Plant Consciousness and Earth-Based Storytelling
00:00
Joshua Cogan
Hi everybody. Welcome to Plant Communication, Earth Based Storytelling. I'm Joshua Kogan. I'm a photographer, storyteller, ethnobotanist. We have Susan Leopold from the United Plant Savers. We have Stephen Benali from the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative. And we have Joe Patitucci, just the man and one of the co creators of PlantWave and an artist and a scientist in his own way. And we're going to talk about a lot of topics up here. It's probably going to be free ranging and roaming. I'd also, at some point, if there are questions out in the audience, I'd really like to open it up to that because we really have some wise stewards and teachers and thinkers here. I thought I'd start just real quickly telling a story. In 2011, I was in Alaska working on a project that was not about plants, that was a cultural story.
01:03
Joshua Cogan
And I got surprised. Late one night. They said, tomorrow we're going to take you out to a logging site. Be ready to go at 5am and so they put me in a helicopter. At 5am they flew me out to a logging site. I'm a East coast kid. I'd never been out to a big logging site, certainly not an old growth logging site. About a half hour flight to Prince of Wales island in Alaska, we landed. I was immediately picked up by the site supervisor. He said, let me take you to where the active cutting blocks are. He took me up to the active cutting blocks. It took about maybe half an hour through some really tough blasted roads. And as soon as I get up there, I start seeing them two men cutting down a really big cedar. And this is a big tree.
01:56
Joshua Cogan
I haven't seen a lot of trees this size in my life. And I immediately start photographing because that's my job. I start photographing and they're cutting and I'm photographing. And then immediately, you know, probably about 20 minutes later, the tree starts to fall. If you've ever seen a tree that has a 13 to 15 foot base fall, it's a really hard experience when it lands. It sounds almost like you would imagine a dinosaur falling down. And I was very shaken and I didn't know what to do because I was scared to admit the fact that I was shaken to these loggers. And the man that took me up there said to me, if you don't feel something when that happens, something's wrong with you. So we are in the middle of a massive extinction crisis, an ecological crisis.
02:58
Joshua Cogan
And it requires a certain urgency of animacy in our storytelling and how we're relating to the world. And the reason we wanted to bring these folks up here is to tell stories about the urgency that they're dealing with the plants and the places they're trying to steward, and to see what we can learn as storytellers, as people are interested in these topics, to really try to think about how we see the world and experience the world in different ways. So with that, I really wanted to go down the panel and really hear from folks and a little of their stories. And I think maybe I'll just go from starting with you, Susan, because you're closest to me, and tell people a little bit about the work that you're doing.
03:42
Susan Leopold
Hi, everybody. My name is Susan Leopold. I'm the executive director of United Plant Savers. United Plant Savers is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1994 by herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, who was deeply concerned about the rapid interest in medicinal plants and where those medicinal plants are being harvested from. And so the mission of United Plant Savers is conservation of at risk medicinal plants. We're based in southern Ohio. We're a membership based organization. We have over 10,000 members, and we have a network of botanical sanctuaries that anybody can join. We have loads of information about the medicinal plant industry and how you can get involved by starting your own medicinal plant garden and being aware and understanding the supply chain in the medicinal plant trade.
04:35
Susan Leopold
For me, I have very vivid memories as a child of going out in my backyard and discovering a beautiful patch of lady slippers. And when I was a child, everything was alive for me. The lady slippers, the fairies that gathered when the lady slippers bloomed. And I remember I had this amazing science teacher in sixth grade, and he gave us this assignment to go out and pick wildflowers and press them and bring them in. And I was, like, so excited to have the opportunity to share about these pink lady slippers. And I picked them and I pressed them, and I brought him into class and he was like, you know, these are so endangered. You can't pick these lady slippers. And that was like a light bulb that went off in my head as a child.
05:31
Susan Leopold
And it's kind of, you know, guided my path with plants. So I am also an ethnobotanist, got my PhD at Antioch University. And I'm also a proud member of the Patawomack tribe of Virginia. And that's where I'm from. So with that, I'll. I'll Pass it along. And I'm so, it's so great to see all you here kind of doing this deep dive into plant consciousness with us. So thank you, Yante.
06:01
Steven Benally
Greetings to all of you. My name is Stephen Benoli and my wife and I, my beautiful wife over there, Lucy. By the way, today is her birthday.
