Intelligence Without Brains with Toby Kiers
In this episode of See See by Ceci, Toby Kiers, one of the world’s most daring thinkers at the intersection of evolutionary biology, economics and ecology, takes us into the living web beneath our feet.
University Research Chair and Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Tyler Prize laureate, MacArthur “genius” Fellow, Spinoza Prize winner and co-founder of SPUN, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, Kiers has spent more than two decades asking the questions most of us never think to pose: How does a brainless organism make decisions? and, What is it like to be a fungus?
In this rich and revelatory conversation, Kiers reflects on symbiosis as the hidden driver of evolution, from the first algae crawling onto land 450 million years ago to a soybean root in a Dutch laboratory today; on cheating as a force of innovation rather than a moral failure; on the exquisite sensitivity of fungal networks that respond to vibration, breath and light; on sanctions that are swift, severe and ingenious; on what she calls “punk science”, research that crosses disciplines and refuses to accept the world as given; and on the humbling moment in Ecuador when members of the Sarayaku community listened to her describe her findings and replied: Of course this is happening. We knew this! This is part of our belief!
She tells us about her team, the “underground astronauts” mapping the world beneath our feet, and about fungi as a “library of solutions” for a planet in crisis: a circulatory system that processes some 13 billion tons of carbon each year, roughly a third of all fossil fuel emissions.
Along the way, we hear former Harvard neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander pose a question on the Cambrian explosion and evolutionary partnerships; we hear from Professor Katherine Hayles on the Umwelt, on actors and agents, and the uncoupling of consciousness from cognition; from ecologist Carl Safina on the cooperation between dolphins and fishermen and the worm’s first aesthetic judgement; and from choreographer Alexander Whitley on the flow states that technology can both disrupt and reveal, each voice opening a new dimension of what it means to sense, to decide, and to belong on a living planet.
This is an episode about the wonder beneath the soil: biological, strategic and ancient, namely the circulatory system that connects all life on earth. About the courageous shift in mindset to acknowledge the ground we walk on not as inert matter but as intelligent beings, capable of supporting universes above their own.
LINKS & INFO:
@tobykiers
@spununderground
@spun.youth
For latest scientific publications:
https://vu.nl/en/research/scientists/toby-kiers
We extend our warmest thanks to Bionics and the Wires for their kind courtesy in allowing us to feature the music selected for the excerpt by Jon Ross. Music used with permission and as a courtesy from Bionics and the Wires.
