Apr 18, 2026 · 1 hr 26 min · 13 segments
What if the defining revolution of Earth's history wasn't led by animals or humans, but by flowers? Are we truly individuals, or are our bodies and minds just walking ecosystems? Our guest today…
Mia FunkHostSadie DeBeerSure, I think I'll start with, this is just from the very first chapter of How Flowers Made Our World.
And I live in Atlanta now, and magnolia trees are a significant part of people's experience of flowers and the plant world here.
In front of office buildings in Midtown, my nose plunges into sweetened almond and tangerine, then resurfaces in a miasma of truck fumes.
The scent brushes past me too in the scuffed lawns of city parks and along shady streets in older neighborhoods.
White flowers the size and color of porcelain dinner plates sprout from branch tips of huge southern magnolia trees.
These aromatic trails dance like ribbons in a breeze, so I can never know when one will warm me with its touch.
By June, a large tree can have 100 or more flowers open at the same time.
When Tyrannosaurus stomped through the subtropical forests of the late Cretaceous, magnolia plants, or magnolia-like plants, had been thriving for 50 or more million years.
If magnolias were rare animals, they'd be corralled into theme parks at the center of movie franchises and central characters in thousands of children's storybooks.
The Earth's first flowers left traces of pollen in the fossil record about 130 million years ago in the early Cretaceous.
Most of the major groups of complex animals evolved 500 or more million years ago.
The first plants, none of which had flowers, came onto land at about the same time, too.
Within a few million years of flower's appearance, perhaps as few as three million, the family tree of flowering plants splayed into almost all of the main branches that are still with us today.
After this initial frenzy of diversification, evolution calmed down, producing new floral diversity at a more leisurely place.
Sure, I think I'll start with, this is just from the very first chapter of How Flowers Made Our World.
And I live in Atlanta now, and magnolia trees are a significant part of people's experience of flowers and the plant world here.
In front of office buildings in Midtown, my nose plunges into sweetened almond and tangerine, then resurfaces in a miasma of truck fumes.
The scent brushes past me too in the scuffed lawns of city parks and along shady streets in older neighborhoods.
White flowers the size and color of porcelain dinner plates sprout from branch tips of huge southern magnolia trees.
These aromatic trails dance like ribbons in a breeze, so I can never know when one will warm me with its touch.
By June, a large tree can have 100 or more flowers open at the same time.
When Tyrannosaurus stomped through the subtropical forests of the late Cretaceous, magnolia plants, or magnolia-like plants, had been thriving for 50 or more million years.
If magnolias were rare animals, they'd be corralled into theme parks at the center of movie franchises and central characters in thousands of children's storybooks.
The Earth's first flowers left traces of pollen in the fossil record about 130 million years ago in the early Cretaceous.
Most of the major groups of complex animals evolved 500 or more million years ago.
The first plants, none of which had flowers, came onto land at about the same time, too.
Within a few million years of flower's appearance, perhaps as few as three million, the family tree of flowering plants splayed into almost all of the main branches that are still with us today.
After this initial frenzy of diversification, evolution calmed down, producing new floral diversity at a more leisurely place.
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