WEBVTT - Special Episode: Carl Zimmer & Airborne 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:47.159 Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is this Podcast Will 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:50.960 Kill You. Welcome to our newest episode in the tp 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.400 w k Y book Club series, where I get to 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:58.120 chat with authors about their latest books in science and medicine. 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:02.480 We have covered some great books so far this season 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:06.960 and in past seasons, and we've got plenty more excellent 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:09.640 books to add to your to read list throughout the 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.399 rest of this season. If you would like to see 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:14.839 the full list of books that we've covered so far, 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:17.480 as well as get a sneak peek of the books 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:20.600 that will be featured later this season, head over to 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:23.720 our website This Podcast will Kill You dot com, where 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:26.759 you'll find a link to our bookshop dot Org affiliate account. 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:31.800 Under the extra tab, there you'll see several TPWKY lists, 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.440 including a book club list. Check back on that list regularly, 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.800 as I'll be updating it throughout the season. As always, 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.440 we love getting your feedback, whether that's a topic request, 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:44.800 a suggestion for a book to feature in one of 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.200 these episodes, or just any other thoughts you have. 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Make sure you're subscribed to 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:16.280 exactly Write Media's YouTube channel so you don't miss an episode. 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.960 By now, we are all fairly familiar with the concept 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:23.280 of the microbiome, the community of microbes that live in 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:26.840 a particular environment, such as your gut, or your skin, 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.680 or maybe even inside your belly button. But how many 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:34.359 of you have heard of the aerobiome. We don't often 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:38.000 think of the air as a medium teeming with microbial life, 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:41.959 but as Carl Zimmer demonstrates in his latest book Airborne, 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.440 The Hidden History of the life We breathe, that may 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:50.280 be a critical oversight. In this book Club episode, award 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:54.160 winning science writer Carl Zimmer joins me to discuss the 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:58.200 long neglected science of aerial life and the public health 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:02.800 implications of this research. Many of you may recall the 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.760 debate that sprung up seemingly out of nowhere in the 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.960 first couple of years of the COVID pandemic, when scientists 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.200 couldn't seem to agree on whether the virus was transmitted 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:16.880 via respiratory droplets or whether it was airborne. Why this 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:21.640 distinction mattered and how the issue grew so contentious is 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:25.840 just part of what Zimmer covers in Airborne. By placing 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:28.480 this debate in the broader context of the history of 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.200 aerial biology, he draws a line from the early days 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:36.160 of germ theory to the pioneers of this emerging field, 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:40.520 from the height of biowarfare research to a Washington State 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.640 choir in the first weeks of the COVID pandemic. Linking 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:48.320 together these disparate stories from the history of science, Zimmer 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:52.560 presents a revelatory picture of a scientific field you didn't 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:57.080 know existed. How might the COVID pandemic have been different 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.280 if we acknowledged the airborne potential of this virus earlier? 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:05.160 What lessons can we draw from this oversight to apply 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:08.800 to future outbreaks? What even lives in the air, and 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:12.040 why does it matter? We get into all of these 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:16.839 questions and so many more. According to a quick Google search, 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:21.120 we breathe about twenty two thousand breaths a day, breaths 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.760 that we don't often think about, but after this episode, 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:27.680 you'll have a newfound respect for those breaths and the 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.479 invisible airborne life all around us. 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:32.400 I am very. 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:34.840 Excited to be bringing this episode to you, so let's 0:04:34.880 --> 0:05:01.599 just take a quick break and get started. Carl, thank 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:03.400 you so much for joining me today. 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:04.440 Thanks for having me. 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:07.400 I have long been such a fan of your work, 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:12.200 and I really especially appreciated your latest book, Airborne, which 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:16.640 tells us really fascinating story of discovery, dismissal, and then 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:20.320 ultimately kind of redemption in the end. To start us off, 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.720 can you give us this big picture view of what 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:25.039 the story that you explore in your book and what 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:26.600 inspired you to write about it. 