In January 2017, I played telephone tag with E.O. Wilson. Routinely compared to Darwin (‘a modern-day Darwin’ or ‘Darwin’s natural-heir’ among others) E.O. Wilson is renowned for his work on evolution, biogeography, sociobiology and myrmecology—the study of ants. I’ve interviewed thousands of scientists—and am not usually prone to being starstruck. But I made an exception for E.O. Wilson: listening to his southern drawl in my voicemail left me a little bit giddy. Wilson and I finally got the chance to chat later that month, but it wasn’t about his storied career in evolutionary science—not abo…

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