The Hidden Brain Team has felt a range of emotions as we've watched the spread of coronavirus.

Like you, we've had moments of frustration, and anxiety, and fear.

Such emotions can play a big role in our response to a disease outbreak.

Another key factor are ability to trust the guidance of public health experts.

We first explored this idea several years ago while working on an episode about an Ebola

outbreak in Africa.

We thought we'd bring you that story today in the hopes that it may remind us that

expertise combined with authentic human connection can achieve a lot during times of uncertainty.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vidantar.

In 1950, before he directed the film on the waterfront, Elia Kazan made another dramatic

thriller, a movie called Panic in the Streets.

There's a reason you probably haven't heard of it.

It isn't a great movie.

Here with recorded is the story of a silent savage menace, the events, incidents, and emotions

of the people who were apart of it, who found time running out as they looked into the face

of mortal peril.

The film tells the fictional story of a murder in New Orleans.

When the police investigate, they find the victim suffered from a deadly infectious disease,

a version of the plague.

Public health officials believe the killers may have contracted the disease as they carried

the victim's body away.

What follows is a race to track down the criminals and halt an epidemic, a collision of law enforcement

...