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Podcast: The Lede
Episode: The Yellow Wind of Damascus — with Benan Grams and Rasha Elass
Description: The city of Damascus is one of the oldest in the world. Syria’s ancient capital has been continuously inhabited for perhaps 12,000 years and seen countless plagues, viruses and epidemics sweep through its streets. But, says Dr. Benan Grams, a social historian of disease and medicine at the University of New Orleans, the cholera epidemics of the 19th and early 20th centuries stand out among the worst.
“The disease is endemic to the Ganges Valley in India, but it did not have its international journey until the involvement of British imperial forces that took the diseas...