1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,560 Welcome to Wonder Cabinet. 2 00:00:03,040 --> 00:00:04,660 I'm Anne Strain-Champs. 3 00:00:04,880 --> 00:00:05,840 And I'm Steve Paulson. 4 00:00:06,180 --> 00:00:10,480 Every year, at about this time, something truly miraculous happens. 5 00:00:11,100 --> 00:00:13,640 The spring equinox arrives. 6 00:00:14,060 --> 00:00:16,600 The sun crosses into the northern hemisphere. 7 00:00:17,400 --> 00:00:19,180 Daylight outlasts darkness. 8 00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:21,240 And the planet flowers. 9 00:00:22,080 --> 00:00:24,680 Superblooms carpet the California desert. 10 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:27,120 Magnolias perfume the south. 11 00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:32,320 And here in the north, snow drops and the first tips of daffodils poke through the soil. 12 00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:38,960 These flowers and all the rest that will follow are ephemeral. They look so fragile, 13 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:41,920 but they're among the most powerful forces on earth. 14 00:00:41,920 --> 00:00:46,960 With a story and an evolutionary strategy that we need now more than ever. 15 00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:52,160 One of the practices is just to sit with a flower. It could be five minutes, it could be an hour, 16 00:00:52,160 --> 00:00:56,560 you can repeat this over and over again with the same flower and watch it through its entire life 17 00:00:56,560 --> 00:01:02,560 cycle and open our imagination to all the things that are happening with that 18 00:01:02,560 --> 00:01:07,360 flower. What is the intention of this flower? Where did this flower first 19 00:01:07,360 --> 00:01:12,760 evolve? And then the flower itself is releasing aromas. It has an electrical 20 00:01:12,760 --> 00:01:18,700 field that has a particular shape around it that is attracting certain insects 21 00:01:18,700 --> 00:01:24,460 and repelling other ones. So sitting with a flower we can pay attention to the 22 00:01:24,460 --> 00:01:30,000 things that we can sense and delight in that, but we can also let our imaginations roam into the 23 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:35,160 unseed and wonders of the bloom. This is the biologist and celebrated nature writer David 24 00:01:35,160 --> 00:01:41,920 Haskell, and he's just written a remarkable book called How Flowers Made Our World. It really kind 25 00:01:41,920 --> 00:01:48,440 of turns the story of evolution on its head by putting flowers at the forefront of life on earth. 26 00:01:48,440 --> 00:01:54,940 what Roger Payne did for whales and Carl Sagan did for the cosmos, David Haskell is doing for 27 00:01:54,940 --> 00:01:59,980 flowers. And you kept reading bits of that book for me, and you told me that I would never look 28 00:01:59,980 --> 00:02:04,840 at a flower again the same way after listening to this conversation. Was I right? I think you 29 00:02:04,840 --> 00:02:10,820 were right, yeah. So before we dive in, who is David Haskell? He is a biologist, and he's famous 30 00:02:10,820 --> 00:02:16,260 for the way he brings contemplative practice into natural observation. His first book was 31 00:02:16,260 --> 00:02:22,540 The Forest Unseen, and it's the one where he watched one square meter of old-growth Tennessee 32 00:02:22,540 --> 00:02:29,000 forest for a year and turned it into a window into the whole hidden world of forest ecology. 33 00:02:29,420 --> 00:02:34,040 And it was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist. I remember that the great biologist E.O. Wilson 34 00:02:34,040 --> 00:02:39,040 called it a new genre of nature writing located between science and poetry. 35 00:02:39,040 --> 00:02:44,440 Yeah, David Haskell is a gorgeous lyrical writer, I think partly because he's really 36 00:02:44,440 --> 00:02:50,700 sensitive to sound, to the musicality of language. He's written about sonic landscapes, about the 37 00:02:50,700 --> 00:02:57,900 evolution of natural sound on earth, you know, bird songs, animal calls, ocean waves. And he has 38 00:02:57,900 --> 00:03:04,540 this amazing gift for bringing people back into an embodied sensory experience of nature. 39 00:03:04,640 --> 00:03:07,620 Which we witnessed in person, because I remember this gathering. 40 00:03:07,620 --> 00:03:08,780 I wondered if you'd remember that. 41 00:03:08,780 --> 00:03:25,100 That we were at a few years ago in northern Illinois, and he took everyone on a barefoot walk through this prairie oak savanna, and he had us listening and touching and smelling trees, which turned into this, as I remember, this beautiful guided meditation. 42 00:03:25,820 --> 00:03:30,300 Wasn't it like an evolutionary history, kind of going right up to the soil that we were standing on? 43 00:03:30,440 --> 00:03:31,100 It was. 44 00:03:31,420 --> 00:03:32,280 It was also freezing. 45 00:03:32,760 --> 00:03:34,580 You were really cold. 46 00:03:34,580 --> 00:03:35,520 It was October. 47 00:03:35,900 --> 00:03:36,620 It was sunset. 48 00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:37,720 I was shivering. 49 00:03:38,260 --> 00:03:40,500 You very gallantly shared your coat with me. 50 00:03:40,840 --> 00:03:43,820 So I might have missed a little of the profundity. 51 00:03:44,140 --> 00:03:47,480 So I guess it's a good thing that you had this conversation indoors. 52 00:03:47,680 --> 00:03:48,080 We did. 53 00:03:48,260 --> 00:03:49,060 Yeah, let's listen. 54 00:03:49,720 --> 00:03:59,180 So part of the fun of reading this book is this very bold, kind of sexy claim, I think, that flowers made the world. 55 00:03:59,180 --> 00:04:07,400 You know, that they show up in the Cretaceous era, seize the reins of evolution, remake the biosphere, and have been kind of running things ever since. 56 00:04:07,720 --> 00:04:14,280 which is exactly the opposite of the way we usually see flowers as kind of decorative and not much more. 57 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:18,040 Yes, in our culture, we dismiss flowers as pretty. 58 00:04:18,200 --> 00:04:18,800 We honor them. 59 00:04:18,900 --> 00:04:22,600 We spend a lot of money on flower gardening and cut flowers and so forth. 60 00:04:22,900 --> 00:04:25,420 But we think of flowers as, well, they're just ornaments, really. 61 00:04:25,420 --> 00:04:32,940 And there's a gendered aspect to this because flowers are also in our culture now pegged as pretty much exclusively feminine. 62 00:04:33,760 --> 00:04:39,980 Therefore, the patriarchal logic goes weak and not in charge and ornamental. 63 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:41,440 And also sexualized, right? 64 00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:42,320 Right. 65 00:04:42,660 --> 00:04:44,100 Which is absurd at many levels. 66 00:04:44,240 --> 00:04:51,420 I mean, at one level, we've picked the most biologically bisexual thing there is in nature, which is a flower. 67 00:04:51,520 --> 00:04:54,460 Most flowers have both male and female sex cells within them. 68 00:04:54,460 --> 00:05:00,760 But also sort of beyond the aspects of gender, we forget that we live on a floral planet. 