Now Playing: June 2024

Our June 2024 edition of Now Playing features books for lovers of nature, spine-tingling screams, and songs that grab you by the heart, all from our contributors!

nat raum 

Glass Animals is about to release a new album, and anyone who knows me even a little knows I am losing my mind with excitement. I'm currently spinning their newest single, “Creatures in Heaven,” which combines their signature dreamy, synthy sound with a tale of first love. I'm such a sucker for a heartbreak song.

Vanessa Hua

I recently finished reading Jason Roberts' Every Living Thing: the Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life. This fascinating book details the rivalry between Linneaus and Buffon, scientific exploration charting new species, and debates over taxonomy that continue to this day. I started foraging during the pandemic and have nearly completed my certification as a California naturalist, so I found the subject compelling and the writing insightful and deeply engaging.

Jeremy Wilson

Recently the timeless horror host Svengoolie aired the 1959 William Castle movie The Tingler starring Vincent Price. Inside each of us is a lobster-like creature that attaches to our spine. It is normally microscopic, but when we are afraid it grows in size and we can literally be scared to death. The only way to diminish the tingler is to scream! Castle was known for his gimmicks. He attached wires to the seats in some theaters that would vibrate at the most spine-tingling moments. In the climax, the screen goes black when the tingler is loose in a movie theater. Vincent Price orders everyone to “scream, scream for you lives!” I can imagine the collective thrill of sitting in a dark theater in 1959 and screaming my head off along with my fellow movie goers. There are many experiences our small screens simply can’t deliver.     

Madeline von Foerster

I am currently engrossed in The Mind of a Bee, by Lars Chittka. It is an enthralling book about the cognition, memory, and navigational superpowers of these wonderful insects. It is dense and fact-filled, but stops short of being an entomological textbook.  Finding out just how miraculous bees are makes me wonder what other aspects of the biosphere humans are, in our anthropocentric hubris, vastly underestimating. I recommend this book to any other nerdy nature-lovers out there; prepare to bee amazed on every page!