Consciousness Live! with Monica Gagliano (S1 E13)

0:01 okay we're live I'm speaking today with Monica Galliano Monica for those who don't know you can you say a little bit about who you are and what you do so hello well I'm my research associate professor in evolutionary ecology of the University of Western Australia and I'm also a research associate for the Sydney environment Institute at the University of Sydney and soon I will be just moving permanently to Sydney so joining the school of life and environmental science

0:35 oh wow congratulations that's pretty exciting you're you're an Australian by I mean you're native Australian well you know who is native Australian do not like I was born in Italy and I did my I guess University training a little bit all over the place mostly in the UK actually but in my PhD in Australia I'm when I landed in Australia thought this is like this is my home so then I stayed and yeah and I've been very lucky to be able to you know become an Australian citizen

1:10 and feel like I am Australian so yeah I guess I misunderstood that for sorry about that but you've had a very interesting career path so you started doing fish work with fish and you described in the book by the way your new book is very exciting very interesting that spoke to plant I mean this is a very exciting read and I'm pretty looking forward to it coming out I guess in November right yep but you described a variant your experience as a researcher doing fish ecology and then

1:43 why you suddenly stopped doing that so I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what happened exactly yeah well as you pointed out correctly I trained as a marine scientist and all the way you know my undergrads were in marine biology in oceanography in the beginning and I did a master in marine science and fisheries and I guess because at the time I always wanted to do something with the ocean and at the time I wanted to save the world and so I thought if I do you know if I learn

2:14 Fisheries work I might be able to do something in that area and then I realized that actually I wasn't very interested in in the economics of it and fishery involves a lot of that and I was more interested in actually how things work in nature and so then I went on and did a I worked in different labs around the world as a research assistant for a while because I thought that PhD is for very smart people so I don't know no for that I'm not no cat for that and so I

2:49 did a lot of research assistant work for a while and and then while I was doing there I was helping someone else doing their pH sneeze and I thought wait a second you know I can do this for myself so then I went to James Cook University which is pretty much the best university in the world for tropical marine science and I was very lucky I was able to do my PhD as an ecology I was always in the field and in my field station my field sites we're on a little island called

3:22 Lizard Island which is in the middle in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef so yeah I had a very spectacular PhD time because I was in the water in this places where you know the typical place that you see from a postcard with a little palm tree on the golden beach and the crystal water that was my mighty nice and so yeah you're this involved like underwater work you were scuba or yeah yeah yeah I spent a lot of time and I spent more time underwater there on the surface I would say for that I might

3:55 have a period of time doing my PhD I was in the field for at least 3 or 4 months of the year sometimes even more so and you know when I was in the field I was in the water all day every day and so I had a really intimate connection I guess with with the area and with the species that I was working with and and and that is actually it was my fish the species that I was working with that gave me the big lesson that I needed to learn and change not only my career but also my personal life I

4:27 because I was doing this experiment looking at the effect of parental stress so our mom experienced the environment including the social environment during reproduction and see how that would translate into what happened to the next generation so the babies and and so I was part of that study I was in the water as I said everyday looking up this fish which are wild animals doing that thing you know like on the reef and of

5:00 course I had my little tags to no lie or disease mum and dad number one – and I had like something I was chasing something like 80 different individuals so I had a nice samples and and in the process of that experiment well you know at the first and during the first week at least this fish being wild animals are not exactly interested in you if anything they're quite scared of you and but after a week of seeing me come in every day and just like passing through

5:32 and checking out and then going without really doing anything disruptive I could pull my hand out and this fish will come in my hand and I could close my hand around them and they would just be like yep this morning because she comes every day and it's all good you know so there was this really quite personal relationship although I speak of it now like this but at the time I just saw like oh these are just fish these are my sample these are gonna be my data points and this is how I was trained and this is how I saw them and so it was a little bit of a shock I guess to my system both

6:08 the the conceptual system as well as my personal perspective to see that these fish actually were about to teach me something I didn't expect and and there was on the last day of the experiment so after three or four months of this interaction very close and personal I went in the water that last day in the morning and the idea was to collect all the fish that day and because you know people maybe does

6:41 realize but a lot of anymore science not all of it but a lot of anymore science involves the killing of the animal at the end because we need to take the brain sample or the garnet sample of the latest samples some samples of some sort of requires like the body parts and and I was totally fine with that I with a little bit of shame I can say that I killed a lot of animals for my science until that point and these sanction is we go ethics permit permits for that you know like it's all good and that's how we are trained and that's how we trained right and and then but that day so I

7:17 thought okay I want to go in at one last swim around to say goodbye to my fish and then in the afternoon not come and collect them all for my samples and so that morning I went like every other morning and well at least I thought I was like every other morning and I didn't have any net so anything that was suspicious from the perspective of the fish but the fish knew and nobody came out everyone was just hiding in the little holes and I was like peering in to see and they were like looking at me like you know this is not good news

7:50 Monica today is not good news and in that moment I don't know something something broke down something beautiful thing broke down and it was this real what is realization that well the fish knows the fish knows what I'm acting and I don't know how he knows but he definitely knows and he's showing me these and not only that but he's showing me that he knows about me and what I'm thinking better than I know myself because I think that I can just go in there and think that you know it's okay

8:22 do you think I'm gonna kill you all these afternoon and they won't know and instead they did and and and they're really I I just it was shocking because I couldn't explain it I didn't know what was going on and when I learned later when I we took me ten years actually shared his story because I felt very ashamed and especially I didn't know how to fit it within the context of the science you know it's like well you know you're supposed to just do it and you're not supposed to feel anything and actually we

8:55 trying to be we call it objectivity I have lots of problems now with this world but you know we think that to be objective it means that you are detached from yours from your object of observation but what I learnt is like there is no such a thing as an object of observation so the objectivity is know about you connect with your with your study species but it's more how you apply the methods of science which is objective and so but that came later and and I guess later I understood that when

9:30 looking at the literature from conservation psychology I understood that when we are faced with a really big shark or a big class that we feel overwhelmed and that felt like that to me we are not very good at being creative with our minds actually literally I think our brain shuts down and we can't really think of alternative possibility is fin easy we just go and do what we already know and what I already knew was well you just call it the fish and you take them and so in the

10:03 afternoon I went back and I did that and but it was the last time I I killed and and of course that started a bit of a crisis and and in the midst of this crisis I tried to carry on my fish science by not killing the animals but it was becoming very difficult to publish the work because because the scientific establishment is set in a way that a suspect he knew to have those body parts and the samples associated to it and so in that moment I think I just moved from Queensland where I was doing

10:39 my research to Western Australia and because we were in a new home I was setting up the garden and just planting I think I was plenty in basil plants or something like you know very common and and while I was planting it really dawned to me that is like you know I don't have to work with fish I have you know I can do it maybe some other ways and then literally just fell like the plants that I was planting felt like they said something like you know you know why don't you work with us you can oops and we are not gonna die and you know why don't you work with us and I

11:12 was like ice this process was starting it was like I don't know anything about plans and don't worry we'll teach you you know and so it kind of started literally as an experiment is okay algae you transform these into something else and and in a way was the best thing that ever happened to me because it really not only changed my approach to science and the actual you know both the ontology and epistemology of my science but also he allowed me to really understand what it means to experiment

