You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Andravis Gontas. This is a podcast that explores the space

where science and society collide. We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters. Those of you who've been listening since at least March,

know that we have declared inquiring minds a COVID-19 free zone. We wanted to give you a

place where you could hear science news, where you could think about science, and not also have to

think about the novel coronavirus. But this week, we're making an exception. Given the recent

surges in the U.S. and potentially the coming of a second wave in Europe, we thought it would be important

to talk about contagion from a scientific perspective. And so we invited Associate Professor at the

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Adam Kucharski, onto the show, because he just

published a book called The Rules of Contagion, and he studies infectious diseases,

including COVID-19. Adam Kucharski has been very busy lately, as you can probably imagine,

and given the timeliness of his book, a lot of people want to talk to him. But in particular,

I wanted to know how things are changing. What do we know now in the summer of 2020 that we didn't know in the winter of

2020? And how should that affect our behavior moving forward? What do we know about COVID-19 and how it

spreads? Adam Kucharski, welcome to inququiring Minds. Thanks for having me.

So I want to start by having you give us an update as to how things, I mean, this is almost an impossible question to answer.

How you're thinking about contagion has changed as a result of COVID-19, given that you published your book, just it seems, from my reading of it, as things, it was a threat,

but it didn't seem that it was necessarily a guaranteed, globally changing, world-changing thing at the moment.

Yes, the book came out, originally in the UK in February, so it was that period where it was really,

I think it's transitioned from something that was an outbreak in Asia, which potentially was still containable to something, which was

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