You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

I don't think it would be too strong to say that the scientific community was

humiliated by this pandemic because they realized that they got it wrong. On the morning of March 1918, a mess cook at Camp Funston in Kansas, Albert Gitchle,

reported to the infirmary with a sore throat. By lunchtime, the infirmary with a sore throat.

By lunchtime, the infirmary was dealing with more than a hundred similar cases,

and in the weeks that followed, so many reported sick

that the camp's chief medical officer requisitioned a

hangar to accommodate them all. We're going to have a conversation today about a

dreadful disease but it's more than just the story of that disease that we're going to

discuss with Laura Spinni the author of Pale Rider the Spanish Blue of 1918 and

how it changed the world. We're going to talk

about a bit about politics and science as well. So I'm very excited.

Laura Sminni is a science journalist and a literary novelist.

She has published two novels in English,

and her writing on science has appeared

in National Geographic, Nature, The Economist,

The Telegraph, among others.

She is the author of the pale rider, the Spanish flu of 1918 and how it changed the world.

And she joins me on the podcast. Laura, thanks for coming

on. My history can beat up your politics. It's a pleasure to be here. In

1918, the world was greeted with a unkind invisible visitor an incredibly

strong virus that we now commonly refer to as the Spanish flu. The scale was so global it reached

...