The Ed's Up #204

I Contain Multitudes: The Series, Episode 2 

Here's the second of the video series that adapts stories from my book. This one's about drug-resistant bacteria. 
 

The Randomness of Language Evolution

"Today, if you wanted to talk about something that’s clear, you’d say that it has clarity. But if you were around in 1890, you would almost certainly have talked about its clearness. Plotkin first noticed this linguistic change while playing with Google’s Ngram Viewer, a search engine that charts the frequencies of words across millions of books. The viewer shows that a century ago, clearness dominated clarity. Now the opposite is true, which is strange because clarity isn’t even a regular form. If you wanted to create a noun from clear, clearness would be a more obvious choice. “Why would there be this big upswing in clarity?,” Plotkin wondered. “Is there a force promoting clarity in writing?” It wasn’t clear. But as an evolutionary biologist, Plotkin knew how to find out." (Image: Suzanne Plunkett)
 

Is It Possible to Predict the Next Pandemic?

"It’s been two years since an epidemic of Zika began in Brazil, three since the largest Ebola outbreak in history erupted in West Africa, eight since a pandemic of H1N1 flu swept the world, and almost a hundred since a different H1N1 flu pandemic killed 50 million people worldwide. Those viruses were all known, but no one knew when or where they’d trigger epidemics. Other diseases, like SARS, MERS, and HIV, emerged out of the blue. Sick of being perpetually caught off guard, some scientists want to fully catalogue all viral threats, and predict which are likely to cause tomorrow’s outbreaks." (Image: Omar Sobhani)
 

Bacteria Can Evolve Resistance to Drugs Before Those Drugs Are Used

"The MRSA origin story always had a few glaring plot holes. For a start, the three initial strains of resistant staph all came from patients who had never been exposed to methicillin, and who were treated in a hospital that had only ever used the drug once. On top of that, MRSA appeared in India and some Eastern European countries before those nations started using methicillin. How exactly did the bacteria evolve to resist a drug that they had never actually seen? Catriona Harkins and Matthew Holden at the University of St. Andrews have the answer, in a study that turns the history of MRSA on its head, and makes it even scarier than before." (Image: Fabriozo Bensch)
 

How a Focus on Rich Educated People Skews Brain Studies

"Perhaps the brain itself invites this lapse. We intuitively understand that our thoughts and behavior vary considerably from person to person. But when it comes to the lump of gray tissue behind those behaviors, it’s easy to forget that variation. “To a degree, I think there’s a sense that a brain is a brain is a brain,” says LeWinn. “That’s problematic. Everyone’s brain is shaped by their experiences, and we want to capture the diversity of people’s experiences rather than just a few kinds.”" (Image: Kim Kyung Hoon)
 

Six Months Later, Controversy Still Plagues the March for Science

"On Monday, Aaron Huertas, the former communications lead for MFS, posted an open letter that called out the group’s leaders for creating a culture beset by miscommunication, opacity, and disorganization. “Though the organization calls itself an open, grassroots movement, it is run like a closed, hierarchical organization,” the letter says. Seven other people told The Atlantic that their experience of working with March for Science was consistent with the open letter. “I really do think everyone has the best intentions, but not everyone has the skill sets they need to run a grassroots organization,” Huertas says." (Image: Aaron Bernstein)
 

Forest Animals Are Living on the Edge

"At the very beginning of his book The Song of the Dodo, the author David Quammen invites us to imagine a fine Persian carpet, which we then slice into 36 equal pieces. “What does it amount to?” he writes. “Have we got 36 nice Persian throw rugs? No. All we’re left with is three dozen ragged fragments, each one worthless and commencing to come apart.” He wrote that almost two decades ago, and it’s still the perfect metaphor for the state of the world’s forests." (Paulo Whittaker) 
 

Friends of The Ed’s Up

This is a new section where I'm going to promote the work of people I care about--people who make incredible art that I think is worthy of your attention and support, but whose fierce intelligence is also match by a genuine warmth of spirit. 
 
Story Collider features true personal stories about science. The latest episode of the podcast features shenanigans of the academic and ornithological kinds. Directors Liz Neeley and Erin Barker also run workshops teaching storytelling skills to scientists. 

Flash Forward is a podcast about the future run by Rose Eveleth. It's part radio drama, part science journalism, and a lot of fun. The latest episode is about bioprinted organs. 

Gastropod is a food, science, and history podcast run by Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley. The latest episode is on cannibalism. 

The Brain Scoop is a video show about natural history, museums, and occasionally taxidermy, hosted by Emily Graslie. The latest episode is about why parasites matter.  

 

More good reads: science and technology

• A superb piece from Adam Rogers on whether we can still rely on science done by sexual harassers.
• Sarah Zhang interviews Lindsey Fitzharris on her amazing new book—The Butchering Art—on the macabre world of Victorian surgery
• Why is this deer licking this fox? Paul Bisceglio investigates
• Why has the EPA shifted its stance on toxic chemicals? Eric Lipton reports. Meanwhile, Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin write that the EPA is replacing environmental scientists on its advisory boards with industry reps.
• Shrews shrink their skull and brain mass by as much as 20 percent in winter. By summer it grows back.
• A strong op/ed from Simine Vazire on the line between criticism and bullying in science.
• Facebook casually disrupts the news ecosystem of six small countries. Alexis Madrigal reports.
• A good look at a bullshit microbiome story about mining the microbes of elite athletes.
• This is a really good explainer on exercise & weight loss, by Julia Belluz

 

More good reads: politics and society

• Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Russia investigation, has indicted two top Trump campaign officials and turned a third into a cooperating witness. Matt Ford and Adam Serwer explain why this is bad news for Trump. (And here’s another good analysis.)
• In which Kathryn Schulz considers the relative plausibility of mythological beasts
• "I'd sit with my baby girl every morning and say, ‘Mom is going to the office to do something really important." Unmissable piece on Jody Kantor and Megan Twohey, the journalists who exposed Harvey Weinstein.
• “Consent is a function of power. You have to have a modicum of power to give it.” One of the best pieces on the Weinstein fiasco, by Brit Marling.
• Why did words that end in –tron once sound so futuristic? By David Munns
• On Leon Wieseltier and how powerful male harassers get away with it.

 
You can also follow me on Twitter or find my writing at The Atlantic. My New York Times-bestselling book, I Contain Multitudes, is out now. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you can sign up yourself.

And that's it. Thanks for reading.

- Ed