Teaching Children the Science (and Heartache) of Moving Today, the first truly chilly day of a German October in the huge city of Berlin, and during a walk to the supermarket I was thinking about how I’m living in this apartment and this city, in the unconventional October weather, and on my way to this supermarket located behind a protected green area with pine trees and two squirrels I visit almost every day. Still, it’s almost certain that I will not live here forever… I m

A Scientist's Take on Art, Empathy, and the Cellular Silk Road There is something extremely poetic about touching a leaf dangling down from a willow tree—while you are walking to protect the intactness of your mind—and knowing exactly what this leaf is experiencing from the inside. It is looking for just the perfect amount of light, allowing it to penetrate its soul, deep into its chloroplasts, where light energy is captured and converted through a series of magical chemical

You are a walking piece of Earth, and every human you see is theoretically some sort of distant cousin!—not in the colloquial sense, but in the profound biological sense that we all trace back to the same maternal ancestor... When you look at a stranger on the street, you're looking at someone whose mitochondria trace back to the same ancient mother as yours, someone whose cells are powered by the same evolutionary inheritance.