Marc Fennell
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
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What if the most ordinary things in your life aren't ordinary at all?
A toothbrush, the pockets in your jeans, even a gravestone.
Someone designed them, shaped them, argued over them and got it so right you've stopped noticing.
The everyday is full of hidden ingenuity and on By Design with me, Anthony Burke, we pull it all into the light.
Search for By Design on the ABC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.
It is the mid-1300s.
For weeks now, the people in your town have just been disappearing.
One day, it's a fever.
The next, they're writhing in pain, their bodies covered in these huge, swollen lumps.
Carts roll through the streets, stacked with the dead.
The smell, it hits you before you can even see them.
And all you can think is, how is this happening?
The Black Death, the plague, pestilence, whatever you call it, this was the worst health disaster the world had ever seen.
But what and who caused it?
Everybody blames rats.
The rats did nothing wrong.
Not rats, not cats, not just the fact that the Middle Ages weren't great for hygiene, no.