On the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic (Feb 2020), we welcomed a very special guest to Contagious Thinking, Associate Professor Dr Nuno Faria from the University of Oxford. In this episode, Nuno speaks with Vandana Ravindran and Elihu Aranday-Cortes, about his life in science and his interests in epidemiology and evolution of viruses circulating in human, vector and animal populations.