It all began 18 months ago with a trip to the zoo. Ed Yong, a science writer at the Atlantic, had been invited by Professor Rob Knight of the University of California, San Diego. The mission was to discern which animals would tolerate being swabbed with a cotton bud, on which body parts. This means of collection permitted Knight to compare their microbiomes — the vast microbial colonies that inhabit every species. As Yong recalled, Knight was especially interested in creatures that emitted funky smells, a sure sign they were home to a particularly intriguing microbial landscape.
During a visit to MIT on September 20 to meet the KSJ fellows, Yong called his zoo excursion the “perfect trip.” As such, it served as the opening to his first book, published in August 2016. A New York Times bestseller, “I Contain Multitudes” outlines what we know and do not know about the bacteria that reside in, on, and around us, as well as their implications for human and animal health. Yong’s private meeting with the KSJ fellows preceded a public book talk cosponsored by the Simons Center for the Social Brain.
“I now understand that every visitor and animal at that zoo was a zoo in their own right,” Yong said. “All the animals and plants I can see with my own eyes are profoundly affected by things I cannot see, and without understanding them, I do not really understand myself. I wrote this book to open up our eyes to this greater view of life, because when we look at the world through the lens of microbes, familiar things take on a wondrous quality.”
Over the past 15 years, the microbiome — which encompasses the minuscule bacteria inhabiting animals, our own bodies, and practically every other surface of the world — has inspired a new scientific craze. Humans contain an estimated 39 trillion bacteria, roughly one microbe for each human cell. As Yong put it, “We’re all just half the person we think we are.” We contain multitudes. This is true across the entire animal and plant kingdoms, from sea sponges, ants, and whales to seaweed and sea anemones.
Far from passive “stowaways,” bacteria digest our food, build our organs, calibrate our immune systems, and perhaps even affect our mood and behavior. However, microbiome research is a relatively young field, and the precise nature of microbes remains unclear — do the bad bacteria cause illness or simply make it worse? Which members of bacterial communities matter? How do bacteria interact with their hosts and with each other?
“I was impressed by how Yong could talk without giving away too much of what he had written,” said Kate Telma, a student at MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, who attended the book talk. “I think it’s interesting that someone can decide to write a book — that happens to be a best seller — without having studied that one thing for their entire lives.”
Indeed, Yong’s debut as an author followed on the heels of several other careers: first a cancer researcher, then a public information officer, and finally a journalist. As he told the KSJ fellows, “I was legendarily bad at the science, and decided I was much better at writing about it than actually doing it.”
Ten years ago while still working as a PIO, Yong began his blog Not Exactly Rocket Science, now part of National Geographic. The blog garnered interest from a number of publications — prompting a full-time freelance career, which ended almost exactly one year ago when Yong accepted his current position at the Atlantic. At age 34, in what little free time he has, Yong does ballroom dancing and Argentine tango. And of course, he also wrote a book.
“I’ve been interested in the microbiome for as long as I’ve been writing about science,” Yong told the KSJ fellows. He had written numerous blog posts concerning the animal and human microbiomes, but always considered them two separate research tracks (as had the scientists themselves). It wasn’t until he realized that these areas of study were deeply entwined that the book began to take shape. He composed an outline for his agent literally overnight, followed by a formal proposal during the span of a month and publication just over a year later. That one year was filled with trips to labs breeding germ-free mice, learning about the microbiomes of buildings, and his visit to the zoo.
Asked about the prospects of a second book, Yong confessed he has no ideas at the moment. Still, he added:
“Back when I was freelancing part time I said, ‘I will never go full time.’ A month later, I decided to go full time. About a year ago I said, ‘I’m a lifelong freelancer, I’ll never go back to full time employment.’ Two weeks later the Atlantic said, ‘Do you want a job?’ and I was like, ‘OK!’ So I don’t have a second book idea, but then again I am also a deeply unreliable source.”
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