
How to Speak Whale
A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication
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Narrated by:
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Tom Mustill
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By:
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Tom Mustill
What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill—the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty-ton humpback whale breached onto his kayak—asks this question in his thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication.
“When a whale is in the water, it is like an iceberg: you only see a fraction of it and have no conception of its size.”
On September 12, 2015, Tom Mustill was paddling in a two-person kayak with a friend just off the coast of California. It was cold, but idyllic—until a humpback whale breached, landing on top of them, releasing the energy equivalent of forty hand grenades. He was certain he was about to die, but they both survived, miraculously unscathed. In the interviews that followed the incident, Mustill was left with one question: What could this astonishing encounter teach us?
Drawing from his experience as a naturalist and wildlife filmmaker, Mustill started investigating human-whale interactions around the world when he met two tech entrepreneurs who wanted to use artificial intelligence (AI)—originally designed to translate human languages—to discover patterns in the conversations of animals and decode them. As he embarked on a journey into animal eavesdropping technologies, where big data meets big beasts, Mustill discovered that there is a revolution taking place in biology, as the technologies developed to explore our own languages are turned to nature.
From seventeenth-century Dutch inventors, to the whaling industry of the nineteenth century, to the cutting edge of Silicon Valley, How to Speak Whale examines how scientists and start-ups around the world are decoding animal communications. Whales, with their giant mammalian brains, virtuoso voices, and long, highly social lives, offer one of the most realistic opportunities for this to happen. But what would the consequences of such human animal interaction be?
We’re about to find out.
©2022 Tom Mustill (P)2022 Grand Central PublishingListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“We are on the verge of a revolution in communicating with these smart, social, otherworldly leviathans. Tom Mustill's riveting reports from the cutting edge of science set my heart pounding! How to Speak Whale is one of the most exciting and hopeful books I have read in ages.”—Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus
“Through his highly personal journey and discussions with experts, Tom Mustill conveys the richness of whale song and communication. Most of all we gain immense respect for these giants of the ocean.”—Frans de Waal, New York Times bestselling author of Mama’s Last Hug and Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist
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Whale obsessed
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Next best thing to nearly being flattened by a breaching humpback whale and living to tell about it
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Fascinating
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Thoroughly enjoyable—with sound effects!
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I loved it
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Excellent read!
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My mind is blown!
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Amazing book!
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That said, the book and the tremendous efforts it took to live and write it are admirable for all they do to maintain a conventional tone that is both enjoyable and informative. What is perhaps the most exciting aspect of How to Speak Whale is the optimism it ends on. It would be fascinating to read it's sequel in say 5 or so years when much of what the book ends on comes to fruition, and farther still when and if a whale could ever write a novel of its own, but that's my own imaginative interpretation of what Mustill has convinced me will become possible with what has already been created. 10\10 sparks of the imagination, and a must read for technological enthusiasts looking for life altering leaps forward.
An insightful recollection of things to come
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For all lovers of living beings
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