06:16
Joshua Cogan
Happy birthday.
06:19
Steven Benally
So it's celebrating her birthday here today with her and talking about something that we love, Nature plants. Working with Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative which started several years back, probably about good six years. And I'm one of the founding members with that non profit organization. All because of our children, our grandchildren. Our purpose here on earth is to ready those up and coming and giving them what they need to enjoy and survive here and teaching them about all these plant foods, medicinal medicines, survive, how to survive and what they need to do to live here on this earth. I think the responsibility that we have is to assure ourselves that we are giving them what they need.
07:50
Steven Benally
And that when our calling comes to move forward way down the road, we should be able to assure ourselves that we have done what were supposed to do and leave knowing that they're in good hands because of what we've done for them. And so the whole idea of giving information to one another and sharing information with one another is for the whole, the purpose of just that, getting the up and coming generations what they need to take care of here. All that was given to us here on this earth came with a responsibility of taking care of it. And so with this Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative, that's one of the things that was really first and foremost in our minds in protecting this medicinal plant that we revere. For an example, the recent pandemic, it was a hard three years, I think for everybody.
09:14
Steven Benally
For us we lost a lot of people. But in that we also survived due to this knowledge that we have with plants. If it wasn't for that, I don't know how much or how many more we would have lost that were able to help. Knowing that when your grandson is in the ICU and barely breathing and trying to fight off this what they call Covid and offering and being able to offer him medicine to help him, being able to do that is something that you really are thankful for. And that's what we know, that everything, life is going to be good. But we also know that there's going to be challenges again down the road.
10:18
Steven Benally
And so we have to give our children and our grandchildren, even ourselves, if we don't have the means of having connections with these very elements that need that sustains us in a spiritual way, then we need to help one another so that we can get to that point where we can assure ourselves that we've done our part living here. And the last thing that we're put here for is to fatten our wallets. But that's what's happening that's causing all the issues that we're faced with today. So let me cut myself out there for now.
10:58
Joe Patitucci
That's. That's beautiful. Thank you for that. Yeah. My name is Joe Patitucci. I am founder of Data Garden. We make PlantWave, the plant music device. The reason I'm on Earth is to bridge people from the technological world, the world of staring at their phones, back into the reality of the fact that we are Earth beings in earth bodies. We are expressions of Earth consciousness in human form. This, any. Any idea that we're separate from nature is a story that was created in service to get people to work in factories and behave in a certain way and buy stuff.
11:51
Joshua Cogan
And.
11:51
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, so that. That's. That's what we're. That's why we're having this panel. And I can tell you that, you know, plantwave was created from a place of my own musical exploration. I would go out into nature and I would record sounds of, like, the forest. And I would always connect. I would always find myself in a place where I just felt really good. And I'd just be like, this is a really special place. And I would record sounds there. And I wouldn't take anything from the place other than the sound I didn't want to extract or anything. But I would go back into the studio and listen to those sounds and connect to that feeling of the place. And I would write music from there, and I wouldn't include the sounds in the music or anything. It was just.
12:45
Joe Patitucci
This is the feeling that I'm feeling and I'm communicating this. And over time, I started to realize, oh, it's almost like these. These spaces, these places are speaking through me, right? It's almost like there's this. There's this voice that wants to come through, that's coming through my being. And I started to ask the question to myself, like, is the same, you know, force or energy that inspires me to write music the same force or energy that inspires a plant to grow in a particular way? I started to kind of play with that idea, and I worked with an engineer who built some sensors so we could hook that up and make Music from it. And the first time I made music with it, which you can experience upstairs. We have a lounge upstairs that's like a chill zone, the plant music lounge.
13:42
Joe Patitucci
The first time I heard the music, it was the music I had wanted to create my whole life. And so that just reveals for me, it's like, yeah, there are so many of these special places on earth that we are just extracting value from. And these places have so much. So much to give.
14:14
Joshua Cogan
And.
14:16
Joe Patitucci
Yeah, and it's. And we need to have a relationship with them that allows them to continue to give. And that involves a certain responsibility in recognizing that this is a relationship with a being that we are connected to and that we are a part of the relationship with the earth is the relationship with. With ourselves. And so there's an urgency there. And so that's what I'm here to do with technology and bring this together. So thanks, y' all, for being here.
