Beverly Sher has been teaching her “Emerging Diseases” seminar since 1996. From AIDS in the 1990s, SARS in 2003, the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 and the modern COVID-19 pandemic, students realize what public health crises reveal about the psychology and sociology of a nation. And: Since it was first identified in the United States in 1975, Lyme disease has become the world’s most common disease to spread from animals to humans through the bite of infected ticks. The sooner it's treated, the better the possible outcome for the patient. This is good news. Except that current testing for Lyme disease takes weeks. Brandon Jutras and his team are working on a rapid, at-home Lyme detection test.

Later in the show: COVID-19 isn’t over. Sara Reed Houser says that the proof is in the wastewater. Plus: You may or may not have been infected by a parasitic nematode in your life. Not to worry, though. It was just that ringworm in kindergarten. Why Mandy Kyle Gibson is deliberately introducing parasitic nematodes to an environment to help solve a problem.