The Ed's Up - An Immense World for Kids!

October 31, 2024

A year ago, I announced that a Young Readers Edition of An Immense World was in the works. I’m now delighted to say that it is finished! The book, complete...

The Ed's Up - XOXO

October 10, 2024

[Laughter] In the past, when I’ve given talks about the pandemic, they’ve focused on how Covid revealed the vulnerabilities in our society, and why we failed...

The Ed's Up - 11 Hours on a Boat

September 23, 2024

Before the puffin appeared, the day was disappointingly quiet. I was off the coast of California with my wife, Liz, on our first pelagic trip—a full-day...

The Ed's Up - A Writing Case Study

August 27, 2024

Behind-the-scenes: On writing and practiced intentionality Every June, since 2022, I’ve spent a week on Catalina Island to support the USC Storymakers...

The Ed's Up - Ain't That a Kick in the Heeeeeead

July 23, 2024

Earlier this month, I travelled to the Maasai Mara in Kenya to do some reporting for the book I’m currently working on. And while I was there, as is my wont,...

The Ed's Up - On Judging a Pulitzer

May 28, 2024

Last summer, I agreed to serve on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction—a group of five writers tasked with selecting the best nonfiction...

The Ed's Up - Immersion in the True Reality

April 26, 2024

Last month, I wrote a piece for the New York Times about what birding has meant to me. Here’s a little snippet, but you can read the full piece with this...

The Ed's Up - Birding for Long-Haulers

March 18, 2024

A black-crowned night-heron that we saw on the second outing of The Spoonbill Club The Spoonbill Club: An Experiment in Birding for Long-Haulers My favorite...

The Ed's Up - How to Start a Book

February 2, 2024

Only when books are completed do we really talk about how they began. During book talks, I often get asked about where the idea came from. Once I had it,...

The Ed's Up - A wound in the shape of your words

December 11, 2023

I have an op-ed in the New York Times about what reporting on long COVID and similar illnesses has meant to me—what it taught me, how I’ve approached it, and...

The Ed's Up: Announcing my third book!

November 15, 2023

Black-crowned night-heron Announcing Book Three: The Infinite Extent “Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to...

The Ed's Up - Down under

October 23, 2023

A New Holland honeyeater, seemingly levitating The birthplace of birdsong I just arrived home from a magical week in Australia. I flew for 15 hours across an...

The Ed's Up - Photography + Young Readers

October 9, 2023

In which I try my hand at wildlife photography In the last newsletter, I wrote about diving (stooping?) into the world of birding. Well, never content to...

The Ed's Up - Spark Region

September 11, 2023

An oak titmouse looking down from a perch (Photo by Ed Yong) I guess I'm a birder now Many birders have a particular species that ignited their interest in...

The Ed's Up - Migrations

August 21, 2023

("Sooty Shearwater" by tombenson76 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.) Last Saturday, I visited Point Arena, California with my wife and two friends. We...

The Ed's Up - A Slightly Lighter Immense World

August 8, 2023

Hi all, A Slightly Lighter Immense World I'm delighted to say that the paperback of AN IMMENSE WORLD will be out in three weeks, on August 29. This is an...

The Ed's Up - An Ending...

July 28, 2023

Hello! It seems like only yesterday that I last emailed you... which is because it was yesterday. Sorry for filling your inbox so soon, but I have two...

The Ed's Up - What Fatigue Really Means

July 27, 2023

Hi all, First, let me briefly note that I've moved from Tinyletter to Buttondown. Same newsletter, slightly different look. This platform has much better...

The Ed's Up #217

March 24, 2018

How Psychopaths See the World "Most of us mentalize automatically. From infancy, other minds involuntarily seep into our own. The same thing, apparently,...

The Ed's Up #216

March 9, 2018

Captive Orangutans Are Curious (But Wild Ones Are Not) "When Carel van Schaik reached the top of his rope ladder, his first thought was: “Oh shit, there’s an...

The Ed's Up #215

March 2, 2018

A Breast-Cancer Surgeon Returns to Work After Breast Cancer "Earlier this month, Liz O’Riordan found herself once again, scalpel in hand, staring down at a...

The Ed's Up #214

February 8, 2018

I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories "I found that ratio in my work, too. Shortly after Adrienne published her analysis, I...

The Ed's Up #213

February 3, 2018

When Your Eyes Move, So Do Your Eardrums "Without moving your head, look to your left. Now look to your right. Keep flicking your eyes back and forth, left...

The Ed's Up #212

January 19, 2018

Why Did Two-Thirds of These Weird Antelope Suddenly Drop Dead? "It took just three weeks for two-thirds of all the world’s saiga to die. It took much longer...

