Pandemics Cause Misery and Death, But They Al...

Of the estimated 1,500 plays written in ancient Greece, only 33 complete works survive today—the rest were lost because medieval scribes deemed low-brow comedies and mass entertainment unworthy of expensive parchment during the transition from fragile papyrus to durable vellum, p ...  Show more

When medieval historian Peter Jones found himself spiraling into depression while teaching at a frigid Siberian university with icicles sprouting from his eyelashes, he asked himself what a medieval sufferer would do—and discovered something shocking: the Middle Ages, for all its ...  Show more

Since humanity’s earliest days, we’ve been plagued by countless disease-causing pathogens. Invisible and persistent, these microorganisms and the illnesses they incur have killed more humans than anything else in history. But which disease has been the deadliest? Dan Kwartler dig ...  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

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

This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of their new series, The Hot Zone. The three-night limited series is inspired by true events surrounding the origins of the Ebola virus and its arrival on US soil in 1989 ...