The Deadliest Pandemic in Modern History

March 5, 1953. The Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, is on his deathbed, and he’s turning blue. At the end of his life, Stalin is surrounded by his closest advisors, but these comrades aren’t hoping for his quick recovery. For days, they’ve been sneaking away from their ...  Show more

March 1, 1951. Two Texas horse trainers sit down to lunch with Walt Disney. They assume he wants to use their animals in a movie. Instead, Walt leans in and tells them about something that doesn’t exist yet. Not a carnival. Not an amusement park. Something movie-like in the real ...  Show more

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

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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 1918, a flu pandemic killed more than 50 million people worldwide. Forty years later, it nearly happened again. This week on Sidedoor we go back to a time when the viruses were winning, and we remember one man, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, whose vaccine virtuosity helped turn the ...

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