The Ed's Up #211

January 13, 2018

Brain Cells Share Information With Virus-Like Capsules "Shepherd studies a gene called Arc which is active in neurons, and plays a vital role in the brain. A...

The Ed's Up #210

January 5, 2018

Happy new year, from me and my new (and very on-brand) mug. And now, on with the show. The Transgender Scientist Who Changed How We See the Brain "Barres was...

The Ed's Up #209

December 14, 2017

Turning Piglets Into Personalized Avatars for Sick Kids "When Charles Konsitzke and Dhanu Shanmuganayagam first met, they were both just trying to get some...

The Ed's Up #208

December 7, 2017

The Desirability of Storytellers "At first, Migliano wasn’t actually interested in storytelling. She wanted to know what qualities the Agta most value in...

The Ed's Up #207

December 1, 2017

Hummingbirds Are Where Intuition Goes to Die "“This has been going on literally under our noses for the entire history of our association with hummingbirds...

The Ed's Up #206

November 16, 2017

New Zealand’s War on Rats Could Change the World "In recent years, many of the country’s conservationists and residents have rallied behind Predator-Free...

The Ed's Up 205

November 10, 2017

A Dying Boy Gets a New, Gene-Corrected Skin "At the age of 7, Hassan had already seen more than his fair share of hardship. A week after he was born in...

The Ed's Up #204

November 1, 2017

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 Ed's Up #203

October 20, 2017

I Contain Multitudes: The Series Here's the first video from a series that's based on my book. There'll be at least 11 of these, with one coming out every...

The Ed's Up #202

October 12, 2017

First, something a little special. Liz Neeley and I did a joint talk at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about the craft, purpose, and ethics of science...

The Ed's Up #201

October 6, 2017

This'll be a short edition because I've been at Madison for a full week as their science-writer-in-residence. But I wanted to send these stories out...

The Ed's Up #200

September 28, 2017

It's the 200th edition of The Ed's Up! When I started doing this, I honestly thought that maybe a handful of people and my mum--hi mum!--would sign up. So...

The Ed's Up #199

September 22, 2017

I'm back! Normal service will now resume after that three-week hiatus, with the usual stories interspersed with some fun dispatches from New Zealand (where...

The Ed's Up #198

August 24, 2017

How Mushrooms Became Magic "Why, for example, do mushrooms make a hallucinogen at all? It’s certainly not for our benefit: These mushrooms have been around...

The Ed's Up #197

August 16, 2017

I'm on Story Collider! "This thing is only slightly smaller than the jeep, and it is about a body length away from us. Its head is lowered, its horn is...

The Ed's Up #196

August 10, 2017

A Dinosaur So Well Preserved, It Looks Like a Statue "When we look at dinosaurs in museums, it takes imagination to plaster flesh and skin on top of the...

The Ed's Up #195

July 29, 2017

Decapitated Worms Get Better, See Again "For humans, decapitation is fatal. For a planarian flatworm, it’s a mild and temporary inconvenience. These small...

The Ed's Up #194

July 19, 2017

The Man Who Blew The Door Off The Microbial World "A few years before Norm Pace revolutionized the study of life on Earth, he almost lost his own life....

The Ed's Up #193

July 13, 2017

What Would It Take to Completely Sterilize the Earth? "In a paper delightfully titled “The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events,” David Sloan and...

The Ed's Up #192

July 6, 2017

How the Democratic Republic of the Congo Beat Ebola in 42 Days "As anti-climaxes go, it was a most welcome one. On May 11, the Ministry of Health of the...

The Ed's Up #181

June 22, 2017

This Common Butterfly Has an Extraordinary Sex Life I guarantee that this story about the sex life of the cabbage white butterf It features sperm packages of...

The Ed's Up #190

June 15, 2017

How a Philly Ob-Gyn Ended Up Delivering a Baby Gorilla "Last Friday, at 10:30 a.m., ob-gyn Rebekah McCurdy was seeing patients in her office when she got the...

The Ed's Up #189

June 8, 2017

Tiny Jumping Spiders Can See the Moon I'm not going to do the usual thing of quoting from this piece. I just urge you to read it--even if you're an...

The Ed's Up #188

June 2, 2017

The Spider Web That Gets Stronger When It Touches Insects "Raya Bott and colleagues at Aachen University in Germany have now shown that cribellate silk...

The Ed's Up #187

May 24, 2017

That Time the TSA Found a Scientist’s 3-D-Printed Mouse Penis (and other amusing tales of the intersection between science and airport security) "The model...

The Ed's Up #186

May 18, 2017

A Remote Paradise Island Is Now a Plastic Junkyard "Henderson should be pristine. It is uninhabited. Tourists don’t go there. There’s no one around to drop...