Today's episode has Greg chatting with Sydney Halpern, a historical sociologist from the University of Chicago who has written extensively about twentieth-century American medical institutions and biomedical science, including 2021's Dangerous Medicine: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis, and Trigvy Faste, an Associate Professor in the Department of Product Design at the University of Oregon, as well as an illustrator and designer in his own right.

Their book, Infected for Science, coming out May 26th from Graphic Mundi, looks at religious pacifist David Miller and a group of conscientious objectors who took on an extraordinary mission during World War II: signing up for government-sponsored medical experiments that intentionally infected them with hepatitis to help scientists understand a disease that was sickening American soldiers fighting on the front lines. It also looks at the project's aftermath and legacy almost 80 years later.

[This episode is number 835 in a series.]

CHAPTERS

00:00 - Intro 01:22 - Discovering the Archives 03:45 - Trygve Finds Comics Again 05:33 - Meeting Through Comics Class 07:31 - Comics Influences and Models 08:34 - Trygve Comic Origins 12:30 - Building Dual Timeline Story 15:15 - Miller Cartoons Tone 18:56 - Art Style and Accent Color 23:14 - Publisher Pitch and Feedback 28:38 - Page Design and Lettering 31:03 - Seamless Reading Flow 32:12 - Internal Logic Design 33:08 - Dance With Death Spread 38:12 - Creative Nonfiction Boundaries 38:54 - Ethics And Compensation 42:51 - Who Gets Harmed 45:58 - Why Comics Worked 49:14 - Collaboration And Outreach 52:52 - Moral Complexity And Empathy 59:17 - Outro