What Was The Great Pox?

These marine invertebrates can solve puzzles, use tools, and camouflage themselves by changing their very skin -- yet they live only three to five years, and die after mating. Learn more about octopuses in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on these articles: https://animals.ho ...  Show more

Iron processing is a benchmark of civilization for good reason -- this metal makes a lot of technology possible. Learn about the history and science of refining iron and steel in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/iron.htmSee o ...  Show more

This week we pay tribute to one of the gnarliest diseases of all time, and the only human disease that's ever been eradicated (thus far). That's right, people- we're talking smallpox! It's gonna get grody. Smallpox has a depressing history, a fascinating biology, a moderately upl ...  Show more

From Acts of Parliament to unethical clinical studies to legendary symphonies (possibly) - syphilis has stained many different areas of history.To find out what this disease is, what it does to the body and how treatments of it and the people who have it have changed, Kate spoke ...  Show more

Smallpox was rife in the eighteenth century, leaving its mark both on its sufferers, and on the literature of the period. This podcast explores its history in verse. Smallpox was common during the eighteenth-century, and its aftereffects much discussed and lamented in popular lit ...  Show more

Doctors have called it the great imitator because this destructive venereal disease can manifest almost any symptom. Initially spreading through sexual contact, Syphilis can remain dormant in the body for decades before flaring up again in brutally disfiguring, debilitating an ...