It's Friday, May 13th, 2016, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds.

I'm Injaviscontas.

And I'm Kishore Hari.

Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters. You can find us online at motherjones.com or inquiringshow.tttumbar.com

and on Twitter at inquiringshow and Facebook. And you can subscribe to the show on iTunes or any other

podcasting app.

This is the fourth in a series of four episodes on the impact of climate change on our world.

We started out with a segment on Earth Day, April 22nd, where we interviewed Bill Nye about

science, advocacy, and policy change with respect to the climate. Then we went on and talked about

melting ice sheets and now we're going to turn to the effects that climate change might

have directly on our species. In April, the United States Global Change Research Program

released a new assessment of a growing public health threat. It's called the impacts of climate change on

human health in the United States, a scientific assessment. And a link to it will be posted on

our Tumblr page. In order to understand these impacts specifically with respect to infectious

diseases, I spoke to Ben Beard, who's the Associate Director for Climate Change and Chief of the Bacterial Diseases Branch of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC's Division of Vector-Born Diseases in Fort Collins, Colorado.

It's part of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases,

and he's been coordinating the CDC's work in understanding and

mitigating the potential impact of climate variability and change on infectious diseases.

So the full report includes topics like vector-borne diseases, but also water-related illnesses,

food safety, extreme weather, mental health, and so forth. But I really wanted to focus on the

...