14:54
Joshua Cogan
Thanks, Joe, and thank you, Stephen and Susan. So there was a. Just before we came up on stage, Stephen said to me, he's like, if you're on the side of plants, you're on my side. And so a lot of these people are on the side of plants. I imagine a few people out in this space are also on the side of plants. We got some plant people in the house. So let's have a conversation together. Right? We're going to open this up in a little bit. I wanted to talk about just two topics. At first, I want to talk about the power of story, the importance of story, and the importance of changing language and how we tell stories. And then I want to talk about the ethics of story. And so I'll start kind of by saying this, right?
15:42
Joshua Cogan
To a degree, what Joe was saying about kind of being able to tap into the plant music. As a storyteller, you're always trying to get to the heart of the story and not let get your constructions of what a story should be in the way to actually try to understand what a place is saying, particularly with Indigenous communities. And in this case, I'm defining indigenous communities and let me know if this feels all right. But people that have been in relationship with an area of land since time immemorial, and there is a different level of relationship with place. A lot of the stories that Joe and I did over the last year were working with indigenous communities and trying to understand the story that wanted to be told and from that place. And then also the way we construct language. Right.
16:31
Joshua Cogan
And how limiting language can be. Right. So in Western science, Systems, we have Linnaean taxonomy. Even in Western language, there tends to be this idea of nouning everything. We noun the plant. It's a he or a she or an it. Even. Even if we don't want to use a genderized pronoun, we use an it. And all of a sudden, we've kind of removed ourselves from relationship, from this thing, which is kind of what I really love about plantwave. A lot of what I like about the work that both Susan and Steven are doing is they're trying to restore that relationship with the living world. Right. And so I wanted to actually maybe go down the panel and talk about. I know, Stephen, you and I were talking about this. Susan, we didn't have a chance to.
17:16
Joshua Cogan
So maybe I could start with you, Stephen, a little bit about telling me the traditional relationship with plants, as you understand it, and the importance of that relationship in contrast to how you see most Western systems in relationships with plants.
17:36
Steven Benally
Yeah, I guess the difference is that Western relationships, they can do this traditionally. It's where it belongs, its rightful place. That's where they belong. If were to be uprooted and put in somewhere else against our will, it doesn't feel good. Because in our history, that's what happened. All indigenous people, they were relocated from their original homelands. And they're all. Most of them are gathered in Oklahoma now, not where they belong. So plants are just like us. Fortunately for us, as the Navajos, our people were taken in the late 1800s, 500 miles, herded like cattle. Those that can't make it were shot along the way. And at that concentration camp, thousands died.
18:49
Steven Benally
But through means, spiritual means, were able to come to a kind of a treaty that allowed our people to go back to their original homeland, but was given just a portion of what was. And that's where we're at today. So these plants, a lot of them have been relocated against their will, and they're somewhere where they're not supposed to be. And so when you do that, then the health of it, the inner spirit of it, is it healthy? Is it working at its full capacity? And that's. If you think about yourself, ourselves, and say, no, that doesn't work. It don't work like that. At the beginning of time, when were all placed here with everything, plants and all, there's a relationship, a protocol that is set there for us to follow.
20:03
Steven Benally
If I was to go get medicine for a ceremony, there's a protocol I have to follow. And that's the reason why we are given spiritual names. That we don't call in public. I can't go to that plant and call my name, say, this is Stephen Benali. It would have no idea who that is. But if I use my spiritual given name, I would gain its attention. And then I have to make an offering to it and pray and let it be known my reasons for wanting its help. However way that it goes, it could be for healing. Like right now, it's springtime, and our people that have farms over there are getting their seeds ready and they're going to have a specific ceremony done with those seeds. You're going to talk to the earth.
21:13
Steven Benally
You want to talk to the light, the rain, the water, and let it be known what. What we need and what we want and what we're doing and help us to. To have a good. A good season and where we would have the abundance of food that we need for our children so that we can go into the spring. And so this season is the one that would control nature, controls us. We don't control nature. So right now it's wintertime going on towards spring. And right now we're getting our seeds ready and we're going to be planting, then harvesting and storing for the winter all the way around. And so in working with this natural process, the natural order, originally at the beginning, were supposed to be right in sync with the natural movement.
