Are you smarter than a tree?

It didn’t weird Dr Suzanne Simard out, when I told her I talk to trees. Dr Simard is a professor of forest ecology with UBC and the researcher behind the viral TED talk that introduced the general public to the idea that trees communicate with other trees, and share information, carbon, energy, in collaboration with…

Coming down from Treeline

Can a quiet and deeply thoughtful piece of film provoke radical action? Jordan Manley’s Treeline makes the case. This morning, on my way home from the school bus-stop, I detoured via a small patch of Douglas-Fir – the grandfather tree, called Srap7ul, in Ucwalmictws, the language of the Lil’wat Nation, meaning “something standing upright.” I found a…

The Dirt on Food

“Fuck calories,” says Krista Scott-Dixon (@stumptuous). “Fuck vitamins. Fuck ‘willpower’. Put real cream in your coffee. And have an avocado too. Your relationship with food and eating is your relationship with life.” Her book, Fuck Calories and Other Dietary Heresies rethinks nutritionism manifesto-style – it’s a 41 page debunking of dieting BS, distilled down to…

How to get your professional headshot done: the non textbook version

Jordan Manley took my portrait. I was short on a recent bio pic. My face doesn’t sell my work, so having an up-to-date headshot, despite what the enterprising types say, has just not been a priority. In fact, it’s something I avoid. But Jordan Manley was shooting photos to accompany my feature story and it…