Synopsis

On September 12, 2015, wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill was kayaking off the California coast when a thirty-ton humpback whale breached and landed directly on top of him and his companion, releasing energy equivalent to forty hand grenades. Miraculously, both survived unscathed, but the viral video of their encounter left Mustill obsessed with one question: What was the whale thinking? His quest for answers launched him into the cutting-edge world of animal communication research, where scientists and Silicon Valley startups are using artificial intelligence and big data to decode the languages of whales, dolphins, and other species. How to Speak Whale chronicles Mustill's extraordinary journey from seventeenth-century Dutch inventors to modern marine biologists, revealing how technologies originally developed for human language are now being turned toward nature. With their giant mammalian brains, complex social lives, and virtuoso vocalizations, whales represent our best opportunity for genuine interspecies communication. Mustill explores the revolutionary potential of this research while examining its profound implications: What would happen if we could actually talk to animals? Through vivid storytelling and rigorous science, he shows us we're closer than ever to answering Dr. Doolittle's dream—and discovering what the natural world has been trying to tell us all along.