I read Freakonomics while stranded at an airport for a few hours a couple years ago. Enjoyed it thoroughly. This week, the editor of the New York Times‘ Freakonomics blog will be soliciting questions from readers about “The Fever.” My attempts to expose the freaky ironies and hidden sides of malaria will appear on their blog shortly. Send in your questions to the NYT here.
Month: August 2010
Here it is–for some reason I’m not able to embed it, but C-SPAN has the video of my Washington DC talk on The Fever in their online video archive.
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/294937-
It’s been brought to my attention–by Mark Powell, of Arlington, VA–that I misspoke during the lecture, and said that hundreds of thousands of French workers died of malaria and yellow fever while attempting to build the Panama Canal. My apologies! The figure is the still-shocking tens of thousands of workers. Thankfully, I got it right in the book (page 151 for those of you inclined to check).
If you watch C-Span 2’s “BookTV” program, you’ll find me on the tube talking about The Fever this Sunday, August 22 at 8 pm (and also at 7:30 am on Sunday, and 5 am on Monday). For more info, see their website listing, here. I think they stream the videos on their website, too, so will be posting that shortly as well.
I gave a talk at the wonderful independent bookstore Politics & Prose in Washington, DC last night, to a packed house. It was a great audience which included at least a few malariologists and malaria historians, not to mention a bunch of people who’d survived the disease and were active in the fight against it. I would have loved to have been able to answer more questions–my favorite was one guy who asked me whether I believed in the transmigration of souls (because I had talked about how the malaria parasite is such a shape-shifter). I think he may have been accusing me of being a mosquito in a past life! C-SPAN was there filming the event, so I should be able to post video soon.
Sonia’s latest book: The Next Great Migration
Sonia’s latest story in the New Yorker magazine
Sonia’s latest story in the New York Times Magazine
Sonia on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Sonia on HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, February 15, 2021 episode, "The Next Pandemic"
Ted Talks
"How Unhealthy Paradigms Become Contagious"
"Three Reasons We Still Haven't Got Rid of Malaria"
Connect With Sonia
