Going Viral - The Podcast

Pandemics don’t tend to register in collective memory and there are almost no memorials to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, but Covid-19 looks set to be different.  Today Mark and Hannah visit the ‘National Covid Memorial Wall’ on the South Bank of the Thames in London, opposite the Houses of Parliament.  Stretching 500 metres along Albert Embankment, the wall is an audacious work of guerrilla art, comprising of 150,000 hand-drawn hearts – one for every British victim of the coronavirus.  To find out more, Mark speaks to the founders of the group ‘Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice’ - Jo Goodman, Matt Fowler and Nathan Oswin, who dreamt up the people's memorial.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Hannah Mawdsley @HannahMawdsley

Jo Goodman

Matt Fowler

Nathan Oswin

@CovidJusticeUK / @CovidMemorialUK

For more information about the National Covid Memorial Wall, visit:

www.covidfamiliesforjustice.org

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

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If you enjoy our podcast – please leave us a rating or review. Thank you!

In this special episode, supported by the Department of Journalism at City, University of London, Mark speaks to three UK-based health and science reporters about the highs and lows of covering the Covid-19 pandemic: Sarah Boseley, The Guardian’s Health Editor; Victoria Macdonald, Health and Social Care Editor at Channel 4 News and Shaun Lintern, the Independent’s Health Correspondent.  What’s it been like being on the front line of the story of the century?  And looking back, what do they wish they had known earlier or done differently?

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Sarah Boseley, The Health Editor of The Guardian @sarahboseley

www.theguardian.com/profile/sarahboseley

Victoria Macdonald, Health and Social Care Editor, Channel 4 News @vsmacdonald

www.channel4.com/news/by/victoria-macdonald

Shaun Lintern, Health Correspondent, Independent @ShaunLintern

www.independent.co.uk/author/shaun-lintern

This episode is supported by the Department of Journalism, City, University of London

www.city.ac.uk/about/schools/arts-social-sciences/journalism

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_Pod   

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

Today Mark explores the discovery of the first vaccine, against Smallpox in 1796, by the English country doctor Edward Jenner.  With Owen Gower, General Manager of Dr. Jenner’s House Museum.  Meanwhile, Melissa catches up with Mark’s progress in the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine trial, the very latest in vaccine science.  From Smallpox to Covid-19: this is the house that Jenner built.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Owen Gower, General Manager, Dr. Jenner’s House, Museum and Garden, The home of vaccination. @owentg

jennermuseum.com / @DrJennersHouse

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

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If you enjoy our podcast please leave us a rating or review - thank you! 

This is not the first time scientists have raced to develop vaccines against a new disease.  In the 1960s, scientists faced a similar crisis over rubella, also known as German measles.  Today Mark explores the race to create the rubella vaccine with Dr. Stanley Plotkin, dubbed ‘The Godfather of Vaccines’.  In 1964, working in his Wistar Institute laboratory in Philadelphia, Stanley developed the rubella vaccine — the “R” in MMR— that’s now used across the world.  And Melissa speaks to science writer Meredith Wadman about the ethics of creating the rubella vaccine.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Dr. Stanley Plotkin, Professor Emeritus at the Wistar Institute and University of Pennsylvania, and consultant to the vaccine industry.

vaccinestoday.eu/stories/author/splotkin/

Meredith Wadman @meredithwadman, Reporter @ScienceMagazine, Author of "The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease”.

meredithwadman.com  

sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/physician-whose-1964-vaccine-beat-back-rubella-working-defeat-new-coronavirus

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

If you are enjoying our series do leave us a rating or review! Thank you

It’s the science story of the century - how successful vaccines against Covid-19 have been created in under a year. Mark explores the back-story on how they did it so quickly with Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the NIAID and Sarah Gilbert from the Jenner Institute, Oxford. He gets the low down on the vaccine science from scientist Rob Swanda and he talks vaccines vs. variants with Wendy Barclay from Imperial College London.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Director

www.niaid.nih.gov/about/director

Professor Sarah Gilbert, Saïd Professorship of Vaccinology, Jenner Institute & Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine

www.jenner.ac.uk/team/sarah-gilbert

Rob Swanda

@ScientistSwanda / Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UClU56Y1m8J9w82itIEXEHFQ?view_as=subscriber

Professor Wendy Barclay, Action Medical Research Chair Virology, Imperial College London.

www.imperial.ac.uk/people/w.barclay

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

If you enjoy these podcasts, please leave us a rating or review.  Thank you.

