Cities, industrial agriculture and ecological pathways to pandemics

Corona Crisis: Once Upon a Pandemic

The growth of cities and the expansion of industrial agriculture have greatly increased the density of human and animal populations, heightening the risk of pathogens being exchanged within and between species, and creating new pathways for pandemic outbreaks. On this episode, Prof. Kate Brown from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides an ecological and food production perspective on infectious diseases, and shares insights from her research on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that, like the coronavirus crisis, unleashed an invisible contamination upon human bodies and unprepared societies.