What happens to the world after a pandemic? Lots of experts have been talking about what we may be able to expect after COVID-19 from the 1918 Spanish flu and The Black Death. But, as any historian will tell, history is often more complicated than people think.

Ada Palmer is an associate professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Chicago and an expert on the Renaissance that followed the Black Death. But she says the “Golden Age” may not have been as golden as we think. On this episode, she clearly explains what lessons for coronavirus we can really learn from historic pandemics.