69 00:05:00,760 --> 00:05:12,420 Almost every bite of food that we humans consume has one way or another been either produced directly by flowering plants or by creatures that have eaten those flowering plants. 70 00:05:12,540 --> 00:05:14,080 We're a flower-eating species. 71 00:05:14,700 --> 00:05:18,020 Our human evolution was catalyzed by flowering plants. 72 00:05:18,380 --> 00:05:22,400 Primates came up into the trees and started eating fruits and flowers. 73 00:05:22,560 --> 00:05:24,620 So without flowering plants, there would have been no primates. 74 00:05:25,460 --> 00:05:32,240 And then our arboreal cousins came out onto the African savannah and became our ancestors 75 00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:34,620 by walking in the grasslands. 76 00:05:34,720 --> 00:05:37,920 And what a grass is, they're a specialized kind of flowering plant. 77 00:05:38,300 --> 00:05:43,180 And then at a global level, ignoring humans for a moment, think about the most productive 78 00:05:43,180 --> 00:05:48,900 ecosystems on the planet today, mangroves, seagrass, meadows, rainforests. 79 00:05:48,900 --> 00:05:52,980 None of these places existed before the evolution of flowering plants. 80 00:05:52,980 --> 00:06:12,200 And rainforests in particular did not exist before flowering plants because one of the innovations of flowering plants was to refashion their water-conducting elements within their bodies so they could chuck enormous amounts of water vapor into the air and photosynthesize at incredible rates. 81 00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:15,560 And when that happened, they changed the weather. 82 00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:21,060 They literally, and this is from the title of a scientific paper, they put the rain in the rainforest. 83 00:06:21,420 --> 00:06:21,820 Oh, my God. 84 00:06:21,820 --> 00:06:24,200 And so, indeed, we live on the floral planet. 85 00:06:24,320 --> 00:06:31,000 If you were to take away the flowers from the grand narrative of Earth evolution, we'd still be on a marvelous planet, right? 86 00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:35,820 There'd be amazing ferns, all kinds of cool mosses and cycads and pines. 87 00:06:36,280 --> 00:06:45,500 But take away flowering plants, and we take away much of Earth's diversity, and we certainly take away humans, which is not how we normally think of human evolution, right? 88 00:06:45,500 --> 00:06:51,120 We don't think of, oh, well, we thank the flowers for our creation, but that's what we should be doing. 89 00:06:51,120 --> 00:07:18,180 Yeah, so here's the thing. When I sat down with your book and started reading, I had a really visceral reaction because of that historical association of women with flowers. If flowers are such prime movers, so essential for needs as basic as food, why don't we see them this way? Like, how and why did flowers, like women, get dismissed and denigrated? 90 00:07:18,180 --> 00:07:24,580 I mean, the two, of course, are tied up together and it's taken different forms in different cultures. 91 00:07:24,760 --> 00:07:32,440 I mean, for British and French kings, flowers were symbols of divine right to rule, right? 92 00:07:32,520 --> 00:07:38,340 With roses and irises and so on used as symbols of power. 93 00:07:38,680 --> 00:07:38,840 Sure. 94 00:07:39,120 --> 00:07:42,660 The Tudor roses and the French lilies. 95 00:07:42,660 --> 00:07:51,820 And in the Middle East, the rose perfume was regarded for centuries, if not for millennia, as actually quite a masculine scent. 96 00:07:52,000 --> 00:08:00,440 And so it hasn't always been the case that we've lived embedded in the present cultural prejudice around flowers. 97 00:08:00,840 --> 00:08:08,040 But there are ancient roots to our general dismissal of flowers and more broadly of plants. 98 00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:15,960 If you look at Paleolithic cave paintings in Europe, there are almost no plants and no flowers represented whatsoever. 99 00:08:16,140 --> 00:08:18,120 It's 99% animals. 100 00:08:18,540 --> 00:08:23,980 The things that first catch our attention are the other creatures that are communicating the way we do. 101 00:08:24,500 --> 00:08:29,500 There's a reason why birds are present in almost all scriptures and creation stories, 102 00:08:29,820 --> 00:08:36,920 is that they sing and speak and they have flashy colors and they're at the same spatial scale as we are. 103 00:08:36,920 --> 00:08:38,860 So we relate to the birds. 104 00:08:38,980 --> 00:08:41,960 We relate to fast-moving animals. 105 00:08:42,080 --> 00:08:46,180 And in the plant world, we often relate mostly to the trees and the things that really catch 106 00:08:46,180 --> 00:08:46,680 our attention. 107 00:08:47,380 --> 00:08:50,880 So there is a sort of sensory bias that is at play. 108 00:08:51,760 --> 00:08:55,280 But also there's a story, I think, and a prejudice about power. 109 00:08:56,060 --> 00:09:00,740 Is that we, and this is one thing that I think is really important for our present time, 110 00:09:00,740 --> 00:09:08,060 an important message from the Flowers, is that we often think of power and revolution as about 111 00:09:08,060 --> 00:09:12,020 control, authoritarianism, and violence. Might makes right. 112 00:09:12,420 --> 00:09:19,340 But that's not the only way in which revolution and power and transformation take place. Flowers 113 00:09:19,340 --> 00:09:27,460 offer a different narrative. They changed the world in revolutionary ways through cooperation, 114 00:09:27,460 --> 00:09:35,640 through collaboration, often mediated by beauty, by sensory experiences. So a flower 115 00:09:35,640 --> 00:09:41,960 is quite literally speaking to the sensory system of a bee or of a hoverfly or of a bird 116 00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:49,560 to draw that animal in to establish a cooperative relationship, a reciprocal relationship. 117 00:09:49,560 --> 00:09:59,760 And we're just the latest animal to become enchanted by the flowers and to become loyal collaborators with the flowers. 118 00:09:59,860 --> 00:10:02,580 And we see this in our gardens and horticulture and agriculture. 119 00:10:02,580 --> 00:10:13,960 The thing that you're pointing out that feels so amazing to me is it's not just that flowers give us a story of evolution. 120 00:10:14,120 --> 00:10:17,260 It's a story of relationship and cooperative networks. 121 00:10:17,840 --> 00:10:24,560 It's a story in which beauty and delight, joy, enchantment are not frivolous. 122 00:10:24,660 --> 00:10:25,920 They're not even optional. 123 00:10:25,920 --> 00:10:31,780 They are essential to the entire biosphere, essential to the way nature works. 124 00:10:32,560 --> 00:10:35,520 I can feel my heart open thinking about that. 125 00:10:36,280 --> 00:10:38,800 You know, and that's one thing that happened to me as I was writing this book. 126 00:10:38,840 --> 00:10:44,740 As I went through these chapters and, of course, gathering information and experiences and thinking about this, 127 00:10:44,740 --> 00:10:51,200 realizing how, again and again, the catalytic effect of flaring plants is mediated by beauty. 