Show Notes
What if we could catch the next pandemic before it starts?
For most of human history, we’ve discovered outbreaks after people start getting sick. But what if we could spot a dangerous virus as it emerges, track it as it spreads and give health workers the information they need to stop it - in real time? Meet Dr Pardis Sabeti, geneticist, disease hunter and professor at Harvard University. Pardis has spent more than two decades on the frontlines of some of the world’s deadliest outbreaks, from Lassa fever and Ebola in West Africa to COVID-19. Now, through Sentinel, she and her team are trying to build something even more ambitious: an early-warning system for infectious disease that can work anywhere - including communities across Africa where laboratory resources are limited and outbreaks can easily go undetected. From why many “emerging” diseases may actually be diseases we simply haven’t detected to the devastating consequences of global health funding cuts - this is a conversation about how close we are to changing our relationship with infectious disease, and what it will take to stop the next outbreak before it becomes a pandemic.
In this episode: How Pardis and her team tracked Ebola as it spread through West Africa Why many “emerging” diseases may already be circulating How Sentinel is building an early-warning system for outbreaks What Rwanda got right with Marburg What global health funding cuts look like on the ground and in the lab Why stopping the next pandemic will take more than technology Why Pardis still believes we can build a world where outbreaks are stopped before they become pandemics Timestamps: 00:00 The Disease Hunter 00:42 If Pandemics Keep You Up at Night 02:51 Inside the 2014 Ebola Outbreak 03:38 The More You Test, the More You Find 04:39 Building an Early-Warning System for Disease 07:05 Are Diseases Emerging - or Are We Finally Detecting Them? 08:48 How Did Pardis Know COVID Was Coming? 10:36 Is Another Pandemic Inevitable? 11:43 What Well-Timed Funding Makes Possible 13:52 Why Every Person Matters in a Pandemic 15:26 How Rwanda Stopped Marburg 16:35 Why Ebola Is So Hard to Stop in the DRC 18:26 Midpoint Reflections 19:29 What Global Health Funding Cuts Look Like on the Ground 21:39 Laying Off a Third of Her Team 23:52 “Philanthropic Survivor’s Guilt” 26:59 How Do You Take On a Trillion-Dollar Problem? 29:08 Why Technology Alone Won’t Stop the Next Pandemic 31:57 “I’m a Student of Humanity” 34:03 The Work You Don’t Get to Finish Find Out More: 👉 Explore Sentinel 👉 Learn more about Pardis Sabeti and the Sabeti Lab 👉 Discover The Audacious Project at TED 👉 Read about Sentinel’s $100 million MacArthur 100&Change award
About Fix The News: Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.
Subscribe & follow: If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.
Production credits: Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose Produced by Fix The News Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!
This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.
More from Fix The News
What happens when the systems we've relied on stop working? And who gets to decide what comes next?
How do you get the world to pay attention to a problem it thinks it's already solved? Around a billion children are exposed to dangerous levels of lead. It can be hiding in cookware, spices and cosmetics, or released through industries like battery recycling. For a child, exposure can mean losing up to six IQ points - irreversible damage that, multiplied across hundreds of millions of children, becomes an enormous drain on human potential. And yet, unlike so many global challenges, we already know how to prevent it. Meet Drew McCartor, President of Pure Earth. For the past 17 years, Drew and his colleagues have been sounding the alarm about lead poisoning: gathering evidence, understanding the scale of the problem and building the playbook for how to solve it. Now, after decades of “yelling into the void”, the world is finally paying attention - and Drew believes we have an opportunity to eliminate lead poisoning altogether. In this episode: Why around a billion children are exposed to dangerous levels of lead The surprising places lead is still hiding - from cookware to spices What losing four to six IQ points means for a child - and an entire country How a Craigslist ad led Drew from unpaid intern to President of Pure Earth Why Pure Earth spent years wondering if they were crazy The young boy in Bangladesh who brought the human cost of lead poisoning home for Drew What changed when the world finally started paying attention Why Drew believes we can eliminate lead poisoning altogether About the title: A Useful Truth comes from a 1786 letter by Benjamin Franklin about lead poisoning: “You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known and exist before it's generally received and practiced upon.” Almost 250 years later, it feels remarkably apt.
What if the knowledge we need most for the future is something we’ve spent centuries forgetting?
Five years ago, the Taliban banned girls from the classroom. One school refused to stop teaching.
The story of farming has always been one of adaptation. The next chapter may be its most one important yet. In this special episode of Fix The News, we bring together two conversations exploring one of the defining questions of our time: how do we feed a growing world without destroying the planet that we depend on? Meet Professor Rattan Lal, one of the world's leading soil scientists and a World Food Prize laureate, whose life's work has transformed our understanding of the living world beneath our feet. Then meet Alesha Miller, Chief Strategy Officer at Digital Green, who's helping smallholder farmers across Africa and Asia combine generations of local knowledge with artificial intelligence to build more resilient food systems.