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:32.760 The story is about the air and how humanity has 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.720 slowly come to appreciate the fact that it's alive. In 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:40.240 other words, we really are walking around on the floor 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:45.400 of a giant, living ocean that is filled with trillions 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:51.040 upon trillions of organisms, thousands of different species, a few 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:53.000 of which we can see, you know, we can, you know, 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.720 see a goose flying overhead, but for the most part, 0:05:56.760 --> 0:05:59.680 it's totally invisible to us. And I guess I say 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:04.680 this the seed of this book came about during the 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.040 COVID pandemic. I was working at the New York Times, 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.239 and I, along with my colleagues, we were just trying 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:14.679 to write as fast as we could about this totally 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:18.440 new disease. And you know, it was challenging because scientists 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.880 themselves are trying to figure out what exactly this disease 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:26.280 is like. And one of the biggest sumbling points, one 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:31.600 of the areas with the most debate and uncertainty, was 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.760 how it spreads. You had people telling you on TV 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:39.880 to wipe down your groceries. I know I did, and 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:42.600 just you know, keep your distance from people, and you know, 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:46.000 you'll be fine. Then there were other there were scientists, 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.159 a small number of scientists at first, who were saying, 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.400 we think this might be airborne. World Heart Organization explicitly 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:56.680 saying COVID is not airborne, and you know, it took 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.440 a couple of years, and then world health organizations that yeah, 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:05.159 it's airborne. And I just thought, why was that so hardy? 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:09.320 And the scientists themselves said to me, like, well, you 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:12.960 need to understand the history. One scientist said, you know, 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.400 history set us up. And so that led me down 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:20.880 this path to discover this whole history of this science 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:23.400 of the life in the air, which is called aerobiology. 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.200 Yes, and as you discussed, you know this, we're living 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:32.320 underneath this ocean of all of these different organisms. This 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:35.440 the aerobiome. What can you tell me about the aerobiom 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.600 Like who's up there? Who's floating around besides the geese 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:39.000 that we. 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:44.200 See, well, all sorts of things. The numbers are kind 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:46.440 of crazy. I mean, actually you have to write them 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.800 down and double check them because I'm like, did I 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:51.920 get that right? Because they're just so I'll just give 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:56.000 you one example. So insects. Okay, so you know you 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.600 presumably seen you know, some dragonflies flying by, or maybe 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:02.720 like a little swarm of mayflies or what have you. 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:04.920 I mean, it's not unusual to see an insect in 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:08.400 the air, but scientists have long suspected that that maybe 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:13.280 large numbers of insects flying long distances high in the air, 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:15.800 thousands of feet in the air. The problem is you 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:21.000 can't see them, and so scientists have invented technology st 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.520 barring radar and tuning it so that you can detect 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:27.760 insects that are in large numbers that are way up 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:29.960 in the air. Lo and behold, there are a lot 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:32.720 of insects up there. And just to give you one example, 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:34.880 and there's a study that came out last year and 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:39.200 from China where just in a small region of China, 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:41.800 they set up some radar systems to look up and 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.680 over the course of a year they recorded nine point 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:50.040 four trillion insects just in that place. 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:51.280 I can't comprehend that. 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:55.040 Yeah, yeah, right now, these numbers are incomprehensible. When you 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:59.640 get to fungi, you walk around in a forest trail, 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:02.199 you see some mushrooms. You think you know what fungi are, 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:06.000 but you really don't, because they're everywhere. They're on everything, 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:09.760 and they make a living by sending their spores into 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.480 the air. I mean they have adapted beautiful like little 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.680 cannons and other devices to get their spores up high 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:20.320 enough so that the air can carry them away and 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.800 then they can go all the way up to the stratosphere. 