128 00:10:51,360 --> 00:10:56,520 And that's something that our culture right now, we need more of that. We need more beauty and joy. 129 00:10:56,520 --> 00:11:02,380 And I think, I mean, think about human ethics. Often we think about ethics, like, 130 00:11:02,820 --> 00:11:07,900 should I, what sort of action is right action or wrong action? We think of that as an intellectual 131 00:11:07,900 --> 00:11:13,140 exercise, like, let's figure this out in the seminar room. And often the experiences of beauty 132 00:11:13,140 --> 00:11:19,780 have no place in that conversation. Flowers, and I would argue other creatures as well, 133 00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:25,300 teach us a different story that by opening to the importance and the fundamental significance 134 00:11:25,300 --> 00:11:32,700 of beauty, we actually get a guide to where might we root ourselves to find the path to right action. 135 00:11:32,980 --> 00:11:37,420 So, for example, someone who's lived in a particular neighborhood for decades and really 136 00:11:37,420 --> 00:11:42,860 paid attention to it, both the human community and the more than human community. When something 137 00:11:42,860 --> 00:11:47,580 happens in that neighborhood, that person will have a deep sense of this change is really 138 00:11:47,580 --> 00:11:54,540 beautiful or it's profoundly broken and ugly in some way. And often the beautification things, 139 00:11:54,640 --> 00:11:58,520 the superficial beautification is actually creating ugliness elsewhere. For example, 140 00:11:59,220 --> 00:12:04,660 spraying things with pesticides to get rid of so-called weeds. Well, it produces a uniform 141 00:12:04,660 --> 00:12:10,140 green lawn, which is beautiful in a certain way, but it's not deeply beautiful. So deep experiences 142 00:12:10,140 --> 00:12:14,940 of beauty that are built over time and really see the whole network of relationships, I think, 143 00:12:14,940 --> 00:12:22,080 are the place to ground morality. There's a few things more motivating than a profound sense of 144 00:12:22,080 --> 00:12:29,700 beauty. And that leads to the other word, which is joy, is this unasked for, unearned 145 00:12:29,700 --> 00:12:35,740 sense of connection and of elevation of life that far transcends the self. 146 00:12:35,740 --> 00:12:39,460 I want to ground us a little bit more 147 00:12:39,460 --> 00:12:43,020 And you wrote this gorgeous chapter about magnolias 148 00:12:43,020 --> 00:12:46,020 Which grow all over your area, Atlanta 149 00:12:46,020 --> 00:12:49,680 And here in the upper Midwest, we have tulip trees 150 00:12:49,680 --> 00:12:50,980 Are those the same thing? 151 00:12:51,220 --> 00:12:53,120 They are related to one another 152 00:12:53,120 --> 00:12:54,060 They're close cousins 153 00:12:54,060 --> 00:13:00,080 So in my neighborhood, I have a neighbor who has a huge, mature tulip tree 154 00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:01,060 It's taller than her house 155 00:13:01,060 --> 00:13:04,120 And every spring, when it bursts into bloom 156 00:13:04,120 --> 00:13:09,420 she sends a party invitation to the whole neighborhood, and people gather underneath 157 00:13:09,420 --> 00:13:15,880 that tree. This is usually the first outdoor time people have come together after a long winter. 158 00:13:16,400 --> 00:13:20,740 People bring food, the kids show up, people talk about what they did last winter, 159 00:13:20,940 --> 00:13:29,320 they notice how the kids have grown. It's become a neighborhood seasonal rite. And I love thinking 160 00:13:29,320 --> 00:13:33,700 that the tree itself in bloom is the party. 161 00:13:34,660 --> 00:13:38,600 So anyway, I knew you'd love it, but tell me about your magnolias. 162 00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:46,360 Well, first, I absolutely adore that story because I think one thing we need more than 163 00:13:46,360 --> 00:13:54,020 almost anything else in our culture is renewal of rituals of celebration around other species. 164 00:13:54,020 --> 00:13:59,140 So the first blooming of the tulip trees or the return of the chimney swifts. 165 00:13:59,320 --> 00:14:08,860 The first spring peepers in the spring, and I have practices of this for myself, and I've invited students and neighbors and friends into these. 166 00:14:08,940 --> 00:14:11,200 And for me, they are extraordinarily important. 167 00:14:11,440 --> 00:14:12,240 What's one of yours? 168 00:14:13,300 --> 00:14:24,640 Well, lying down on my cracked driveway here in Atlanta with my hand lens and looking close at the bittercress weeds that are growing up through the cracks in the driveway 169 00:14:24,640 --> 00:14:29,420 that have these absolutely gorgeous ivory cream flowers. 170 00:14:29,580 --> 00:14:30,740 They're tiny little flowers. 171 00:14:30,980 --> 00:14:34,320 And they come up when everything else is still quite muted. 172 00:14:34,640 --> 00:14:39,480 And it feels like this eruption of possibility and of hope from the ground 173 00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:45,180 in the most improbable place, which is busted up concrete in a driveway 174 00:14:45,180 --> 00:14:47,460 in an urban area in the middle of a big city. 175 00:14:47,460 --> 00:14:50,460 And yet for me, those are often the most beautiful experiences. 176 00:14:50,720 --> 00:14:53,960 The vitality of life in unexpected places. 177 00:14:53,960 --> 00:14:55,880 because that's what's coming. 178 00:14:56,200 --> 00:14:58,920 In a few million years, humans will have gone extinct 179 00:14:58,920 --> 00:15:00,400 or will have evolved into something else. 180 00:15:01,280 --> 00:15:04,100 Bittercress will have taken over the continent. 181 00:15:05,440 --> 00:15:09,180 Magnolia trees will be coming out of the edges of the cities. 182 00:15:09,820 --> 00:15:14,300 So, yes, gathering communally to celebrate creatures 183 00:15:14,300 --> 00:15:17,460 like the tulip trees is really, really important. 184 00:15:18,040 --> 00:15:20,520 The significance of the tulip tree and the magnolia 185 00:15:20,520 --> 00:15:29,380 is that these are descendants almost unchanged of some of the very first flowering plants 186 00:15:29,380 --> 00:15:35,540 to appear on the planet. If you look at the structure of a tulip tree flower or of a magnolia 187 00:15:35,540 --> 00:15:43,120 flower, it's essentially a relatively simple bowl of petals with both male and female parts inside 188 00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:47,780 that bowl of petals. And the magnolias in particular produce this absolutely gorgeous 189 00:15:47,780 --> 00:15:55,380 aroma that drifts like ribbons of scent through the city. Even the more diesel-fume-choked parts 190 00:15:55,380 --> 00:16:01,600 of the city, you get little, here in Atlanta, you get little whiffs of magnolia blooms in May. 191 00:16:01,740 --> 00:16:07,860 And they're almost tropical, right? Because think of those big, waxy, cup-shaped flowers with this 192 00:16:07,860 --> 00:16:14,840 intoxicating scent inside. And the flowers are the size of dinner plates. So this is not a subtle 193 00:16:14,840 --> 00:16:21,000 form of beauty, which is part of the point of flowers. They want to do what it takes 194 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:26,840 to draw in creatures. And the creatures that are most attracted to magnolia flowers, 195 00:16:27,060 --> 00:16:32,840 it's the creatures that were the first pollinators of the first flowers, tiny little beetles and 196 00:16:32,840 --> 00:16:37,860 flies. And particularly the beetles seem absolutely intoxicated by this scent. 