What I’m Reading
April 20, 2021
This week’s What I’m Reading looks at two science reads, one all about the hug, the other about bison and their role in protecting forests. For the third and final recommendation of the day, I found some stunning photography that shows us the beauty at home.
The Science Behind The Hug
Science journalism can be tricky. Writers need to understand the science behind the stories they’re reporting, and they need to convey the complex world of facts in an easily digestible format.
But this translation of the science language into plain English happens on a fine line between simplifying the science just enough non-scientists can understand the issue at hand and neglecting the science by overdoing that simplification.
Both traditional journalists and scientists writing for publications have to perform this communications dance. I found a fascinating example in The Guardian that demonstrates a successful execution of this translation.
The science of hugging, and why we’re missing it so much during the pandemic was written by Susannah Walker, a behavioral neuroscience scientist at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K.
As the headline suggests, Walker offers the science behind the emotional benefits of the human touch.
Her work group had been fascinated by the topic of touch before the pandemic. But since the world entered the first pandemic lockdown, Walker noticed that conversations at work revolved more and more around missing hugs.
This short read looks at three things to explain why we’re missing touching those we love: evolution, social history, and skin.
If you click your way to the article, you’ll learn about the role that skin plays in signaling comfort and safety when we experience touch.
In the process, Walker shows fascinating connections between mothers and toddlers, how skin contact impacts our relationships, and there’s even a neat explainer of why you’re (probably) seeing more dogs out and about recently.
Walker makes the science behind human touch understandable. A great science read.
Saving The Bison, Saving The Forest?
Eat, roam, repeat: Can the bison’s big appetite stop Spain’s forest fires? by Stephen Burgen is a curious conservation find in The Guardian.
The basics are simple: just as in California and Australia, Spain has seen an increasing number of forest fires over the last few years, and the signs are that this trend continues.
The article explains why the fires occur more often, from climate change and rural depopulation to fewer sheep.
The European bison could fill the void the sheep have created. Conservationists hope that bringing the animal that has been extinct in Spain for about 10,000 years back to the country’s forests can help clear the undergrowth and slow big forest fires.
Head over to learn how exactly an animal that can weigh up to 1,000 Kg and eat about 30 Kg of vegetation per day can help and how the European Bison Conservation Center of Spain is going about this initiative. A truly fascinating read.
Cycling And Photography
For today’s sendoff, I found a beautiful photography article in The New York Times and their series The World Through A Lens, which brings the world to readers in times when travel is limited.
Photographer Roff Smith has been on a mission in lockdown. He decided to bring his camera and tripod on his bike rides, turning them into little assignments.
The result is A Cyclist on the English Landscape.
He describes it as traveling at home. His travels bring us beautiful pictures, from nature to quiet city streets. And there’s even a bit of English history squeezed in.
Smith explains the details behind his complex photographic process, which even includes changing outfits to match the background better.
All of the pictures were made within a 10-mile radius of his home. It is inspiring how he transformed one’s familiar and often uninspiring surroundings into pictures that spark with beauty, mystery, and interest.
Go, have a look and travel to England as you’ve never seen it.
And that’s it for this week’s What I’m Reading post. I hope to have the second episode of “Of Miles & Minutes” ready this weekend. And next week, I’ll have more reading recommendations and maybe something extra; until then.
