While influenza is often thought of as a common and curable disease, it still kills over 30,000 Americans each year. Jeremy Brown, Director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health, talks with epidemiologists, policy makers, and the researcher who first sequenced the genetic building blocks of the original 1918 virus to offer both a sweeping history of the flu and a roadmap for understanding what's to come. Explaining the controversies over vaccinations, antiviral drugs like Tamiflu, and the government's role in preparing for pandemic outbreaks, Brown also warns that many of the most vital questions about the flu virus continue to confound even the experts, and it may be many more years before we can conquer it for good.