The Glasgow Effect
Standing in the affluent part of Glasgow, you can expect the people around you to live for 80 years. On the other side of town, they only live 54 years. The difference in only a few kilometres, but th...
5 Nov 201915min
Siege Mentality
In 1992, the city of Sarajevo was placed under siege, in what turned out to be the longest siege in modern history. The numbers of death and injury were staggering, but as with siege conditions, there...
30 Jul 20199min
Black 47
In 1845, potato blight hit Europe, crippling isolated Ireland. Potato crops failed and despite efforts, famine ensued. But like most famines, it isn't just a lack of food that creates a disaster. Poli...
29 Jul 20198min
The Jungle Book
Animals are some of our best friends, and have been at our side for millennia. But they can also cause human infections and kick of new epidemics, and all the big pandemics in the recent years, includ...
29 Jul 201914min
The Grim Reaper Goes Bowling
An eerie ad played on Australian television in the late 1980s. The Grim Reaper carelessly bowled balls of death at normal members of society, killing many with his reckless behaviour. What this advert...
27 Jul 201915min
Disease, Be Gone!
Some disease, theoretically, can be eliminated, and stop causing human disease. But it takes a lot of effort of a lot of people to do this, and there are many barriers standing in the way of eradicati...
25 Jul 201917min
The Battle of the Biotics
91 years ago the medical world changed forever with the discovery of penicillin. Through the hard work of many scientists, today bacterial infections are nearly trivial. But the threat of resistant ba...
18 Jul 201911min
