To Fight a Virus, and Win

January 15, 1919. Boston PD receives a call: “Send all available rescue personnel...there's a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street." The bizarre flood decimated Boston's North End. How did it happen? And why does it still affect us all today? Special thanks to our guest ...  Show more

Editor’s note: This episode originally aired January 9, 2023. Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. passed away in February 2025 at the age of 100. Lt. Col. James Harvey III still resides in New Jersey, now 102 years old. -- January 11, 2022. Lt. Col. James Harvey arrives at Nellis Air Forc ...  Show more

How do we understand something as huge as a global epidemic?

Similarly to Covid, the AIDS epidemic, which was most destructive in the 1980s and 90s, had such universal reach. Yet within that, there were millions of personal experiences.

What was it like to ...

On the same day the COVID-19 death toll surpassed 300,000 in the United States, the first vaccines are being administered, finally giving millions of Americans hope for a better future and a return to normalcy. We explore how officials expect to deliver a safe and effective vacci ...  Show more

As the first in a series on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Steven Johnson speaks with Dr. Bruce Gellin, president of Global Immunization at the

The way we die has been utterly transformed. There have been around 10,000 generations of human beings, but only in the last 3 or 4 have infectious diseases not been an expected and accepted cause of death. What drove the most deadly infectious diseases? Was technological progr ...  Show more