197 00:16:38,360 --> 00:16:44,420 How do the flowers make their scent? What part of them? I don't even know how to describe the 198 00:16:44,420 --> 00:16:52,300 smell of the magnolia i just know it feels heavy and rich yes and it's transporting for me i know 199 00:16:52,300 --> 00:16:58,180 it sort of knocks me sideways when i and and there's a little narrative arc within the aroma 200 00:16:58,180 --> 00:17:02,440 right it's sort of a little bit bitter and cucumbery when the magnolia flower first opens 201 00:17:02,440 --> 00:17:08,400 with layers of clove and a little bit of citrusy stuff coming and then when it's fully open 202 00:17:08,400 --> 00:17:19,060 the bitterness goes away and you're just in this colored warm world that feels like soaking in a 203 00:17:19,060 --> 00:17:25,140 nice bubbly bath with this whole body sensation that lasts for a few seconds and then it's gone 204 00:17:25,140 --> 00:17:28,860 and you're back to being a normal old human standing on the sidewalk. So it's kind of like 205 00:17:28,860 --> 00:17:36,620 being high. Well, I mean, it is being high. What is being high? It's, you know, when you smoke a 206 00:17:36,620 --> 00:17:41,720 joint, you're taking botanical chemicals into your body and they're uniting temporarily with 207 00:17:41,720 --> 00:17:48,600 nerve receptors. When you smell a flower, those aromatic molecules are going directly 208 00:17:48,600 --> 00:17:55,920 into your nose, but also into your bloodstream and binding with the cells of the human body 209 00:17:55,920 --> 00:18:00,800 and producing a particular neurological effect. It might be very temporary, a little 210 00:18:00,800 --> 00:18:06,120 a burst of pleasure, and medicinalists and herbalists have known this for a long time, 211 00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:12,220 the aromas of flowers and also the aromas of tree resins and other things can be very healing, 212 00:18:12,660 --> 00:18:19,360 not as a placebo effect, but because those molecules go into our body and actually heal us. 213 00:18:19,360 --> 00:18:25,380 The aromas of basswood trees and linden trees, for example, have been shown to be very calming 214 00:18:25,380 --> 00:18:30,600 to human anxiety. You can get that through smelling and also through drinking a tea 215 00:18:30,600 --> 00:18:35,740 made from the flowers of the linden tree. Wow, I just feel like we need to pause for a second 216 00:18:35,740 --> 00:18:43,160 because when I smell, I don't know, especially potent rose or, I don't know, some of the peonies 217 00:18:43,160 --> 00:18:51,020 I love best have this peppery, sweet smell, it never occurs to me that that smell is going 218 00:18:51,020 --> 00:18:57,360 inside me, that its molecules are moving into my brain affecting me neurologically. 219 00:18:58,120 --> 00:19:00,940 Smell is the most impudent of the senses. 220 00:19:01,500 --> 00:19:06,180 It doesn't have the decency to act at a distance the way sound and light do. 221 00:19:06,760 --> 00:19:11,960 Quite literally, part of the flower's body enters our body and merges with us. 222 00:19:12,040 --> 00:19:13,260 We become chimeric. 223 00:19:13,800 --> 00:19:16,060 And you'd asked about where they come from in the flower. 224 00:19:16,140 --> 00:19:17,380 It depends a little bit on the flower. 225 00:19:17,480 --> 00:19:22,060 But for many, the petal itself is a living aroma diffuser. 226 00:19:22,060 --> 00:19:31,640 The cells on the top surface of the petal are producing aromatic oils and letting them go into the air across the cell membrane. 227 00:19:31,820 --> 00:19:40,720 If you look at, for example, a rose petal under a microscope, it's completely carpeted with conical cells that are stuffed full of aroma. 228 00:19:40,720 --> 00:19:46,700 And of course, when the sun hits that, it's a warmed aroma diffuser, right? 229 00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:52,800 And those oils then bind inside our nerve receptors, or if we're using them as a perfume 230 00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:57,100 or rubbing ourselves in rose petals, they actually get onto the skin. 231 00:19:57,500 --> 00:19:59,760 And on the skin, they have antibacterial properties. 232 00:20:00,220 --> 00:20:03,800 These aromas are not just produced to attract insects or other animals. 233 00:20:04,040 --> 00:20:07,200 They also protect the petals, at least some of them do. 234 00:20:07,280 --> 00:20:09,840 They have antimicrobial, antifungal functions. 235 00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:16,360 So we get that, too, when you put that aroma on your skin, it actually kills some of the bacteria there. 236 00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:27,900 Let's pause there and just savor that image of rubbing rose petals all over your skin, soaking in all that beauty and healing. 237 00:20:28,540 --> 00:20:32,980 I'm talking with David Haskell about his new book, How Flowers Made Our World. 238 00:20:33,380 --> 00:20:34,420 And we'll be right back. 239 00:20:39,840 --> 00:20:41,840 You 240 00:20:42,020 --> 00:20:43,220 Hey, it's Steve. 241 00:20:43,540 --> 00:20:46,600 I want to invite you to visit our Wonder Cabinet website, 242 00:20:47,180 --> 00:20:50,500 where you will find more information about the show and Anne and me. 243 00:20:50,900 --> 00:20:53,300 And I really hope you'll subscribe to our newsletter. 244 00:20:53,780 --> 00:20:56,340 We'll tell you the story behind the name of this podcast 245 00:20:56,340 --> 00:21:00,400 and some of the amazing guests we'll be talking with in future episodes. 246 00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:04,260 You can find us at wondercabinetproductions.com. 247 00:21:04,580 --> 00:21:06,980 And please, tell your friends about Wonder Cabinet. 248 00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:11,540 This is a brand new podcast, and we'd love your help in getting the word out. 249 00:21:11,840 --> 00:21:41,820 Thank you. 250 00:21:41,820 --> 00:21:52,280 this is wonder cabinet i'm an strange champs and i left you swimming in rose petals so let's see 251 00:21:52,280 --> 00:21:59,780 where david takes us next so you went to a place i've always wanted to go in provence to grass 252 00:21:59,780 --> 00:22:05,000 where they've been making perfume for centuries and you went to the famous international perfume 253 00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:11,240 museum garden which i i just imagine that is a totally intoxicating experience 254 00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:12,660 It is. 255 00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:13,260 It's extraordinary. 