For thousands of years, flowers have threaded themselves through human life—into our rituals, our art, our language, even our names. We decorate our homes and altars with them, distill their scents, celebrate them in poetry and song. But what if we’ve misunderstood them entirely?

In How Flowers Made the World, biologist and writer David George Haskell invites us to see flowers not as delicate embellishments, but as one of the most powerful forces in Earth’s history. When flowering plants emerged more than 200 million years ago, they didn’t just adapt to the world—they transformed it. Through strategies of beauty, attraction, and reciprocity, they turned rivals into partners, reshaping ecosystems and making possible the rich diversity of life we know today.

In a lyrical, science-rich conversation, we explore:

— Why Haskell calls flowers “nature’s revolutionaries”
— How beauty, pleasure, and desire function as evolutionary strategies
— The deep interdependence between flowers, animals, and humans
— What flowers can teach us about resilience in a time of ecological crisis
— How re-centering flowers might change the story we tell about life on Earth

We live on a floral planet, Haskell says—and more than that, we are a floral species, utterly dependent on flowering plants for food, habitat, and survival. The lessons flowers offer—about creativity, cooperation, and transformation—may be exactly what we need to navigate a rapidly changing world.

What would it mean to tell the story of life not through predators and conquest, but through seduction, partnership and bloom?

David's book: How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries
To the Best of Our Knowledge (2020): David George Haskell on the forest unseen
To the Best of Our Knowledge feature (2021): Listening to trees as fellow citizens

00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:50 Flowers Remade the World
00:12:40 The Scent of Ancient Flowers
00:22:00 The Language of Perfume
00:30:30 Belonging to the Living World

Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.

David George Haskell: Flowers and the Revolutionary Power of Beauty

Wonder Cabinet