Merle

Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke , the hosts of This Podcast Will Kill You, join the Infectious Historians to reflect on podcasting and infectious diseases.

Shana Gadarian (Syracuse University) joins the infectious historians to discuss her book on politics and their influence on behavior during Covid-19

Michelle Pfeffer (University of Oxford) joins the Infectious Historians and presents her work on astrology in the context of the second plague pandemic.

Neeraja Sankaran (National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR) and Stephen Weldon (University of Oklahoma) join the Infectious Historians to discuss a special journal issue on pandemics they recently edited.

Michelle Smirnova (University of Missouri-Kansas City) returns to the podcast to discuss her new book on drugs and prison in the United States.

Karen Cook (University of Hartford) joins the podcast and speaks about her work on medieval music and potential connections to disease and epidemics.

Tylor Brand (Trinity College Dublin) joins Merle and Lee to discuss his recent book on Famine in Lebanon during World War I.

Kristina Sessa (Ohio State University) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss her recent work on late antique disasters – including diseases – within the broader context of premodern environmental history.

Tom Ewing (Virginia Tech) comes on the podcast to discuss his work on the Russian Flu.

Troels Arboll (University of Copenhagen) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss his work on disease and healing in ancient Mesopotamia.

Jeffrey Reznick (The National Library of Medicine) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss his work as Chief of the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine.

Alex Otieno (Arcadia University) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss HIV-AIDS, focusing on the pandemic in Kenya.

Paula Larsson (University of Oxford) joins Merle and Lee to discuss her work on vaccinations and anti-vaccination movements. 

Sara Carr (Northeastern University) joins Merle and Lee to talk about her work on redesigning urban space in response to a pandemic.

Anjuli Raza Kolb (University of Toronto) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss her recent book on the history behind the metaphor of the “terrorism epidemic”.

Suman Seth talks about the practice of medicine in the British colonies during the 18th century.

Claas Kirchhelle (University College Dublin) and Samantha Vanderslott (Oxford University) discuss the development and history of public health laboratories and their use during Covid. 

Rhona Seidelman (Oklahoma University) discusses the quarantine of immigrants arriving in Israel at the foundation of the state.

Colin Elliot (Indiana University) discusses the Antonine Plague and the complicated history of trying to understand its impact during antiquity.

Ben Dodds (Florida State University) joins the podcast to talk about his new book about memories, myths, and the modern uses of the Black Death.

Rebecca Kaplan (Oklahoma State University) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss her work on animals and disease, focusing on brucellosis.

Graham Mooney (Johns Hopkins University) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss how space and place shape the impact of a disease alongside how these ideas shape public health responses

Emily Mendenhall (Georgetown University) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss Covid in her hometown in northwest Iowa

Lisa Sarasohn (Oregon State University) joins Merle and Lee to discuss her work on vermin, their interactions with humanity, and how humanity has perceived them over the past few centuries.

Andrew Wehrman (Central Michigan University) discusses the role of smallpox and inoculations during the American Revolution.

Tim Newfield (Georgetown University) discusses the connected histories of climate change and disease pandemics with a focus on the early middle ages.

Ben Trump (US Army) joins Merle and Lee to discuss his job and its ties to Covid, policy and history.

Tzafrir Barzilay (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) comes on the podcast to discuss his work on persecution of minorities before and during the Black Death, particularly through allegations of well poisoning.

Daniel Curtis (Erasmus University Rotterdam) joins Merle and Lee to discuss his diverse work on early modern pandemics, inequality, quantitative methodologies and movies.

Zachary Dorner (University of Maryland) joins Merle and Lee to discuss his work on the role of early modern commerce and capitalism in changing how medicine is administered and medical ideas about the body.

Robin Scheffler (MIT) joins Merle and Lee to discuss his work on cancer, including the perception of cancer as an infectious disease.

Matheus Duarte (University of St. Andrews) sits down with Merle and Lee to discuss plague in Brazil at the turn of the 20th century, medical solutions to the outbreak, and the creation of microbiology.

Scott Gabriel Knowless comes on the podcast to discuss his daily show, Covid Calls, and what he has learned from talking to people from across the world since March 2020.

Jim Webb (Colby College) comes on the podcast to talk about historical epidemiology and how it might transform the research on diseases in the past, present, and future.

Dora Vargha (University of Exeter) sits down to talk about the impact of post-World War Two polio epidemics in Hungary and how these epidemics shed light on the end of pandemics.

Nathan Crowe (U. of North Carolina-Wilmington) discusses the career of the scientist Joshua Lederberg and his role as a public scientist and policy influencer across the second half of the 20th century.

Urmi Engineer Willoughby (Pitzer College) talks to Merle and Lee about her work on Yellow Fever outbreaks in New Orleans across the 19th century.

John Mulhall (Harvard University) discusses what the medieval translation movement was and his own work on how late ancient authors innovated in their medical knowledge about plague.

Richard McKay (University of Cambridge) discusses his work on the history of Patient Zero and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Janet Kay (Princeton University) discusses the planning, aims, and assignments for her course this semester (Spring 2021) “Art & Archaeology of Plague.”

Adia Benton (Northwestern University) discusses the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak and why Ebola, as a charismatic disease, has such a powerful hold over our imagination.

Merle and Lee discuss a recent article that they wrote on the Justinianic Plague that has been published, and tie it to some of the discussions they’ve had on the podcast.

John McNeill (Georgetown University) discusses the state of the field of environmental history including its development, what it looks like now, and where it might be going.

A.J. Herrmann (Director of Policy for Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City, Missouri) talks about how he helped develop and implement Covid policies for Kansas City and the responses and difficulties in the city since March.

David Pickel (Stanford University) discusses malaria in the ancient world with a focus on Roman Italy.

Elliott Bowen (Nazarbayev University) discusses syphilis and sexual health in Hot Springs, Arkansas with Merle and Lee

Tara Malanga (Rutgers University) joins Merle and Lee to discuss indigenous perceptions of disease in the context of post-Contact Mexico.

Jim Harris (Ohio State University) discusses the development of vaccinations and anti-vaccination sentiments since the 18th century.

Mari Webel (University of Pittsburgh) talks to Merle and Lee about sleeping sickness and the impact of colonization in East Africa.

Nancy Tomes (Stony Brook) discusses the development of Germ Theory and how its ideas spread through advertising and other popular media.

Merle and Lee discuss the late antique Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750), their current topic of research.

Amir Afkhami (George Washington University) talks about modern cholera pandemics with a focus on their impact on Iran.

Liat Kozma (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) discusses the development of medicine in the Middle East.

John Haldon (Princeton University) discusses the idea of resilience to systemic crises with a focus on the seventh-century Byzantine Empire.

Seth Archer (Utah State) discusses the various diseases that devastated Native Americans focusing on their impact in Hawaii.

Guy Geltner and Janna Coomans join Merle and Lee to talk about what public health was like in medieval cities and why their work has important political implications for today.

Julia Simons talks to Merle and Lee about the evidence for tuberculosis and its effects around the Ancient World.

Thomas Zimmer speaks with Merle and Lee about the emergence and development of global public health from World War Two to the present.

Fushcia Hoover sits down to talk to Merle and Lee about the connections between environmental justice and the impact of COVID-19 on a community level.

Merle and Lee talk to Phil Slavin about the evidence for the impact of the Black Death in Central Asia before it arrived more famously in Europe.

Merle and Lee have their first guest, Alex Chase-Levenson, on the podcast to discuss historical quarantine and its relationship to social distancing in the present.

Merle and Lee discuss the most famous disease in human history, the plague, and give an overview of its impact.