Ask any expert in infectious diseases and they’ll tell you that when it comes to pandemics, it’s not a question of if we’ll have another one.

It’s a question of when. Today’s episode investigates what the most likely killers might be, and whether we’re prepared or not.

Guests:

• Ed Yong, science writer at The Atlantic
• Nahid Bhadelia, assistant professor at Boston University School of Medicine and the Medical Director of Special Pathogens Unit (SPU) at Boston Medical Center
• Laura Spinney, science writer and author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
• Nicola Twilley, co-host of Gastropod and author of a forthcoming book on quarantine

Further Reading:

• The Next Plague is Coming. Is America Ready?
• Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
• Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being by Harold Napoleon
• Strengthening Health Systems While Responding to a Health Crisis: Lessons Learned by a Nongovernmental Organization During the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic in Sierra Leone
• Medicine’s Long, Thin Supply Chain
• What Bill Gates Fears Most
• Predicting virus emergence amid evolutionary noise
• Nebraska’s Biocontainment Unit
• The Terrifying Lessons of a Pandemic Simulation
• Clade X Livestream
• CDC Director: Why I Don’t Support A Travel Ban To Combat The Ebola Outbreak
• Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters and Bioterrorism
•  How prepared is the world for the next epidemic? This tool shows most countries are not.

Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose Eveleth. The intro music is by Asura and the outtro music is by Hussalonia. The voices from the future this episode were provided by Paul Krueger, Sean Raines, and Sameer Ajmani. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky.

If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. We love hearing your ideas! And if you think you’ve spotted one of the little references I’ve hidden in the episode, email us there too. If you’re right, I’ll send you something cool.

And if you want to support the show, there are a few ways you can do that too! Head to www.flashforwardpod.com/support for more about how to give. But if that’s not in the cards for you, you can head to iTunes and leave us a nice review or just tell your friends about us. Those things really do help.

That’s all for this future, come back next time and we’ll travel to a new one.

Flash Forward is a critically acclaimed podcast about the future.

In each episode, host Rose Eveleth takes on a possible (or not so possible) future scenario — everything from the existence of artificial wombs, to what would happen if space pirates dragged a second moon to Earth. What would the warranty on a sex robot look like? How would diplomacy work if we couldn’t lie? Could there ever be a black market for fecal transplants? (Complicated, it wouldn’t, and yes, respectively, in case you’re curious.) By combining audio drama and deep reporting, Flash Forward gives listeners an original and unique window into the future, how likely different scenarios might be, and how to prepare for what might come.