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:28.280 Fungi loan they lift up about a trillion trillion spores 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:28.840 every year. 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.439 Again, I can't I don't know what that means even 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:33.240 right right. 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:36.320 What do you do with that? The you know they're 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:41.440 back also bacteria, viruses, algae like and again they probably 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:46.600 comprise thousands tens of thousands, maybe millions of species. You know, 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:51.640 we've barely begun to sample this habitat, this living habitat 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:53.280 in the air called the aerobiome. 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.520 And I love how you describe it as an ecosystem 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:59.000 of visitors. You know, this is a for most of 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:02.160 these species. This is a transitory period. If you take 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.120 one you know, cubic meter of air or something wherever 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.520 it is, how often that changes just within a second, 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:12.200 within a minute, within a day, it's completely different. 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:20.720 Yeah, it really depends for the individual organism on how 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:23.880 high they get up initially, you know, and what the 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:26.960 air conditions are like when they get lofted into the air. 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:31.720 The oceans, for example, every time a wave breaks, there 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.319 are lots of tiny droplets that rise up, and some 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:40.320 of them have bacteria, viruses, other marine organisms in them. Now, 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:43.000 if there's enough of a breeze, they may get carried 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.199 up and maybe they fall right back down after you know, 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:51.320 a few seconds. But it is possible for them to 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.360 go up and then keep going up, and then eventually 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:57.080 they get so high that they're just riding along long 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:00.760 distance waves and they can actually go thousands of miles, 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.240 so they can be floating for days. You know eventually 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.640 they will land. I mean, it's just a matter of time. 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.320 But because there's so many things coming up all the time, 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:15.440 it's always a very lively space. So like the clouds, 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:18.079 for example, every cloud you look at is alive. It's 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:22.440 it's got you know, trillions of bacteria something something on 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:26.520 the order of that. And you know the bacteria, there 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:29.200 are signs that they might be growing in the clouds, 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:34.920 and that means that they are eating the clouds. So 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:37.240 you know, it's a different way to look at the 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:38.760 sky and think about what's up there. 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:41.440 Let's take a short break, and when we get back, 0:11:41.520 --> 0:12:03.000 there's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone. I've 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:06.400 been chatting with Carl Zimmer about his latest book Airborne, 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:09.160 The Hidden History of the life We breathe. Let's get 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:14.560 back into things. Which certain types of pathogens are more 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:18.080 likely to be airborne? Do they share certain evolutionary history 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.200 or drivers that might make them more likely to be airborne. 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:24.800 That's a really good question, and I honestly, I don't 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.400 think anybody has a good answer for you. Yet. Part 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:32.760 of the challenge is it's hard to really carefully study 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:37.960 airborne disease if you're talking particularly about pathogens. Now, certainly 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:43.800 there are some very familiar pathogens that are clearly we 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.360 know are airborne, but that's by no means an exhaustive list. 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:49.199 There probably are lots of other things that we are 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:53.680 not appreciating fully yet. But just to give a couple examples, 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:57.959 the biggest infectious disease killer by far is tuberculosis. It's 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:03.320 caused by bacteria, and those bacteria are totally airborne. In 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:07.000 other words, they really can't infect people in any other 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:12.840 way other than people releasing little droplets that float out, 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:15.920 not just you know, maybe when they cough or sneeze, 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.199 but even when they're just breathing, they are going to 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:24.080 release droplets, some of which have tuberculosis bacteria in them. 