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Going Viral - The Podcast

Jun 7, 2021

Pandemics don’t tend to register in collective memory and there are almost no memorials to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, but Covid-19 looks set to be different.  Today Mark and Hannah visit the ‘National Covid Memorial Wall’ on the South Bank of the Thames in London, opposite the Houses of...


May 10, 2021

In this special episode, supported by the Department of Journalism at City, University of London, Mark speaks to three UK-based health and science reporters about the highs and lows of covering the Covid-19 pandemic: Sarah Boseley, The Guardian’s Health Editor; Victoria Macdonald, Health and Social Care Editor...


Apr 23, 2021

Today Mark explores the discovery of the first vaccine, against Smallpox in 1796, by the English country doctor Edward Jenner.  With Owen Gower, General Manager of Dr. Jenner’s House Museum.  Meanwhile, Melissa catches up with Mark’s progress in the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine trial, the very latest in vaccine...


Apr 8, 2021

This is not the first time scientists have raced to develop vaccines against a new disease.  In the 1960s, scientists faced a similar crisis over rubella, also known as German measles.  Today Mark explores the race to create the rubella vaccine with Dr. Stanley Plotkin, dubbed ‘The Godfather of Vaccines’.  In 1964,...


Feb 12, 2021

It’s the science story of the century - how successful vaccines against Covid-19 have been created in under a year. Mark explores the back-story on how they did it so quickly with Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the NIAID and Sarah Gilbert from the Jenner Institute, Oxford. He gets the low down on the vaccine science...