In this episode we begin our history of metagenomics with Matthew Schechter. Beginning with highlights like the initial ability to see microbes with a microscope and growing microbial colonies, we work our way through the history of metagenomics leading to modern day sequencing. Matt describes a discrepancy between culturing and what is present in a sample, and how sequencing began to overcome this discrepancy. Matt covers what 16S sequencing is and where it fits in the history of metagenomics. We end with a discussion of a seminal work on reconstructing genomes from sequenced metagenomes. Read Matt's full article of the history of metagenomics at https://merenlab.org/2020/07/27/history-of-metagenomics/