Carl Zimmer: Air-Borne

Take a breath. Just breathe.

And then reserve your ticket for a special online-only talk with New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer, who will tell you all about what just went into your lungs. Zimmer will share the ideas that are in his new book Air-Borne, giving a fascinating, previously untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down

Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air—and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took more than two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus.

Zimmer will lead us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. From the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, to Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. Meet the long-forgotten pioneers of aerobiology, including William and Mildred Wells, who tried for decades to warn the world about airborne infections, only to die in obscurity.

Zimmer also chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of airborne biological weapons designed to spread anthrax, smallpox and an array of other pathogens.

Breathtaking, isn’t it?

In Association with Wonderfest.

Photo by Mistina Hanscom.

March 3, 2025

Speakers

Carl Zimmer
“Origins” Columnist, The New York Times; Author, Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life we Breathe; X @carlzimmer

In Conversation with Quentin Hardy
Journalist



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