November 2022

This month, for the first time, I am the interviewee rather than the interviewer. This episode was recorded for BioScience Talks, the podcast of the journal BioScience, which recently published an article that I co-authored. The article is about science and media communication around Covid-19 and, in particular, the way that some of the scientific literature, and much of the media, have portrayed the relationship between land change and disease spillover risk. To be clear, my co-authors and I are not suggesting that the destruction of nature is not a key driver of spillover. There is plenty of evidence that it is. We are pointing out why this is not always the case, and why it’s risky to imply that it is.

Links to resources:

• Messaging Should Reflect the Nuanced Relationship between Land Change and Zoonotic Disease Risk - The BioScience paper discussed in this interview.

• Communicating disease spillover risk during the pandemic - This same interview, on the BioScience Talks website where there is a library of others to choose from as well.