Dr. Anne Rimoin (epidemiologist: bird flu / Covid / pandemics and art)

I'm joined by epidemiologist DR. ANNE RIMOIN, who will be discussing her scientific work and art’s role in our relationship to disease, pandemic potential viruses like H151 (avian flu), and what if anything we learned from COVID. She’s a Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health where she is also the Gordon-Levin Endowed Chair in Infectious Diseases and Public Health and the director of the Center for Global and Immigrant Health.

A bonus episode, exclusive to 5AM StoryTalk’s amazing paid subscribers, is also available here. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, you’ll get more of Anne and I discussing a seminal piece of art from her life – Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca’s 2014 song “E Moyo”.

Subscribe to the 5AM StoryTalk newsletter ⁠here⁠ to get access to this podcast episode, the bonus episode, and hundreds of other arts and culture articles, essays, and educational resources.

Show notes. Dr. Rimoin and I discuss the following and much more:

• The challenges of being a scientist in America in 2025
• Her journey from record company intern to the Peace Corps to leading epidemiologist
• Her lifelong love affair with Africa, especially Congo, and her years fighting disease there
• How the inter-cultural communication skills she learned in Benin and, later, Congo, inform her role as a science communicator today – but also, what this skill reveals about the failure of many, especially on the Left, to communicate effectively
• The profound risk of cutting federal funding for disease prevention when the H151 virus, also known as avian flu, is knocking on our door
• What COVID taught her was the real threat to society in the inevitable event of another pandemic (spoiler: the answer is not “dying from virulent disease”)
• Whether a Black Plague-like pandemic – or even one as lethal as the one in Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven – could occur in the 21st century given our scientific achievements
• The portrayal of pandemics in media, or the lack thereof with regard to COVID

Links:

• Become a paid subscriber to the 5AM StoryTalk newsletter⁠ to gain access to both the 5AM StoryTalk newsletter and all episodes of this podcast – including paywalled bonus episodes
• Listen to my bonus episode with Dr. Rimoin here
• Learn more about Dr. Rimoin here
• Follow Dr. Rimoin on Instagram