The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth–from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people, it exists in our memory as an afterthought to World War I ... Show More
Apr 23
Roland Betancourt, "Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth" (Princeton UP, 2026)
When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, it demystified the hidden world of factory automation through its extraordinary new attractions. In Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth (Princeton University Press, 2026), Dr. Rola ... Show More
55m 7s
Apr 22
Sarah Murray, "Powered by Smart: A Prehistory of Everyday AI" (NYU Press, 2026)
Powered by Smart traces the techno-cultural evolutions that made artificial intelligence feel more familiar than futuristic. From wearables and streaming platforms to home voice assistants and AI toasters, smart is an inescapable feature of postdigital life. Today, thousands of p ... Show More
55m 13s
Apr 22
The Information State: How is the State Surveilling and Manipulating us These Days?
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny interviews Jacob Siegel, writer, Army veteran, and author of The Information State. Siegel traces how military information operations, post‑9/11 surveillance programs, and Silicon Valley’s rise converged t ... Show More
54m 19s
Apr 2020
Lessons from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic
The influenza outbreak of 1918 was the deadliest pandemic in recent history, killing an estimated 50 million to 100 million people aroundthe world. And it bears some striking similarities to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, Laura Spinney, science journalist and author of Pale Rider: ... Show More
24 m
Apr 2020
#107 - John Barry: 1918 Spanish flu pandemic—historical account, parallels to today, and lessons
<div> <p>n this episode, John Barry, historian and author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, describes what happened with the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, including where it likely originated, how and why it spread, and what may have accounted f ... Show More
1h 21m
Mar 2020
The Deadliest Pandemic in Modern History
April 5, 1918. The first mention of a new influenza outbreak in Kansas appears in a public health report. That strain, later called the Spanish Flu, would go on to kill at least 50 million people worldwide. In a time before widespread global travel, how did this disease spread so ... Show More
21m 24s
Jun 2023
Pandemics Cause Misery and Death, But They Also Created Agriculture and Put Humans on Top of the Food Chain
Three years into a global pandemic, the fact that infectious disease is capable of reshaping humanity is obvious. But seen in the context of sixty thousand years of human and scientific history, COVID-19 is simply the latest in a series of world-changing pathogens. In fact, the r ... Show More
49m 56s