Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who has proven, beyond doubt, that trees communicate with each other — that a forest is a single organism wired for wisdom and care. Simard found that the processes that make for a high-functioning forest mirror the maps of the human brain that we’re also just now drawing. All of this turns out to be catching up with intelligence long held in aboriginal science. She calls the mature hub trees in a forest “Mother Trees” — parenting, eldering, in a mode of mutuality and reciprocity, modeling what we also know to be true of genuinely flourishing human ecosystems.
Suzanne Simard is Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia. You can connect with her ongoing work at mothertreeproject.org. Her book is called, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
[Unedited] Latanya Sweeney with Krista Tippett
Matthew Sanford – The Body's Grace
Baratunde Thurston — How to Be a Social Creative
Reid Hoffman — AI, and What It Means to Be (More) Human
Kerry Washington — Acting as a Devotional Practice
Kate Bowler — On Being in a Body
Kate Bowler — A Blessing for the Life You Didn't Choose
A New Season of On Being Is Coming
"Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire."
From Poetry Unbound: Benjamin Gucciardi — The Rungs
Patronage and Love: On Being's Becoming
Vivek Murthy — To Be a Healer
Vivek Murthy — A Meditation for Moments of Despair, and To Feel Less Alone
[Unedited] Vivek Murthy with Krista Tippett
Barbara Brown Taylor — “This Hunger for Holiness”
[Unedited] Barbara Brown Taylor with Krista Tippett
Ruth Wilson Gilmore — “Where life is precious, life is precious.”
Janine Benyus — Biomimicry, an Operating Manual for Earthlings
Rick Rubin — Magic, Everyday Mystery, and Getting Creative
Isabel Wilkerson — "We all know in our bones that things are harder than they have to be."
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