In this episode, Peter discusses a controversial outbreak... So-called 'Russian' Flu is either the first influenza pandemic we’ll be discussing, or it wasn’t the flu at all. It was either a disease which emerged from and then devastated the country it was named after, or an outbreak which the Russian people barely noticed at the time. It either deserves its place as the seventh pandemic we’re covering in the series, or it’s the pandemic that never was, an outlier in our historical narrative…  

This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating pandemics humanity has experienced. Peter and his colleagues will discuss ten major outbreaks: from the Plague of Athens to the West African Ebola outbreak, via the Black Death, Smallpox and Cholera, and ask how these outbreaks have shaped society, what we may be able to learn from them today, and where we might be heading? Find out more at https://bit.ly/TheHistoryOfPandemics 

Futuremakers is created in-house at The University of Oxford, and presented by Professor Peter Millican, from Hertford College. The voice actor for this episode was Anna Wilson. The score for the series was composed and recorded by Richard Watts, and the series is written and produced by Ben Harwood and Steve Pritchard.