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.120 These are so good at being airborne that they actually 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:32.079 manipulate us. They actually have adaptations to sort of essentially 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.320 tickle our airway to get us to cough more, because 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:37.800 that gets them out and gets them into the air, 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.240 propels them and then they can float off and infect 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.880 someone else, and they make the droplets make their way 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:46.160 into the very finest tips of our airway endings. In 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.720 the lungs, the lvoli and that's where the bacteria can grow. 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:52.640 So tuberculosis kills over a million people a year. But 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:55.400 you know, it's also a huge threat to in terms 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:58.640 of pathogens. It's also a huge threat to our crops. 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:02.520 So there are lots of disease is, particularly fungi that 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:06.360 spread through the air in part or entirely. I write 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:11.560 a lot about a kind of fungus called rust, which 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:14.760 can just you know, it can endanger the food supply 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:18.840 of whole countries if it really breaks out seriously. So 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:23.320 I'm just giving you two examples, but there's a long list. 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:26.880 And you know, is there something about airborne pathogens that 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:31.000 you know they all have in common? I would say 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.840 they're rugged in the sense that they can survive being 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.800 floating around in the air. It's not easy to be 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.680 a pathogen floating around out in the air. It's hard. 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:45.720 And there's some viruses that don't last very long when 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:49.040 they're exposed air. Other viruses can last a really long time, 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.960 and it might be that they sort of they have 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:55.840 adaptations that let them kind of use the chemicals inside 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.000 of those droplets that come out of our lungs to 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:00.800 sort of shield themselves from the elements. 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:05.360 This respiratory droplet versus airborne debate, you know, as you say, 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:08.200 really took center stage during COVID as we all remember, 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:11.920 and kind of, like you it seemed baffling, like why 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:14.520 is this so controversial? Why is this something that we're 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:19.080 so resistant to the idea of this being airborne, especially 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:21.680 when it seemed like, you know, this research had been 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:24.600 going on for quite some time. And before we get 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:29.000 into how that controversy started in the germ theory myasthma debate, 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:33.560 what role did people think the air played in diseases 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:35.040 before germ theory. 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.840 So if you go all the way back to say Hippocrates, 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:42.720 in the sort of the world of Western thought in particular, 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:47.600 there was this idea that obviously, you know, air is 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:50.720 essential to us. The Greeks considered it, you know, one 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.960 of the main elements we obviously we need to breathe. 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.920 But people couldn't really say why. And yet there was 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:02.080 sort of a sinister dark side to the atmosphere. And 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:04.880 you know, like I mean, we've all, I suppose we've 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:07.360 all had that experience walking around. It's you know, today 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.200 here in Connecticut, it's a beautiful sunny day. The air 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:12.880 feels very lovely, but you know there are also days 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:16.760 where you like, it smells really wrong, or there's a 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:19.600 there's a weird light in the sky because there are 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.640 wildfires someplace, and you know, like the the air is unpredictable. 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:28.880 And so Greeks had this idea that gods could visit 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:31.920 curses on them and they would call these miasthmas. And 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:36.440 Hippocrates said sort of took that name and applied it 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.640 to what do you call it, like corruptions of the air, 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:42.480 so that if you breathed in that air, you would 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:46.080 become sick. And there were different miasthmas for different diseases, 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.000 and even different species could get different diseases because they 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:52.560 had their own miasthmas, but they were all transformations of 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:57.280 the air itself. It had a certain explanatory power. I mean, 0:16:57.360 --> 0:16:59.640 how was it that, you know, a bunch of people 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.880 in this same town all would get the same disease 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:06.159 around the same time. You can imagine, well, you know, 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.320 a breeze just came through and people all inhaled it 