The Obscure Virus Club

On February 24, 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two small planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an organization in Florida that tried to spot refugees fleeing Cuba in boats. A strange chain of events preceded the shoot-down, and people in the intelligence business turned ...  Show more

Malcolm has been writing about race and policing for a very long time, going back to the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999. Sometimes, it is useful to take a step back and consider policing in a broader context. Here we present a chapter from Malcolm's book David and Goliath, whic ...  Show more

What happens when you combine an axe-wielding microbiologist and a disease-obsessed historian? A strange brew that's hard to resist, even for a modern day microbe.

In the war on devilish microbes, our weapons are starting to fail us.  The antibiotics we once wielded like ...

Today we uncover an invisible killer hidden, for over a hundred years, by reasonable disbelief. Science journalist extraordinaire Carl Zimmer tells us the story of a centuries-long battle of ideas that came to a head, with tragic consequences, in the very recent past. His late ...

In this episode, the story of a doomsday cult that predicted the exact date and circumstances of the end of the world, and what happened when that date passed and the world did not end.

Also, we explore our drive to remain consistent via our desire to reduce cogniti ...

The definition of life is in flux, complexity is overrated, and humans are shrinking.

Viruses are supposed to be sleek, pared-down, dead-eyed machines. But when one microbiologist stumbled upon a GIANT virus, hundreds of times bigger than any seen before, all that went ...