256 00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:19,580 Grasse these days is still a hub for perfume manufacturing and marketing and was a place 257 00:22:19,580 --> 00:22:27,160 where, because of the microclimate there, they could grow aromatic flowers and other 258 00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:28,520 plants from all over the world. 259 00:22:28,980 --> 00:22:30,520 And there are museums there. 260 00:22:30,520 --> 00:22:37,440 The one that was most fascinating to me is the living museum, the gardens, where various 261 00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:43,960 aromatic plants are grown alongside plants that are native to the region there. So it's a very 262 00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:50,940 ecologically rich place full of bees and birds and just sort of feels like an aromatic garden 263 00:22:50,940 --> 00:22:59,180 of Eden. You said that walking among the roses in the cross garden, you sniffed 400 different 264 00:22:59,180 --> 00:23:07,820 volatiles. I had no idea that flowers could produce that many different aroma molecules. 265 00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:13,460 Yeah, they put the human alphabet to shame, right? So this is the language. I mean, 266 00:23:13,460 --> 00:23:19,240 the analogy is, I sort of mean it intentionally, is that this is the language of plants. Each one 267 00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:26,100 of those 400 different molecules that unite into what we label as the aroma of a rose, 268 00:23:26,100 --> 00:23:36,120 Those 400 molecules all have particular functions within the cell, and they have communicative functions to different species of insects. 269 00:23:36,500 --> 00:23:37,940 And some flowers are very specific. 270 00:23:38,420 --> 00:23:53,820 So some orchids, for example, make a blend of perfume that only one species of wasp in the entire world will be attracted to because essentially that perfume is mimicking the sexual perfumes that the wasps use in their own mating displays. 271 00:23:54,340 --> 00:23:59,100 So that orchid is literally speaking to just one species of insect, 272 00:23:59,380 --> 00:24:02,640 whereas others like the magnolias and to a certain extent the roses, 273 00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:07,180 they have very wide open, welcoming flowers 274 00:24:07,180 --> 00:24:10,420 that are attracting a whole range of different insects. 275 00:24:10,840 --> 00:24:13,080 Part of it, though, honestly, is still mysterious. 276 00:24:13,300 --> 00:24:19,400 We don't know, like, why can't they just get away with 200 molecules instead of 400? 277 00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:22,900 And that kind of question is still one that, as far as I know, 278 00:24:22,900 --> 00:24:31,180 there isn't an answer to, in the same way that if you ask, why does this bird have a song that goes 279 00:24:31,180 --> 00:24:35,200 up at the end and the other bird has a song that goes down at the end with a little trill? 280 00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:41,020 Most of the particularity of the forms of bird song is a complete mystery. There are no good 281 00:24:41,020 --> 00:24:46,260 answers to why they sound. And don't you think something doesn't feel quite right about trying 282 00:24:46,260 --> 00:24:51,700 to reduce it all to utility? Maybe flowers evolved all those different scents and birds 283 00:24:51,700 --> 00:24:56,580 learn to sing all those different songs, partly because it's beautiful. 284 00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,260 I mean, everything doesn't have to have a use value. 285 00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:01,300 No, I agree with that. 286 00:25:01,380 --> 00:25:04,700 But I also think that the beauty can be its own use value. 287 00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:06,700 So, for example, a complex bird song, 288 00:25:07,540 --> 00:25:12,460 the very complexity of the song is, to other birds, attractive. 289 00:25:12,980 --> 00:25:16,180 Just like we are attracted to people who are really cool, 290 00:25:16,260 --> 00:25:18,400 you know, the cool DJ or jazz musician 291 00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:23,280 who can do pretty much anything on their piano or with their turntable, 292 00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:25,160 that's kind of cool and sexy. 293 00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:29,700 And so beauty itself is part of the signal. 294 00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:34,000 And complexity and nuance is part of that signal. 295 00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:40,780 So I think the line between beauty and utility in biology gets blurred. 296 00:25:41,580 --> 00:25:47,040 And I don't think the fact that something is utilitarian diminishes its beauty, 297 00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:51,140 its complexity, or indeed its scientific mystery. 298 00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:58,800 Well, we've also, going back to your experience in Cross, you wrote about one little section 299 00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:06,260 of the garden is the garden of forgotten perfume plants, which made me think, are there aromas 300 00:26:06,260 --> 00:26:12,880 that we have forgotten about or aromas that we don't value or appreciate anymore? 301 00:26:13,700 --> 00:26:15,020 Yeah, that's an interesting question. 302 00:26:15,020 --> 00:26:19,360 The ones in the garden, because they've been planted there, someone has remembered them. 303 00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:29,080 More generally, though, we have, for example, in the horticulture trade, mostly forgotten that one of the delights of flowers is their aromas. 304 00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:38,820 So most roses that you would go to the grocery store or the florist store to buy have had the scent bred out of them. 305 00:26:38,820 --> 00:26:48,620 The same is true for many violets that were actually bred and cultivated and brought into people's homes specifically for their scent. 306 00:26:49,220 --> 00:26:58,960 And so we have, as we have for so many other aspects of our lives, turned what was a multidimensional sensory experience into something that is just feeding the eyes. 307 00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:05,200 that this bouquet looks good, but there's no more aroma there, 308 00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:12,520 which to me is a great loss of sensory experience, of richness, of potential joy. 309 00:27:13,940 --> 00:27:18,900 I mean, I was asking that because one of the recurrent thoughts I had in reading your book, 310 00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:23,520 which is, you know, as we said, scents are really difficult to describe in words, 311 00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:25,200 but you do a really wonderful job. 312 00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:33,640 And I was thinking that we really need a richer language for scent or just need to pay more attention to it. 313 00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:38,220 And I was thinking about your earlier work on sound and soundscapes. 