A Cauldron of Bats

Vincent Racaniello (0:00)

This Week in Virology, the podcast about viruses, the kind that make you sick.

From Microbe TV, this is TWiV, This Week in Virology, episode 1363, recorded on October 2nd, 2026 I'm Vincent Racaniello, listening to the podcast, All About Viruses. Joining me today from Montreal, Canada, Angela Mingarelli.

Angela Mingarelli (0:33)

Hello, everyone. You didn't talk about the weather, Vincent. Anyway, I'll talk about the weather. What's the weather in New York? Because here it is 17C, 62F. I had to Google that, obviously, because I don't, and it's raining. It's kind of overcast. I'm sitting in front of the window.

It's a little bit gloomy.

Vincent Racaniello (0:52)

So it's pretty, it's warm here. It's 29C and cloudy.

So it's warmed up a bit. Yeah, it's warm. Also joining us from Western Massachusetts, Alan Dove.

Alan Dove (1:02)

Good to be here. And here in Western Mass, it is also 29C, which is 85F, cloudy, chance of rain tonight.

So it's a little one day of extra summer, and then we return to our regularly scheduled season of autumn tomorrow, apparently.

Vincent Racaniello (1:23)

And we have fake autumns and fake summer ends and all that stuff. So a few weeks ago, it got cold. I had to turn the heat on.

Alan Dove (1:29)

Yeah. Oh, really?

Vincent Racaniello (1:30)

And now, yes, last night I had the windows open. It was great. Sleeping with windows open is the best, especially if there are no animal noises.

Alan Dove (1:40)

That's too muggy here for...

Vincent Racaniello (1:41)

Yeah, it's muggy.

Angela Mingarelli (1:42)

Yeah.

Alan Dove (1:43)

Yeah, I had to... Actually, we had... Previously, we had the heat on, and then this morning I flipped it back to AC.

Angela Mingarelli (1:51)

I haven't had AC or heat in like three weeks. I've been neutral housed, just windows, which is nice. I feel happy.

Vincent Racaniello (1:59)

When I have the heat and the AC off, I feel like I'm saving money.

Angela Mingarelli (2:02)

Yes.

Vincent Racaniello (2:02)

Helping the environment, right? And it doesn't last very long, but it will last for a while.

Anyway, so it's funny. I think TWiV is now a three-person show, or mostly.

Angela Mingarelli (2:14)

Right.

Vincent Racaniello (2:16)

So there we go. If you enjoy these programs, we would love to have your support to produce them. You can go to microbe.tv/contribute.

You know, what do we do on these programs? We talk about science and we talk about the papers mainly. So it's a pretty, I guess you would say low level, not high level, right? Low level discussion.

Angela Mingarelli (2:38)

Yeah. You can often. Yeah.

Alan Dove (2:40)

Right.

Vincent Racaniello (2:41)

It's granular.

Alan Dove (2:42)

Right.

Angela Mingarelli (2:43)

But we go from, I feel like we go from high level to granular.

Vincent Racaniello (2:46)

Yes, we try. We try and explain things. And you can always send in questions if you don't understand that. You can send it to twiiv at microbe.tv. But if you'd like to support us, we'd love your help, microbe.tv/contribute.

There's one news item today. Tomorrow, October 3rd, and Kathy put this in the notes, is Virus Appreciation Day. And some people are going to say, what?

Why should I appreciate viruses? Actually, there is a website called daysoftheyear.com. And you can find every day what's going on. So yes, in fact, there is a virus appreciation day. It's been an unofficial holiday for over 20 years. And its purpose is rather than celebrate harmful infections. It focuses on educating the public about the complex role that viruses play in nature evolution and scientific medical advancements, such as molecular biology, vaccine development, and gene therapy, and highlights ongoing work of medical science in fighting and treating viral disease. So here at TWiV, it's every week is virus appreciation week. We talk about viruses twice a week, actually, on TWiV, and sometimes more, who knows? So I understand that. It's to celebrate how interesting they are and how much people work on them, and they can be beneficial too.

But we have two papers today for you that I think you will enjoy very much. The first one was published in Nature, so Alan's going to have to go all the way to the end of the article, the Affiliations. And the title is The Anthropogenic Fingerprint on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Alan Dove (4:36)

And they did an interesting thing with co-authors here. It's three of them contributed equally. So two co-first authors, Rory Gibb and Sadie Ryan, and then the senior author is Colin Carlson, and apparently they all contributed equally. And as Vincent said, since it's Nature, the list of affiliations is at the end, and end has a few different definitions. But right. So in this case, the list of affiliations could be a separate book.