Virginia Historical Society Podcast

A century ago—at the height of World War I—history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. The disease claimed more lives in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has claimed in thirty-seven years, and more than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease. KEYNOTE SPEAKER: John M. Barry is an award-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose book The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History was named the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine by The National Academies of Science’s in 2004. After weaving together a dramatic story of triumph amid tragedy in the face of a global pandemic, Barry will join a panel of specialists from the VCU School of Medicine who will discuss the role they are playing today in the research, treatment, and prevention of in