22:16
Steven Benally
And so as we're in sync with that natural movement, we're also camouflaged with it so that any evil, danger or harm that's out there will not be able to see us because we're moving with nature. Nature protects us. It takes care of our needs. But right now, the way that we are, it seems like we're just exposed to any and everything because we're not in sync with it like we're supposed to. And the movement here in what we're doing is to get ourselves back to where we can spread the message of what we're here for and what our responsibilities and our duties are to ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. I have a little granddaughter that's four months old, and I want her to have a chance at drinking from a spring.
23:21
Steven Benally
Not from a bottled water, but from a spring, be able to go out. Years ago, when we used to be out on the land with our horses, you would find a pond of water and you would have your horse drinking over here. You would be drinking right there, and your dog would be drinking over here. Your animals drinking over there out of the same pond can. That's not doable. Today, but that's the way it was, being in sync, in harmony with everything. You would see some bugs, insects on top of the water. You just blow them away, clear it and drink from there. And I remember that. And there was no health issues because of it. But today, you know, there's probably. There's a river somewhere here that goes through the center of the city. How many of you would drink from that? Anybody?
24:27
Steven Benally
So that's where we're at today. And these plants are the ones my grandfather says, you talk to these plants, take care of these, because that's the one that gives you good air, good clean air. That's the one that brings in the rain. They have a connection with one another. That's the one that makes the light just right for growth. These plants, they're the ones that are protectors of us human beings. It's our medicine, it's our food, and it's the one that is going to be there way before time. And when we're here, we do right with them. They'll be here for our children, for our grandchildren. And so getting information that there's a lot of plant people that are there that are trying to understand these relationships and to clean up the mess that power and greed has given and left.
25:38
Steven Benally
It makes my heart feel good to see that there are people really out there that are a different color skin than mine, that have an idea that nature is in charge, that we are at the mercy of nature and how we deal with it and how we work with it is important. And so maybe I kind of strayed off what he wanted.
26:04
Joshua Cogan
It's a great stray, I find, incredibly soothed. You're just, you're very soothing to listen to, Steven.
26:08
Steven Benally
So I say, but so your, your approach to these plants is very important. The approach to that and our medicine down indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative there, what we're trying to do to preserve and conserve and to protect is all for our health and our well being. It's not to make money or to gain anything, but to preserve something that is so important to us. And so in this process, not only is there that approach through your name, through your prayer, but there has to be a song with it. And that song is the one that vibrates and brings to life these plants. The water, the air and the helmets. It brings it to life. For the singing, the vibration, the rhythm of that movement of that sound is what brings out the spirit of that.
27:21
Steven Benally
And when you're able to, when it's able to come in sync with it, then that's when that. The powers of that particular plant comes into play and you take it in. And for an example, listen to this. That sound, that sound of it helps to bring everything into sync. So that's why Indian people, we always have a prayer. See, the prayer is the mother's side of you, and this song is the father side of you. And there's only. There's life. Only if there's a male and a female. Life will never happen female to female or male to male. It's got to be the opposite. In order for anything to happen that's going to have life, it's got to have that male, and it's got to have that female. And so the song and prayers go like that to bring out that.
28:46
Steven Benally
The inner spirit of all of this. And so that's enough again for now.
28:51
Joshua Cogan
It was great. Thank you so much. I'm going to turn it to you, Susan. I'll kind of use as a reference point because were talking about stories before and kind of the power of story as we do that. The photo we have on the screen was I was doing some work with the Kuna indigenous community close to 20 years ago, and I would follow the man you see on the screen. His name was Nestor. He was a traditional medicine person for the Kuna people. And we would always go into the forest to harvest medicine, whoever who was dealing with illness that day.
29:26
Joshua Cogan
But about a weekend went in, and whenever he would harvest medicine, he would walk up to the plant that he was going to harvest from, and he would tap it with his machete first, really gently, and he'd say, may I harvest medicine? You know, at this point, I'm 25, I'm fresh out of school, and I'm like, well, what's going on there? And he was like, well, how would you like it if somebody just took a machete to you without asking, you know, or just started taking something from you without asking? So it's a little bit what Stephen's talking about, a little bit here. And I want to. I don't know if that kind of kicks something off for you, Susan, but I'd love to hear a little bit how you kind of see relationships with plants.
