Pigs press together on a farm on the outskirts of Xicaltepec in Mexico's Veracruz state, April 27, 2009. (AP)

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The H1N1 virus is more commonly known as “swine flu.” That doesn’t mean you can catch it from a pig, but it does point to the source of the infection.

And it’s far from the only disease that can make the jump to humans from other species. Avian flu. Rabies. Ringworm. Hantavirus. West Nile Virus. Even Ebola and HIV likely originated in animals and made the leap.

Now, with the world a global village and populations soaring, experts warn these species-hopping diseases may arise more frequently, and become more dangerous.

This hour, On Point: animals, people, and disease.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Donald G. McNeill Jr., science and health reporter for The New York Times.

From Columbus, Ohio, we’re joined by Lonnie King, dean of The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine and former director of the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne and Enteric Diseases.

And from Oklahoma City, we’re joined by Susan Little, professor of veterinary parasitology at the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences, Oklahoma State University. She’s a member of the board of directors of the Companion Animal Parasite Council, which is sponsoring the “Pets, People and Pathogens” conference in Providence, Rhode Island next week.

Across the country, and especially in the great Midwest, the corn pickers are in the fields today, bringing in what is projected to be the biggest corn harvest in American history.

Through corn meals and corn sweeteners and corn-fed livestock and corn-brewed ethanol, Americans eat and drink — and now are beginning to drive on — an astounding amount of corn.

In a beautiful new documentary called “King Corn,” two young Americans plant one acre of corn in the corn ocean of Iowa, and learn a bundle.

This hour, On Point: You are what you eat. The corn-fed nation and “King Corn.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Ian Cheney, co-writer and co-producer of the new documentary King Corn.

George Naylor, president of the National Family Farm Coalition and a corn/soybean farmer in Churdan, Iowa.

Ricardo Salvador, former associate professor of agronomy at Iowa State University, currently he’s Program Director of Food Systems and Rural Development at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Daryll Ray, Director of the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center at the University of Tennessee.