314 00:27:38,860 --> 00:27:44,440 And, you know, as an audio producer, that concept of the soundscape speaks really powerfully to me. 315 00:27:44,900 --> 00:27:51,520 And I began to wonder what would change if we started thinking about landscapes as scentscapes. 316 00:27:52,260 --> 00:27:54,520 You know, do certain plant aromas go together? 317 00:27:54,940 --> 00:27:58,800 And then what might that reveal about certain landscapes? 318 00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:01,680 Yes, think like a bee. 319 00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:08,820 Because bees do have a geography, if you like, a map of scent. 320 00:28:08,940 --> 00:28:14,460 And indeed, I mean, I do think that is part of my way of experiencing the world, 321 00:28:14,460 --> 00:28:20,200 is to listen to the shapes of sounds, the different kinds of aromas that we find. 322 00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:25,960 And for example, in the neighborhood where I live now, part of the neighborhood was built 323 00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:31,700 in the 1940s and another part was built basically by a raising forest in the 1990s. 324 00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:36,500 And you can smell the difference as you walk from one neighborhood to the other because 325 00:28:36,500 --> 00:28:45,220 there are old oak trees in one neighborhood and just small little mostly ornamental trees 326 00:28:45,220 --> 00:28:48,400 that have a completely different aroma in the other neighborhood. 327 00:28:48,900 --> 00:28:53,100 Most of us have these experiences, we just don't bring them into consciousness that much. 328 00:28:53,100 --> 00:29:05,560 Well, I was wondering if we paid more attention to aroma, if that actually could lead in any way to better or different science or new ecological strategies. 329 00:29:06,300 --> 00:29:10,300 The one book of yours that I haven't read is 13 Ways to Smell a Tree. 330 00:29:10,300 --> 00:29:27,400 But I think, I'm guessing, that in that book you probably connect smelling trees to ways of fighting deforestation or coming up with better ecological interventions. 331 00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:38,540 Yeah, or re-embodying ourselves and integrating the human intellect with the human senses, I think, is a big task before us. 332 00:29:38,540 --> 00:29:54,960 Not so much, I mean, it's, yes, re-embodying ourselves and remembering, coming back to our senses is important for science, but it's important much more broadly is that that's a foundation for figuring out right action, for finding joy. 333 00:29:55,600 --> 00:30:01,480 And as we were talking about earlier, beauty in our lives, making ourselves whole again. 334 00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:08,460 We have these senses that come, to use a technological analogy, these apps are pre-installed in our body, right? 335 00:30:08,460 --> 00:30:12,280 We don't need to download them, and they're not harvesting our data. 336 00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:18,100 Why don't we turn them on just by turning our attention to the senses, which is a scent 337 00:30:18,100 --> 00:30:25,320 gives us, you know, we actually really enjoy and are present for our cup of tea, and if 338 00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:30,360 we share the experience, as your neighbor does, with other people, we draw people together 339 00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:31,080 into community. 340 00:30:31,180 --> 00:30:37,520 And that's one of the great powers of flowering plants, is they create opportunity and connection 341 00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:39,040 and community for others. 342 00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:39,680 Yeah. 343 00:30:40,340 --> 00:30:45,440 You know, we're kind of living with this drumbeat of advice today 344 00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:48,300 about the importance of relationships for mental 345 00:30:48,300 --> 00:30:50,680 and even physical health and longevity. 346 00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:52,660 You know, over and over I keep reading articles 347 00:30:52,660 --> 00:30:55,100 about the importance of human relationships. 348 00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:57,100 Make sure you have a good network. 349 00:30:58,020 --> 00:30:58,460 Right. 350 00:30:58,940 --> 00:31:01,800 It's always about human relationships. 351 00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:04,820 What about our more-than-human relationships? 352 00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:05,120 Yeah. 353 00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:17,200 What about having relationships with the trees around us or a particular backyard or, as you described, the, you know, crest coming up in the middle of a sidewalk? 354 00:31:17,860 --> 00:31:19,720 Those relationships matter, too. 355 00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:33,300 And I think what all of these things really are about, it's about getting back into our bodies, that embodied intelligence and wisdom, which knows things that, you know, we can't know just using words. 356 00:31:33,460 --> 00:31:33,900 But anyway. 357 00:31:33,900 --> 00:31:50,840 No, I absolutely agree. And I do think, I mean, flowers were revolutionaries not because they focused on themselves, but because they formed these interspecies communicative networks, right? So the flowers are speaking to the insects, they're speaking to the birds and the fungi below the ground. 358 00:31:50,840 --> 00:32:03,880 And I agree that we can expand the bounds of what friendship and kinship mean by befriending the birds, by befriending the flowers, by cultivating flowers in our own lives. 359 00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:09,640 I mean, personally, those relationships have been really important, essential for my own health. 360 00:32:10,060 --> 00:32:17,160 And when I read the advice that you've got to have a big friend network, I think, oh, my goodness, you know, I am failing at that one, right? 361 00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:23,420 So, you know, I mean, I have a number of good friends, but could use more. 362 00:32:23,940 --> 00:32:25,120 And then I think, well, hang on a minute. 363 00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:31,880 There are dozens of birds outside my backyard that I have a pretty deep relationship with. 364 00:32:32,060 --> 00:32:33,900 And I watch them raise their young. 365 00:32:34,220 --> 00:32:38,800 And these flowers that I'm cultivating in my backyard and the vegetables in the community garden, 366 00:32:39,180 --> 00:32:45,320 these are beings with whom I have actually a very deep and intimate bodily relationship with 367 00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,880 that when I look at the textures of my own mental health, 368 00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:53,840 the more I get that, the better I feel or the less bad I feel. 369 00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,680 Yeah, I'll tell you when I began thinking that is we spend summers in Vermont. 