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:13.000 and then they all keeled over. But that explained plague, 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:17.679 and you know influenza, and you know malaria literally like 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:22.399 bad air, like that's what the disease name means. And 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.000 so it held on for a long long time until 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:31.080 people who had been discovering and studying microbes said no, wait, 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:33.960 we think these are responsible for these diseases. And it 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:36.680 was a very you know, it was a very long 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.080 slog I mean to us in hindsight, it seems obvious, 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:42.960 but you know, this was a battle that started around 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:47.240 seventeen hundred and lasted up until about nineteen hundred, so 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.560 about two hundred years of a long drawn out fight. 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:52.920 It seems like a blink of an eye, like Louis 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:55.880 Pasture came in and solved everything, But it's not. That's 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:59.439 not what actually happened. But I think it's it's so 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:03.119 interesting to think about miasma and airborne transmission because they 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:05.879 seem like almost the same thing, right, Like, how was 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:10.040 that distinction made between microbes in the air causing disease 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:12.480 and miasma causing disease? 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:18.080 There were a lot of confusing, seemingly contradictory pieces of 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:22.720 evidence flying around. So Louis Pasteur, who you mentioned it 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:26.680 was an architect of the germ theory disease. He actually 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:30.360 was the first person to really clearly demonstrate that there 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.840 were germs floating in the air. And people said at 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.080 the time when he was trying to persuade them of this, 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:40.119 that this was crazy. One journalists said, this is you 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:42.520 want to lead us into a world that's too fantastic 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:46.359 to believe. I love that line. But he would go 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:50.560 outside with flasks and he would catch bacteria. They would 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:52.520 fall down the long neck of the flask and fall 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:56.760 into sterile broth and start multiplying. And he did it 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.000 in Paris streets, he did it in farmland around France, 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.280 and the even climbed a glacier, which was my favorite 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:07.399 episode of this. And he actually initially said that he 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:11.480 thought that lots of diseases were caused by these floating germs, 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:15.000 by airborne germs, but it didn't really go that way, 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:21.920 and what happened instead was that as as scientists definitely 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:26.320 showed that the diseases were caused by germs. So, for example, 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:30.600 cholera not caused by miasma as the authority is claimed. Instead, 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.959 it was caused by Fibrio cholerae, like one particular bacteria, 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:39.439 and that particular bacteria spread in water, so you have 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.560 a water borne disease and then you have other bacteria 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:47.159 that get into food and contaminate food, so you have 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:50.960 food borne diseases. You have you know, bacteria that spread 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:54.520 through sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and on and on and on. 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.280 So it was like the germ theory disease was taking 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:01.239 one disease after another out of the air. Yeah, and 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:05.399 by the early nineteen hundreds you had very prominent public 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.760 health figures saying we don't need to worry about the 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:11.560 air anymore, like this should be a relief. The air 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:17.000 has been this specter of infection since Hippocrates. They literally 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.880 said this, and now you don't need to worry that. 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.000 I think that really did keep people from really thinking 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:25.480 very much about life in the air. And they also 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:29.800 didn't have very good technology for really measuring and capturing 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:32.920 life in the air. So that combination really did lead 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:36.480 to a real, very strong consensus starting in the early 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.600 nineteen hundreds that has endured for over a century. 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:43.560 Let's take a quick break here, we'll be back before 0:20:43.600 --> 0:21:01.800 you know it. Welcome back. I'm here chatting with Carl 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.040 Zimmer about his book Airborne, The Hidden History of the 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:09.040 Life We Breathe. Let's get into some more questions. There 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:12.280 were still some people that did remain intrigued by the 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:17.040 concept of, you know, living things that the aerobiome. And 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:19.440 I want to ask you about one of these, which 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.119 is Fred Meyer. How did he end up turning what 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:25.280 was first a hobby into this branch, this whole branch 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:25.880 of science. 