30:03
Susan Leopold
I mean, for me, I really just intuitively feel like the plants are our ancestors, they're our ancient ancestors. And I think if were able to kind of tap into that legacy and that history, we wouldn't be able to. To cut down old growth forests like we are at unprecedented rates, you know, Just speaking to the biodiversity crisis that we're in. I mean, a recent report came out by Natureserve that says anywhere between 30 to 40% of all native species in North America are threatened with extinction. Which is, you know, something that's really hard to wrap your. Your mind around. But what we're losing is we're losing those wild spaces and we're seeing the landscape transform at such a rapid rate.
31:05
Susan Leopold
And so with that in mind, I think when people tap into that awareness of plants and start to recognize ecosystems and tree species and native plant communities and how they communicate, I mean, I think we're seeing this in a really positive way with our understanding of mycelium and fungal networks and how all these things interrelate with Suzanne Simard's work with the mother tree and understanding how when we have intact ecosystems, they're absorbing carbon, they're serving all these really important roles that are not only critical to the ecosystem, but critical to our ability to survive on this planet. So it's amazing when you kind of tap in and sink into plants as ancestors, the knowledge that they're providing to us if we just listen to what they're teaching us.
32:21
Susan Leopold
So that's really important to me to really express my gratitude to the plant world and to see them as ancestors and the long legacy that they've been on this planet for millions and millions of years before we came into form. So I remember, gosh, back in the early 90s, Kathleen Harrison was speaking at the Bioneers Conference, and there was an article that she wrote where she described how every species has a song, and that has so resonated with me throughout my life. And speaking to that element of when we sing to plants, even when I grow plants in my greenhouse, I play them music. I remember that book, Peter Tompkins, the Secret Life of Plants, that was like, wait a minute. Plants are conscious beings and we can communicate with them just like we communicate with each other.
33:31
Susan Leopold
And so, you know, just that awareness. My aunt, who is a historian and the tribal historian for the Patawammak tribe, I remember her taking me out as a child, and we would water the garden, and she would say, as we feed the plants today, they feed us tomorrow. As we feed the plants today, they feed us tomorrow. And so these are the things that I think have just kind of resonated with me. And it's kind of everything I do with how I live my life, my dedication to the work I do with plants. I'm constantly trying to be the voice for plants because I Feel like they don't have a way to advocate for themselves in this really changing dynamic landscape.
34:32
Susan Leopold
So it's like that's where, you know, the empowerment of all of you being here today, that you take a part of this and you think of ways that you can bring awareness in your own life, in whatever level that may be. One thing that's really beautiful about the Patawammak tribe of Virginia who were really massacred in the year 1666 and very few survived. And there's this legacy of these families that have carried through. And I guess it was about three years ago that the Patawammak tribe was given land to land back from that used to be theirs, you know, going back. So it's interesting that these threads kind of, you know, bring us all back despite all these things that have happened. And so I completely believe with all my being that we all carry this within us.
35:47
Susan Leopold
We all have a deep connection to the plant world and we discover it in all unique ways, but it's within all of us. And so I love that thought that every species has a song and that reciprocity of plants. Love being song.
36:11
Joshua Cogan
I was gonna, I'm gonna kind of pitch it over to you a little bit, Joe, here, but I hadn't. So I gave you guys the first part of the story about the logging story in Alaska in 2011. Right. And that set me forward on this commitment to do plant based storytelling. About 10 years later, I had a story pitch in front of National Geographic that they green lit. And it was a really hard story to tell because it was going to require me to get back on these clear cut old growth logging sites, which is. I'll just say that most old growth logging sites don't want people from National Geographic on those sites. It's not necessarily a good situation. And all these obstacles kind of fell out of the way. And this kind of builds a little bit on what you were saying.
36:55
Joshua Cogan
All these obstacles fell out of the way that all of a sudden I was invited to do this story. And there was a woman that was helping me at the time do that story. And I called her up and I thank you. And I was like, deb, they're gonna let me do this story. I can't believe it. Thank you so much. And she said to me, it wasn't me, it was the trees. Which is a little bit what Susan is saying here too. After I did that project, an editor said, hey, I want you to write up a thing called PlantArc. So we said this about The Nature Conserve report. About a third of plants, if not more little mess, are in threat of extinction right now. I mean, we are dealing with an extinction crisis we can't wrap our heads around.
37:33
Joshua Cogan
So for those of you that know about extinction issues, you can take all mammals, all insects, all amphibians, all fish and aquamarine alums. You can combine all those and multiply those by five, and that's how many plants are facing extinction. So plants are facing a level of extinction not even close to what we see with the other animal brothers and sisters. Right. We're also facing language extinction that is going along with that at the same time, which is something we should probably also turn our attention to right here. We conceptualize these plants, too. But I was invited to write this grant, like, write a thing. And I called it PlantArc. This idea that I wanted to go and document these plants that were facing challenges and extinction crises. And I submitted this grant. I was pretty sure it was going to get funded.
38:18
Joshua Cogan
I was feeling really good about it. Didn't get funded. And then a couple of months later, I met Joe and went for a walk, you know, kind of unbeknownst to me. And he kind of called me up a couple months later. He's like, why don't you tell some stories about plants? And so I want to talk a little bit about what your experience was out and doing some storytelling with us, Joe, what prompted you to do it? I mean, we know your love of plants and your relationship with them, but it's a big risk to say, hey, I want to do the storytelling right now.
38:48
Joe Patitucci
Sure, yeah. I mean, for me, it's always been about. It's always been about place. I remember I was. I don't know what I was. I was in college. I remember I saw like a. Saw a talk by the director of Vim Vendors, and he talked about all of his stories came. They were never plot driven. They were always driven by place. Characters emerge from places. Is. And so all these characters are expressions of a place. And that's how I feel about. That's, you know, that's kind of what inspired me in. In part to make PlantWave and to make plant music. People ask me all the time, hey, why aren't you releasing more albums? And I'm just like. Because my ideal way of connecting and listening is to listen to what's happening now.
39:35
Joe Patitucci
So I connect to a PlantWave and I listen to the music shifting in that moment. So for me, yeah, it's. It's always about. It's always about place. There are these places on Earth that have evolved to be these really unique ecosystems over the course of Earth's existence. And to think that it's worth destroying them to extract some, extract US dollars and leave this without being able to pass it down to future generations, I think it's just like a complete tragedy. And also the doom and gloom stuff doesn't really necessarily help inspire people to action in the same way. It can, it can, it's a good, it's a, you know, sometimes we need that, but I think we need hope. Number one, we need hope and we need to create space for people to have experiences of wonder and to reconnect to meaning.
40:52
Joe Patitucci
And these natural spaces are cathedrals that are here waiting for us. We've abandoned religion maybe in our societies and now we have these open cathedrals that are sitting there out in nature. These like untouched, the few untouched places that are left that are just waiting for us to I guess like honor them. And so for, you know, my experience, man, I mean when were out in Alaska this last summer and were driving through areas that were clear cut, it felt even more depressing than when you're in some place where it's like everything was paved over and it's just like Walmarts and Home Depots and Arby's. Like it was, it was as intense or worse than that. And then especially when we got, we found, were guided to this one place where it's like the last little patch of old growth forest on this island.
42:02
Joe Patitucci
We take a boat there and everything and to experience what that space is like. I had never felt so held by Earth. It was the kind of place where we have climbing gyms with big pads and stuff. Imagine being able to like climb a tree and like fall off it onto like a huge boulder. But there's like six feet of deep moss on top of that boulder is just like the comfiest, like most like playful. You can just fall anywhere and it's soft and lovely and it's like, oh my God, this is what Earth was like. Like, what the hell have we been doing? And so yeah, and it's really simple. You could, you know, the people that were, that had a relationship with that land, the people there, you know, they wouldn't clear cut.
42:57
Joe Patitucci
You could take, there's a certain amount of trees you can take and work with for your society and the forest will regrow. But when you clear cut, all of a sudden all that moss died. And when the moss dies, that means that the tree stumps aren't going to decompose. They're not going to be broken down. You're not going to create new soil. So you just have this, like, burnt landscape that's just sitting there. And it just feels like it's so sad and tragic. And it's like, I get it, okay. Like, human beings on Earth, we want to provide material comforts for our families. All of that. That's great. We've done a lot of that. We've done that work. We're realizing now, hey, guys, this isn't really sustainable. Well, it's not sustainable at all, first of all.
