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The Book Club: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

Author
The Spectator
Published
Wed 25 Jun 2025
Episode Link
https://shows.acast.com/best-of-the-spectator/episodes/the-book-club-the-hidden-history-of-the-life-we-breathe

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is science writer Carl Zimmer, whose new book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe explores the invisible world of the aerobiome – the trillions of microbes and particles we inhale every day. He tells me how Louis Pasteur's glacier experiments kicked off a forgotten scientific journey; how Cold War fears turned airborne research into a bioweapons race; and why the COVID-19 pandemic exposed a century-long misunderstanding about how diseases spread through the air.


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