11:47 you know to be truly experimenting with whatever is presented and truly finding knowledge or exploring knowledge through experimentation which involves of course the prime subject yourself yeah that's a really interesting story I don't think I've worked in the lab before on my own backgrounds in neuroscience and cognitive science and I had to work at so I I certainly have had a similar experience that's why I sort of switched

12:20 to psychology instead of neuroscience was for much the same reason I think a lot of people in the lab they deal with it in different ways you know the sacrificing of the animal you're and the weirdest thing especially with the rats is that you have to go and handle them when they're babies to get them to trust you so it's this really weird experience of petting them and getting familiar with them and then later you know chopping them so it's it's it's but you're actually you're absolutely right that the science requires it's really hard to do the science without doing that so I I teach in neuroscience and

12:54 this is one of the hard things that communicate this the students is like the science science is pretty brutal and whether it's worth it or not as a subjective assessment you know thought that thinks of it all but but anyway sorry for that rambling I really admire though your your just your resolve to try something completely new and something that you want to train in so yeah okay was it the switching over was it I mean the same kind of scientific methodology in general is applied but working with plants a completely different arena so

13:28 how was it going getting grants and being in that in that other world well honestly I just moved to Western Australia for a new project on the brain and in fish and that was the fellowship that I had when this happens and of course as you can imagine that you can study the brain of a fish without actually pulling the brain out and doing things like that and so that project never really happened because it was just like I'm now doing this I can't do

14:01 this and and I just sneakingly started doing my experiment with plants without telling anyone and then you know we'll see what happened in the worst that can happen is that they say that oh you're not performing you're not doing the right thing and we're picking you out as I okay but in the meantime I try these and see how it goes and if it works then I'm sure the University won't care if I worked on Fisher plants is I at the end the University just care that you're doing something cool that it's gonna you know

14:32 advanced knowledge and whatever else publish the papers and whatever else so so it's okay well you know here is the gamble so let's try and see what happens I know that I cannot do my fish science the way in which is required so that's it so either I get out of science now oh I try something different and if it works great and if he doesn't work well I was gonna get out anyway so maybe it's just a delay and but I guess it really felt like I say it now because of course the nice side it's easy but I think the

15:06 plants saved me as the scientist because if those experiment didn't work out and it was a really high chance that it didn't work out because I didn't really know anything still don't really know anything about plants and so it was always a gamble and but they did they did and the first experiment that I did was actually quite simple conceptually not so simple run because because that's the thing is like to translate some of the frameworks that we use for anymore research into

15:41 plants is it's not that simple conceptually yes but when you're actually doing it in practical terms what you would do with that anymore it's quite different of course you have different issues in terms of like movements and that kind of stuff and so so that was an interesting exercise for me and and what I did I the first thing I did of course as probably any scientist would do I went into the literature and see like okay so what do they know about like information exchange communication or any of these stuff in any in plants because that's

16:14 really what I was interested already in the animal field so I was okay so what's there is there anything and I was surprised pleasantly surprised there was already stuck there and in the the experiment some of them were beautiful and you know like when you see those neat study design yes this is really good science so it got me kind of excited and also I said oh I think maybe I can do this so in the first study that I did was inspired my mic by my own garden and so I use chilies basil plants and fennel

16:51 plant and in at the time because I was getting into gardening and I was reading a lot about like how to make your garden thrive and you know all the entire literature on companion gardening and so plants they do go well together but they really don't like each other and so I thought oh I wonder if I can use that concept and and see whether the channels there we know plants use to communicate with each other and at the time it was primarily light the chemical volatiles and touch insight okay what happened if

17:25 I create a setup which aspera mentally excludes one of them all of them at the same time and so the idea was like well you know it will show me which one may be the prioritizing channels but also we show me whether there is something else beyond those that we haven't explored and and that's exactly what I found is like that I these crazy boxes look like matryoshka boxes set up and which took a lot of work and a lot of effort to maintain and you know when people see the paper they

17:57 only see the final results as you know I'd be like why isn't it neat and he's like yeah thanks a lot of I don't want to do this very man ever again but but yeah what he showed was like that even when you block all of the channels that we know labs use to communicate they still know who is growing next to them and so they opened up for me another question which is always the case we sign you do this payment then you go more question than answers but and it was okay I'll do clients know who is next to them if we

18:30 are excluding the channels that we already know that using so they obviously must be other channels and this is again coming from the animal background was really useful because of course in any more science in any more ecology sound is one of the thing that we look a lot to and some say it sound is everywhere whether you're an animal a plant about tears only sound we are affected is it's it's always present and so that kind of started me in this trail of like okay I wonder if plants use sound and then of course I bumped into the SOTA pseudoscience folkloristic

19:06 aspect of this story where you know in the 60s I installed apparently scientists have said that you know like plants like music and although they you can see now that you know at the time maybe was useful because maybe it was coming at a time in history where those kind of conversation were really needed to bring attention back to nature but then if we look at it now we can really appreciate it the idea were probably good but the approach was not so good and so do you know the infamous the

19:41 secret life of plan to which it's a nightmare for anybody that does any of these work now because people assume that that's what you are doing anything it is not what we are doing unfortunately those studies where as I said maybe yeah years were good but the approach was not scientific really because it cannot be replicated the methodology is not explained enough to be able to even try to replicate this stuff so and besides you know when you're talking about sounding specific is I will sound a music or two different things

20:14 you know music is a very human concept and it's a you know it's a way in which we appreciate certain sounds put together in a particular way that makes you know pleasing effects or not to us but that it's got nothing to do with sound as the sound in the environment or the frequencies that are available to any most plants or whatever and I was of course I was interested and I am interested in that rather than the music I receive a lot of emails we want to play music to our plants is that yeah go ahead I'm not really interested I'm sure

20:48 your plants like smaller bed in them bits of and I heard his story too but it's got nothing to do with these so what I was really interested I was more than these pseudo scientific area well I was really interested and intrigued by the the literature from anthropology where you see a lot of indigenous was engaged in the relationship between the human and the plant in terms of sound and and they do speak of songs which either the the elder of the shaman or

21:24 whoever is singing to the plants or even more intriguing is the plants singing to them and then they are kind of the medium or the translator of that information and in the in many culture those songs are used to then kill the people call the rain and all sorts of practices and and that has been in the literature and it's been in our culture as humanity for a long time so you know the the secret life of plants is kind of

21:58 a new thing really in the context of the time scale and it doesn't really I'm not really interested but these on the anthropological ass bit of the story very interested and so I started exploring myself and you know I mean the the true method of knowledge is experimentation right William Blake so that's what I did is okay so if I need to work out where the dishes go any legs I need to go and find out myself and in in a way this is where then this book comes in is like it's been you know

22:36 it's kinda higher than the speakers of course this kind of conversation is not actually have with my colleagues and actually it took me a very long time to have this conversation at all because as you can imagine it can freak some people out and he can you know it can be easily dismissed as like she's just gonna loopy but I'm I'm not loopy at all I'm very grounded and I am a scientist and I think that's part of my job is to explore and experiment and if that means

23:10 going to the edges of what we know which I think that's what science should do then I got it right right yeah because this guy has details of science that you did but also your personal experiences talking in the shaman using psychedelic drugs vision quests I mean there's the quite a quite personal person personal details related in that respect so it wasn't until you started doing the research though that that happened so you started with her with the basil and

