On the first episode of the new season, BJ and his guest talk about pandemics. At the time that this episode was recorded, it had been over six months since the world was gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, which the World Health Organization has referred to it as a ‘once-in-a-century’ heath crisis. In the 14th century, Europe experienced its own once-in-a-century pandemic in the form of the Black Death. On this episode, BJ and his guest turn their scanning electron microscopes on history to examine similarities between the ways that medieval societies dealt with their pandemic, and the techniques we are using to deal with ours.