Governments all over Europe are struggling to regulate numbers of new infections coming from the covid-19 pandemic. But how does a state regulate a "reproduction rate" of a virus? And what are the origins of these ways of regulating an entire population?

It stems from a technique known as biopolitics.

Listen to Moritz & Mihai traveling to 17th century France, where an earlier epidemic became the prototype for a political dream of control. Find out more about the workings of biopolitics and how strongly it relates to current discussions we have in society!