100 Conversations About One Health = 100 Surprises

The best thing about good science is that it never fails to surprise you. And the best problem solvers are always willing to be surprised. In 100 episodes of One World, One Health, we’ve been surprised over and over again by what people have learned as they have set out to solve some of the biggest problems facing the planet – and by how often what everyone thought was going to be the answer was not even close.

The first episode of One World, One Health was posted on July 18, 2022, with guest Dr. Kinari Webb. She told us how she set out to save great apes and ended up saving people, too. Webb discovered that in forests in Indonesia, people were cutting down trees to pay for healthcare. She found that to save forests and protect orangutans who lived in the giant hardwoods, her team needed to find a way to improve healthcare access for locals.

It was a classic example of how One Health works – the intertwining of human health with our environment and the animals, forests, crops, microbes, soils, rivers, and oceans that we live among.

We later expanded on the idea of saving forests to protect human health with Dr. Paula Prist, who found that deforestation not only worsens climate change, but also spreads rodents that carry diseases into communities.

In four years of One World, One Health podcasts, we’ve chatted with experts working on a  vaccine that safely protects people against dengue fever; people fighting deadly fungal infections; ways to prevent pandemics; and the unexpected power of grandmothers.

We’ve heard a lot about the factors that lead to the rise and spread of antimicrobial resistance – also known as AMR or drug-resistant superbugs. We’ve discussed how antibiotics may save lives until they are used too frequently; the counterintuitive impact of feeding them to farm animals; and how this problem affects everyone in different ways, even the tiniest of babies.

We have also looked for ways to prevent the spread of drug resistance, such as the careful use of drugs, weaning the food industry off overuse of antibiotics, vaccination, and potential new drugs. We’ve even chatted about some AMR mysteries, like the case of the killer eye drops.

Listen to our review of the highlights of 100 episodes of One World, One Health, with host Maggie Fox, and find out what we found that matters the most in solving some of the world’s most pressing crises.