This episode traces the Black Death from its origins in Central Asia to its devastating sweep across Eurasia, exploring how trade, migration, and war fueled its spread, how medieval communities responded with early quarantine measures, and what skeletal evidence reveals about who suffered most.

Guests:

• Philip Slavin: Professor of Medieval and Environmental History, University of Stirling; co-leads the Plague Synergy Project
• Sharon DeWitte: Professor, Department of Anthropology and Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder; specializes in bioarchaeology and mortality crises of the medieval period

This episode covers the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain, now the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded. We compare it to the more familiar Zaire strain and to the 2014 West Africa outbreak, looking at what's different about this virus and how it's spreading. We also examine how the global public health response has evolved since 2014, and where old gaps and failures are still showing up.

Guests:

• Dr Michael Osterholm, Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota
• Dr. Mark Kortepeter, a physician who spent nearly three decades in Army biodefense
• Dr Tom Carpino, Hock Fellow at the Duke Global Health Institute at Duke University

This episode traces the 1918 influenza pandemic, from its origins in Kansas to the wartime censorship that hid its true toll, and asks why one of history's deadliest events largely vanished from public memory.

Guests:

• John M. Barry: Historian and author of The Great Influenza
• Dr. Nancy Bristow: Retired Professor of History, University of Puget Sound; author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic