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The Sounds of Life: Karen Bakker, PhD on PYP 542

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What do you get when you combine a reverential attitude toward the natural world with a high-tech approach to problem solving?

You get the story told in Karen Bakker's fabulous new book, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants.

In it, Dr Bakker writes both sharply and poetically about a world humming, buzzing, whistling, rattling, and singing – in frequencies that the human ear cannot apprehend.

The inexpensive and easy to maintain audio recording devices that have accompanied the digital revolution are now allowing us to listen in to nature as she speaks to herself, and as her creatures speak to one another. Thanks to supercomputers, artificial intelligence algorithms for deep learning, and cadres of professional and amateur researchers, we're learning that many beings communicate with sound, and some of them may even possess – are you sitting down? – language.

That last word is an invitation to a fight at any number of biology conferences; unsurprisingly, human scientists have defined language – and even intelligence – in a completely human-centric way.

But whales communicating their locations over thousands of miles, and teaching their babies to speak; elephants rumbling subsonically into the savannah ground to coordinate mating and share important news; even mother turtles singing their newly hatched babies from the beach into the ocean; these and other examples of nature talking amongst itself, with us totally oblivious, are the norm, not the exception.

The upside of these technologies and the scale at which they're being deployed is understanding, potential kinship, and reconnection to the web of all life.

The downside is more complete domination and ownership, as we come closer to mastering the language of bees and coral reefs to fulfill our needs at the expense of others.

In our conversation, we note that many of the scientists who are taking the time to study bioacoustics and ecoacoustics are women, operating in organic time (“Kairos,” Dr Bakker called it, using the Greek words for leisurely unfolding, as opposed to the unyielding “Chronos,” or clock time) and having the patience and faith to listen for years and decades.

We also point out that many of these “new” discoveries have been known to Indigenous peoples since time out of mind, and that Indigenous leadership of the sciences might produce wiser, more useful, and far more sustainable systems and technologies than we've managed with the modern “command and control” methods of scientific inquiry.

Links

The Sounds of Life, by Karen Bakker

The Whales, They Give Themselves: Conversations with Harry Brower, Sr. 

“Residential exposure to transportation noise in Denmark and incidence of dementia: national cohort study”

SmartEarthProject.com

TheSoundsofLife.org

Dr Howie Jacobson

This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).

My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.

Here are three gigs that I do:

1. Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation

I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high  performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.

At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.

My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.

2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance

I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.

We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.

The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.

3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams

I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.

So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.

You CAN Change Other People!

Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.

What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.

Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.

 

Music

The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.

It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.

You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.

Gratitudes

Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.

Disclosure

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1 comment on “The Sounds of Life: Karen Bakker, PhD on PYP 542

  1. Marian Blum says:

    I listened to this interview on my commute. Couldn’t wait to get home and tell my partner about the coral, the whales, the turtles, and the elephants!! Cutting edge tech is finally demonstrating what indigenous people knew long ago, and sensitive modern folks like your listeners have intuited. Of course the world is teeming with intelligence beyond our imaginings! The question is: what will we do about it? We need a sea change in human consciousness. I know this book, and your podcast, are helping. Thank you, Howie, for another enlightening conversation!

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