Plagues

Exile, mercenary, Viking king. Harald Hardrada, 'Thunderbolt of the North', fought his way from Norway to Byzantium, from the streets of Constantinople to the battlefields of Sicily. He married a princess, blinded an emperor, and nearly conquered England.Today, Dr Wayne Bartlett ...  Show more

How did a cluster of Iron Age huts grow into one of history's greatest civilisations?In the first episode of our series on the Roman Empire, we're joined by Dr Simon Elliott to trace Rome's rise - from its humble origins on the banks of the Tiber to the moment Augustus became the ...  Show more

In October 1347, a ghostly fleet of trading ships docks at a port in Sicily. The crew members – dead already, or well on their way – bear bubonic plague. The ‘Great Pestilence’ will ravage the populations of three continents over the next decade. What changes to society will resu ...  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, K ...

From when our ancestors first mastered fire to the rise of modern cities, humanity’s progress has been accompanied by a revolving door of parasites, bacteria and viruses, wreaking havoc on our health. Kyle Harper, author of Plagues Upon the Earth, discusses the sprawling history ...  Show more

The way we die has been utterly transformed. There have been around 10,000 generations of human beings, but only in the last 3 or 4 have infectious diseases not been an expected and accepted cause of death. What drove the most deadly infectious diseases? Was technological progr ...  Show more