The Black Death: A Journey Through the Medieval Bubonic Plague

Oddity Shop

Oddity Shop
The Black Death: A Journey Through the Medieval Bubonic Plague
Feb 12, 2026 Season 1 Episode 176
Kara Perakovic and Zach Palmer

Welcome To The Oddity Shop, Where The Bizarre is Always on Sale.  This week, your Curator Zach Is telling the dark tale of the plague!

Twelve ships slid into Messina’s harbor and history snapped. We follow the Black Death from its quiet beginnings in Central Asian rodents to the siege of Kaffa, where corpses were catapulted over walls and panic sailed for Sicily. 

What arrived in 1347 was more than a disease; it was a trio of killer plagues—bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic—moving along the arteries of medieval trade and faith, turning crowded markets and cathedral squares into corridors of grief.  You’ll hear how Yersinia pestis adapted to fleas, how Mongol movements amplified spread, and how lancing buboes and burning incense were no match for a pathogen that could leap from breath to breath. 

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