Fungal Spores and Pandemic Possibilities

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This chapter explores the potential dangers of fungus spores and the risk of a fungal pandemic. They discuss a scientist's warning about the adaptability of fungus to climate change, and tease an upcoming interview on the topic.

How likely is the fungal infection in The Last of Us? The one that takes over human brains and brings humanity to the brink of extinction, could something like that really happen?

In this episode we sit down with Emily Monosson, an expert on deadly fungal infections, and discuss the handful of fungi (we know of) that are today, right now, causing catastrophic declines in wildlife, eradicating trees, destroying crops, and increasingly impacting humans.

Monsoon explains that many in the field worry that fungi are an underestimated threat and that our actions are causing an increase in invasive and deadly fungal epidemics. We explore what is at stake, why this is happening now, and what we can do to prevent future outbreaks.

• Emily Monosson's Website

• Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic

• 2013 Trailer for The Last of Us

• Newsletter

• How Minds Change

• David McRaney’s Twitter

• YANSS Twitter

• Show Notes