The Black Death: a global contagion
5/2/202634 min
The Black Death is remembered as one of the most devastating catastrophes in human history – a pandemic that swept across continents and killed millions. But where did it come from? How did it travel so quickly through towns and countryside? And did people at the time understand just how terrifying the illness would be? In this first episode of our three-part series on the deadly disease, Emily Briffett and historian Thomas Asbridge – author of new book The Black Death: A Global History, published by Allen Lane – trace the origins and spread of the Black Death. ––––– GO BEYOND THE PODCAST If you’d like to find out more about the Black Death and its impact on the medieval world, Emily Briffett has put together some essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra archive to help deepen your understanding: https://bit.ly/4mVQu01 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
[intro music] Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Today, we're launching the latest of our Sunday series, and this time around we're going to be focusing on the Black Death. Emily Brittett will be joined by Thomas Asbridge, author of The Black Death: A Global History, over the next three weeks, kicking off with today's first episode.
Emily Briffett· Host0:21
The Black Death is remembered as one of the most devastating catastrophes in human history, a pandemic that swept across continents and killed millions. But where did this deadly disease come from? How did it travel so quickly through towns and countryside? And did people at the time understand just how transformative the terrifying illness that was unfolding around them would be? I'm Emily Brittett, and I'm joined by historian Thomas Asbridge. In this first episode, we'll be tracing the origins and spread of the Black Death, exploring the moment it erupted onto the medieval stage. Now, I wondered if we could start with a pretty notable example, a notable case, and that is the siege at Caffa. So the year is thirteen forty-seven, and we have a band of Genoese merchants who find themselves on the brink of annihilation. They're under siege in the port city of Caffa on the Crimean Peninsula. They're a thousand miles away from