23:43 the Chili Peppers and then you went yeah yeah yeah well it's been like as I started engaging with the research these materials started appearing because of course I was searching and then as he started appearing and I engaged with the material more ideas arrived and more material arise then and so it became like a Thunderman then I realized like as the year went by I realized that these was all part of my science so I'm a field ecologist right and I was really frustrated in a way that a lot of my

24:17 science with the plants was stuck in the lab and of course he needed to be because we're just open in these areas and you can go in the field unless you while you're trying to look for and so by my desire is always been to go back in the field you know that's what I want to do the science because that's where things are really happening in the lab I can construct things and make them you know whatever I want really in terms of environment while the real environment is the dynamic one the one that is got all of the noise and the variation and that's really the juice so but then I

24:50 realize only literally recently as I was talking to someone else about the book and I realize oh that was Mike you look like my fieldwork was I didn't know at the time but my field was about sourcing knowledge and experience indirectly the environment with some of these idea have emerged and in see for myself what does it mean and what happened when you do engage with those spaces and of course I totally understand you know some some people would probably think that they're

25:25 just like oh she just went off and she was tripping and all of that but he's actually that sounds to me such an understatement because well emerge from there is the science that I eventually actually did and the science is now in question he's been you know reviewed published I know that I've done it if anything we might client work I've done more replication and more strict protocols than I've ever done before because I knew that it was I well you want to really make sure that whatever you're claiming is really actually

25:58 happening and not some you know wishful thinking or any of that kind of stuff so yeah so it's a it's gonna be tricky I mean I'm very curious to see how people respond it will be interesting to see I mean I I agree with you that it's really easy to dismiss some of the things that you're saying because you're saying well I took this you know ayahuasca and then I had the experience of speaking to the plant but then it on the other hand and many people have not had that experience I would hazard but on the other hand you describe you know having the experience

26:34 of thinking up an experimental design under those conditions and then carrying out the expiry and the data that's collected seems like good data so whatever your view is about what happened on those of those hallucinogenic journeys you had the result was good science and so I don't think you can argue with that at all and the interesting thing I guess is like that before people jump onto the judgment widen they should check because well I did you check yourself you know if you want if you're so cute and if you're so adamant about judging these as

27:08 dismissing it then first go and try yourself and have the experience so that you know what you're talking about but of course not everyone can know everyone should I'm not you know I'm not encouraging people to go in the middle of the jungle a drink ayahuasca or any of that because it's pretty hardcore so you know but the other thing though that they could be easily check is these theory of science and not just science but the arts and all sorts of other explorations that humans have gone forever it's like there's been the

27:41 involvement of some otherworldly kind of experiences I don't even know myself as to describe them really and I found it really difficult to write a book in the in that context because I don't really know I know the experience that I had but I don't really know what the real words of the most appropriate words would be to describe those experiences because I know that our society is kind of like it's really committed to a particular intellectual space you know it's a Western space and anything that

28:15 kind of shifts a little bit on each side it's uncomfortable and it's it's easily pushed away but just because you know it feels threatening to the space that we are comfortable in so so but if you look into the the science of you know anyone really that made anything any contribution that was worthwhile a lot of these people had some kind of experiences that we would define as otherworldly whether they we involved you know plants or other like mushroom

28:50 as well Oh simply like connection and being deeply connected to nature you know people that went off and you know they they spend time in nature in solitude and people I mean Darwin himself is like it was a great the greatest observer of nature that's how he did it but you know he needed to really when you read his work you can see that EVD needed to be putting himself into the roots of plants English in the shoes of plants to really

29:23 appreciate what a plants might be looking for searching for being attentive to and so these these need to put yourself in the shoes of another or in the roots of another or whatever it is it's really what is you know these experiences kind of mediate and then how you get there it doesn't really matter and in fact you know what I learned through my experiences is that whether it is the one of the most potent artisanal genic on the planet the ayahuasca or where there is a Vision

29:57 Quest which involves no drugs no it is just your own drag you're there Polly to drain stress of the system they really like it kind of cracks open that intellectual framework that you are encased in and he allows you for a little moment to see something else and and of course you know like I mean we again we have this idea that hallucinations is the bad connotation but it's like if you are loosen a ting because you are physically sick that's a one story but if you're actually

30:31 bringing your your mind into that space to explore something else I think that there is a very there is an intent that there is a very conscious effort to get there so the elucidation doesn't take you in sweeps you away and makes you non-functional in this world actually if anything I'd find it made me even more functional here in the sense that I feel I can make an even more important contribution for just for being able to see something a little wider

31:05 and it is important to note that a lot of these experiences you had were under the guidance of people who knew what they were doing yeah herself I mean and I agree with what you're saying I think I'm someone who thinks that whose do genetics are good for people that everyone should try it at least once yeah I've experimented with a lot of these myself not for science like you have it just for recreation and I think that breaking open the sort of traditional viewpoint that you have seeing another viewpoint whatever you make of it that's a different question

31:37 but seeing things from a completely different angle is is worthwhile and beneficial so I think yeah your honesty in this book is also admirable that you come right out and say you know these are the experiences I had make of it what you will but also the results I think are really interesting as well yeah I would have been pretty nervous if I were you right I think there were a lot of there's been plenty of bouts of anxiety in the process of writing the book and and and of course you know I

32:13 was talking to our colleagues just a few days there going ah you see I don't understand like people is gonna be really some people it's gonna be really upset about this book because it is a scientist bright in it but if I was an anthropologist if I was a philosopher if I was if I was an artist it would be no question no problem yeah you know I mean I've been reading the new Michael Pollan's book which you know he's amazing I really loved his work and I love him and great but he's like everyone is real course he's an

32:46 amazing writer and everyone is really like you know honoring this book I like yes the new Michael Pollan amazing work which it is yeah but um I mean that's what he's talking about he went often and when things explored for himself some of these experiences to work out and make up his mind and he's quite a staunch material is really or was and I guess through the process of this book he was allowed to see something else and kind of yeah open up his vision so um I'm interested to see because of

33:21 course science has this role still more or less in our society as a Western culture of defining the world right so if science says so it must be true and all of that and so for our scientists to ride these yes threatening certain perspectives and that's why I think the book in itself I felt it was kind of a duty to my science to write it and of course I know that in my compromise some spaces and some

33:58 people might not want to have anything to do with me just in case but that already was happening when I was doing the science so for me it's not gonna really change much you know I just feel well you know the way in which I see my work in general it's very much from an ecological perspective and what I mean by that is there for me things emerge in the interaction and relationship in the relating of things and so I'm just I

34:33 just brought the book but the book in itself doesn't exist as such until the reader comes in so then there is the reader and the in the writer meeting through the emergence of the books or each one I'm perceiving in a particular way and the reader would perceive it in another way and really the book is somewhere in between the two and so for me from that perspective then I you know I'm just part of a picture and whatever the other side of the picture is gonna create in terms of relationship between me and the reader through the book it's

35:08 a it's interesting no matter what happens and really it's actually exactly what I see happening in nature you know so I seem as this is yet another experiment well every interested to see how it works out and I yeah I think it's four it's pretty it's gonna be very interesting because there's some people will be threatened by it but I'm not sure why I'm not I'm not threatened by these sorts of things so I I am you know I have to so I do come from a more like staunchly materialistic framework just

