Summary: <p>Back in February we spoke to Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer <a href="https://twitter.com/laurie_garrett" target="_blank" class="cursorsHover">Laurie Garrett</a>, author of <em><a href="https://www.lauriegarrett.com/the-coming-plague" target="_blank" class="cursorsHover">The Coming Plague</a></em>, in an episode we called <a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-black-swans">"Black Swans"</a>. The coronavirus had yet to make landfall in the US but the anxiety was building. After the segment aired, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/movies/contagion-movie-coronavirus.html"><em>New York Times</em> critic Wesley Morris</a> told us that after he heard the part where Garrett described her role as a consultant on the movie,<em> </em>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYSyuuLk5g" target="_blank">Contagion</a>" he felt compelled to rewatch the 2011 thriller. In the film, competency — specifically, within federal government agencies — is the solution to a destructive crisis. This is comforting to watch, like a sort of public health "West Wing." It is also unnerving, and heavy, to watch the thrilling procedural un-spool as people, on- and off-screen, die. Brooke spoke to Morris in March about how for him, it was the pandemic film that most perfectly fit with the current moment — down to Kate Winslet, playing a dogged pathogenic detective, reminding her colleague to stop touching his face. </p> <p> </p>
