Thomas Levenson
As seen in:
MSN,
Nature,
TIME,
Gizmodo,
NPR,
PBS,
The Atlantic,
The New Yorker,
Live Science,
The Boston Globe
and
Author, Money for Nothing, and much else. Professing science writing at MIT. Servant to Tikka & Champ. @tomlevenson@mastodon.online & @tomlevenson.bsky.social
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Thomas Levenson
How to Refute an Antivaxxer (And Why RFK Jr. is a Danger to Us All)
Thomas Levenson Takes on Some Common Arguments Against Immunization We don’t know their names. We almost certainly never will. But beginning on February 11, 2022 108 healthy adults from across the United States performed an act of selfless generosity. Twelve went first. They were the guinea pigs, those willing to ensure the safety of others by taking the risk of whatever might go wrong.
So Very Small: How Humans Discovered the Microcosmos, Defeated Germs--and May Still Lose the War Against Infectious Disease
. Apr. 2025. 10:12 hrs. ISBN 9780593950128. $76. SCIENCES COPY ISBN Levenson ( Money for Nothing), who teaches science writing at MIT, recounts the history of germ theory in this work. He starts with Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch draper who, in 1676, constructed his own microscopes and thence discovered a previously unknown world of living organisms.
Expand your horizons with MIT’s summer 2025 reading list
Enjoy recent titles from Institute faculty and staff, including three books from the MIT Open Learning community. Zoom image will be displayed Summer is the perfect time to curl up with a good book — and MIT authors have had much to offer in the past year.
Expand your horizons with MIT’s summer 2025 reading list
Enjoy recent titles from Institute faculty and staff, including three books from the MIT Open Learning community. Summer is the perfect time to curl up with a good book — and MIT authors have had much to offer in the past year.
Author Thomas Levenson on Writing His New Book SO VERY SMALL, about Germs and Vaccines.
Before germ theory, disease seemed unknowable—a punishment, a mystery, a fate. After it, we could fight back. But the leap from the first glimpse of a microbe to the realization that these tiny beings could kill us took 200 years. We often tell the story of germ theory as a straightforward triumph: microscopes, microbes, medicine. But discovery isn’t the same as acceptance. When I started asking what held us back, the answer wasn’t about science alone—it was about psychology, belief, and power.
Author Thomas Levenson on Writing His New Book SO VERY SMALL, about Germs and Vaccines.
Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Before germ theory, disease seemed unknowable—a punishment, a mystery, a fate. After it, we could fight back. But the leap from the first glimpse of a microbe to the realization that these tiny beings could kill us took two hundred years. We often tell the story of germ theory as a straightforward triumph: microscopes, microbes, medicine. But discovery isn’t the same as acceptance.
How London’s Great Plague Planted the Seeds For Future Scientific Advancements
This much is certain: the physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries who stayed in town during London’s Great Plague of 1666 paid scant attention to the rats they may have encountered on their miserable rounds. Why should they? Since the fourteenth-century eruption of the Black Death, European medical thinkers had relied on a set of established theories about disease. None of them involved an overabundance of rodents, except as a symptom of the general derangement of life in the midst of apocalypse.
Summary and Reviews
I "God preserve us all" Few facts remain from the life of good-woman Phillips. We know this much: She was married. She and her husband lived in the parish of St. Giles in the Fields, just outside London's city wall. The couple had some number of children. Mrs. Phillips fell ill late in December 1664 and died on Christmas Eve. As required, women hired by the parish to review local deaths examined her body. They reported their finding: Phillips, given name unrecorded, had succumbed to the plague.
Table of Contents - May 15, 2025
String Theory Two exhibitions focused on weaving go beyond the functional, the folkloric, and the feminine, tracking fiber’s escape from the connotations of the grid.
Einstein in Berlin
Chapter One "Suspicion against every kind of authority" The Berlin suburb of Dahlem remains a pretty place, quiet, dominated by its university and the science institutes renamed after the disasters of two World Wars in honor of Max Planck. In 1914 it was less than an hour by train on a good day from the heart of Berlin, and its houses are large and comfortable, ideal for a professor and his family.