35:41 you know to be put my cards on the table I'm open-minded about alternatives but I think that a lot of them I sort of want to take the position that a lot of this stuff can be explained in terms of neural functioning and really I would want to have that ruled out before I was forced to some other position and I'm not saying that that couldn't happen but I certainly a bit skeptical about some of the metaphysical implications although not skeptical all about the usefulness of the experiences and those sorts of things so I am kind of curious

36:14 about what your ultimate kind of position on the nature of reality is after all of this so you putting yourself as someone who's kind of against materialism or questioning it you know in a sense and I wonder if that if that was like how you felt before or is that a product of the experiences that you've had or where are you on that question I I don't think I'm against anything but certainly questioning but I'm questioning as well the metaphysical you know alternative I guess so I'm just I think that what I've learned through

36:50 these experiences in the last 10 years of these research is there well definitely I know less than what I think I know and that should be always my starting point because I don't know then all I can do is offer myself to disappearance of knowing and and as I said you know for me as a scientist experimentation is the the way in which I approach the world but and again going back to the objectivity of the science is like I find that science is

37:23 definitely a way to I find it very useful in the way in which I can express myself in the world through that science method so that is objective it's got certain rules I know what the rules are and I can I can follow them and I have no problem with that but at the same time I don't think that science as the the essence of science physics I thought you just broke up for a second you don't think the essence of science is well it's exclusively an objective

37:57 endeavor and so and I was trying to think that way and so in that sense um I'm breaking down for myself I'm breaking down the materialistic hospital science for me because I know now that well no there is other things that can play and in at this stage I don't understand them as you said we might find the neurological base for air or not great but so I'm just open to questioning rather than so even with the book it's like whatever I've written in

38:31 the book I'm I'm happy and want to I'm going to leave myself the freedom to change my mind that's a good scientific this is what it is what it was actually for them in the moment which I brought it this is where I was at but I already know because I had other of course like since then I had already other experiences I'm a other people I've had other conversations and again in these relational space that I think reality

39:04 really is for me the the some of the understanding that I got already has changed and some new stuff has arrived some other stuff is gone so so I'm happy to yeah I'm happy to be this open system because again I think they sound nature really works with an open system that keeps changing and flowing and fluctuating and and that's how evolution works as well like if you didn't have the variation in the system it would

39:37 just take the same but that's not the case so yeah I guess the reason that I was asking was because some of the things so you a lot of the way that you see your work described is as finding that plants have a mind without a brain yeah and so and in the book you explicitly say that you're not really interested in the can Excel answering the question how do they do the things that they do leave that to the plant physiologists or whatever much better at the job than me that's why that's but you know so I

40:10 would guess I was asking because to kind of get around that kind of not willingness to answer I mean it's got to be so I would carry through is do you think that these plants are enabled able to do these things because they have some non physical attribute or is that just something you have no interest in talking about no no I'm happy to talk about it like first of all I should say that it's nothing I'm not interested in the mechanics because I don't think that they are important or interesting it's just that I know that that's not my area of expertise so I'm not interested in the sense like don't ask me to do this

40:44 because that's not what I'm good at the physiologist are really good at this and it's the same as saying you know like you can have a behavioral ecologist that works on zebras but really unless it's going you're a science background it shouldn't really fit with the brain of the zebras you know trying to work out so it's the same it's like I'm not a plant physiologist I'm really comfortable in between the behavioral responses and now that is expressed and of course I've been really happy and this is that's why I mean this is

41:17 already changing because I am gonna be collaborating very soon already it started with the Sumiko physiologist – I hardly address those questions but so it's I see these workers collaborative work and I think again this is the only way in which we're gonna pull this off oh me as myself I don't think I can do it on my own so because he's not what I do and but that said so the idea the plants have these metaphysical aspect

41:51 there is no I don't see as our either/or it's not that if we find the plants have some chemical you know just like the neurons which there was a beautiful paper just published recently in nature they showed you know I think you saw with the response to in the in terms in the context of Defence and the response of the chemicals so that great science I love it and I'm like yes you know so I'm totally comfortable with there and see ya in conflict with other layers of reality and I think basically I am learning is I there is not just one

42:28 answer to the same one question and things happen a multiple lay in multiple layers and multiple levels so depending where you're coming from you know when I talk to the physiologist often they just want to know just what is the mechanism and oh you should have described the mechanism before you describe the behavior and it's like how does that work yeah that I haven't seen yet so but that's because some some people are coming from very strict and narrow points of view and that's okay

43:03 because they might be amazing at doing those points of view but they can't see anything else beyond those and I'm trying to open myself so that I can appreciate that point of view even if maybe I don't have the skill to actually engage with it indirectly so that there is a space for discussion first of all and through that discourse we can open a collaboration where grace so you got the skills I can bring this at the point of view and why don't we combine them and then we see a bigger picture and as I said this is happening and it's gonna be

43:36 really exciting I think because the people that I'll be working with I think that they're amazing and so it's gonna yeah it's gonna be good and I'm really curious as to see I don't know if he's gonna work but I'm curious to see where we end up very exciting so I wonder if I could ask you about the what I think well what was one of the most exciting aspects of your work to me which was the the conditioning kind of experiments so you you present some evidence that seems to show that planets are able to learn can you tell us a little bit about that

44:09 what the experiment that you're performing and what you take the BIRT results to be yes so I think you're referring to the piece yeah yeah Maes well so then this story is pretty simple I think that many of us are familiar with the Pavlovian bar in Seoul general Pavlov had notice that the dog would salivate before dinner and then he did not yeah didn't bail and he realize that like the dog doesn't care about the bail but if I always bring the bail and then give dinner the dog soon

44:42 learns they are the bail means the dinner is coming and so I start salivating even if there is no dinner around so that was pretty much the simple you know the better the bones of experiment is okay so can the plants do this as well so can the plants learn to associate something that is totally meaningless to something that he wants and then just the meaningless thing acquires meaning and so the plants will respond just like the dog to the bail so in my experiment of course dinner was light for the plant and and it took me a while to work out

45:18 which one would be a neutral a neutral cue that the plants really wouldn't care about because of course again what people maybe doesn't realize is like we're so focused on movement and we think the plants are stupid because they don't move but because it don't move they are absolutely super alert about also silk use much more than animals probably and so because they can't just uproot and go as that any more would do so they need to really be sensitive to a lot of things all the time to know how

45:51 to engage and and protect themself or engage with the environment appropriately so so that was a challenge because I knew the plants would be very sensitive to many things and is that ok so what do I use that they really don't care about and so I ended up settling for these it was a little tiny fan from computers you know and and of course I mean I know the plants are sensitive to wind and so I'm pretty sure that they would have detected the cue but the point wasn't whether they can I mean the

46:23 bail also makes a sound and of course the the dog can detect the sound but it is more what kind of value the dog or my client in this case gave to the cue and so then I tested it as part of the pilot study and you can see the the plant really didn't care about the fan and so there was i okay we got something here to start with so then what I did just like Pablo did with the dog I just presented the fan followed always by the blue light which was dinner and done that for a few days swapping it around because plants are

46:57 very good at like ah the life came from there so I'm going there and so I had to kind of trick the plant as I oh you're not gonna know which way it's gonna come and so really the only thing that is gonna give you the cue is if you work out that the fan is the only thing that is gonna precede the light and that's your cue and so so that's what I did and so I did the training for about three days and the training consisted in these fun light paired act together of it you know the course of the day and the plant

