The Current, Episode 1: Laura Spinney & Clive Priddle on the Spanish Flu and COVID-19
Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Current, a weekly series featuring interviews with nonfiction authors discussing the top issues of the moment, with host VP, Publisher of PublicAffairs Clive Priddle.
This week, Clive speaks to Laura Spinney, science journalist and author of “Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World.”
Episode originally aired: April 10, 2020
Episode length: 9:32
In this episode we cover:
(1:03) – How the Spanish Flu got its name
(3:28) – The questions Laura is being asked by media to compare the Spanish Flu to COVID-19
(5:46) – Clive is in New York, Laura is in Paris. How did these two cities cope with the Spanish Flu in 1918?
The haunting story of a virus that triggered the worst pandemic of modern times.
“Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story.” —The Guardian
The flu pandemic of 1918–1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth—from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi, and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll far higher than that of World War I, the 1918 flu is little more than a historical afterthought.
In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney reveals how the virus traveled across the globe, exposing humanity’s vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. She demonstrates how the 1918 flu shaped the modern world by disrupting, and often permanently altering, global politics, race relations, and family structures.
Now with a new afterword reflecting on the impacts of COVID-19, Pale Rider is a masterful account of the catastrophe that forever changed humanity.