146. Disease vs. the rise of civilisation

Why did the Persian Empire cross the Aegean to destroy Athens in 490BC? Who was Darius, the King of Kings, and the most powerful man in the world? And, how did this totemic invasion unfold? Join Tom and Dominic as they launch into one of the most cataclysmic clashes in all ancien ...  Show more

Is there a secret meaning behind the Mona Lisa’s famously ambiguous smile? What light does the painting shed upon Renaissance Italy, and Leonardo da Vinci himself? And, who is the mysterious man or woman in the painting…? Join Dominic and Tom as they unfold the secret history beh ...  Show more

April 5, 1918. The first mention of a new influenza outbreak in Kansas appears in a public health report. That strain, later called the Spanish Flu, would go on to kill at least 50 million people worldwide. In a time before widespread global travel, how did this disease spread so ...  Show more

Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ The largest single killer of human beings throughout history has been disease.  With the advent of modern medicine and the understanding of how bacteria, viruses, and parasites work, we’ve made enormous stri ...  Show more

Three years into a global pandemic, the fact that infectious disease is capable of reshaping humanity is obvious. But seen in the context of sixty thousand years of human and scientific history, COVID-19 is simply the latest in a series of world-changing pathogens. In fact, the r ...  Show more

When people think of Medieval diseases, hysterical dancing is not usually what first comes to mind. Yet in 14th and 15th century Germany, dozens of ordinary people claimed to be infected by the ‘dancing plague’. What was this mysterious phenomenon? What caused it? And was it e ...