Everything you wanted to know about the black death

It all used to be so simple. The story of how we – that is Homo sapiens, today’s humans – emerged from Africa and spread across what’s become Europe and Asia was a neat, straightforward narrative. It

In AD 897, Pope Formosus was put on trial for the crimes of perjury, coveting the papacy and violating canon law by holding more than one bishopric at a time. In truth, the whole thing was a spectacle

How a lethal mixture of arrogance, fear and blind faith condemned millions of Chinese to death

The statistics are terrifying. The burial entries in most parish registers from the 18th and 19th centuries show an appallingly high rate of infant and child mortality. Looking at some registers recen

Where newspapers came from

From print to AI, any major innovation in communication technology follows much the same trajectory. We start with technological fascination, which generates a massive influx of development capital, o