47:30 was a little peaceably which was planted at the bottom if you imagine like a why the shape of the letter y so there is a part here where you know the plant is just growing and learning and then if he has actually learned when he hits the the intersection and he has to turn one way or another if he has learned and there is only the fan available there is no light and he had learned that the light is going to follow the fan if you if you understood this then the plants would go towards the fan if he hasn't

48:04 learned then what the plant would do which is was also part of the or the pilot data well the plant would do if he hasn't learned it would rely on his instinct and the instinct of plants is of this plants specifically by all plants is to go to where they saw the light last time so when I did the pilot all my pee is like a hundred percent of my peas went to the light where they saw the light last time if there was no fan involved so that was the baseline you know zero percent go randomly like

48:37 wherever all of them know exactly where the light was presented last time and they see is the safest I mean he makes sense is the safest place to go that's where he was so it's likely that it's gonna be there again now when you train them and you provide his association a possibility to associate the fan with the light then in two different I had two case scenario by like between sixty and seventy percent of the plants actually turn away from that instinctual response and they trust something that

49:11 you know really didn't have any meaning and suddenly now it does and then it's huge because it means that they are there there is a decision there there is a choice as I these will be going to where I saw the light last time would be the safest thing to do but I actually know that that's not the case I know that this fan that didn't mean anything to me at the beginning nice got some meaning and suddenly spiral it's got value so which of course implies that the plants is not only you know kind of calculating what is worthwhile and what

49:45 is not but there is a value associated to things and it doesn't have a brain which of course is suggest that you know this is possible it can be done this kind of behavioral especially can be done without a brain it doesn't have neurons or nervous system so that's not facilitated by these structures so what other ways the plants is doing this I don't know and that's the part of the mechanistic question that I did to the physiologist but but he's doing it and that was for me the the thing that it

50:18 was like oh my god they're doing it they know so then that I mean you described in the book that there was a period of time where you thought that this was failing because only like half of them were going towards the conditioned stimulus and as it was kind of a revolution revelatory moment when you realized yeah yeah because I was in the LA and after you know I dunno the part a little studies I would and then I did I started doing the actual experimental runs and after two weeks and again the I received a lot of emails especially from

50:53 kids from the schools and yeah we want to do your experiment for the for a science fair know why or not is it actually it looks neat and all clean but he's actually I again and I don't see kids doing it you know like it's actually not as simple as it looks but basically after two weeks of intense trial in and light training these peas and what I found was oh there is only just above half going towards the fan which of course if you are

51:27 assuming the the baseline is 50/50 because you've got a 50% chance to go either way then it's not significant and there is no result and that thing was the first thing that I thought and I think that that was the first thing many of my colleagues would think and in fact one of the review for the papers was exactly his point is that oh but this is not significant and then I understood exactly where this person was that because I was there as well at some point and then the moment that really clicked was exactly when I was just I just decided I was gonna dismantle

52:01 everything okay this is not working you know I'm just doing the zoo jackford and I'm not getting anything okay plants can't do it you know and so I went in the lab that day and this is what I was describing in the book I went in the lab that day like really I was just gonna go there to dismantle everything and instead what happened was that something you know as I well I walked in the room which is all in darkness something just said in my head which I just check him at the time check again and so I looked in like what you know what is it that

52:35 I'm supposed to see and I looked in and I have no idea again that those moments I think they occur in science all the time but they're those moments are like oh my god it is working and and it is working meant oh my god my own bias in my own way of thinking about this as totally obscured what was actually presented and worried what I mean by this is like many of us when we do this kind of experiment

53:11 when there is a choice between IOB we are trying to assume that the baseline is 50/50 but my pilot data my actual piece told me that that's not true like the actual peas were showing me that no we're gonna go a hundred percent of the time to the light so there is no such a P that that's fifty fifty those peas don't exist they are an eye pathetical baseline that doesn't exist and these I think it was really important for me because again it just flagged the the importance of look of what nature does

53:46 there of the rides what your ideas are or what nature should be or should be doing and so that is your base that's where you start from not the other way around and so and so then suddenly you're correcting me like oh my god you know yeah the peas are actually going a hundred percent of the time to the light so for them to go against that and the majority now is going on the other way just because of a fan it's like this is a this is huge this is change is like yeah it's a it's a change is a

54:19 comparison between my sixty seventy percent against zero because none of them would ever do that so yeah I don't know how it happens very happens I guess yeah so one of the questions that I have so is I mean I think that that's pretty good evidence that there's some kind of pairing of the stimulus going on yeah between the fan and the and the like and we know that kind of Pavlovian conditioning is universal amongst all animals I mean every kind of animal on earth shows this kind of conditioning so I from an evolutionary point of view I

54:51 wouldn't find it all that surprising that is that plants are doing it as well what I mean demonstrating it's a different issue but I mean conceptually it kind of makes sense that we didn't show it animals don't show magically one day we kind of came from you know built on similar things but the so I agree with all that the question I have though is that this kind of conditioning is is often thought of as unconscious it's done automatically kind of mechanistically there's no real awareness that it's going on when you're being conditioned

55:25 in this way and so this showing that the plants are able to do this shows that they are processing information or something of that sort but does it show that they're aware that they're conscious that's where I guess I would be a little more skeptical because that's not the way it's typically presented in cognitive psychology so I'm wondering what your take on that would be yeah well first of all for me there is a difference between awareness and consciousness to be aware to be somehow be attentive to your environment is one story and I think that this is what you

56:00 know you cannot not pay attention and learn associations you are kind of you know you need to be aware of what's happening around you to be able to learn and so for me saying that the plants is aware of the of the fan and the light and is doing whatever is doing irresponsible I don't have any problem with that from this perspective consciousness consciousness is the C word it's a swear word so loaded from all perspective is like you talk about

56:37 consciousness in science and the first thing that people think is like you need to have a brain consciousness is in the brain is I I don't know about that it's like it seems such a restrictive way of seeing it and maybe that's right but I don't know like in and starting from there and excluding a priori any other possibility I find it very dangerous so for me a neuro center though cerebral centroid consciousness now may be suspicious it sounds a very human way of describing things because we have a brain and even for our own consciousness

57:09 I don't believe that it's just there but you know that is open you know I don't really have an answer and I think nobody actually become so mechanistic sin our nothing wrong with that but is like a we need to come to mechanistic thing look into one neuron and describe consciousness based on the one urine but again for me just from the perspective that I come from is ID to me I don't subscribe to a constructivist approach

57:46 move to an ecological approach which means that there is this relationship so a neuron on his own it's just a cell on his own it's like if I take you away and put Yuna in a room you're still the human okay but you're not the human the full human the full human is you with your environment your relationship your food your you know everything around you so I'm very skeptical of the science that is claiming to study consciousness not that they are describing it but to study culture know trying to find consciousness when they're looking at

58:20 these very reductive spaces and in isolation as well on the other side of course I'm always like oh no where we are you are you get I've seen them but and you can't stop it it's like when the media in particular takes your work and suddenly your plants are telepathic and they and I mean my own experience is my personal experiences suggest me that that might be the case as well but it's not my science you know I don't have any

58:55 way to test that as a scientist so I would never claim that it's as my personal experience I can claim whatever I want because they're just experiences and maybe they will inform how I approach my question as a scientist but as the scientist is like I don't know I never claimed there and I have no way to test there and so from that perspective saying the plants are conscious to me is the same as saying the human is conscious so we don't know really what consciousness is even for ourselves we

