Professor Peter Millican interviews the Oxford scientists working at the forefront of research into Disease X - a pathogen which the World Health Organization added to their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases in 2018 to represent the hypothetical cause of our next pandemic ..read more

Professor Peter Millican begins the final episode of this series in 2014, at the onset of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Whilst that pandemic officially ended in 2016, this virus has caused a brutal outbreak nearly every year since. After his discussion at the start of the series about whether Ebola may have been the disease that caused the Plague of Athens, has Peter arrived back where he started ..read more

In the ninth episode of our History of Pandemics season, Professor Peter Millican leaves the perils of influenza behind, only to discover an entirely new virus: HIV. Many of you may remember the emerging panic that became the media narrative around HIV and the disease it can lead to, AIDS, and in this episode Peter follows the story from the beginning, with medical experts who’ve worked on the front line of this pandemic since the early days ..read more

Professor Peter Millican arrives in the twentieth century, during the last years of the Great War, to a pandemic which you may have read a lot about during the early coverage of our current COVID outbreak. After the Black Death, the so-called ‘Spanish’ Flu has one of the most famous monikers of any pandemic, but does it deserve such notoriety ..read more

In this episode, Professor Peter Millican discusses a controversial outbreak... So-called 'Russian' Flu is either the first influenza pandemic we’ll be discussing, or it wasn’t the flu at all. It was either a disease which emerged from and then devastated the country it was named after, or an outbreak which the Russian people barely noticed at the time. It either deserves its place as the seventh pandemic we’re covering in the series, or it’s the pandemic that never was, an outlier in our historical narrative ..read more

Professor Peter Millican makes it to the nineteenth century to discuss the achievements of John Snow - a man who either played a central role in the history of epidemiology, or was just one of many trying to tackle that century's foremost threat; cholera. Peter discusses Snow's role, water pump handles, and how we may very well still be experiencing this devastating pandemic today ..read more

Welcome to the eighteenth century, at a point when Europe is going through another major smallpox outbreak, a disease that by this point has been plaguing populations around the globe for centuries. Professor Peter Millican will discover why milkmaids may be to central to the story of vaccination, how smallpox features in popular contemporary literature and what Napoleon thought of an English physician called Edward Jenner. This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating pan ..read more

in the final plague episode of the series, Professor Peter Millican talks to his guests about the last major outbreak of this horrific disease in seventeenth-century England. Along the way they dispel some myths – for example it wasn’t the Great Fire of London that finally defeated the disease – and he drops in on one of the outbreaks most famous commentators – Samuel Pepys. Stay tuned to the end for a bonus conversation on Shakespeare’s experience during the plague outbreaks which led up to this final Great Plague. This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Pet ..read more

Professor Peter Millican arrives in the fourteenth century and meets history's most notorious plague outbreak. The Black Death is a gruesome name well-matched with a grim disease, and as you'll find out, it's not just the name which has survived to the modern period... This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating pandemics humanity has experienced. Peter and his colleagues will discuss ten major outbreaks: from the Plague of Athens to the West African Ebola outbreak, via ..read more

Welcome to the Eastern Roman Empire in the sixth century. This time, Professor Peter Millican discusses a plague that historians and medical experts agree was likely the first plague pandemic humanity experienced. You may not have heard much about the emperor Justinian I, or why he’s got a plague outbreak named after him, but by the end of this episode you’ll hear just how devastating and long-lasting this pandemic was. This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating pandemi ..read more