Some days, TTBOOK can actually change how I see the world. It might happen in a single interview, but more often it’s through a series of programs that delve deeply into a subject. And it happened again over the course of working on our latest series, “Kinship With the More-Than-Human World.” The series explores our profound connections with the natural world and suggests a new kind of ecological thinking. What if we see birds and bears, flowers and trees, even rivers and hills, not just as “things” - objects to be exploited as resources - but as subjects in their own right? It means trying to imagine the “personhood” of a plant; or how to think like a mountain; or why kinship practices can deepen our care and respect for the nonhuman world.
When I first heard some scientists talk about the learning and decision-making capacities of plants, it seemed kind of crazy. Doesn’t this require neurons and a brain? But then I talked with evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano about her groundbreaking studies of plant intelligence, and I came to appreciate their “plantness.” It’s all pretty mind-bending, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.
“Human people are only one kind of person,” ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer told Anne and me as we sat in her yard in upstate New York. She’s the bestselling author of “Braiding Sweetgrass” and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. “There are maple people. There are oriole people. There are cloud people. And that changes everything."
This week’s show, “When Mountains Are Gods,” marks the completion of our kinship radio series. We’re also launching a new kinship podcast series, in partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature, which bundles our radio shows, along with four extended podcast-only interviews. We hope this series will inspire and fill you with wonder.
—Steve