The Ed's Up #153

Book news

I Contain Multitudes has been out for a month now. The legendary Tim Radford reviewed it in the Guardian calling it a "marvellous, thrilling and richly annotated book" and a "page-turner in a very old-fashioned sense". Meanwhile, two amazing people took me away on a surprise unwinding weekend, where I got to meet some owls. Owl always be grateful to them. 

You can listen to me visit the zoo with WHYY's The Pulse and if you call this number from Pop-Up Magazine, you can hear me tell a microbial story. And if any of you are so moved to leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or other sites, or to spread the word about the book through whatever channels you prefer, that would be amazing. It all helps, and it's all appreciated. 

Finally, here's a list of speaking appearances over the next month. If you're in one of these cities, come along! 

• September 9th – Seattle, Elliott Bay Book Company
• September 13th – Phoenix/Tempe, Arizona State University
• September 18th – New York, Brooklyn Book Festival
• September 19th – Chicago, Seminary Co-Op Bookstore
• September 20th - Cambridge, MA, Simons Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• September 27th – New York, NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
• October 3rd - Washington DC, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History  

 

Stunning Videos of Evolution in Action  

"What you’re seeing in the movie is a vivid depiction of a very real problem. Disease-causing bacteria and other microbes are increasingly evolving to resist our drugs; by 2050, these impervious infections could potentially kill ten million people a year. The problem of drug-resistant infections is terrifying but also abstract; by their nature, microbes are invisible to the naked eye, and the process by which they defy our drugs is even harder to visualise. But now you can: just watch that video again. You’re seeing evolution in action. You’re watching living things facing down new challenges, dying, competing, thriving, invading, and adapting—all in a two-minute movie." (Image: Michael Baym) 

Pandas Bounce Back in Spite of Their Critics

"In its latest update, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has downgraded the giant panda from “endangered” to merely “vulnerable”. That’s one level down in the rankings from its Red List of Threatened Species—its master register of all things screwed and about to be screwed. The new status doesn’t mean that the panda is safe, more that its situation isn’t as imminently dire as it was before. It’s still threatened, but it has more time before extinction comes knocking. Still, you take your victories where you can get them in conservation, and the panda’s new grade is a rare spot of good news. It suggests that all the effort poured into saving this species is paying off, and it adds to debates about whether that effort has been worth it." (Image: Olivia Harris) 
 

A Worrying Trend for Psychology’s “Simple Little Tricks"

"Over the past decade, social psychologists have dazzled us with studies showing that huge social problems can seemingly be rectified through simple tricks. A small grammatical tweak in a survey delivered to people the day before an election greatly increases voter turnout. A 15-minute writing exercise narrows the achievement gap between black and white students—and the benefits last for years. They seem to work, if the stream of papers in high-profile scientific journals is to be believed. But as with many branches of psychology, wise interventions are taking a battering. A new wave of studies that attempted to replicate the promising experiments have found discouraging results. At worst, they suggest that the original successes were mirages. At best, they reveal that pulling off these tricks at a large scale will be more challenging than commonly believed." (Image: Jim Young) 

 

More good reads

• This week, I finished EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU, by Celeste Ng. It’s a masterpiece. It takes a familiar genre—family riven by tragedy—and makes it fresh through incredibly tight storytelling, and a look at racism, sexism, and longing in a pivotal time in history.
• How Elizabeth Holmes’ house of cards came tumbling down. An investigation by Nick Bilton.
• Why It’s So Hard To Find The Next Earth, Even If You're Looking Right At It. By Maggie Koerth-Baker
• Zika's Accidental Ally: Miami's Luxury High-Rises. A fascinating Maryn McKenna piece about how our architecture can inadvertently screw us.
• That ‘Alien’ Signal? New Observations Are Coming Up Empty. By Nadia Drake
• In the final episode of Flash Forward Season Two, Rose Eveleth asked an AI to write a future.
• The giraffe isn’t just one species, but four. By Alessandra Potenza   
• “Across the USA, some police departments claim a vast number of rape reports are false, and dismiss them without investigation.” Important journalism from Alex Campbell and Katie Baker.
• An obituary of Donald Henderson, head of the WHO programme that eradicated smallpox. By Linda Geddes
• How Harambe became the perfect meme, by Venkatesh Rao. “The slain gorilla signifies nothing—except maybe our increasingly weird post-everything world.”
• The Origin of the Word 'Dongle': 7 Leading Theories. By Megan Garber
• The world’s most beautiful typeface was nearly drowned in the Thames. After a century, it resurfaced. By Hayley Campbell