Meet The Greatest Plant Neurobiologist You've Never Heard Of

About the conversation

🧠 THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF THE GIANT'S SHOULDER FAMILY Here is the full, ad free version of my conversation with František Baluška. František Baluška is the cell biologist who helped turn plant intelligence from a fringe idea into a field. At the University of Bonn he co-organised the first Symposium on Plant Neurobiology, and his lab showed that the same anaesthetics that knock humans out stop a Venus flytrap from snapping shut. With Arthur Reber and William Miller he co-wrote The Sentient Cell, which argues that cognition didn't begin with brains, but with the very first cell. Expect to learn: - The Anaesthetised Flytrap: why plants go under with the same drugs that knock us out - The Addicted Ants: how acacia trees hook their bodyguards so they refuse any other food - The Root Brain: Darwin's idea that every root tip acts like a mini brain - The Self-Assembling Animal: separate every cell of a hydra and it rebuilds itself - The Lost Cancer Cell: why tumours may be cells that have lost their map of the body GS EPISODES MENTIONED Michael Levin - Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM William B. Miller Jr. - Meet The Scientist Proving Your Cells Are Conscious and Intelligent: https://youtu.be/xrV5oGyyKSI Denis Noble - Evolution Has Purpose, Cell Consciousness & Why The Last 70 Years of Genetics Is Wrong: https://youtu.be/xqw-DaWVK24 Philip Ball - "Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought": https://youtu.be/9SseGx0R0fY GUEST LINKS University of Bonn (IZMB) Group Page: https://www.izmb.uni-bonn.de/en/plant-cell-biology-1/ag-baluska The Sentient Cell (2023): https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-sentient-cell-9780198873211 Anaesthetics Stop Plant Organ Movements (Annals of Botany, 2018): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6215046/ Senomic View of the Cell: Senome versus Genome (2018): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6132427/ The Third Way of Evolution: https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/people/view/frantisek-baluska LISTEN ON Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249 SKOOL Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about FOLLOW EVAN https://x.com/evan_mcgl TIMESTAMPS 0:00:00 Trailer 0:02:26 From Plant Roots To The Very First Cell 0:05:37 Plants vs Humans: Different In Scale, Not Kind 0:08:59 How Plants Turn Caterpillars Into Cannibals 0:10:08 The Tree That Gets Ants Addicted 0:11:20 Blind Biochemistry Or Real Cognition? 0:13:16 Do Cells Choose Their Own Mutations? 0:17:31 The Senome: The Cell's Missing Layer 0:21:49 "What Is Living Can Be Anaesthetised. The Rest Is Dead." 0:25:33 Wounded Plants Anaesthetise Themselves 0:26:56 How Do You Know A Daffodil Is Knocked Out? 0:33:57 The Field Science Tried To Shut Down 0:35:19 Darwin's Root-Brain Hypothesis 0:36:49 Roots That Swarm Like Birds 0:38:45 Underground Plant Wars 0:39:25 The Fungal Internet 0:45:04 Could AI Let Us Talk To Plants? 0:47:54 Cell Sentience vs Human Consciousness 0:51:04 Why Your Sense Of Self Is An Illusion 0:54:57 The Animal That Rebuilds Itself From Loose Cells 0:59:40 Your Membrane Traces Back To The First Cell 1:03:46 Heart Transplants And Personality Changes 1:08:25 Cancer Cells Have Lost The Map 1:13:09 "The Gene Outside The Cell Is Nothing" 1:14:41 Will Michael Levin Win A Nobel? .....Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com