Pandemics Cause Misery and Death, But Th...

America's Founding Fathers feared a standing army would inevitably threaten civilian governance. Yet 250 years later, the U.S. military remains a strange outlier among nearly every nation that has ever existed—maintaining its strength and popularity while never attempting a coup. ... Show More

Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists famously described the First Amendment as building a "wall of separation between church and State." This line has been the gold standard for those who point to the secular origins of America and the threat of funding any sort ... Show More

There’s an argument to be made that every technology advance in communication – from cave paintings to fake AI movie trailers – is at its root an attempt to tell stories. Our first night-fires created the earliest audiences for spoken stories. In time, the development of rhyme, s ... 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

<p>This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with National Geographic in anticipation of their new series, <em>The Hot Zone</em>. 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 ... Show More

The epidemic known as the Black Death struck Europe in 1347 and completely upended medieval society. It's been estimated that roughly half of the European population was killed by this gruesome disease. Despite huge advances in our understanding of this epidemic debate still rema ... Show More

<p>There’s <a href="https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus-history" target="_blank">a working theory</a> for the origins of Covid-19. It goes like this: Somewhere in an open-air market in Wuhan, China, a new coronavirus, growing inside an animal, first made the jump to a human. B ... Show More

The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth–from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 a ... Show More

<p>It began in the East. At least, that’s what the experts think. Maybe it came from animals. Maybe it was the Chinese. Maybe it was a curse from the gods. </p><p>One thing is certain: it radiated out east, west, north, and south, crossing borders, then oceans, as it overwhelmed ... Show More

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