Ebola and hantavirus scare us in different ways. Ebola is the famous fear: dramatic disease, high-containment laboratories, protective suits, outbreak response, and decades of cultural imagination shaped by books, television, movies, and headlines. Hantaviruses are quieter: rodent-associated viruses that can live near cabins, sheds, barns, and ordinary human spaces until exposure turns ordinary dust into something dangerous. In this episode of 4Ps: Plants, Pests, Parasites and People, Dr. Kate Martin compares Ebola virus and hantaviruses — their genomes, proteins, cell entry, ecology, headlines, and why pathogens are never just biology. They are also behavior, memory, landscape, and fear.

The American West is full of iconic images: ghost towns, gunslinger shows, dusty roads, wide-open skies, sagebrush, and tumbleweeds rolling across the scene like they have somewhere important to be. But the plants of the West are not just movie props. In this episode of 4Ps: Plants, Pests, Parasites and People, Dr. Kate Martin looks at kochia, Russian thistle, puncturevine, sagebrush, and cheatgrass; plants that help tell a larger story about drought, disturbance, wind, movement, chemistry, fire, public lands, and landscape change. From ghost town scenery to goat heads in bike tires, this episode asks what happens when the plants in the background start changing the story.

Weeds are usually the plants we pull, mow, spray, curse, or ignore — but what if we looked closer? In this episode of 4Ps: Plants, Pests, Parasites and People, Dr. Kate Martin explores what actually makes a plant a weed, why weeds matter in agriculture, and how they can act as reservoirs for insects, viruses, fungi, bacteria, nematodes, and genetic diversity. From Palmer amaranth and waterhemp to horseweed, giant ragweed, and morning glory, this episode asks us to see weeds not just as plants in the way, but as organisms with histories, families, strategies, and ecological roles.