A better Black Death story
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What new insights are being uncovered about the Black Death?
What's up, y'all? I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is AmMom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Does anyone really know what goes on behind closed doors at the Supreme Court? Four years ago, I got a tip about the court, and I was not in the market to cover it whatsoever. But this tip was about a secret influence campaign that had been carried out inside the court. As you know, the very idea of that is outrageous. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, New York Times investigative journalist Jodi Kantor joins me to discuss her expose on the court's shadow docket.
The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts. Noam, are you ready?
Yes. Hello. Hi.
Hello. I have you here today to talk about the Black Death.
Fun!
Yeah. Well, kind of, actually, though. Like, interesting, at least.
You got a fun take on the Black Death?
Well, I got interested in the Black Death. Because this paper came out last year about sort of climate and the Black Death in Europe. And I wound up calling up these two lovely researchers, this guy named Ulf Bündchen and another guy named Martin Bauch. And I wanted to talk to them about their research. And I was doing the thing that we usually do, which is to basically be like, let's establish a baseline of information here. Like, let's just get our facts straight before we dive into the research. But then as I was asking sort of, what's the Black Death? Like, what are the basics here? They would sort of hit me with these caveats.
We have to be honest and always cautious. This is something that happened 700 years ago.
So the idea that you're saying is that we don't know what the Black Death is?
So no, we do know a lot. We know there was an outbreak of disease in the 1300s. We know this was one of the biggest pandemics in recorded history. We know it had a huge effect. So historians have made the case that this caused a lot of economic upheaval, spiritual upheaval. People have talked about it having an evolutionary effect on the people who survived it because there might have been genes that helped people survive that were then passed on. Or even... People have made the argument that the Black Death laid the groundwork for some public health interventions that we know today. But like, as Ulf and Martin would talk to me about specific details that I honestly would have thought would be simple, they'd often hedge.
Um, caveat?
Yeah.
What exactly is he caveating?
So a whole range of things. But one example would be how many people died. Because obviously people weren't doing statistics in the 1300s the way that we are now. But we know it was a lot, right? Yeah, we know. So... The estimates that I encountered for Europe, at least, were initially I was hearing maybe like 30 to 50 percent of everyone died. But then some people are saying it was more like 40 to 60 percent of everyone died, which is a pretty staggering percentage.
Yeah, I mean, COVID was nowhere near that.
Right. So any of those estimates is sort of... Yeah. But given how big a deal it was, I guess it surprised me that we don't have a better or narrower number on what percentage of people died or how many died. And I was sort of encountering that over and over again. And so that's the show today. Instead of talking about climate and the Black Death, I wound up reaching out to a medieval historian named Hannah Barker, and she really helped me understand, first, like, why this key moment in our history is so hard to pin down, but also sort of why that ends up mattering Not to be too dramatic, but why it ends up mattering for how we tell our own history.
A better Black Death story.
A better Black Death story. Actually, maybe. Huh. By the end of this.
So, just to start. Mm-hmm. What do you know, just off the dome, about sort of what caused the Black Death?
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What new insights are being uncovered about the Black Death?
0:00–6:09
2
How do climate factors relate to the Black Death?
6:09–10:44
3
What role did historical narratives play in understanding the Black Death?
10:44–17:33
4
How have researchers challenged traditional beliefs about plague transmission?
17:33–21:46
5
What evidence supports the idea of grain as a transmission route for the plague?
21:46–26:57
6
How did the Black Death reshape European societies?
26:57–32:22