Monthly Archives: June 2024

Zoë Schlanger THE LIGHT EATERS: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

Zoë Schlanger is an award winning environmental journalist and reporter with The Atlantic. Her book, THE LIGHT EATERS: HOW THE UNSEEN WORLD OF PLANT INTELLIGENCE OFFERS A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE ON EARTH, was published in May 2024 by Harper.

We are at a revolutionary moment in the field of botany, a veritable paradigm shift for those who pay attention to such things, and Zoë Schlanger chronicles the remapping of scientific frontiers, as one assumption after another is being proven not only to be false, but ignorant and arrogant. Along with the scientists she interviews, she explores questions such as do plants communicate with each other and even other species? Can they recognize and favor their own kin? Can they respond to visual and aural stimuli, store memories and learn? Are they conscious and intelligent? How is any of this possible lacking a brain? We asked about these and other questions when we spoke with her via Skype on June 24, 2024.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

‘Tiny Crime Fighters With Wings’: Bees Go to Work on a Virginia ‘Body Farm’ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/science/body-donation-farm-virginia-death-scent.html

Scientists Find the Largest Known Genome Inside a Small Plant https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/science/largest-genome-fern-plant.html

Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv223z15mpmo

Videos Show Ants Amputating Nest Mates’ Legs to Save Their Lives https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/science/ants-amputation-legs.html

A New Book About Plant Intelligence Highlights the Messiness of Scientific Change https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/a-new-book-about-plant-intelligence-highlights-the-messiness-of-scientific-change?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_Free_061224&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=63b1f92250183f0ae10c0ba9&cndid=72363063&hasha=84d21cdfe18d0cd11a658c9d53f6399e&hashb=06e188f77cae68a6da1a2a975a274177f3b8a307&hashc=00628266d9531298e9eb7ccaabcc24f623d796b2c5e9e46cfbdc3eb12203466e&esrc=&mbid=CRMNYR012019

When They Hear Plants Crying, Moths Make a Decision https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/science/moths-hearing-plant-sounds.html

Henry Giroux: Expanding Democracy or “Unified Reich?”

We were especially grateful and delighted to interview Henry Giroux in this last minute conversation, because he generously agreed to join us with mere hours notice beforehand, when our originally scheduled guest had to postpone due to illness.

Author and public intellectual, Henry Giroux, is Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy and Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest at McMaster University. He has written more than 65 books since his first book, Ideology, Culture and the Process of Schooling, was published in 1981. He has always been generous with us with his time over the years, as he published books such as Zombie Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism; Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories, and the Culture of Cruelty; The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine; Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle; America at War with Itself; American Nightmare: The Challenge of US Authoritarianism; and The Terror of the Unforeseen.

He last joined us when his book, INSURRECTIONS: EDUCATION IN AN AGE OF COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS, was published by Bloomsbury Press in January, 2023.

Bloomsbury will be re-releasing in updated form two of his earliest books: Theory and Resistance in Education, originally published in 1988, and Teachers as Intellectuals from 1983. We began our conversation by congratulating him about this.

Articles pertinent to this conversation can be accessed here:

The neoliberal university faces a crisis: This generation could change everything https://www.salon.com/2024/06/08/the-neoliberal-university-faces-rebellion-this-generation-could-change-everything/

Mainstream Media Obscure the Threat Posed by Trump’s Authoritarianism https://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-justice/disimagination-machines

Poisoning the American Mind: Student Protests Against the War on Gaza in the Age of the New McCarthyism https://www.laprogressive.com/progressive-issues/poisoning-the-american-mind

Silence Is Dangerous in the Current Age of Rising Fascism in the US https://truthout.org/articles/silence-is-dangerous-in-the-current-age-of-rising-fascism-in-the-us

Assassins of Memory: Lessons from the Attacks on Biden’s Forgetfulness https://www.laprogressive.com/election-reform-campaigns/assassins-of-memory

Trump told donors he will crush pro-Palestinian protests, deport demonstrators https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/27/trump-israel-gaza-policy-donors/

Ruth Ben-Ghiat Discusses Project 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnjdKuQAuq8&t=5s

Heather Cox Richardson’s Politics Chat: June 11, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EvFEjedw-8