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.

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Featuring:JAIME GREEN, The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the CosmosOne of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists. This amazing book somehow managed to incorporate everything from expert interviews, cutting-edge astronomy research, philosophical inquiry, and pop culture touchstones ranging from A Wrinkle in Time to StarTrek to Arrival. But probably what makes this one of my favorites is a sneaky side quest you can’t help but travel throughout: Not “are there aliens,” but “What does it mean to be human?” If you loved chatting with Katie Mack and Marc Hartzman, then you won’t want to miss this night of wonders (and maybe little green cocktails). Only on the Peculiar Book Club!

Episode was recorded live February 13, 2025.

Email: peculiar@bschillace.com

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From the authors of Quackery, a visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproven by science.
From the easily disproved to the wildly speculative, to straight-up hucksterism, Pseudoscience is a romp through much more than bad science—it’s a light-hearted look into why we insist on believing in things such as Big Foot, astrology, and the existence of aliens. Did you know, for example, that you can tell a person’s future by touching their butt? Rumpology. It’s a thing, but not really. Or that Stanley Kubrick made a fake moon landing film for the US government? Except he didn’t. Or that spontaneous human combustion is real? It ain’t, but it can be explained scientifically.
Pseudoscience is a wild mix of history, pop culture, and good old fashioned science–that not just entertains, but sheds a little light on why we all love to believe in things we know aren’t true.

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I loved this book so much that I wrote the Wall Street Journal review for it! It’s an absolutely madcap and unexpected take on history I thought I knew… But I hadn’t yet encountered Candace Pert. This amazing scientist stood at the dawn of three revolutions: the opioid crisis, the AIDS crisis, and the mind-body movement. A troubled genius, beleaguered, beguiling, and not above bedeviling, her visionary work shaped history - for good and, inadvertently, for evil. She discovered the opiate receptor (the mechanism by which opioids function in the brain), launching the opioid crisis… She proved the mind-body link, launching the field of integrative or functional medicine… and most shockingly, she created Peptide T, the underground AIDS drug featured in the film Dallas Buyers Club… and then went rogue, becoming a linchpin in the black market. Like a mythic hero, her greatest strengths—singularity of purpose and blind faith in her own virtuosity—would be her undoing. Come for a fast paced discussion about this singular woman, a name almost forgotten to history, now resurrected by Pamela Ryckman. It’s a breathtaking ride!

Episode was recorded live January 23, 2025.

Email: peculiar@bschillace.com

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Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book Invisibility, we are doing the 2020 reboot of The Invisible Man.

Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into this inventive horror/thriller. We'll discuss the themes of gaslighting, the technology of invisibility, and strategies for fighting an invisible man.

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It’s like that Monty Python Sketch… There are good reasons to know how not to be seen, and Gregory Gbur is ready to tell us all about the SCIENCE. Come now, you say, it isn’t really possible to be made invisible! Or is it? You’ll be surprised! In this book, science writer and optical physicist Gregory J. Gbur traces the science of invisibility from its sci-fi origins in the nineteenth-century writings of authors such as H. G. Wells and Fitz James O’Brien to modern stealth technology, invisibility cloaks, and metamaterials. He explores the history of invisibility and its science and technology connections, including the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum, the development of the atomic model, and quantum theory. He shows how invisibility has moved from fiction to reality, and he questions the hidden paths that lie ahead for researchers. Join us for an evening of science, bad puns, and a cocktail that I’m sure we can make “disappear”—only on the Peculiar Book Club!

Episode was recorded live January 10, 2025.

Email: peculiar@bschillace.com

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Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book Bite, we are doing the 1994 horror/romance film Interview with the Vampire

Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into this 90's classic. We'll discuss the themes of morality, vampire nihilism, and how great Kirsten Dunst was as a child actor and Tom Cruise was as a villian.

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If you follow the Peculiar Book Club Facebook group, you’ll know Bill Schutt is EXACTLY our kind of weird. He’s a vertebrate zoologist and author of six nonfiction and fiction books, including Pump, Cannibalism, and Dark Banquet! Recently retired from his post as professor of biology, Bill’s now a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He knows ever so much about bats (our favorite night wings) and in this latest book, an “incisive” history of teeth (from hagfish to humans), he delivers a mouthful. Come on, you KNOW there will be puns in a book about teeth. Did you know crocodiles regrow theirs? Sharks, too. (And we can hope he’ll throw in some facts about the Promachoteuthis Sulcus Squid, which looks like some combo of starfish and opera singer.) Join us for a fascinating lesson in denticulation! And sink your tusks into a good book.

Episode was recorded live December 12, 2024.

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