For thousands of years, humans have shaped mosquito evolution while mosquitoes have shaped human history. Today on the show, Noah Rose, an ecologist at UC San Diego, tells us how mosquitoes came to love human blood. Then, Georgetown historian John McNeill makes the case for how mosquitoes – and the viruses they carry – changed the course of history in the Americas.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After four decades of dedicated research on HIV, scientists have made extraordinary progress in treating the disease. But we still don’t have a vaccine or a cure. On today’s show, we’re joined by two veteran scientists who have dedicated their careers to HIV research. First up is Christine Rouzioux, a virologist from the Nobel Prize winning team of scientists who first identified the HIV virus. For the second half of the show we talk with Richard Koup from the National Institutes of Health, who explains why it’s so hard to create an HIV vaccine.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For a long time, people could tell that there was some connection between chickenpox and shingles. But exactly how they were related was a mystery. Then, in the 1950s, a family doctor shipped out to a remote Scottish island to investigate an outbreak, and made a discovery that shaped our understanding of shingles. On today's show, Ann Arvin, professor emerita at Stanford Medical School, tells us that detective story. Then Robert Johnson of the University of Bristol explains what he's learned about treating pain in his decades working with shingles patients.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.