Last week, I traveled to Italy to give a talk about viruses at the Genoa Science Festival. I ate a lot of focaccia and a lot of pesto, as one should in the city where both those fine dishes were invented. And I was also interviewed on Italian radio and television. The journalists asked me about my book A Planet of Viruses, which was translated into Italian last year. But the conversations inevitably turned to American politics.

I had no idea at the time who would win the presidential election. But I expected that the choice would have a huge impact on American science and medicine. During his campaign, Donald Trump promised that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a man who lacks any medical or scientific training and who has promulgated false claims about medicine—would have free rein over America’s health. Trump himself also has a long track record of dismissing climate change, either as a hoax or an insignificant distraction.

I suppose some people might brush all this off as campaign talk. But we have four years of a previous Trump administration to examine as a prelude. Here’s a talk that I gave seven years ago about Trump and science, and how journalists should respond. At the time, he was installing climate deniers in his administration and shutting down public web pages about climate change.

French Fries And The Evolving Natural

My doctor recently advised me to cut down on the carbs. While my blood sugar level is thankfully still safe, it’s inching up as I march through middle age. So I am trying my best to resist things like French fries.

Following my doctor’s advice feels like a struggle against the modern world. The twenty-first century food industry provides much of humanity with cheap, tasty carbohydrates that are helping to drive pandemics of diabetes and other disorders.

This week, I wrote in the New York Times about a newly published study on the life that floats 10,000 feet over Japan. A team of scientists chasing after the cause of a mysterious disease got in a Cessna equipped with vents, tubes, and filters. They then flew into the sky in pursuit of living things.

After they returned to Earth, the scientists suited up in biosafety gear to inspect their harvest.

My next book, AIR-BORNE, will be coming out in February. You’ll be able to recognize it in your local bookstore by its groovy cover:

If the cover looks surreal, that’s no accident. Aerobiology—the science of airborne life——has shown us that the atmosphere is eerily alive, from the breath you just inhaled to the clouds that float overhead. I hope when you’re done reading AIR-BORNE, the sky will look different—a floating garden rather than a desert.

You can pre-order AIR-BORNE now. I will share updates as the publication date approaches both here and on a new page on my website.

It’s Coming!

A few days ago, I sent my publisher the final polishes to my next book, AIR-BORNE: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. I’ve kept pretty mum about the project for the past couple years while I’ve been researching and writing it. But now you can officially pre-order a copy. So I’m delighted to send you this email to tell you about the book.

These days I spend some of my time talking to virologists about a new virus that can move from quickly host to host. It uses a route that we don’t yet understand very well. But we need to find out, because the virus has an unknown potential to wreak havoc on the economy and to give rise to a new pandemic. I’m keeping tabs on companies scrambling to design new vaccines against the new virus, drawing up plans to manufacture them in huge quantities if needed in an emergency.

I am not reporting about Covid-19 (which is not to say Covid-19 is gone, of course). Instead, I’ve started helping the New York Times with its reporting on a strain of H5N1 avian influenza that’s spreading among cows.

I’m glad to pitch in, because it’s a story that needs telling. But I really wish my colleagues and I didn’t have to tell it. I especially wish that I didn’t hear so many echoes from early 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Life Keeps Throwing More Junk at Us

It’s been nearly ten years, but I can still see the blood flowing out of my finger.

I was in a lab in Canada, chopping the green stem of an onion with a razor blade. I accidentally brought the ring finger of my free hand too close and I slit open my skin. The scientists looking over my shoulder with didn’t flinch. One of them, Nick Jeffery, just raised a vial to my finger and had me skim off a few drops. They needed my blood anyway, for an experiment they were about to carry out.

Why Do Whales Sing? Why Do We Sing, For That Matter?

In my work as a journalist, the threads of science sometimes weave together in unexpected ways. For some time now, I have been keeping an eye on a team of scientists studying whales, in the hopes of deciphering their songs with signal analysis, machine learning, and other methods from computer science. The team, which calls itself Project CETI, formed four years ago, and they’re just now starting to publish the first results of their work.

It’s been nearly 60 years since biologists first recognized that humpback whales produced strange whoops and rattles that lasted for hours at a time. Whale songs became cultural icons on best-selling albums, in Star Trek movies, and on the Golden Record that NASA flung into deep space. Other whales, scientists discovered in later decades, produce their own songs. The songs are not rigid, simple calls; they turned out to be complex and creative acts. But their meaning remained a mystery.

The Brain Worm Edition

As I was sitting down to write this email, I learned that my book Parasite Rex got name-checked today in a podcast (44:20). It’s not a podcast about biology, mind you, but one about politics. In a conversation about tapeworms and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain, one of the hosts recommended the book for learning more about parasites.

We authors will take a plug pretty much anywhere we can get one. But I did not expect a plug to arrive at such a weird cultural moment—a moment in which which Stephen Colbert is making jokes about a tiny voice in RFK’s head asking, “What wine pairs best with cerebellum?”

The reason for all this parasitological palaver was a story that my Times colleague Susan Craig broke earlier this week about Kennedy’s health. Looking at a deposition, Craig learned Kennedy had trouble with his memory. A doctor, according to Kennedy, said it “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”

Welcome to another edition of "Friday's Elk." I'm sending out this newsletter every other week, barring deadlines and such. It's free, but any support you may want to offer will be most appreciated!

