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Steven Johnson's TED talk about spreading of epidemics

Mark Frauenfelder at 1:37 pm Tue, Apr 28, 2009

Kindle

Here's Steven Johnson's TED Talk about The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, "his book about a cholera outbreak in 1854 London and the impact it had on science, cities and modern society."

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

This was a great book! Not scary at all; it was very heartening to see how an illness so deadly could be eradicated through research and education.
Anonymous

The original is < http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_johnson_tours_the_ghost_map.html> with various audio and video formats.

scary stuff!!

Great article. Awesome presentation.

ALso… somehow I didn’t know about Ted.

A big thumbs up for the book as well. The guy writes as well as he talks and there’s something extremely poignant about the personal stories Johnson’s uncovered from the archives; all of a sudden it’s not just a story about abstractions, but about people.

Oh and the John Snow pub in Soho is a fine place for a drink on a hot summer’s day.