43:57
Joe Patitucci
And also, there's a dimension to our being that is beyond the physical and material, and it's beyond the quantifiable. It's qualitative. And the qualitative aspects of the human experience are as important as the quantitative and the qualitative. It's kind of when, like, Stephen was talking about, like, the kind of masculine and feminine energies, like, there's the masculine, which is a little bit more quantitative, and the feminine, which is more like qualitative in a lot of traditions. And so there's been such a. We've been so heavy on the quantifiable. Right. That we've. We've kind of lost our sense of feeling and meaning. And. And there's also what Steven said earlier about these plants. You know, these plants are taken from their homes. Right. Well, were also taken from our homes and put in buildings where all the lights are. All the lights are fluorescent lights.
45:14
Joe Patitucci
And we have to work, and all of a sudden everybody's stressed, and then they're on all the drugs, and then they're like, oh, my God, how do I feel better? Well, I'll bring a plant into my house. And it's like we're all kind of, like, stuck in this cycle and. Yeah. So I don't know. So going out there was just really beautiful. You know, I just. I want to create opportunities for us to, you know, to tell these stories. And I want to create opportunities for people to have a deeper relationship with plants and with nature.
45:51
Joshua Cogan
I want to just do another thing here, too, because we're going to kind of share this film in just a little bit. But there was this thing were at. Then the film will show. We'll have Dr. Susan Simard in it. And one of the things that you learn. And I'm wondering, reflections on this from you and Steve and Susan. But when you're in these Old growth. These last few patches of old growth ecosystem that actually still live are still unlogged. It's all living, but that haven't been cut yet. And you're in this river bottom old growth. So you're talking about 10ft of soil duff, you're talking about ferns that come up over your head.
46:26
Joshua Cogan
You're talking about soil matrices that are like undamaged, that have huge miles and miles, perhaps like millions of miles of mycelial networks underneath that have so much biodiversity in the soil that you can't even see. And one of the things Susan says is like, listen, these trees, they shoot up to the sky, but the mycelial networks allow them to do that. Because what they're doing is they're reaching up and they're converting sunlight to sugar.
46:52
Joshua Cogan
They're pumping that back down on the forest floor that's going out and feeding the mycelial networks, which is feeding the microorganisms that are in soil that are feeding the other plants, which are then creating the algae that goes in the rivers, that feed the salmon, that feed the bears, that drag the salmon carcasses back up onto the soil matrix and they decompose under the trees, that create more trees. Right. And the lesson of that, you know, and this is why it's important I feel like, to really like feel into stories of place, is that life is always in favor of more life. That seems to be the rule for me, that life always wants to be generative of more life. Right.
47:32
Joshua Cogan
And I'm wondering for those of you that are working really closely with plants, like you, Steven, you, Susan, how those kind of laws of nature are informing how you're showing up in your lives, or the things that perhaps you see when places come back into their fullness as you restore them or try to maintain them or steward them.
47:51
Susan Leopold
I know it can be really tragic to wrap your head around the level of deforestation or the loss of old growth forests, but I would say in my work that nature is incredibly forgiving and that restoration is completely possible. And often when we just step back and do nothing, nature just takes over and comes back with a vengeance. So I really believe that if we trust in the power of plants and we see the value of ecosystem services and we allow nature to regenerate, it's amazing what can happen in a very short amount of time. So I think there's a lot of hope in that, especially with the work of agroforestry restoration of prairies, allowing nature to reforest on Its own has a tremendous amount of potential. So I feel like nature in itself is incredibly hopeful. And there's a lot of.
49:17
Susan Leopold
There's just an overwhelming wave of people connecting with plants, whether it be in the permaculture space or whether it be in the restoration space. And there's one thing that I really want to just kind of highlight that we can be a part of the solution. And the more we interact with plants, the ability we have to increase the level of biodiversity. And that's something that we've seen over time. I mean, just look at the diversity of all the different types of vegetables we have, all the different types of fruits we have all of these things evolved because humans interacted with those environments and with those species. And when, you know, I'm really rooted in Appalachia, right, that's where I'm from and that's where a lot of the work that I do.