Money for Nothing
Chapter One “The System of the World” Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, Mid-Summer, 1665 He had walked for three days to escape a farmer’s life just four years before. There’d been no hint he’d ever return. Yet, here he was again, about to open the gate. Little had changed: the main house, stone-built, comfortable; the barn behind; and, just across the track from the front door, the little patch of garden with its stand of apple trees, warming in the early summer sun.
Money for Nothing ebook by Thomas Levenson - Rakuten Kobo
Money for Nothing by Thomas Levenson Rate it * You Rated it * 0 1 Star - I hated it 2 Stars - I didn't like it 3 Stars - It was OK 4 Stars - I liked it 5 Stars - I loved it Please make sure to choose a rating Review * Do Say what you liked best and least Describe the author's style Explain the rating you gave Don't Use rude and profane language Include any personal information Mention spoilers or the book's price Recap the plot (0) 50 characters minimum The review must be at least 50...
Thread by @TomLevenson on Thread Reader App
26 Aug I'm pretty sure that this is a take with a lot of problems. It's author, a fashion journalist, doesn't engage with the technical issues of modeling or calculating environmental impact, launching the story from one 3 y.o. study. She doesn't examine plastics carefully...1/ https://twitter.com/studentactivism/status/1430900829582630914 2/ Minor errors make me wonder about the bigger stuff.
When a Good Scientist Is the Wrong Source
Six weeks ago, a reporter, Nicholas Wade, published what seemed to be a blockbuster story, one that, if true, would expose the greatest scandal in recent history. SARS-CoV-2, he wrote, or SARS2 for short, the virus that has driven the global COVID-19 pandemic, had likely been modified in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from which it then escaped into the wild. “Neither the natural emergence nor the lab escape hypothesis can yet be ruled out,” Wade wrote.
When a Good Scientist Is the Wrong Source
Six weeks ago, a reporter, Nicholas Wade, published what seemed to be a blockbuster story, one that, if true, would expose the greatest scandal in recent history. SARS-CoV-2, he wrote, or SARS2 for short, the virus that has driven the global COVID-19 pandemic, had likely been modified in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from which it then escaped into the wild. “Neither the natural emergence nor the lab escape hypothesis can yet be ruled out,” Wade wrote.
Today’s Crypto Fanatics Could Learn a Lot From Isaac Newton’s Money Mishaps
Since January, U.S. financial markets have been on a tear, a wild ride that began as the Biden administration completed its first full week in power. Five months later, the benchmark Dow and the wider S&P indexes have reached , while individual assets have behaved…well, exuberantly, most spectacularly in the sudden 1,200 percent rise and 40% drop in the price of Dogecoin, a cybercurrency initially launched as a joke.
The “Lab Leak”: It’s Not Enough to Say Accidents Happen - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
So far no one has come up with any clear account of how a coronavirus escaped biosafety level 4 barriers. Photograph by MihasLi / Shutterstock Disasters evoke a search for who to blame. Mishandled disasters make that search vital for anyone whose actions or inactions may have amplified the catastrophe’s damage.
The “Lab Leak”: It’s Not Enough to Say Accidents Happen
Disasters evoke a search for who to blame. Mishandled disasters make that search vital for anyone whose actions or inactions may have amplified the catastrophe’s damage. As the official United States COVID death toll reaches 600,000, those two dynamics have revitalized a claim first made early in the pandemic: that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, was released, possibly as an engineered organism, in a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Books in brief
Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks. From the Great Wall to the Great Collider: China and the Quest to Uncover the Inner Workings of the Universe Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau. International Press of Boston (2015) 9781571463104 The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Europe's particle-physics lab, CERN, has witnessed game-changing discoveries, not least the Higgs boson in 2012. Now, rival ideas for successors are evolving (see Nature 511, 394–395; 2014).
