“Up until early 2020, the idea that you would wear a cloth face covering to prevent giving someone else a respiratory infection or acquiring it yourself—there was no evidence to support that. But after things had been shut down for a while, there seemed to be a need to give the public something that they could believe was going to make them safer—convince them that maybe they could go out if they just wore something over their face. That was enough. That was the appearance of safety, giving them that control—the illusion of control.”

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Steven Templeton, professor of immunology at Indiana University School of Medicine and the author of a new book, “Fear of a Microbial Planet: How a Germophobic Safety Culture Makes Us Less Safe.”

“It's offering people this idea that they can completely eliminate risks—for their children, for themselves,” says Dr. Templeton.

Could our fear and excessive avoidance of germs and microbes actually be backfiring? And how will the rise of what Dr. Templeton calls a “safety culture” impact future generations?