Cicadas: Inescapable Yet Elusive

If you live east of the Rockies in the United States, there’s a decent chance that you’ve witnessed one of nature’s weirder happenings: the emergence of trillions of cicadas.

Welcome to another edition of "Friday's Elk." I'm sending out this newsletter every other week, barring deadlines and such. It's free, but any support you may want to offer will be most appreciated!

A Science Writer in Florence

Since my last newsletter, I turned in a revised draft of my next book (more details soon!) and headed off with my family to Florence. I had never been there before, and it did not disappoint. It is almost absurdly rich with the histories of art, business, and politics. And it's got plenty of history for a science writer, too.

After all, Florence was Galileo's home for many years. If you end up in Florence someday, I highly recommend a trip to the Galileo Museum, where you can see a lot of exquisitely beautiful scientific instruments, such as a sixteenth-century armillary sphere, which places Earth at the center of the cosmos. I zoomed in for a picture that would capture its awesome intricacy.

Welcome to another edition of "Friday's Elk." I'm sending out this newsletter every other week, barring deadlines and such. It's free, but I will appreciate any support you may want to offer!

LifeGPT?

In early 2020, as the world plunged into the Covid-19 pandemic, I spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be alive. The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was, depending on who you asked, a living thing or a non-living menace.

Welcome to another edition of "Friday's Elk." I'm sending out this newsletter every other week, barring deadlines and such. It'll stay free, but any support will be much appreciated!

Who Else Is In Our Species?

If you're reading this--and if you have neurons for brains rather than microprocessors--I'm going to assume you're a member of my species, Homo sapiens. No other living species has ever shown a capacity for reading email newsletters.

Welcome to another edition of "Friday's Elk." I'm sending out this newsletter every other week, barring deadlines and such. It'll stay free, but any support will be much appreciated!

Jurassic Ostrich?

Scientists who study the origin of birds in 2024 live in a different world than those who were studying it in 1994. In 1996, paleontologists in China announced the discovery of the first dinosaur with primitive feathers. Then more fossils came to light, some with more bird-like feathers. There were dinosaurs with stripes of colors across their plumage. They sported feathery tails, even feathery legs.

Welcome to another edition of "Friday's Elk." I'm settling down here at my new home at Buttondown and hope to send this newsletter out on a fairly frequent basis. It'll stay free, but any support will be much appreciated!

X Marks Many Spots

It's been so long since I learned about the X chromosome that I can't remember when I became aware of it. It's one of the first things we learn about genetics, because the basics are so basic. We have 23 pairs of chromosomes, 22 of which are identical. The 23rd pair are the sex chromosomes: in females, two X's, and in males an X and a Y. Done.

Why The Magic?

One of the most surprising recent trends I've noticed in science news is the explosion of stories about magic mushrooms. Of course, this is old news for people across Latin America who have consumed the fungi in rituals for thousands of years. It was only in 1957 that many Americans became aware of psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms. In an article for Life magazine a J.P. Morgan banker named Robert Gordon Wasson recounted how a Mexican shaman provided him with the legendary substance. "For the first time the word ecstasy took on real meaning," Wasson reported.

To Wasson's regret, the article brought a flood of hippies to Mexico seeking to copy his experience. The counterculture popularity of the mushrooms led the U.S. government in 1971 to designated them a Schedule 1 controlled substance. A hidden culture grew around the illegal fungi like a subterranean web of mycelia.

Today, over half a century later, they're still officially illegal for the most part. But in recent years some scientists have begun carrying out studies to understand how exactly they produce ecstasy in the human brain. Psychiatrists are investigating them as a way to treat patients for with depression, PTSD, and other conditions. (A few months ago, I had a fascinating conversation at the Crosscut Festival in Seattle with two psychiatrists in the midst of this work. You can listen to it here.)

The Sisyphus Tree

With just two days left in 2023, I have been looking back over the year in biology, scanning for news that pops out.

There were some stories of long-dreamed triumphs. In late 2023, both the United States and the United Kingdom gave the green light to CRISPR as a medical treatment for the first time.

Back in the 1990s, CRISPR first came to light as a kind of immune system for bacteria. The microbes made molecules that zeroed in on viruses, shredding their genes. Scientists converted those molecules into a tool for editing DNA in human cells. With CRISPR, researchers rewrote genes in the blood cells of people with sickle cell anemia and other blood disorders, reversing their diseases. Newer forms of CRISPR may very well cure other diseases in the years to come. (Here is a piece I wrote for Quanta and another for the New York Times, both on the history of CRISPR.)

Greetings! This is the newly reincarnated version of my long-running newsletter.

If you have come here for the first time, welcome to what I hope you will find an entertaining and edifying experience. I write the "Origins" column for the New York Times, and I write books about science (fifteen so far). In my newsletter, I riff on the subjects and ideas that grip me in those longer works. I also send out links to talks I give (in person, on the radio, online), as well as to things I've published.

If you are a long-time reader of "Friday's Elk," welcome back! You are no doubt noticing something different about it. For a number of years, I used a service called Tiny Letter to send out my newsletter. But now its provider is shutting it down and offering alternative plans that just don't suit me.

Wondering what to do next, I noticed that other writers I know and respect, such as Annalee Newitz and Ed Yong, were using a service called Buttondown. After checking it out, I decided that it would suit me too. So I've taken the liberty of rolling all you Tiny Letter subscribers into my new Buttondown list.