The Deadly Puzzle of Yellow Fever

October 22, 1975. After traveling millions of miles through space, a Soviet spacecraft plunges through thick clouds of sulfuric acid to land on Venus. Its goal: take a photograph of another planet’s surface and send it back home—history’s first up-close glimpse at a world other t ...  Show more

October 12, 1820. John James Audubon—a failed shopkeeper, grist miller, and steamboat investor—sets off from Cincinnati on a flatboat down the Ohio River. He is bankrupt. The bank has taken everything except his clothes, his gun, and a portfolio of 62 bird drawings. His plan is t ...  Show more

Young doctor Jesse Lazear has deadly Yellow Fever. He thrashes around and convulses in his sick bed, and his vomit is black. He is just 34 when he dies. Curiously, mosquito expert Lazear was researching the disease when he became ill. Some historians think his infection wasn't an ...  Show more

How an early 20th century doctor pitted one scourge (malaria) against another (syphilis).

Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: <a href= "https ...

In the sixteenth century, sporadic outbreaks of a deadly fever crippled armies and altered the political landscape of Western Europe. Centuries later, a British surgeon reshaped the world’s understanding of how disease spread—and uncovered the key to fighting typhus. Learn more a ...  Show more

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The southern United States was hit by a dramatic epidemic of a mysterious disease called pellagra in the early twentieth century. This episode discusses the cultural and scientific sources of the outbreak -- from the cotton fields of the south, ...