The Capital Note: Interest Rates at Four Thousand Year Lows (What Could Go Wrong?) | National Review Original
Sir Isaac Newton ( GeorgiosArt/Getty Images) Welcome to the Capital Note, a newsletter about business, finance and economics. On the (abbreviated — Daniel Tenreiro is busy with other projects) menu today: Negative interest rates and other negatives, “stakeholder capitalism,” Illinois taxes, the EU’s Green New Deal, magic, math, money, and Sir Isaac Newton. Lending to Italy at 0 percent — and other absurdities. Italy: Debt/GDP in excess of 150 percent by year end. Check.
Newton, Coffee, and the New Science of Money – - Samuel Gregg
As far as revolutions go, the world is still reeling from the publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica on July 5, 1687. By identifying and offering proofs for an impressive number of calculations and three laws of motion that established the foundations of classical mechanics in physics, Newton provided a powerful means for unlocking and then quantifying nature’s secrets. Nothing would be spared the ramifications of Newton’s discoveries.
The Hunt for Vulcan : How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet and Deciphered the Universe
In 1859, the brilliant scientist Urbain LeVerrier discovered that the planet Mercury has a wobble, that its orbit shifts over time. His explanation was that there had to be an unseen planet circling even closer to the sun. He called the planet Vulcan. Supported by the theories of Sir Isaac Newton, the finest astronomers of their generation began to seek out Vulcan and at least a dozen reports of discovery were filed. There was only one problem. Vulcan does not exist - and was never there.
Virtual Event: Thomas Levenson
presenting Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich in conversation with DAVID DOBBS Date Sep 15 Tuesday September 15, 2020 7:00 PM Location Join our online event (or pre-register) via the link in the event description. Tickets This event is free; no tickets are required.
Virtual Event: Thomas Levenson
presenting Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich Date Sep 15 Tuesday September 15, 2020 7:00 PM Location Join our online event (or pre-register) via the link in the event description. Tickets This event is free; no tickets are required.
Money for Nothing: Thomas Levenson (1720)
Thomas Levenson, Professor of Science Writing at MIT In this episode of Travels Through Time, Thomas Levenson, Professor of Science Writing at MIT, guides us back to the scene of one the first and most devastating of all stock market crashes, an event that traumatised Georgian Britain: the South Sea Bubble. *** The early eighteenth century was an energetic, expansive time in British history.
Investors Have Been Making the Same Mistake for 300 Years
Early in August 1720, Sir Isaac Newton was faced with a choice. In a year when London’s stock market was roaring upward in an utterly unprecedented boom, should he sell the last of his safe investments to buy shares in the South Sea Company? Since January of that year, shares in the firm—one of the largest private companies in history—had gone up eightfold, and had made paper fortunes for thousands. Already a wealthy man, Newton was usually a cautious investor.
Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich by Thomas Levenson
Synopses & Reviews Synopsis The sweeping story of how the greatest minds of the Scientific Revolution applied their new ideas to people, money, and markets--and along the way, invented modern finance. "An astounding episode from the early days of financial markets that to this day continues to intrigue and perplex historians . . .
Money for Nothing
Author Thomas Levenson Publisher Random House Publication Date 2020-08-18 Section Economics / New Hardcover - Nonfiction Type New Format Hardcover ISBN 9780812998467 The sweeping story of how the greatest minds of the Scientific Revolution applied their new ideas to people, money, and markets—and along the way, invented modern finance. “An astounding episode from the early days of financial markets that to this day continues to intrigue and perplex historians . . .
Unfortunately, the US political system, beginning with the Constitution, is…
1/ More from this must read, balloon-juice.com/2020/07/17/the…: Unfortunately, the US political system, beginning with the Constitution, is not built to respond to, handle, and/or deal with an irregular, asymmetric, and unconventional insider threat... 2/ "that recognizes no authority other than that of their own power and sees every law, rule, norm, and tradition solely as a means to obtain power, maintain power, expand power, or direct power to reward allies and punish opponents....