59:29 have plenty of theories and you know we somehow again the the westernized intellectual lineage that we come from is so insist of excluding and precluding the possibility of added systems of thinking and knowledge to come in and so if we really were interested in in consciousness well we should really look at all the text written in other traditions where they have described consciousness and instead we kind of seemed like to put that aside and and just subscribe to

1:00:03 the neural centric view at this time which of course it wasn't always the time the the same you know so for me I I rather allow the space often again and if plants are conscious my experience with them is that whatever it's here living inside me lives outside that you I experienced that with my fish and I experienced that with the plants and I think I experienced that with every human that I meet so if there is what consciousness is so there how it is

1:00:37 consciousness expressed then yeah plants are conscious as much as myself maybe and and anything else that it's here if that's not how we want to describe it and plants are not conscious but then I need to question my own description of my own consciousness too so I guess I'm making a long story short to make a long story short is like I don't really know what consciousness is I don't claim to know it I don't think for myself I don't think necessarily the consciousness is a trait or something that we can measure like here it is it's a concept that

1:01:12 describes a process and but again I'm an ecologist so we tend to go for what is kind of definition rather than the more mechanistic perspective of it so yeah sorry I mean apart from your own personal experiences then you would be a little bit hesitant to say that the kind of work that you've done suggests that plants are conscious the work that I've done only shows exactly what he shows so it shows that plant can use sound can emit sound plants learn they have

1:01:46 memories they can evaluate things they can make decisions if that is part of the expression of consciousness then yes plants are conscious if we don't want to say that let's find you what I am really saying more than consciousness as such I'm using another c-word and that one I'm very happy to support and kind of you know sit behind comfortably and his cognition because cognition is an umbrella that contains all of these aspects of

1:02:20 behavior from perception all the way to thoughts and language and in the middle there lots of those processes involve learning of many kinds memory of many kinds decision-making choice and all of these so from that perspective plants are definitely cognitive and then if consciousness is part of that umbrella then we my story as part of the cognitive realm of plants if it's not under the umbrella then we'd have to find some otherwise I'm definitely very

1:02:53 interested in the question and in fact with the physiologist that are being gauging with we're gonna see if we can find an entry point through possibly the the cognitive round and see whether we can we can understand what we have apply better by ultimately I just seen really all of these is a great exercise to understand our own consciousness oh we are we are it's always talking of the human more than the plants of the fish or whatever we are looking at to me yeah and and so as someone who's interested

1:03:28 in the science of consciousness and you know spends a lot of time and even works on it occasionally III agree that there's a kind of neuro centric approach I think part of that though is that well there's one thing that we're sure of part of the reason for that I mean is that the one thing that we are sure of is that were conscious I I you know going back to Descartes DISA been a lion in a lot of philosophy but I think that we can know with more certainty than anything else that we have conscious experience in the sense that philosophers use that tournament means you know that there's something that

1:04:00 it's like from my point of view that there's an experiential point on the view of the world from here and that I have that is not doubt about I would say some people actually I don't have friends on my to try to say it is doable that's I don't know we can talk about that if you want but I think it's from our point of view not doubt a bowl and so the one thing I so because of that I would say that the one thing that we can be pretty certain of is that brains produced consciousness and so if we wanted to do sign of consciousness we should start where we know it is whether it's in these other places is something that we would

1:04:32 want to learn and I'm open to it by the way I don't reject it out of hand I slightly skeptical but don't reject it but I think that the do the science though we should start from something that is pretty much familiar and given what do you think is that is that fair or what do you think about that I know that this is the the main stream of thinking that we are experiencing at the moment but I don't necessarily subscribe to that I think that yeah that's cool right you know but to think that the brain produces I don't think the

1:05:05 consciousness is produced by the brain I actually seen is the other way around you know that the brain becomes the brain because there is consciousness but again we you know even when you say I'm pretty sure that I'm conscious no and I have an experience of what it means to be like me well again it's like but that doesn't actually define what consciousness is is defining an experience that you are having that you call oh this must be consciousness and so I have a feeling that to me in

1:05:41 consciousness which unfortunately again enters or interfaces with another area of society which yeah it's very tricky to navigate and not fall into that or not being put into that but you know like all the kind of New Age view of consciousness and people use the word very freely and literally and and all of that and it becomes to me becomes very dangerous because he loses meaning and any kind of bundles are like you just take a bit of quantum physics you take

1:06:15 up your neuroscience you just watch it then here you go doesn't really advance anything in terms of understanding or any of that which of course is very different from reading texts from you know ancient tradition which have to me have done a very experiential exploration of what consciousness might be so you know there are all these different layers and then of course go the our corner science on one corner and so again I don't think when you you know if you if anybody does any

1:06:50 meditation for several you know for a long time you will know that and even you know the neuroscientists that have described the processing of the brain for meditators is like yeah that's how through meditation you know they can improve or change the dynamic of the brain why there is not consciousness that's the for me that is what the results of meditation practice does and it's not that the brain is created there

1:07:27 but is being affected by so to me again there is what you described is only after the story basically there is the other half where the brain is actually being changed as well as much as this creating is also being created and so the constant flip-flop of like on one side is the object of the subject of consciousness and on the other side he creates conscious experience and but unfortunately what I see a lot in the

1:08:00 neuroscience is like that the second part is not is not taken into account and so become then very cerebral centric when well I mean I I agree with what you're saying but it you could still be so if the if consciousness is something in the brain then it the brain is just affecting itself I mean when when you meditate or when consciousness affects the Brinks I agree it's undeniable that consciousness affects the brain I would say but I don't know if that suggests all by itself that there's that it's somehow separate from the brain yeah but yeah and I guess that's again it brings

1:08:35 us to the point of like well if consciousness E is produced by the brain well surely we looked at the brain much where is it what is it well I'd say we've only looked at it really seriously for less than a hundred years but I agree with you what's so obvious that the brain is producing his eye okay where is it is a good what I'm trying to say is like that we are actually assuming a lot yeah and and then based on this assumption we are making them into life facts and in fact we don't really know and that's the only

1:09:09 fact that is actually seems to be real here so if we don't know it will be much safer to consider all possibilities as much as possible all at the same time I mean try it like stuck into light no it's in the brain and if that's the case that's only what we are looking and therefore by automatically saying that we are excluding everyone else from being conscious everyone else it doesn't have a brain but we could be so wrong and also what is very dangerous about this attitude from my neighbor environmental perspective is that by

1:09:43 saying there we are saying that everything else is pretty much objectify Bo because they're not conscious anyway and so we can use and abuse this view to me which is a modern view is very dangerous because it sounds very much arising from a particular culture which has driven industrialization and has taken us to the point where we are at in terms of environmental crisis right now and I'm not saying that all for the good

1:10:17 of the planets which we should just grant consciousness to everyone so that we save the world nobody's eye by excluding and precluding that from being the case a priori without even really doing the science to test whether that is actually the case very dangerous and he's right just reiterate in a particular attitude that then spills over into the into culture politics and how we behave and so then he slightly kind of grants and it kind of said that it's okay to behave in

