{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"233. Sabrina Sholts with Dr. Julianne Meisner: Pandemics and Human Potential","description":"The very fact of being human makes us vulnerable to pandemics, but it also gives us the power to save ourselves. The COVID-19 pandemic most likely won\u2019t be our last\u2014that is the uncomfortable but all-too-timely message of Sabrina Sholts\u2019 new book, The Human Disease. Traveling through history and around the globe to examine how and why pandemics are an inescapable threat of our own making, Sholts draws on dozens of disciplines\u2014from medicine, epidemiology, and microbiology to anthropology, sociology, ecology, and neuroscience\u2014as well as a unique expertise in public education about pandemic risks, to identify the human traits and tendencies that double as pandemic liabilities. Though the COVID-19 pandemic looms large in Sholts\u2019s account, it is, in fact, just one of the many infectious disease events explored in her book. When the next pandemic happens, and how bad it becomes, is largely within our highly capable human hands\u2014and will be determined by what we do with our extraordinary human brains. Sabrina Sholts is the curator of biological anthropology at the Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of Natural History, where she developed the major exhibit Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World. She has also served as a scientific commissioner for a related exhibition at the Mus\u00e9e des Confluences in Lyon, France.  Julianne Meisner, PhD, MS, BVM&S, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, focusing on One Health and pandemics. Her research explores the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health, with a focus on novel pathogen emergence and the impacts of livestock keeping. She holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh and UW, and her current projects include investigating the effects of land use change on disease emergence and refining models for human-animal contact networks. Buy the Book The Human Disease: How We Create Pandemics, from Our Bodies to Our Beliefs The Elliott Bay Book Company ","author_name":"Town Hall Seattle Science Series","author_url":"http:\/\/scienceths.libsyn.com\/website","html":"