50:13
Susan Leopold
And when we go out and we see this diversity of all the different nut bearing trees and we see the diversity of all the berries and all of these things, like the reason why we have that diversity is because indigenous people were here for 25, 30,000 years interacting as agroforesters. They were collecting seeds and planting them. So in that regard I see our relationship as reciprocal and we have the ability to change the trajectory of biodiversity. So interact more with plants. That's my thing.
50:52
Joshua Cogan
Or is that. Was that a time limit?
50:53
Joe Patitucci
I'm getting a little, I'm getting a little time prompt. I know we have to, we're going to show.
50:59
Joshua Cogan
So I'll tell you what, we're going to show this film. This is the world premiere, guys. It's kind of exciting. It's the film we made with Susan, so and the Mam Tagila land keepers there, particularly Randy, who is the Moaka of his people, the hereditary chief who invited us on this land. And what we're really talking about in this film is the braiding of Western science systems and indigenous knowledge systems and trying to bring those together. And you'll hear some kind of, I feel like some emergent themes. I'm going to stick around hopefully Susan Will and Stephen will a little bit. So you guys can come up to us after the film. Just so we don't take up too much space and ask us any questions you have. I'll certainly hang out. We don't have to take up everybody's time.
51:42
Joshua Cogan
But I wish were in a dark theater. But we're not the cool thing. One of the cool things about the series is we scored the entire films with music from the plants, which I think might be the first time that's done. I don't know.
51:57
Joe Patitucci
It might be.
51:57
Joshua Cogan
Yeah, might be the first time. So we explored this whole series with music from the plants from that place that we made with the PlantWave device. It's really cool. So please watch and hopefully I'll talk to some of you later. And thank you for coming out. This is awesome.
52:11
Susan Leopold
Thank you, everybody.
52:14
Joe Patitucci
Thanks for listening to the Nature of Now podcast. That was a conversation we had at south by Southwest, and It's actually in 2023. It's been a while since I've released an episode, but I've been sitting on some pretty cool conversations that I'm excited to get out there into the world. You may be wondering, where is that video that we're talking about, this film that we're working on? Well, that was a. We. We showed just a short of. Kind of a work in progress there, and we have four different shorts where we're focusing on these two different people around the world who are stewards of the earth in different ways, kind of wisdom keepers in their own way. And we're looking at kind of packaging that in different ways. So we're kind of playing around with that now.
53:08
Joe Patitucci
We have some short clips on our YouTube that I can share in the show notes. And just please stay tuned to us because we're going to be getting something out there a little bit larger and just really looking forward to sharing it because these conversations are just so important right now. So thanks again for listening and catch you all soon. This episode is brought to you by plantwave. And unlike most ads, I'm not going to tell you why your life is incomplete and that my product will solve your problem. PlantWave will not solve your problems. It will give you an opportunity to tune into nature in a new and novel way. If that's of value to you, then investing in a PlantWave sounds like it could be a good idea. And if it's not, then that's totally chill. That's great.
53:59
Joe Patitucci
One of the things that drives me most crazy about the Internet is all of the ads out there that are just there to try to make me feel bad so that they can convince me that I'll feel better if I buy their product. That's kind of abusive and that's like the. Not the vibe. I didn't create plantwave to create any sense of FOMO in people. I created it to give people an opportunity to drop in more deeply into the moment. You can do that with PlantWave. You can do that without PlantWave. I'm not here to, like, shout on the top of a mountain saying, like, you need to buy this. But yeah, thank you for listening to this podcast. The best way to support this podcast with beta, buy a plant waiver if you know someone that would want a PlantWave.
54:44
Joe Patitucci
Or how about even this? You can share your favorite PlantWave video on Instagram or Tick Tock, or maybe even do a little duet with one of the PlantWave videos. But yeah, you can also learn more about it@plantwave.com and I just really appreciate you listening to this podcast and supporting it. And for all the people that have purchased PlantWaves in the past or are considering it, just know that I wouldn't be able to do this without you. So I really appreciate it. And this podcast wouldn't be possible without PlantWave. So thanks, PlantWave. Thank you, Plants. Jeez. Wow. I mean, the plants really are kind of the star of the show here. They're. They're kind of what made this happen. I can go way deep into that in another episode, of course.
55:28
Joe Patitucci
But yeah, thanks so much for listening and consider PlantWave. Check it out plantwave.com and send them lots of love. Peace.