Telling the Bees: An Interspecies Monologue

In a bid to wean himself off Facebook and Twitter, media scholar and cultural theorist Dominic Pettman decided to revive an ancient custom. He decided to tell the local bees of his thoughts, theories, musings, and meditations. The result was an apian journal that parses the daily news and the routines of modern life in a more sustained and reflective way than the Pavlovian posts to which we are so addicted.

The account that emerges from Pettman’s regular discussion with the bees forms a comp...