempted at many points), or you observe that you're resisting anything that's said that challenges your already fixed ideas. That's actually her point, but you notice early on that what she's talking about is actually happening to you as you read. I think this is an important piece of work. Daring, adventurous, and deeply spiritual.

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incredible

I've listened to this over and over. I love it. it's incredible, thankyou Monica Gagliano

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Disappointing on multiple levels

Do not recommend, except for those who believe something purely because it sounds nice, or those who are interested in studying the former.

Given the blurb I came to this book expecting a popular explanation of scientific research on plant stimulus response, electro/chemical communication and bio-acoustics, interwoven with some spiritual and ecological wisdom from our elders. What the book presents is largely a new religion, centered (unsurprisingly) around the author as 'the one', to whom plant spirits have unaccountably decided to teach their philosophy through drug-fuelled dreams and hallucinations. Scientific findings appear only occasionally, briefly and with weak explanations. The actual wisdom of the elders she meets is never passed on, substituted instead for her own enthusiastic musings and self-righteous narratives about how closed-minded her colleagues at the university are.

After making much of how we shouldn't think of plants in an anthropocentric way, she then goes on to write an intensely anthropocentric treatment of plants where they seem to have human-like emotions, human-like spirits and for some reason are interested in communicating about philosophy and religion to humans, particularly through their newly appointed prophet.

The justification for jumping to wack conclusions seems to be that since modern science is guilty of a dogmatic closed-mindedness that can obfuscate and denounce controversial new findings (which is fair to a degree), the opposite must be true, i.e. literally whatever comes to the author's mind while high. No admission is given of the well-known benefits of narcotics for diffuse-mode thinking, and it appears no attempt is made to discern whether the results of the author's trips are grounded in reality or imagination.

I struggled through to the end hoping the conclusion would help me reach a new level of appreciation. But the culmination is that, while spending 9 days sky high on tobacco, lo and behold the spirit of tobacco informed her that tobacco is "the holy spirit" and "the one who heals humanity's grief". This was followed by some generic stuff about forgiveness and love recycled from all previous religions into a kind of vague truism that could mean anything.

Maybe you think I'm a classic materialist that treats science as my God, but I say all this as someone who considers myself spiritual and is frequently frustrated by an over-reverence for scientific dogma. I wanted to like this book, but I found it really disappointing.

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The plants have spoken.

Inspirational and ground breaking book which addresses the important relationship between humanity, plants and the biosphere. I think plants have communicated a message to us through Monica.

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Beautiful, revolutionary and easy to read

I loved this book from the first chapter to the end. Highly recommend to anyone curious about seeing the world in a different way; way that evokes evolution of human consciousness and the way we relate to our world and all life within.

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.