370 00:32:58,900 --> 00:33:00,440 We started doing that recently. 371 00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:04,840 My husband has, Steve has, his parents built a house years and years ago, 372 00:33:04,900 --> 00:33:06,520 just a little summer house in Vermont. 373 00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:08,100 They're older and we've been going. 374 00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:12,960 And when we came back to Madison this fall, after about a week, 375 00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:20,280 there was a day where I thought, I miss something. I can't tell what it is. And I realized I miss 376 00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:28,860 the trees. In Vermont, I miss specific trees. And I kind of felt like, I think it misses me too. 377 00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,740 And at first I thought, oh, Ann, don't be so fanciful. And then I thought, no, 378 00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:38,820 that's what a relationship is. Why wouldn't they miss me if I miss them? 379 00:33:38,820 --> 00:33:47,940 And that opened the door to, I don't know, thinking of this as a real relationship, not just me appreciating them from the outside. 380 00:33:47,940 --> 00:33:50,580 I love the way you describe that. 381 00:33:50,620 --> 00:34:04,420 And for me, the thought that comes is the opening of the imagination to what friendship, relationship, and missing someone or being bonded to another being could be. 382 00:34:04,420 --> 00:34:15,560 Because, of course, the trees, whatever form of sentience or intelligence and memory they have, it's going to be of a very different texture than our own because their bodies are, of course, arranged in a completely different way. 383 00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:26,220 So they're not little humanoids, and yet they're living complex beings that are in deep relationship in a very decentralized way with all the creatures around them. 384 00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:29,160 And we do become known by the places. 385 00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:36,180 I mean, at a microbiological level, any place that we've been, we've left our microbiological signature. 386 00:34:36,340 --> 00:34:41,940 We've probably also left some microplastics from our waterproof jacket and so on. 387 00:34:42,420 --> 00:34:45,960 And we've also left those networks of relationship. 388 00:34:46,100 --> 00:34:46,680 I learned this. 389 00:34:47,740 --> 00:34:52,340 The first book I wrote was about sitting watching one square meter of forest for a year. 390 00:34:53,080 --> 00:34:56,080 And at first I thought, well, I'm just an observer here. 391 00:34:56,080 --> 00:35:06,540 But then I came to realize, no, these chipmunks, these birds have come to know that here's this weird guy in a brown jacket who comes and sits on a particular rock every day. 392 00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:09,220 And they basically just ignored me. 393 00:35:09,220 --> 00:35:19,680 I mean, they had their eye on me in a way that I could slip into the forest network without causing alarm after repeated rounds of visiting. 394 00:35:19,860 --> 00:35:21,620 So I became part of that community. 395 00:35:22,180 --> 00:35:28,540 I'm sure if I'd grabbed a chipmunk and murdered it, then there would have been a lot more alarm for several months afterwards. 396 00:35:28,540 --> 00:35:41,200 And in fact, people have done scientific experiments to show that birds and mammals do indeed remember particular individual humans and response to them based on our past behaviors, good or bad. 397 00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:49,280 And so at a level of animal awareness, non-human animal awareness, we become known by landscape. 398 00:35:49,460 --> 00:35:55,020 And I think that's probably true for other beings in ways that are honestly, to me, very mysterious. 399 00:35:55,020 --> 00:36:06,040 I have no idea how a tree experiences the world, and I'm happy not to know because I don't think that's a knowable thing for a human being, but we can cast our imagination into that space. 400 00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:27,700 I think it changes everything, because caring, I think, is a two-way thing, you know, that keeps building. I don't just care for something that can't perceive me, or, you know, it's a kind of chilly, objectified caring. 401 00:36:27,700 --> 00:36:34,940 but the kind of caring that feels alive is when you love your child and you know your child loves 402 00:36:34,940 --> 00:36:43,980 you back that's when we enter into something that feels dynamic and warm a reciprocity of regard and 403 00:36:43,980 --> 00:36:48,680 and it's not just about particular individual places it's just in general this earth is taking 404 00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:54,560 care of us right it's providing the food the oxygen at a very material physical level and 405 00:36:54,560 --> 00:37:01,180 And for me, the challenge is also that there is great brokenness, right? 406 00:37:01,180 --> 00:37:05,200 So the parents who don't love their children, there are children who absolutely love their 407 00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:08,680 parents, and that's part of those relationships as well. 408 00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:13,140 There are parasitic organisms that get into my body and will literally try to kill me 409 00:37:13,140 --> 00:37:17,700 because that's their best strategy for getting on to the new place. 410 00:37:17,700 --> 00:37:36,380 So we live in ecological relationships that are at the same time extraordinarily supportive, completely life-giving, filled with beauty, and at the same time utterly weighted in other regards with pain, with brokenness, with exploitation. 411 00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:39,960 And those two things are simultaneously true. 412 00:37:41,060 --> 00:37:42,380 This land was stolen. 413 00:37:42,780 --> 00:37:45,360 This land is also caring from me. 414 00:37:45,360 --> 00:38:09,640 There are fractures. There's blood soaked into the land. There's triumph from beauty and love everywhere. How do we have practices that can hold both at the same time without getting crushed by the brokenness of things or completely intoxicated by the beauty so that we don't see the fractures and don't see the pain that other people are suffering? 415 00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:14,220 And that's the bit, you know, I don't have an answer to that other than showing up. 416 00:38:15,020 --> 00:38:29,040 And for me, it's through contemplative practice, just being, trying to be awake to the sights and the smells and the stories, the beauty and the brokenness of any particular place, of any particular relationship. 