You may not want to do this, but let me ask you to rewind your memory to March 2020 when COVID-19 was starting to lay us all low. We were hoarding toilet paper, we were wiping

down grocery deliveries. Some people, meanwhile, were taking on bigger challenges.

My name is Amy Kirby and I am the program lead for the National Wastewater Surveillance System

at CDC.

To most people,

wastewater surveillance may not seem particularly germane to a global pandemic,

but most people aren't Amy Kirby.

People will sometimes look at me and say,

well, you just think wastewater is the answer to everything.

And I'm like, but it is the answer to a lot of things.

Today on Freckonomics radio three surprising stories about water.

The first one is microbial, the second is racial, and the third, geopolitical.

This is not a problem of the Saudis coming and stealing Arizona's water. This is a problem that Arizona has bad water policy.

Water, water everywhere, but you have to stop to think. This is Freakanomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything

with your host Stephen Dubner. Amy Kirby is a microbiologist and epidemiologist who grew up in Atlanta and that's

where the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prevention is headquartered.

When it was established in 1946, CDC stood for the Communicable Disease Center.

Its main goal was to fight the malaria that haunted southern military bases. Today, the

CDC is a federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services. Amy

Kirby always knew she wanted to play for the home team someday.

I have always been interested in medicine and infectious diseases and how these tiny microbes

end up causing such dramatic symptoms in people. And I knew that if that's what I wanted to do the place to be with

...