So here we are at the end of Life on Earth Week and day 10 of our 20 day

Atlas Obscura holiday break. We've spent the week celebrating the smallest, most wonderful, most under-appreciated

creatures on Earth, microbes. In 2024, I hope to change that, I declare that this is the year of the microbe.

Every time you drink a beer or eat a piece of cheese or sour dough or even just

digest any of that food. We all owe microbes a tiny silent thanks.

So today, we're going to go to one of the few places

that truly gives microbes the place of honor that they deserve.

We're headed to Micropia, a museum slash zoo in Amsterdam,

all dedicated to the glory of the teeny tiny microbe.

I hope you and the 39 trillion microbial cells inside of you.

Enjoy the episode. In almost any love story, there's this part where one person sets eyes on the other and suddenly their whole world opens up and from that moment on everything changes that is exactly what happened to Antony von Levenhook. Chapter 1. Love at First Sight.

Once upon a time, 1674, to be exact.

Antony von Leavenhook was living in the Netherlands,

and he was a draper.

He spent a lot of his life looking really closely

at different types of fabric. He actually ground his own teeny, tiny single lens microscopes.

And Antony was also a curious guy.

So one day he collected some water from a nearby lake and put it under one of his microscopes.

And suddenly, something very strange came into focus.

V bizarre looking creatures world and zipped around in that drop of water.

It was an entire tiny universe.

Some people call this story the start of microbiology,

...