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:32.440 Yes, Fred Meyer is a really remarkable figure, and it's 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:36.600 kind of typical for early aerobiology figures completely forgotten, so 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:39.240 you know, I had to dig into archives to really 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:43.359 figure out what I could about his life. So I 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:48.080 had mentioned before about, you know how there are these 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:53.000 pathogens of plants, particularly of crops. So fred Meyer was 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:56.560 a plant pathologist. He worked at the US Department of 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:00.199 Agriculture ever since he was like twenty years old, was 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:04.639 just his lifelong employer, and he was part of this 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:08.560 tradition of studying diseases that affected crop like watermelon and 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:12.439 wheat and so on. And they were very comfortable with 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.919 the idea of airborne disease because there are these spectacular 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:20.040 crop failures, like you know, the the Great Irish Famine 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:22.800 that was caused by potato blight that in part was 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:28.720 airborne that organism. So by the early nineteen hundreds, plant pathologists. 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:30.760 They knew that things moved through the air, they just 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:32.879 didn't know how far they could go or high they 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:36.959 could go. And so eventually fred Meyer says, like, I 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:40.320 am going to try to figure out how high and 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:43.560 far I can go to catch them. And this was 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:46.360 something that his bosses did not want him to do, 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:48.879 so he just did it on the side on his 0:22:49.000 --> 0:22:52.159 off hours, and it's kind of spectacular. He would he 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:56.480 would jump into planes, these open cockpit cockpit biplanes, and 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:00.159 you know, he'd have these petra dishes stuck on to 0:23:00.560 --> 0:23:03.320 handle wooden handles, and he would just basically be waving 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:07.520 his arms around out of a flying plane in the clouds, 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:11.200 and the pilots would just be totally baffled by him. 0:23:11.800 --> 0:23:15.239 But he'd bring these prejudicies back to his lab and 0:23:15.280 --> 0:23:18.080 he would grow stuff. He was catching things. So then 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:24.080 he started looking for opportunities to send more sophisticated devices 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:27.440 higher and farther. So, for example, Charles and n. Lindberg, 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.760 they flew in ninety thirty four across the North Atlantic 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:35.280 over Greenland, and he talked them into trying to catch 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:38.640 life as well, and they did. And then there were 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:42.639 these explorers who got into sort of metal spheres that 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:44.960 were attached to giant balloons, and they went up to 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:49.360 the stratosphere, and so they took along with them probes 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.480 that Meyer had to see if life could survive up 0:23:52.520 --> 0:23:55.520 in the stratosphere. And then on a second voyage, they 0:23:55.600 --> 0:23:58.760 actually were able to catch stuff up there in the stratosphere. 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:03.240 Real kind of unbelievable to me is that by nineteen 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:08.240 thirty seven Meyer had done assembled so much dazzling work 0:24:09.280 --> 0:24:13.320 that he was able to talk the government into creating 0:24:13.720 --> 0:24:17.399 a whole new service in the government, a kind of 0:24:17.800 --> 0:24:21.119 centralized lab for life in the air, and he was 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:24.760 going to head it. He coined the word for the 0:24:24.800 --> 0:24:27.600 science that they were going to do, aerobiology. He came 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:29.680 up with that word in nineteen thirty seven with this plan, 0:24:30.520 --> 0:24:33.560 and everything was looking great, and then he went on 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:37.040 his you know, sort of made voyage across the Pacific 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:41.240 in search of search of life and was never heard 0:24:41.280 --> 0:24:45.720 from again. So I feel sometimes writing about these people, 0:24:45.760 --> 0:24:48.520 there's there's a certain curse that hangs over aerobiology. 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:51.520 I mean, I was shocked when that was like the 0:24:51.760 --> 0:24:54.440 twist in the story, But then also it did feel 0:24:54.440 --> 0:24:56.480 like fitting in a way like, of course this like 0:24:56.600 --> 0:24:59.280 there's more things, Like you said, Befell, these people that 0:24:59.760 --> 0:25:02.240 you know, you can't quite get their ideas and their 0:25:02.240 --> 0:25:06.320 evidence to take hold in the public eye, I think, 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:08.919 in the public facing side of science. But as you 0:25:09.040 --> 0:25:12.280 talk about the military side of things, this really did 0:25:12.520 --> 0:25:15.600 gain hold. There was more interest in aerobiology and the 0:25:15.600 --> 0:25:20.320 potential of air as a way to transmit disease and 0:25:20.440 --> 0:25:23.280 how to protect ourselves from that. And I think it's 0:25:23.280 --> 0:25:26.240 interesting to think about these two sort of lenses through 0:25:26.280 --> 0:25:29.600 which people viewed aerobiology. You have Fred Meyer on the 0:25:29.680 --> 0:25:32.720 one hand, who's just interested in the rich tapestry of 0:25:32.760 --> 0:25:35.320