Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic - David Quammen

Category: Documentary, History, Science
Language: English
Keywords: AIDS Covid Disease Ebola Epidemic illness Pandemic SARS Sickness Zoonotic

Written by David Quammen
Read by Jonathan Yen
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 20 hrs and 47 mins

A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases.

The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pandemic. We hear news reports of Ebola, SARS, AIDS, and something called Hendra killing horses and people in Australia - but those reports miss the big truth that such phenomena are part of a single pattern. The bugs that transmit these diseases share one thing: they originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. David Quammen tracks this subject around the world. He recounts adventures in the field - netting bats in China, trapping monkeys in Bangladesh, stalking gorillas in the Congo - with the world’s leading disease scientists. In Spillover, Quammen takes the listener along on this astonishing quest to learn how, where from, and why these diseases emerge, and he asks the terrifying question: What might the next big one be?

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I know there are already versions of this book up on the site, but those were monolithic mp3’s and it bothers me listening to a book this long with no clear stopping points, so here it is as an m4b file split into chapters.