We're about to go into a dark winter.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Ladstone.

On this week's show, we remember how during the fall of 1918, the Spanish flu roared back with a similar vengeance,

and similarly incoherent and inconsistent advice from state public health authorities.

There are people dying 24 hours after the first symptoms.

People very rapidly know they're being lied to.

They lose all trust and authority.

Rumor and panic spread.

Plus, how and why America has always claimed ownership of the work of Britain's very

own Will Shakespeare.

It is explosive.

It is potentially toxic, but that's why it speaks to us.

We get it.

It's all coming up after this.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Bob Garfield is out this week.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

We have a lot of history coming up this hour, some sweet, most sour, pretty much all of it fascinating,

and all tending to the inevitable conclusion, to paraphrase Samuel Beckett, that the sun shines, having no alternative on the nothing new. We start with the specter still haunting us this

Thanksgiving weekend. Hospitalizations around the country have nearly doubled since late

September. Some hospitals are already talking about rationing care. The cases nearly triple the

daily rate we were seeing just a few weeks ago.

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