1:10:51 particular way and he excludes us from our moral and ethical an ego legal responsibility towards others yeah no I think that's an important point it went anytime a theory becomes unchallengeable that's bad for science yeah and so if you're if you just automatically rule out the other perspective without like you say doing the work on it then I think that's definitely bad well I wasn't suggesting that I was merely suggesting that one what I thought of as a reason why a lot

1:11:25 of science of consciousness starts with a neuro centric perspective was because we're reasonably sure that there's constant consciousness and the brain are related in us but I agree with everything else that you were saying that if we without doing serious work it's it doesn't make sense to exclude these other things like plants being conscious although you know and and you know by the way I teach this stuff a lot of students are very open to the idea that plants are conscious whenever I bring that up there like yeah duh and you have to try to convince them that maybe not as opposed to come but so I agree with what you're saying

1:12:00 what I was wondering though is whether the science that you're doing right now bears on that question so what I was suggesting is that I thought that this shows that plants are way more sophisticated we thought but I don't see it that is showing that plants are conscious no I'm not saying that it couldn't be shown I was just wondering what your own view about what the work was yeah yeah yeah yeah I know I know I totally agree with what you just said is like I've been tested for that right you know of course by opening the case of well they're more sophisticated as then

1:12:35 we saw is opening the question of like oh could they be and we haven't looked right exactly and there's been this attitude for a long time that it would be silly to look and not I think it's pernicious yeah can we actually ask the question right nicely and then we'll see and as I said before I'm open to whatever is the answer but can we at least ask the question and then decide after you know after we have checked and after we have tried rather than a priori and deciding that not this is not the case and it's like well we don't know

1:13:08 really and another thing that I guess there I think would be worthwhile pointing out is that you know we you know we're talking about our consciousness as it's in the brain but you know we also have body consciousness we have all sorts of other consciousness types that we discuss and talk about and and you know so what kind of content again what kind of consciousness really are we talking about and and if they are different type of consciousness if

1:13:42 that's the case then could it be that plants have a plant consciousness there might be really different from human consciousness but is still consciousness and so then he opened again he opens up a much deeper understanding of different expression of not of life rather than like this idea that to be conscious is so important and it has to be in a particular way that if you're not in that way you are lesson automatically right I think that's where it really gets to me and so I think in my work my the intent of the the driver of my work

1:14:18 is not necessary to demonstrate our plants are conscious but actually I think is more important to demonstrate our amazing they are in the form of life that they are in you know like in their plant nests I don't want them to become humans I don't want them to become any moves I want them to be seen for what they are as amazing plants bean plants and and I think I mentioned that in the book one thing that I learned through these is that yeah because they might actually invites the human to be fully human as well you know instead of its being so contorted it is like we can

1:14:52 actually really understand the human better through understanding others better because maybe as often is the case you know your inner when you have a problem is often useful to have someone to look at the problem from the outside and you get these external perspective and you're like oh thanks I couldn't see because I was inside and so maybe it's the case this might be the case where we are going to understand better what it is about human consciousness that makes us human by looking at others and appreciating what is their form of consciousness in the plant or in the end whatever and again it's just an idea I

1:15:28 just let's try that is there may be work I mean anything I think that anything that gets people to respect life in general more is a good thing yeah there's really people don't generally I mean yes humans of course but then getting them to care about it anything else is really not help so I mean that's a kind of I know you I don't want to keep you around forever although here I could talk to you forever but I know your time is limited so I wonder we're sort of broaching these topics right now but I

1:16:02 wonder if you so and you mentioned in the book a couple things like that you know industrial agriculture or you consider to be a type of slavery for the plants yeah and so I'm wondering what kind of moral in general what kind of moral implications your your work and then also your personal abuse about plants because you also in the book called in people that there are certain plant people so that you know you said you didn't want to make them human but calling them a person seems to be something you know I can't even convince people that dogs are people so calling a plant a person is another step so I just wonder if you could say something about

1:16:34 where you think the moral dimension of your work comes in or does yeah I to the person is not necessarily referring to that again that's a very it's a very westernized version of what we you know what we see our we see the world because person doesn't have to be human you know there is human person and then there is any more about the kind person and then there is plant for some people and so that's not making the you the plant that human is just making a person and the

1:17:08 reason why personhood is important is because we give rights persons yeah so it's a you know it's a kind of subversive way I do like you should consider this so then you should consider are you as the human person impinge on someone else's rights which might not be a human person but still is a person and has it does have rights of his own just because it is here you know and so yeah the work like from an environmental perspective and now we

1:17:41 approach nature and are we interact with nature even you know from utilitarian perspective it's an important one and again the solution I don't have like a quick fix or whatever solution and I think that if I did the world would be already different but you know I think that we are still working in general as what I did learn from and I don't want to romanticize them but what I did learn from many of the

1:18:14 indigenous people that I interacted with from different cultures including here in the US you know like it's again it's about the relating it's not that you're not supposed to eat a plant I'm vegan I only eat plants basically so but it's not that you're not supposed to eat plants but it's I'll it's always our if you think about your relationship with people you know human people it's not so much what you say or what you do for them but it's really how you with them in the relationship with them but

1:18:49 you know how many time you said yeah this person always does these many things for me but I really they really don't I don't feel that love right I don't feel they really care they're just doing things but they don't really care so I think is that case like it's not so much what you do about how you do it and the way in which you the way which you act really reveals you as the human being right and so for me you know is not valid or don't eat plants because poo beasties or poo poo Plante's they

1:19:21 have like feelings and they have whatever you know their conscience or whatever we want to say but it's more like come on be proper human behave like a proper human person in a proper human a fully-fledged a mature human respects life because he understands the warez scene out there is life as much as what the life that lives in here yeah he's expect any moves and we think hold on so you just cut out for a second the

1:19:56 eyeball came we say that I'm saying that whatever we choose to do when we when we are abusing using not caring really for the relationship and we do this with animals I mean you know look at the abattoir and all of the traffic of anymore that is like really atrocious but we do that we plants we do that with everything including the actual planet is like we are excavating these resources and and there's no real it's almost like we are so hungry and there

1:20:30 is no real relationship and that's the thing is like it's about re-establishing the relationship and then the plants can also can still be grown as a in the contest of forestry but is how we we do that is we care and I think that this is the key word for me is like doing we can do it that we are actually wanting to connect with this and who so when when whoever it is where there is the animal whether you're eating meat or you're eating a plant you really know what

1:21:04 you're doing so be fully conscious so if we are talking about consciousness and how the human is the conscious being here there will be fully conscious of what you're doing otherwise you're not conscious otherwise you are totally just a product of your conditioning which means that you're just responding to the environment because that's what you learn to do just like you know in the experiments so it's like if that's the case then yeah you're not conscious at all and so bring that consciousness grow that consciousness within the

1:21:37 relationship and that's how you show it and so then it doesn't matter what you do when you are eating your chicken or where you're eating your broccoli is exactly the same but you're doing it knowing that this is life supporting life that's all for me interesting so I mean I'm it's interesting to hear that you're vegan I'm vegan as well not that it matters but so am i I've been vegan for what I consider to be moral reasons because I think that

1:22:11 the suffering of the of a chicken or a pig always the pleasure that I get from me or would get from eating meat now of course I would be different if I had to survive and there was only you know I was living in a different world where that was the only food available but because I'm in a Western society foods everywhere for the most part and I'm lucky enough to have my share of it then I think that these kind of choices matter so so to me I would the moral question with respect to plants would be do they suffer do you think that they suffer because if so then that would I

