Kyle Harper is an historian who focuses on how humanity has shaped nature, and vice versa. He’s a Professor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma and the author of several books, including The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, and his latest, Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and t

Tom and Dominic are joined by friend of the show Kyle Harper to discuss how pandemics and disease played a far greater role in the decline of the Roman Empire than previously understood. On the show Kyle, Dominic, and Tom discuss life expectancy, how the Roman Empire was ‘bad for people’s health', the Antonine Plague,

Kyle Harper is the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty, Professor of Classics and Letters, Senior Advisor to the President, and Provost Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma.  Harper’s fourth book, Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, is a global history of infectious

How devastating were European arrivals to the Americas in terms of deaths and the introduction of new infectious diseases? Tom and Dominic are joined by Professor Kyle Harper from the University of Oklahoma to discuss the relationship between disease and colonial expansion, the origins of the Spanish flu and the spread

The way we die has been utterly transformed. There have been around 10,000 generations of human beings, but only in the last 3 or 4 have infectious diseases not been an expected and accepted cause of death. What drove the most deadly infectious diseases? Was technological progress and globalisation one of the key cause

In this episode of “Keen On”, Andrew is joined by Kyle Harper, the author of “Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History”, to discuss why infectious diseases are a fundamental dimension of human history, as well as to explain how human processes drive the evolution of our microbial pathogens. Kyle