Studying the culture of the 17th and 18th centuries gave historian Keith Johnston a vision for how we could mark the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnston says we can draw inspiration from a 10-day festival hosted in Naples at the end of the 1656 epidemic.

The Mahabharata is a 2,000 year old sacred text from India whose central message is “everyone dies.” And yet University of Toronto associate professor Arti Dhand has found it a place of solace through the horrors of the pandemic.