1:22:45 don't think that I could go with just the caring because I would be very much against you know slaughtering the chicken even if it was done nicely for the chicken because the chickens you know suffering so I mean I don't know that you have an answer this I'm just wondering what your view about whether plants suffer what so this is something that comes up a lot and I hear people talk about with respect to your word it's like you know someone on the internet was saying oh you can't be a vegan because plants know that you're eating them they hear that you're about to come so I'm just wondering what your view about that is about a plant

1:23:18 suffering yeah well again it's a very human concept first of all so we as for when you describe conscience that we know about suffering and we can see the suffering of others and the further away they are from us that more difficult it is you know the suffering of a bee or a cockroach is different than the suffering of a dog right because the dog is much closer so we can empathize with that more so really again when we talk about plants they saw alien really

1:23:53 there's such weird things compared to what we are in terms of the form of life that I think we find it difficult to empathize on there but I I guess suffering you know if we think of death as suffering then you know if plants died and they suffer but is there is really suffering it's like we can die in so many different ways and so it's the same with then again where there is an anymore or appliance is exactly the same as I you know I

1:24:27 remember was when I was a child and my grandma would go to the market she would get the chicken living chicken she will bring it home and I was part of that process like she would just kill the chicken by cutting the neck she would take all the feathers out and then she would boil the thing you know all of that but the entire process it was like I was five minutes before the chicken was that I was playing with it you know and so that was I oh here is the chicken isn't it cool look he's running and you know doing things and then he became like okay this is gonna be dinner so

1:24:59 we're gonna go through this process and there was I didn't appreciate that but if I think about it now it's like there was a kind of ritual in the process of like okay so now that's this come in and she might I remember my grandma the the best the best killing was done when he was clean and it was just like okay you cut the neck here you do it in this point particularly because the animal will die straight away so again this is our wish okay I think it's like the chicken is part of like we are carnivores and you know for the most

1:25:33 part in and we might eat meat oh you know where my eat vegetables and so in that process again is is always done I agree with you and that was a sort of part of my reason as what to become vegetarian first and many years ago and he was like well I cannot engage I cannot be part of this kind of killing you know I cannot be part of a killing for the sake of it because that's really what it what the industry is doing and

1:26:05 he's doing in such brutal way they've got no compassion and no caring for the animals involved that's not human I'm not kind of human so I don't want to be part of that so but when I get my veggies you know I'm really so especially if they're coming from my garden those are the best veggies you know they're like when my plants you know my my tomato plants or my kale comes out or my rocket come after the arugula it's just like you're the best Rockets or the best Tomatoes ever and now thank you so much and when I eat

1:26:38 it I really I'm really enjoying but there is a kind of gratitude because in a way there is this ritual okay I'm gonna go to the garden and get some tomatoes now and so again there is a relating and the saddest thing that I think our society is facing is when you talk to the kids and they talk to you about you now chicken or whatever and they point at the at the team yeah and he's like our society has totally disintegrated any opportunity for these kids to have this relationship so they don't even know that they could be a

1:27:12 relationship and they're relating could change the entire spirits of eating the entire experience of food and there is no guilt because you know we are animals and as part of the system we are consuming some and we are gonna be consumed by some so in that context I don't see the concrete but is again it's out its approach so with the plants have pain with the plants have suffering is like a well I have pain and suffering too and if I see someone in pain and suffering I try to relate to them in a

1:27:45 way that can maybe soothe or ease their suffering but suffering is part of life and they you know maybe there is no way out it's not that the point is not to avoid suffering or eliminate suffering the point is like how can we manage and deal with suffering as part of life very interesting yeah I mean I've actually thought that I would like to go photosynthetic if I could some reason it's like and stop all the shopping list you just don't need to go there every

1:28:18 game just lay on your side for six hours um for some things that the market just is the treat if they yeah I'm gonna eat today well okay yeah I think that's a very interesting perspective and one that's pretty that's challenging so I thank you for sharing that so we've been talking for a while now I wonder if there's anything that hasn't come up in our discussion that you would like to mention or and the answer can be no but I'm just curious we can't fire your ground I guess I don't know if there any other thing that

1:28:51 you wanted to that's on that we didn't I mean though I think we covered all those stuff that mostly want to talk about I know that you're a musician and an artist I've seen some of your art I think it's really interesting and you're you have some videos on YouTube of you playing music with I guess you have a group just friends yeah yeah just friends okay well it's very cool music so is that something that you just do on the side or you trained musician or no I'm definitely not trying musician and no I I don't even know how to read music and just yeah it just happened that I

1:29:29 saw someone once plane and I was so inspired and I never played anything and then I was I oh I want to play that and that was a sitar and so then I just saw the video of you playing this attire yeah and it just happened that I then you know came across one as you do and and I started kind of teaching myself and listening to people that I really liked and kind of copying you know that style and learning by that and then more recently though I discovered the ukulele

1:30:05 I went to why and I heard people playing it and knowing the typical way of the ukulele but I actually playing as if it was a guitar and I was I oh my god this is so good and so I've been playing the ukulele as well and that one is been really fun because while with the sitar I was trying so hard to copy with the ukulele I've learned how to just I can only play my own music on the ukulele I can't play anybody else's and he's my own expression without having to be

1:30:40 something else or like something else yeah that's really freeing to be able to do that yeah so that's been really amazing and of course I'm hearing the u.s. at the moment and I have both I've got my ukulele and my sitar which is not very comfortable way to travel in do get asked at the airport if I'm carrying a bazooka and is I know it's not but okay do you want to see it because and so yeah I got him here and I'm always open to just improvise and

1:31:16 and play with people you know if he comes you know if it becomes relevant its it gives me a lot of joy and I find it very relaxing for my mind so they dance sometimes while I'm playing I'm they're like well actually now I feel inspired I'm gonna write this down and and so the music the music and also painting dancing science to me are just the biggest bear image so they kind of mingle into each other and they become one another and and then eventually you know if I'm lucky they turn into a lab

1:31:50 experiment if I'm lucky they turn into a song or a painting that's very cool I mean I'm always surprised by how many musicians there are that in the world of science in the world philosophy there's a lot of musicians other people you know musically interested so I used to organize a group of people here in New York we were called the New York consciousness collective it was scientists and philosophers getting together to play music together just you know jamming or whatever so if you're ever in New York and you want to play some music look me up might be coming to New York actually next year mid mid year

1:32:33 sometimes so I remember these please do probably my all my luggage again yeah what'd you think Karen I said towards bad I'm a drummer so it's a oh that's the worst job of all always laughing guitar playing about carrying their gear and I'm like liking the 22 inch bass drum yeah leader drum I've always wanted to play hand drums and you know I've

1:33:08 dabbled here and there but I just never you know the poly rhythms are very difficult on and how did it play like those drums so I have never been really good at it I'm a self-taught musician as well I'm not so know what I'm doing so I just listen to what I like and try to go along with what people are doing I'm gonna play these very cool well Monica thank you so much for joining me I really enjoyed our discussion I learned a lot from engaging with your work I think it's challenging and thought-provoking and very timely so

1:33:41 I really hope that people read this book once again that spoke to plant for those that are paying attention I really hope that it gains a wide audience and I think it deserves a wide audience now thank you for writing it I really enjoyed talking with you thank you so much so I see you a median ex year for some music absolutely