A swarm of bees, gathered around their queen — der Bien in motion. Photo by Patricia Z.
A hundred years ago, my grandmother was born. In 2081, I will turn 100. What happens in between — and what we are actually made of — turns out to be more interesting than most of us realise.
This essay moves from a WhatsApp photo to quantum physics, from a nineteenth-century woman who crossed the Indian Ocean alone to the molecules in every breath, from the silence that settled over Europe after 1945 to the bee colony as superorganism. It is about ancestry, intuition, thermodynamics, and why knowing what you are made of is the most useful thing there is.
A brief guide to being 99.99% invisible.