In this Curiosity Entangled conversation, sonic artist and immersive ecology designer Mileece and philosopher of plant intelligence Paco Calvo explore plant sentience, sound, consciousness, ecology, and the limits of human perception.

Mileece has spent decades using sound, technology, and immersive ecological design to help people experience their living relationship with plants and natural systems. Paco Calvo, professor of philosophy of science at the University of Murcia and author of Planta Sapiens, studies plant intelligence, behavior, and the assumptions that shape how science understands non-animal life.

Together, they discuss plant anesthesia, sonic art, scientific dogma, anthropocentrism, panpsychism, pollination, relational ecology, and what it means to think of life itself as minded.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00:07 – Mileece opens with microtubules, time crystals, and a playful path into big questions
00:00:27 – Paco Calvo asks how art, technology, and ecology connect in Mileece’s work
00:02:42 – Mileece on art as an entry point for questions science cannot yet formalize
00:04:10 – Paco on why art and science should move in both directions
00:06:03 – Mileece on the responsibility of artists in this moment on Earth
00:07:02 – Using technology to facilitate people’s innate relationship with nature
00:08:07 – Why art allowed Mileece to discuss plant consciousness before science was ready
00:10:08 – Paco on plant anesthesia and the power of outsider questions
00:13:00 – What does it mean for a plant to come out of anesthesia?
00:15:09 – Mileece on watching insects, bumblebees, and the limits of human dogma
00:16:31 – Externalities, economics, and the danger of ignoring contextual reality
00:19:39 – Robotic Buddhist monks, anthropomorphism, and the Dalai Lama’s view on plant sentience
00:24:48 – Paco on human bias beyond Western science
00:26:37 – Time scales, empathy, and learning to meet other beings on their own terms
00:29:01 – Mileece explains why she works with sound and plants
00:31:16 – Relational ecology and the false separation between humans and nature
00:32:31 – “Every inhalation we take is the exhalation of plants”
00:34:11 – Sound as a bridge to the hidden living relationships in ecology
00:36:29 – Paco on relational thinking, pollinators, flowers, and coevolution
00:39:08 – Why the whole plant can be understood as a sensory surface
00:40:04 – Why science loses the relationship when it freezes life into snapshots
00:43:08 – Sentience, decision-making, and unconscious processes inside living cells
00:44:02 – Paco’s view that where there is life, there is mind
00:45:06 – Neurocentrism, carbon-centrism, and the slippery slope toward panpsychism
00:47:35 – Mileece on emergence, coherence, and life as a relational state
00:51:02 – Mycorrhizal networks and the question of who gets to be the “main character”
00:55:39 – Communicating with radically different forms of life
00:57:14 – Mileece on wanting to communicate with plants and building sonification systems
01:00:54 – Mileece reflects on criticism, skepticism, and proving the legitimacy of the question

GUESTS

Mileece – Sonic Artist, Immersive Ecology Designer, and Biophilic Energy Ambassador
Paco Calvo – Professor of Philosophy of Science, University of Murcia; Author of Planta Sapiens

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ABOUT CURIOSITY ENTANGLED
Curiosity Entangled pairs distinguished thinkers from different disciplines for unscripted conversations about science, technology, philosophy, and humanity’s long-term future. Produced by Accelerator Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to thoughtful educational media and long-term thinking.