Just read an @radioopensource email on their "cancel culture" program in which Yale professor David Bromwich displayed a level of historical…
12,399 views Just read an @radioopensource email on their "cancel culture" program in which Yale professor David Bromwich displayed a level of historical illiteracy that made me wonder if Clio herself appeared to whomp him upside the head. Quote and exegesis to follow 1/ 2/ Here's the quote: "Bromwich says...that universities are on the way to becoming much less free than they were 'let’s say from 1945 to 1995 or 2000 or so. Universities were the freest part of American life for all those years . .
MONEY FOR NOTHING
The story of government debt finance, which sounds boring but definitely isn’t. Science writer and MIT professor Levenson reminds readers that rulers throughout history have taxed citizens to pay bills. During wars, this proved insufficient, so they borrowed from rich people and often didn’t pay it back. As a result, governments paid higher interest than private borrowers and sometimes found no lenders.
1/ The single biggest story US media has missed is that Trump's and the GOP's actions, both in the last few days and stretching back over 40…
12,399 views Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos , 16 tweets, 3 min read 1/ The single biggest story US media has missed is that Trump's and the GOP's actions, both in the last few days and stretching back over 40 years, have been in response to the increasing probability that Republicans are a permanent minority in US politics... 2/ The GOP has not won a majority of votes in a non-incumbent presidential election since 1992.
A thread written by @TomLevenson
Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos @TomLevenson Author, Money for Nothing coming in August/Sept. from Random House & Head of Zeus. Pre-orders are an author's best friend! Professor of science writing at MIT. May. 08, 2020 3 min read 1/ The single biggest story US media has missed is that Trump's and the GOP's actions, both in the last few days and stretching back over 40 years, have been in response to the increasing probability that Republicans are a permanent minority in US politics...
The Truth About Isaac Newton’s Productive Plague
The idea that the bubonic plague woke the brilliance in Isaac Newton is both wrong and misleading.Illustration from Oxford Science Archive / Getty Now, with the spread of the coronavirus imposing its own isolation, Newton’s miracle year is being touted as a model.
@GOP's push to kill millions is turns on the idea that the economy is both more important than & immune to mass death comes (i…
1/n I'm rereading basically the whole @GreatDismal corpus. I'm on Spook Country. There, on page 138-9, I found myself once again marveling again at how Gibson isn't writing fiction, but non-fiction a few years soon: "A nation," he heard himself say, "consists of its laws... @GreatDismal 2/ A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time.
Conservatives Try to Rebrand the Coronavirus
(AP Photo/Padmananda Rama) l recently, Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, was most famous for tweeting a lie: a faked photo of President Barack Obama shaking hands with Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran.
Conservatives Try to Rebrand the Coronavirus
The term Wuhan virus treats COVID-19 as a Chinese scourge—and ignores an ugly history. About the author: Thomas Levenson, a professor of science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of Money For Nothing, a forthcoming book about the South Sea Bubble and the invention of financial capitalism.
1/n I'm rereading basically the whole @GreatDismal corpus. I'm on Spook Country. There, on page 138-9, I found myself once again marveling a…
1/n I'm rereading basically the whole @GreatDismal corpus. I'm on Spook Country. There, on page 138-9, I found myself once again marveling again at how Gibson isn't writing fiction, but non-fiction a few years soon: "A nation," he heard himself say, "consists of its laws... @GreatDismal 2/ A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time.
Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich
Money for Nothing (Hardcover) The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich By Thomas Levenson Random House, 9780812998467, 480pp. Publication Date: August 18, 2020 List Price: 30.00* * Individual store prices may vary. Description The sweeping story of how the greatest minds of the Scientific Revolution applied their new ideas to people, money, and markets—and along the way, invented modern finance.
Einstein: Genius Among Geniuses
Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Who was smarter, Newton or Einstein? "It's a photo finish," Levenson says. Courtesy Wikipedia.org and Yousuf Karsh/Library and Archives Canada Newton's claim is obvious. He created modern physics. His system described the behavior of the entire cosmos, and while others before him had invented grand schemes, Newton's was different.
