You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters. Probably like many of you, during this pandemic, I've spent more time

reading fiction than I normally do.

It's a way of escaping the reality of our current world.

And one of my favorite books that I just finished was by Richard Powers.

It's called The Overstory.

And I'm not the only one that thinks it's great. It won the Pulitzer back in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

It essentially tells the story of a number of

different tree activists, but also about the trees that they're trying to save. I can't do it

justice. I'm very bad at describing fiction and why it's wonderful. But this story really made me

think differently about the trees that surround us. Mostly it made

me think differently about time scale, about how a tree can live hundreds of years, if not

thousands of years. And so the things that it experiences are at a very different rate compared

to how we humans perceive time. And that got me wondering about climate

change. Normally when I think about the biggest threat to trees, I think of logging, deforestation.

Essentially, humans using the trees for their own purposes. I don't really think directly about

climate change,

although I know I've heard about different kinds of fungi and beetles and other ways in which

...