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What if animal sounds are not just signals, but music, performance, and meaning?In this wide-ranging conversation, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg and animal cognition researcher and writer Justin Gregg explore the strange borderlands between music, language, animal communication, play, science, and imagination. Moving from birdsong and whale music to dolphins, narwhals, emotional support alligators, escaped zoo animals, and improv comedy, they ask what happens when we stop treating animals as biological machines and start listening to them as expressive beings.David Rothenberg, professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, has spent decades making music with birds, whales, insects, and other species while writing about the philosophical and scientific meaning of animal sound. Justin Gregg, author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal and Humanish, studies animal minds, dolphin cognition, and the ways humans project meaning onto other creatures. Together, they bring music, science, philosophy, humor, and curiosity into a lively conversation about what animals know, what humans imagine, and why the boundary between the two is never as clean as we think.They discuss why birds sing, whether animal sounds can be understood as music, how scientists study communication without reducing it to simple function, and why anthropomorphism is not always the mistake it is assumed to be. The conversation opens into stories of beluga whales, military dolphins, narwhals, prairie dogs, koalas, lyrebirds, emotional support alligators, animal escape stories, and the deep human need to find kinship with other beings.TIMESTAMPS00:00:57 – David Rothenberg on music, philosophy, and his unconventional academic path00:04:35 – Justin Gregg on sociolinguistics, dolphins, and entering animal cognition from the humanities00:05:20 – Scott McVay, John Lilly, Gregory Bateson, and the strange history of dolphin research00:07:45 – Teaching electronic music to engineering students and encouraging creative play00:12:21 – What makes sound music, and why streaming has changed how people listen00:20:04 – Organized sound, John Cage, silence, and listening differently00:24:08 – Why birds sing at dawn and why science still struggles to explain the dawn chorus00:26:34 – Birdsong, mating success, nightingales, and the limits of simple evolutionary explanations00:29:16 – Studying musicality in birds and why scientists resisted the question00:34:20 – Humpback whale song, beauty, and what science often leaves out00:39:15 – Koalas, lyrebirds, noise, distortion, and what humans recognize as song00:44:10 – Bee dances, prairie dogs, symbolic communication, and the importance of attention00:48:05 – Justin Gregg’s emotional support alligator story and animals as individuals00:53:55 – Narwhals, belugas, military dolphins, and Cold War animal research00:57:10 – Escaped animals, freedom stories, and why humans root for animals in captivityGUESTSJustin Gregg – Animal Cognition Researcher and WriterAuthor of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, Humanish, and Are Dolphins Really Smart? His work explores animal minds, dolphin cognition, human exceptionalism, and the stories people tell about intelligence, happiness, and meaning.David Rothenberg – Philosopher, Musician, and WriterProfessor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Author of Why Birds Sing, Thousand Mile Song, Bug Music, and other works exploring music, nature, animal sound, and the deep connections between human creativity and the more-than-human world.FOLLOW ACCELERATOR MEDIATwitter/X: https://x.com/xceleratormediaInstagram: https://instagram.com/xcelerator.mediaLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/accelerator-media-orgWebsite: https://acceleratormedia.org#AnimalCognition #Birdsong #WhaleMusic #JustinGregg #DavidRothenberg #AnimalCommunication #Dolphins #MusicPhilosophy #Anthropomorphism #Bioacoustics #CuriosityEntangled

Waste is not just what societies discard. It is one of the clearest records of who we are, how we live, and what kind of planet we are leaving behind. In this wide-ranging conversation, anthropologist Joshua Reno and geologist Jan Zalasiewicz explore waste as both a human problem and a geological force, moving from landfills and urban rubble to deep time, the Anthropocene, and the far future of Earth itself.  Joshua Reno, professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, studies the hidden systems societies depend on but prefer not to think about, especially landfills, disposal, and the cultural meanings of waste. Jan Zalasiewicz, geologist and paleontologist, has spent decades mapping the physical traces humans leave behind, from landfill strata and made ground to the broader geological signatures of the Anthropocene. Together, they bring two very different disciplines into unusually close conversation. They discuss why waste is both necessary and disavowed, how landfills reveal uncomfortable truths about human behavior, and why the geological scale of human leftovers is far larger than most people realize. They explore how cities preserve layers of industrial history like buried archives, why “waste as resource” is both useful and misleading, and how the accelerating production of waste changes our sense of time. From there, the conversation opens outward into questions of continuity, extinction, future readers, nuclear warning systems, the Fermi paradox, deep-time oceans, and what it means to leave a material record in a universe that may not care whether anyone is left to interpret it.   This conversation bridges anthropology, geology, environmental thought, philosophy, and deep time, revealing waste not as a side effect of civilization, but as one of its defining signatures.⸻TIMESTAMPS00:00:27 – Joshua Reno on landfills, hidden systems, and the paradox of necessary waste00:06:27 – Why studying trash reveals more than self-reporting ever can00:10:06 – Why many geologists resist treating landfill and waste as geology00:13:22 – The shocking scale of the technosphere and humanity’s waste legacy00:19:03 – Why pollution narratives are powerful but incomplete00:20:55 – Fly ash, landfill mining, and the complicated idea of “good waste”00:25:43 – Cities as layered archives: London, war, rubble, and urban strata00:29:23 – What landfill work feels like from the inside: constant motion, danger, and routine00:35:34 – Sewer epidemiology and why institutions often resist what waste can reveal00:39:00 – Future readers, lost continuity, and who might one day interpret our remains00:49:08 – Nihilism, speculative philosophy, and the spread of “the world after us” thinking00:53:12 – The Fermi paradox and whether civilizations accelerate into self-destruction01:00:35 – Nuclear waste, deep burial, and the problem of warning distant futures    ⸻GUESTSJoshua Reno – Professor of Anthropology, Binghamton UniversityAuthor of Waste Away: Working and Living with a North American Landfill and Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness. His work examines waste, disposal, landfills, and the hidden systems that shape social life.Jan Zalasiewicz – Geologist, Paleontologist, and StratigrapherEmeritus Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Leicester, Author of The Earth After Us and co-author of The Cosmic Oasis. His work spans geology, paleobiology, the Anthropocene, and the long-term material traces of human civilization.