science – Sophia Fratta

Beautiful, Slow, and Alive: A Review of The Hidden Life of Trees

I have always loved trees. Whenever my siblings and I would go to the large park near our home, I would find a tree to sit in. I liked sitting in the large, sturdy pine next to the playground, but often I would clamber into one of the three small Judas trees at the other side of the park. The feeling of the rough bark underneath my fingers and the sight of the branches reaching up into the endless blue sky always entranced me. A year later, when I started a biology course, I realized that trees are not slow and sleepy, but awake and working. And when I read The Hidden Life of Trees—well, I was just blown away.

Of Podcasts and Electricity: A Review of Electric Universe

As we were driving home from piano lessons one day, my mother (with my siblings’ eager consent) decided to play a podcast about the history of light, from candle wax to light bulb fixtures. The podcast cast a spell on us. As we were listening to the acknowledgments, a name of a certain book caught my mother’s ear. This book was afterwards given to me to read, and truly, the book is as interesting as the podcast itself.