You're listening to an episode of a Wondery Plus exclusive series.

To continue listening, join Wondery Plus and enjoy Ad Free Listening to over 40,000 episodes,

early access to your favorite podcasts and more.

Find Wondery Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts.

From Wundery, I'm Stephen Johnson, and this is American Innovations. And then. On American innovations, we tell stories of the crucial breakthroughs and triumphs of modern science and technology.

And there's something they all have in common, whether it's the discovery of the polio vaccine or the innovation of organ transplants, people working together to rise to the challenge.

The coming months will be filled with just these kinds of stories, stories of heroism, collaboration, and invention. of I have a personal connection to the subject of epidemics. About 15 years ago, I wrote a book called The Ghost Map.

It's the story about the Collar epidemic in 19th century London.

And while it starts with a confounding and terrifying disease,

the thing about the ghost map is that against all odds,

it turns out to be an optimistic story,

a story of triumph and ingenuity. And that's the thing.

Whenever we're threatened on a mass scale, we collaborate, we invent, and we often end up

leaving the world in an even better place.

The people I speak with on this show will all be part of that push for something better.

We're going to learn from our past history and also talk about new solutions to the unique

problems that the coronavirus is presenting.

On this episode, I'll be speaking with Bruce Gellen, the president of Global Immunization at the Saben Vaccine

Institute in Washington, D.C.

Before he joined Saben, Gellen was director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In 2005, he led the creation of HHS's first pandemic influenza preparedness and response plan.

We'll talk with Galen today about how the government

...