Humanity’s Most Confounding Survival Epic

People encounter all kinds of threats in the natural world, but a virus presents an especially ominous challenge, as Outside contributing editor David Quammen can attest after decades of research on the topic. Quammen forecast a COVID-19–like pandemic in his 2012 book, Spillover , and beginning in the 1980s, he wrote a column for Outside called Natural Acts that had him pursuing fascinating scientific questions around the planet. He eventually took a special interest in zoonotic diseases, traveling to remote jungles and villages where contagions like HIV and Ebola had crossed over from animals to humans. Now he’s back with Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus , a gripping investigation of our battle against COVID. In this episode, Quammen describes why the disease will be with us for a long time and what we can do reduce the risk of future pandemics. This episode is brought to you by Tracksmith, a proudly independent running brand that makes high-performance products for amateur runners striving to be their best. Check out its entire collection at tracksmith.com . New customers get $15 off their first order of $75 or more for a limited time by entering the code OUTSIDE at checkout.

You can listen to Humanity’s Most Confounding Survival Epic online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Humanity’s Most Confounding Survival Epic is an episode from Outside Podcast by Outside Podcast.

This episode is 28:45 long.

This episode was published on Nov 9, 2022.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Outside Podcast when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.