The Ed's Up #150 - Book news, 400-year-old sharks, and defensive mosquitoes

Book news

The book is here! The response on Twitter and elsewhere has exceeded my nervous expectations, and it is so gratifying to see people posting pictures of their copies. The Boston Globe published a wonderful review: “At times, Yong’s curiosity and humor made me smile and even laugh out loud, much to my husband’s surprise. “Isn’t that a book about microbes?” he asked with an arched eyebrow. By the end of the book his sense of wonder for microbes was, well, infectious.”

I spoke to the Leonard Lopate Show, Vox, Livescience, Gizmodo, NPR, Publisher’s Weekly, Gizmodo, Generation Anthropocene, Science Communication Breakdown, and Read Science about the book. For the scientists among you, Howard Ochman wrote a lovely and insightful review (full of Whitman shout-outs) in Cell. Maria Popova talks about how microbes affect the mind in Brainpickings, and David George Haskell, whose own book inspired me while I was writing, penned this really beautiful write-up.

At my launch event, I chatted with Radiolab’s Robert Krulwich about the book. You can watch the video here, in which I confess my inability to pronounce Leeuwenhoek, explain that microbes can’t talk, and commission a “Go mucus!” T-shirt.

And for a brief time, Barnes and Noble outed me as a vampire. 
 

The Sharks That Live to 400

"In 1620, the Mayflower set off from Plymouth, carrying hopeful pilgrims to the New World. As it sailed over the Atlantic, it passed over deep, cold waters, where baby Greenland sharks were starting out their lives. Those youngsters slowly grew into giants. And if a new study is right, some of them are still alive today." (Image: Franco Banfi) 
 

BOOK EXCERPT: How to Beat Dengue and Zika: Add a Microbe to Mosquitoes

"On January 4th, 2011, in the first hours of a crisp Australian morning, Scott O’Neill walks up to a yellow bungalow in a suburb of Cairns. He sports glasses, a goatee, jeans, and an off-white shirt, with “Eliminate Dengue” written over the breast pocket. That’s both the name of the organization that O’Neill founded and its goal: eliminate dengue fever, from Cairns, from Australia, and perhaps eventually from the world. The tools with which he will accomplish this feat are sitting in the small plastic cup that he now holds in his hand." (Image: Mario Tama / Kevin Frayer / Getty / James Gathany / AP / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic) 
 

Wasps Learned to Sew Way Before Humans

"Last August, Niclas Fritzén was on a family holiday in western Finland when, as entomologists like him are prone to do, he decided to search for spiders. He started peeling off the bark from a pine tree, and underneath one piece, he found the silken nest. Inside was a jumping spider, but one whose jumping days were far behind it. It was paralyzed, and a strange larva was sitting on its back, sucking its juices." (Image: Niclas Fritzén) 
 

A Book About Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient Sparks Controversy

"At the age of seven, Henry Gustav Molaison was involved in an accident that left him with severe epilepsy. Twenty years later, a surgeon named William Scoville tried to cure him by removing parts of his brain. It worked, but the procedure left Molaison unable to make new long-term memories. Everyone he met, every conversation he had, everything that happened to him would just evaporate from his mind. These problems revolutionized our understanding of how memory works, and transformed Molaison into “Patient H.M.”—arguably the most famous and studied patient in the history of neuroscience." (Image: Brian Snyder) 
 

More good reads

• Is the Smithsonian railroading one of its star scientists? A troubling investigation from Michael Balter on the treatment of mammal-finding machine Kristopher Helgen. (I wrote about Helgen’s work here.)
• The leaf moth blew my mind. By Gil Wizen
• Everything is Fucked: The Syllabus. I would sign up for this course by Sanjay Srivastava in a heartbeat.
• How peacock spiders get their bright blue butts. By Nadia Drake
• The Many Ways Game of Thrones Tried to Make Hodor's Name Work Around the World. By Katharine Trendacosta
• “Why humans should think about technology the way field biologists examine the living world” – Adrienne LaFrance interviews Samuel Arbesman about his new book, Overcomplicated.
• Oksana Chusovitina is 41 and competing in gymnastics at the Olympics. I’m 34 and I make a small oof noise when I sit down.  
• The strange case of an outbreak of chronic hiccups among Salem teens, as reported by Dan Vergano.
• Kevin Carey profiles Cassie Conley, NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer.
• Bride Is Walked Down Aisle by the Man Who Got Her Father’s Donated Heart. By Katie Rogers

You can also follow me on Twitter or find my writing at The Atlantic or on my blog. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you can sign up yourself.

And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed