Laura Spinney, “Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu o...

In A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire (U Chicago Press, 2026), Professor Michelle Henning presents an environmental history of chemical photography through the lens of its deep connections to empire and industry. Dependent on the extractive practices of fo ...  Show more

Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan during World War II was, arguably, the most controversial decision of the 20th century. The responsibility for that “decision” has logically fallen on US President Harry S. Truman. But in The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Stru ...  Show more

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

My special guest is author Catherine Arnold who's here to discuss a pandemic in the early 19th century that left bodies all over the place.  Get her book Pandemic 1918 - Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest medical Holocaust in Modern History on Amazon or your local book store.  ...  Show more

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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 ...

In light of growing concerns about the coronavirus, we’re revisiting an episode we ran last spring. 

One hundred years ago, the Spanish flu pandemic forever reshaped the way the United States responds to public health crises. At a time when people around the world w ...