C&B Book Recommendation: The Ghost Map

CLAY: I like to give out book recommendations, ’cause I’m an old man who still reads print publications a lot. The Ghost Map. The book that I was referencing is The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World.

It’s the story of England in the nineteenth century. You’ve read it as well, Buck. It’s about John Snow, a (I would say) rebel physician who challenged the prevailing mores of science to demonstrate that cholera was spread through water, not by basically smell, which was the idea at the time of how viruses spread.

BUCK: It turned out that “Jon Snow” did not “know nothing” —

CLAY: (chuckling) Yes.

BUCK: — for you Game of Thrones fans. So, Dr. John Snow, that was a womp, womp.

CLAY: Different “Jon Snow.”

BUCK: Different “Jon Snow.” I think that’s important because Clay and I are always talking off air as well, and we’ve got a million ideas we always want to get on the show, and one thing is just, I believe — and Clay and I share this ’cause we both do like to geek out on history stuff — that if people knew the history of modern meds, specifically how breakthroughs have always come in the face of consensus and expert opposition, they would feel very differently.