Pandemic on the Prairie
A podcast about the intersection of public health, cultural history, and war in Kansas. School closures, mask mandates, infection waves, front line workers, debates over the disease’s origin, disparities in health care access, quarantine fatigue. All of these descriptions could easily apply to both current times and a century ago. In the midst of the current Covid-19 pandemic, many have started looking back to the last global health catastrophe of this magnitude - the 1918 influenza pandemic, also known as the “Spanish flu”. Approximately 50 million people globally, including 675,000 Americans and over 12,000 Kansans, died of this strain of influenza between 1918-1920. “Pandemic on the Prairie” tells the stories of Kansas and Kansans during this tumultuous time of both a World War and a global pandemic. Through learning about our past, we hope to better engage with the present.
- Update frequency
- every 37 days
- Average duration
- 33 minutes
- Episodes
- 7
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2021
A Tale of Two Kansas Cities
The invisible line that runs through the middle of Kansas City may be an important political boundary, but in 1918, like today, diseases do not respect these human divides. This episode compares the …
Samuel Crumbine, Public Health Pioneer
Samuel Crumbine was a physician and public health pioneer known throughout Kansas and the nation for his evidence-based methods of promoting food safety, sanitation, and combating communicable diseas…
Mini-episode: A History of the Haskell Institute
Kansas is home to Haskell Indian Nations University, today the premier institution of higher education for Native Americans in the United States. However, Haskell has a long and complicated history, …
The Other Haskell
Just weeks after the March 1918 “first wave” flu outbreak at Camp Funston, the Haskell Institute in Lawrence saw a similar rash of influenza infections. Around one-third of the Native American studen…
Mini-Episode: Dr. Loring Miner
In this mini-episode, we tell the story of Dr. Loring Miner, a physician in Haskell County in southwest Kansas who, in early 1918, may have encountered the first outbreak of the flu pandemic. Dr. Min…
The Kansas Flu?
Did the deadly 1918-1920 influenza pandemic begin in Kansas? While this pandemic is often called the “Spanish flu”, there is a strong possibility it originated in Camp Funston, a training camp for WW…
Introducing Pandemic on the Prairie
Welcome to Pandemic on the Prairie, a podcast about the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic in Kansas and what local stories tell us about the American experience more broadly. But before we explore local s…