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The cover of Entangled Life

Entangled Life

Merlin Sheldrake, 2020

A vivid journey into fungal worlds that reveals how mycelium, symbiosis, metabolism, and human stories reshape individuality, ecosystems, minds, and technological possibility.

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9 parts, about 22 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Reveals fungi as a kingdom that digests the world outside its body, builds soil and shapes most plant life
  • Changes how you think about individuality, intelligence and cooperation once you see bodies without centers and lives made of partnerships
  • Merlin Sheldrake pairs fieldwork, experiments and history while flagging where metaphors like the wood wide web outrun the evidence

Who it is for

  • Nature lovers curious about what happens beneath the forest floor
  • Gardeners and farmers thinking about soil health
  • Readers who enjoy science that questions its own language

What the summary covers

  1. Entering a Hidden Kingdom2 min
  2. Allure, Sensing, and Chemical Relations2 min
  3. Bodies without Centers3 min
  4. The Intimacy of Strangers2 min
  5. Minds Changed and Manipulated3 min
  6. The Partnerships beneath Plants3 min
  7. Wood Wide Webs, Evidence, and Metaphor3 min
  8. Fungal Technologies and Their Limits2 min
  9. Yeast, Stories, and Unmaking2 min

Recommended by

  • Ed YongAuthor of An Immense World
    Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.
  • Michael PollanAuthor of How to Change Your Mind
    I fell in love with this book. Merlin Sheldrake is a scientist with the imagination of a poet and a beautiful writer.
  • Margaret AtwoodAuthor of The Testaments
    Gorgeous.

About the author

  • Merlin SheldrakeBritish mycologist and writer on fungi
    • Born in London in 1987.
    • Studied at the University of Cambridge as a scholar of Clare College, with a degree in biological science and a master's degree in the history and philosophy of science.
    • Earned a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge for work on underground fungal networks in Panama, as a predoctoral fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
    • Research associate of Oxford University and the Vrije University Amsterdam, and Chief Impact Officer at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks.
    • Presenter of the giant screen documentary Fungi: Web of Life, narrated by Björk.
    • A keen brewer and fermenter who plays piano and accordion.

Read it alongside

  • Goes deeperHow to Change Your Mind

    Merlin Sheldrake says clinical research on psilocybin looks promising for depression and addiction, while Michael Pollan sets out the cancer anxiety and addiction trials and a proposed brain mechanism, and stresses that the work is early.

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