On New Year’s Eve 2020, Mark took his mum to St Charles’s Hospital in London’s North Kensington to get a shot of the new Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, almost a year after the coronavirus had emerged in Wuhan. It’s the science story of the century - how successful vaccines against Covid-19 have been created in under a year. Mark explores how they did it so quickly with Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute in Oxford behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. And against the backdrop of global vaccine hesitancy, and as Covid-19 cases surge in Britain’s second wave, Mark speaks to Peter Openshaw from Imperial College London about the magic of vaccines.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Professor Adrian Hill, Lakshmi Mittal and Family Professorship of Vaccinology; Director of the Jenner Institute; Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines; Fellow of Magdalen College.

www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/find-an-expert/professor-adrian-hill

Peter Openshaw Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College at Imperial College, London.

www.imperial.ac.uk/people/p.openshaw / @p_openshaw

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

If you enjoy these podcasts please leave us a rating or review - thank you.

Disease ecologist Peter Daszak speaks to Mark down the line from his hotel room in Wuhan, China, on day 4 of his quarantine. He’s a member of the World Health Organisation team currently investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2. 

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

@PeterDaszak the President of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to understanding the connections between human, animal, and environmental health.

Facebook @EcoHealthNYC

Twitter @EcoHealthNYC

Instagram @ecohealth_alliance

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

Mark returns to a subject close to his heart: the Spanish Flu of 1918/19 and asks what can we learn from that pandemic of 100 years ago? With Wendy Moore and Hannah Mawdsley.

Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Wendy Moore, author of The Knife Man; Wedlock; How to Create the Perfect Wife; and The Mesmerist. Her new book is ENDELL STREET: The Trailblazing Women who ran World War One’s Most Remarkable Military Hospital (Atlantic, UK). Published in the US (Basic Books) as NO MAN’S LAND: The Trailblazing Women who ran Britain’s most extraordinary Military Hospital during World War 1.

You can hear ENDELL STREET adapted for BBC Radio 4 here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jmpp

Twitter @wendymoore99

www.wendymoore.org 

Hannah Mawdsley, Twitter: @HannahMawdsley

Series Producer Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram goingviral_thepodcast 

Mark examines the origins of Covid-19 and why we failed to heed the warnings about coronaviruses with virus hunter Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance.

Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

@PeterDaszak the President of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to understanding the connections between human, animal, and environmental health. EcoHealth Alliance works in 30 countries around the world to identify and study the threat of emerging zoonotic disease. EcoHealth Alliance has been instrumental in understanding the origins and spread of diseases like SARS, MERS, Nipah virus, and Ebola, among others. EcoHealth Alliance also published the first ever global emerging disease hotspots map, identifying regions where the threat is highest. Dr. Daszak helped to launch the Global Virome Project, an ambitious vision to identify all of the world's unknown viruses. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and Chair of its Forum on Microbial Threats.

Facebook @EcoHealthNYC

Twitter @EcoHealthNYC

Instagram @ecohealth_alliance

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

With the UK recording the highest death toll from Covid-19 in Europe, Mark speaks to Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet and Robert Dingwall, medical sociologist at Nottingham Trent University, who sits on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) to help him make sense of the British government’s decision-making.

Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Richard Horton, Editor of The Lancet medical journal www.thelancet.com / @richardhorton1

Robert Dingwall, medical sociologist and a member of NERVTAG @rwjdingwall

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter: @GoingViral_pod    

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast