Air-Borne

The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

By: Carl Zimmer

Narrated by: Joe Ochman

One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best Science Books of 2025

The fascinating, 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 over two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus.

In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We travel to the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, and follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. We 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.

Air-Borne 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. Air-Borne also leaves readers looking at the world with new eyes—as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind.

Weaving together gripping history with the latest reporting on Covid and other threats to global health, Air-Borne surprises us on every page as it reveals the hidden world of the air.

Excellent and timely!

Fascinating history re the science of the air around us. Discoveries 80 years ago were so prescient of what we figured out so slowly (tragically) w Covid. So much interesting info. Should be required reading for every politician.

Carl Zimmer gets science communication

I didn't know it was so hard to prove that Covid travels in clouds. Heaven help us over the next pandemic now that the CDC is gone.

Accurate in an age of misinformation

Thorough, historically interesting, medically accurate. As a front line physician during COVID I found it fascinating

Very clarifying look at how messy science can be

Another stellar one from Zimmer. His last two books were also fantastic but this one is much more in the zeitgeist (if you are not suffering from covid fatigue).

When covid started I remember hearing about how mask couldn't really help with containment. This would later become a kind of conspiracy theory. That medical community was lying to
the general public to keep the good masks from themselves. I remember hearing how the mask just wouldn't work to stop the spread very. Still when I would hear about the reasons it was confusing to me. Mostly because, as a lay person, I didn't understand what airborne meant in turns of a contagion. I think it was very confusing to the public to tease apart what was meant by the terms. This book will clear up what it means and why the science establishment was so resistant to the idea that covid was an airborne spreader. He doesn't get into the philosophy of science with your paradigm shifts or falsifiability; but does give concise history of how science figured out how disease spread through the air. Can't recommend this book enough.

Interesting

Good book - great history just read greens book on tuberculosis and this was a great follow up. Enjoyed the listen Especially the history