There’s a working theory for the origins of Covid-19. It goes like this: Somewhere in an open-air market in Wuhan, China, a new coronavirus, growing inside an animal, first made the jump to a human. But what happens when diseases spread in the other direction?
Sonia Shah, a science journalist, explores the dangers of “spillback,” or “reverse zoonosis”: when ... Show More
Yesterday
1979: How the U.S. and Iran Went From Allies to Enemies
At the heart of the current U.S. war against Iran is an inconvenient truth: that the United States is, in many ways, responsible for creating the very regime it now seeks to topple. Today, Scott Anderson, a New York Times Magazine contributor, tells the story of America’s outsize ... Show More
49m 32s
Jun 11
The Young Economic Populists Reshaping the Left
College graduates used to lean right politically, but over the past few decades, they have increasingly moved to the left. Today, Noam Scheiber, the author of “Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class,” explains the economic forces that have left many col ... Show More
37m 25s
Apr 2024
What to know about the new bird flu outbreak
<p><span style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">For the first time, a virulent strain of bird flu has been detected in U.S. dairy cows. Fragments of the virus have also been found in commercial milk. Today, health reporter Lena Sun shares the latest on the ou ... Show More
27m 31s
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
Jun 2020
China's Wet Market Workover
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on our relationship with wildlife. The virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is zoonotic, which means it originated in an animal. Experts believe the virus emerged in bats then jumped to an intermediary host, possibly pangolins ... Show More
26m 52s
Aug 2023
'Speedboat Epidemiology': Eradicating Disease One Person At A Time
Smallpox is a deadly virus. At one point, it killed almost 1 in 3 people who had it. Almost 300 million of those deaths were in the 20th century alone. It was extremely painful, highly contagious and many people thought it would be impossible to wipe out—until it was. On May 8, 1 ... Show More
12m 28s