This series connects different aspects of modern life and society to microbes, bacteria, viruses, and parasites through seemingly unconnected natural events, scientific discoveries, and human inventions.
What do blue jeans have to do with diphtheria antitoxin and the 1925 Serum Run to Nome? Follow the journey from Levi Strauss and the Gold Rush to the 1925 serum run, where sled dogs raced to deliver life-saving antitoxin. Timeless fashion and infectious diseases might seem like an unlikely pairing, but history has a way of weaving together the unexpected.
How does Mardi Gras and Carnival connect to leptospirosis? From New Orleans parades to Brazil’s Carnival, uncover the link between reservoirs, Leptospira bacteria, and the hidden dangers lurking in water and soil.
How does the Google no internet Dinosaur Game connect to Rabies? Haunt over the Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, classic Universal monster movies, psychological thriller and horror by Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Stephen King – including Cujo, and rabies and post exposure vaccine treatment.
What do kindergarten arts and crafts have to do with influenza and the flu? Take a trip down memory lane with grade school activities, remembering Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, the transfer of infectious disease with European colonization of the Americas, the dangers of influenza then and now, and the flu vaccine.
How do hamburgers connect to typhoid fever? Follow as we discuss turn-of-the 20th century meat industry, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Theodore Roosevelt and the origins of the FDA, Salmonella enterica Typhi, typhoid fever, and Typhoid Mary.
How do Hollywood summer blockbuster movies connect to sexually-transmitted syphilis? Take a journey from Jurassic Park and Contagion to Oscar Awards, Ignaz Semmelweis and handwashing, Treponema pallidum and syphilis, the No Nose Club, and the infamous Tuskegee Experiment.
How does Monticello span to Kuru and the cannibalistic Fore people of Papua New Guinea? Traverse from Thomas Jefferson and his plan for maple sugar, ending slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase, westward expansion along the Oregon Trail, the fate of the Donner Party, cannibalism, Fore people, Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, and the Kuru prion disease.
How does Steak and Eggs for breakfast help stave off cholera diarrhea cases during a disaster? Probably not how you think! In this episode, follow along as we connect the Waffle House Index, hurricanes, cholera, epidemiology, and the need for public infrastructure. Vibrio cholerae infects millions of people each year, and the cholera toxin can cause acute diarrheal disease that produces “rice water stool” and kills between 21,000 to 143,000 people worldwide annually.
How does honky tonk and rockabilly singer Johnny Horton connect to the Human Genome Project? Join us as we navigate the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, Nazi submarines, Alan Turing and the Enigma machine, LSD, the heat-loving bacteria Thermus aquaticus, and Nobel laureate Kary Mullis.
How does coffee connect to the 2003 FIFA Women’s World Cup? Tag along as we talk about Mediterranean conquests, coffee houses, dancing goats, civets, bats, and the deadly Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus outbreak in China.