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
Yesterday
Britt Paris, "Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up" (U California Press, 2025)
We are glad to talk to Britt Paris about her book Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up (U California Press, 2025). This book asks: What if we could start over and build the Internet from scratch? For more than eight years, Britt S. Paris investigated ... Show More
52m 31s
Mar 8
Christiane Tristl, "Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent" (Bristol UP, 2025)
In this episode, I am in conversation with Dr Christiane Tristl, an economic geographer interested in heterodox economic geography. Their scholarship focuses on big tech companies, digital technologies, marketisation of water and critical agri-food studies. We discuss her book Tu ... Show More
41m 44s
Mar 7
Rebecca Sharpless, "People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas" (U Texas Press, 2026)
If you’ve ever wondered where your wheat flour is coming from, who is milling it (and how), or how it came to be such an important staple, then this episode might be for you. Dr. Rebecca Sharpless speaks with host Scott Catey about People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in ... Show More
1h 10m
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