The Ninth Planet That Wasn't
Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier had to know something was amiss. Not in his data or his analysis, but with the planet Mercury itself. It was 1859, and Le Verrier, a giant of French astronomy, was attempting to fine-tune his mathematical model of Mercury—the “theory” of the planet’s motions expressed within mathematical models based on Newtonian gravitation. He had already produced the most accurate theory 16 years earlier, and this time, he expected to do better. And he did.
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist
Thomas Levenson / Published June 4, 2009 For sale at Amazon.com. In 1695, Isaac Newton–already renowned as the greatest mind of his age–made a surprising career change. He left quiet Cambridge, where he had lived for thirty years and made his earth-shattering discoveries, and moved to London to take up the post of Warden of His Majesty’s Mint. Newton was preceded to the city by a genius of another kind, the budding criminal William Chaloner.
The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
The Hunt for Vulcan (Paperback) . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe By Thomas Levenson Random House Trade Paperbacks, 9780812988307, 256pp. Publication Date: August 2, 2016 Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover (11/3/2015) MP3 CD (3/22/2016) List Price: 16.00* * Individual store prices may vary.
News & Events: It's Not Too Early To VOTE
Mark your calendars for our annual Frequent Buyer Sale (November 4th) and for our Winter Warehouse Sale . And check out more upcoming events , now updated through December. The New York Times bestselling author of Disrupted presents his latest book, Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us. At this meeting of the Harvard Square Book Circle, our in-store book club, we will discuss Fyodor Dostoevsky's most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground.
7 Must-Reads for Fans of British Crime Dramas
Why does it feel like Britain one-ups America on crime shows? From golden oldies like Inspector Morse to the more recent Luther, Broadchurch, and The Fall, the Brits have mastered the quirky cozy mystery and gritty detective story. But if you’ve watched (and re-watched) these shows already, have no fear. There are plenty of books that capture the same grittiness, quirkiness—or all-around Englishness—of your favorite British crime dramas.
The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . and How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe (Paperback)
For more than fifty years, the world's top scientists searched for the "missing" planet Vulcan, whose existence was mandated by Isaac Newton's theories of gravity. Countless hours were spent on the hunt for the elusive orb, and some of the era's most skilled astronomers even claimed to have found it. There was just one problem: It was never there.
Squid Empire
The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods Narrated by: Emily Durante Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins 4.4 out of 5 stars 4.4 (162 ratings) Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts. You will get an email reminder before your trial ends. Your Plus plan is $7.95 a month after 30 day trial. Upgrade or cancel anytime. Buy for $17.49 Publisher's Summary Before there were mammals on land, there were dinosaurs.
Benjamin Franklin’s Greatest Invention | HistoryNet
Citizen Ben figured out how to make paper money as valuable as gold or silver coins—and got rich in the process. In September 1723, in the port of Boston, a very young man—still shy of his 18th birthday—looks for a ship. He finds a captain ready to set sail, and through a friend tells an old, familiar story: He has “got a naughty girl with child.” Would the captain carry him? He would. There is no girl—at least, not this time. Rather, Ben Franklin simply hates working in his brother’s printing shop.
Apropos Of Not Much (Post-Prandial Rant)
Trump and GOP actions are powering that decline, from gutting US diplomacy to abandoning soft power/trade alliances to an over reliance on the trappings of military power on the international security side to an attack on the US’s domestic capacity to solve problems, propel economic growth, and secure good lives for the great mass of its people.
Pressroom Podcast: Glensheen murders prosecutor John DeSanto
Forty years later, then chief prosecutor John DeSanto joins this week’s Pressroom Podcast to share his firsthand experience with Duluth’s most well-known murder case.“The day of June 27, 1977, Monday. I remember it like it was yesterday,” DeSanto, a now semi-retired senior judge who had a 35 year career in the St. Louis County Attorney’s Office, said. Since that night and the trials that followed, DeSanto has written a book about the case and given many presentations to the public.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Thomas
Contact Thomas, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack