Measles, Plagues, and How “Knowledge Isn’t The Problem”

My guest today is Dr. Edna Bonhomme, author of A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19. I don’t think Dr. Bonhomme wrote her book knowing there’d be a resurgence of measles, but here we are!

I asked Dr. Bonhomme about the history of epidemics and pandemics, both in the U.S. and around the world. Exploring earlier outbreaks sets us up to talk about measles and vaccine skepticism today. These are troubling times, and Dr. Bonhomme pushes us to go deeper and examine the inequities that link official responses to contagion over centuries.

Dr. Bonhomme is a historian of science, a culture writer, and a journalist based in Berlin. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, and many other outlets.