417 00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:38,840 That's so well said and so well taken because we really haven't talked about the ugly side of humanity's relationship with flowering plants. 418 00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:48,840 But, of course, you know, the drive to profit from them led to colonialization and slavery and plantations and then later industrial farming and the development of agrochemical poisons. 419 00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:55,020 And it matters to also hold that brokenness, as you said. 420 00:38:55,640 --> 00:39:00,620 Yes, and particularly around flowers, I think there are things that we can do. 421 00:39:00,620 --> 00:39:19,640 So one of the things that really shocked me in researching this book was the extent to which many flowers that we might find for sale at the garden center are absolutely soaked with poisons that are really horrible for human health, but also for the help of pollinators. 422 00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:22,640 The very creatures that made the flowers in the first place, we're poisoning them. 423 00:39:23,100 --> 00:39:29,400 Even the plants that are labeled wildlife-friendly, because there's no good standard for labeling 424 00:39:29,400 --> 00:39:30,780 of any of these things. 425 00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:35,960 I mean, we're talking about dozens of poisons in one particular plant that we might buy. 426 00:39:36,020 --> 00:39:40,340 The same thing with some cut flowers at the florist shop are just laden with poisons 427 00:39:40,340 --> 00:39:43,680 that mostly are affecting the people who have to grow those flowers. 428 00:39:43,900 --> 00:39:45,960 But as individuals, we have some agency there. 429 00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:58,260 We can decide what we're going to grow in our garden, what kind of things we're going to buy, what things we're going to advocate for in the policy arena, so that flowers can once again become unambiguously good. 430 00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:11,680 By changing our aesthetics and priorities, we could actually change our relationship to flowering plants, which I think would be an extraordinary gift to give ourselves and also the future. 431 00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:17,100 That's the celebrated biologist and writer David George Haskell 432 00:40:17,100 --> 00:40:19,700 Author of Sounds Wild and Broken 433 00:40:19,700 --> 00:40:21,400 The Songs of Trees 434 00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:24,220 And I highly recommend his brand new book 435 00:40:24,220 --> 00:40:26,860 How Flowers Made Our World 436 00:40:26,860 --> 00:40:29,280 It is an exhilarating read 437 00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:30,960 And perfect for springtime, too 438 00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:35,140 And hopefully you can find some flowering plants to appreciate this week 439 00:40:35,140 --> 00:40:38,480 And maybe follow David's example of just sitting with one for a while 440 00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:40,440 Actually, Steve, I was thinking about that 441 00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:43,120 and it reminded me of another exercise. 442 00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:46,460 Do you remember when we were at the Island of Knowledge 443 00:40:46,460 --> 00:40:48,360 in Italy probably a year ago 444 00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:51,180 and there was another contemplative biologist there, 445 00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:55,240 Andreas Faber, and he led a meditation with plants? 446 00:40:55,240 --> 00:40:58,620 Oh yeah, I remember I ended up sitting under an olive tree. 447 00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:00,520 So I was trying to remember what he said. 448 00:41:00,620 --> 00:41:02,860 It was springtime in Tuscany. 449 00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:04,740 I was under this almond tree. 450 00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,540 It was in bloom, covered in delicate pink flowers. 451 00:41:08,240 --> 00:41:10,280 The grass was full of tiny daisies. 452 00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:17,080 And the instructions were to find a plant you like and go sit with it for, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes. 453 00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:18,840 Do you remember what we were supposed to do then? 454 00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:21,520 I think we were supposed to say hello. 455 00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:22,140 Okay. 456 00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:24,120 And then just observe. 457 00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:27,540 Oh, and we were supposed to ask a very simple question. 458 00:41:28,660 --> 00:41:31,900 Where do you end and I begin? 459 00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:33,860 You're asking the plant. 460 00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:38,820 And when your mind wanders, just come gently back to that question. 461 00:41:38,820 --> 00:41:41,100 And I mean, I don't know what your experience was like. 462 00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:42,080 For me, it was magical. 463 00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:44,780 It was pretty great for me. 464 00:41:44,860 --> 00:41:46,280 But so what made it so memorable? 465 00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:55,780 I felt like the boundaries that separate me from the rest of the world kind of softened and dissolved. 466 00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:59,720 My ego, my sense of self receded. 467 00:41:59,720 --> 00:42:10,900 And for just this little bit of time, I was just blue sky and a living branch of pink almond blossoms. 468 00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:18,020 It was such a relief to not be me anymore, even just for a few minutes. 469 00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:18,600 Yeah. 470 00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:21,940 Well, that seems like a great way to end this episode. 471 00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:24,680 And if you want to try it, tell us about it. 472 00:42:24,720 --> 00:42:28,300 You can write to us and describe what your experience was like. 473 00:42:28,300 --> 00:42:34,120 Reach us at wondercabinetproductions.com, and while you're there, sign up for the newsletter. 474 00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:39,740 Wonder Cabinet comes to you from Madison, Wisconsin, and Versher, Vermont, our two homes. 475 00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:42,320 Our audio engineer is Steve Gotcher. 476 00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:44,900 Our digital guru is Mark Rickers. 477 00:42:45,140 --> 00:42:47,420 Be well, and join us again next time.