In the fourteenth century, the plague killed about half the population of Europe and Asia, making it one of the most devastating pandemics in human history - and it's a disease that persists to this day.

After a month of almost unprecedented drama on global financial markets due to the spread of the Coronavirus, Rear Vision revisits the 1920s and the events that led to the stock market crash of 1929.

Singapore and South Korea – partly because of their experience with previous corona virus outbreaks – have managed this pandemic without locking people in their homes or shutting down their economies. How did they do it?

For over 60 years the World Health Organisation has been the pre-eminent international health organisation but questions have been asked about its response to several infectious diseases. This is the story of the WHO, its strengths and its failings. Episode first aired 1 March 2015

The NBN was supposed to provide all Australian homes with reliable, super-fast internet connections. As many of us adjust to living and working from home, connected with our jobs, friends and family online, has it lived up to its promise?

Find out how match fixing works. It's ubiquitous and now recognised as the biggest threat to sport integrity.

Joe Biden has emerged as the Democratic nominee for the United States Presidential race in November. But he’s run twice before and both times been defeated soundly. Why did he win this time and how did he gain the support of African American voters?

Heidegger was an unrepentant Nazi. Nietzsche's later work contains passages that openly advocate slavery and genocide. Today, with far-right extremism on the rise around the world, how concerned should we be when reading – and teaching – the work of these canonical figures?

As LGBT people grow old, they can become particularly vulnerable to social isolation and loneliness. Simone de Beauvoir had a keen appreciation of the challenges of ageing – “old age exposes the failure of our entire civilisation” – so can we find resources in her brand of existentialism that address some of the issues raised by LGBT elders?

Artificial intelligence is helping us to make all sorts of decisions these days, and this can be hugely useful. But if we outsource our moral intuition to AI, do we risk becoming morally de-skilled?

Institutions shape every aspect of our lives, yet they can be strangely amorphous things, operating according to norms and conventions that often undermine each other. For women, this can result in institutional discrimination – in workplaces and public organisations, but also in less tangible institutions like the family and the law. This week we’re talking feminist institutionalism, and the need for a women’s honour code.

Many of us have extra time on our hands at the moment, and for many of us that time can feel like a burden. But what is this mysterious relationship between what time feels like and what it really is?

We're told that COVID-19 is an unprecedented event, one that's upended all our old certainties — so it's perhaps strange that we're thinking about it in very familiar ways. Considering the history, the politics and the ethics of COVID-19 can reveal fascinating and uncomfortable insights about ourselves and our society.

Refugees are often spoken and written about as victims: people on the far side of a border that separates them from all the things we citizens know and love about our homeland. But what if the refugee actually knows things about Australia that we don't?

Can our genes tell us if we're gay? Or intelligent? Science says the answer is complex, and that genetic determinism — the idea that we're genetically hardwired for certain outcomes — shouldn't be taken seriously. But genetic determinism has taken hold of the public imagination.

Indonesia, like other emerging economies, has been hit hard economically by Covid-19. Our guest argues that it's in Australia's interests to extend an economic lifeline, and that there's a costless way to do it.

News sites are recording a huge spike in traffic - but with advertising dollars dropping, how will media survive?

News sites are recording a huge spike in traffic - but with advertising dollars dropping, how will media survive?

Building a sustainable renewable industry.

Compromises and working within Putin's Russia and the current state of COVID-19.

The man who shaped and reformed Australian intelligence services receives an overdue biography.

New legislation in Cambodia is feared to further restrict human rights in the country.

The dire predictions for Africa are all in place, but so far they haven't come true.

Mike Ladd reads the Clive James poem, My Father Before Me

Some pundits say capitalism can never recover from Covid-19, and there will need to be bigger government. Others say the future economic recovery rests with the business sector.

Strained diplomacy in times of a pandemic. As the US and China tussle over who is dealing with COVID-19 the best, is it time for Australia to rethink our relationships?

PNG was already battling dangerous infectious diseases — tuberculosis and HIV. Now it has to fight coronavirus as well. Incredibly, so far there are only seven known cases of Covid-19 in the whole country, and no known deaths.

It’s ‘reporting season’ - where the ANZ, Westpac and NAB announce six month results. And in this year of economic crisis, those results were always going to be significant. The big banks are increasingly seen as economic bellwethers. Their fate tells us a lot about how everyone else might be going.

The higher education sector is a vital part of Australia's economic and intellectual life - why is Canberra intent on ignoring it?

Australia and India, as former British colonies, had much in common, and could have forged a strong relationship for their mutual benefit. But Australia's White Australia policy, and India's determination to leave the Empire and become a Republic, stymied the friendship.

What to read, watch and listen to in the month of May to broaden your world.

One of the world's best known economists is proposing that all American be tested for Covid-19, regularly. Paul Romer says despite the expense and logistical challenges, mass testing is the only way the US can build community confidence, and therefore successfully re-open the economy.

Most of the world is locking down and spatial distancing - but in Sweden the powerful public health agency has steered the country down a very different path.

How should Australia proceed in its relationship with China and what are the risks involved?

Retail giant Amazon has profited from the virus-related online shopping boom - but that boom has also exposed the company's flaws - and led to a high profile resignation.

A thought provoking examination of our relationship with whales and the environment.

New Zealand has aimed for elimination of SARS-CoV-2 — or as close as you can get.

There's growing debate about how we get out of this pandemic. Where is the off ramp and what's at the end of the slip road?

Developer of the human papilloma virus vaccine, Professor Ian Frazer, weighs in on the prospects of a coronavirus vaccine.

New modelling suggests the recurrence of COVID-19 will depend on human immunity to the virus, which remains an open question.

How much is SARS-CoV-2 mutating, and does it matter?

Twin studies allow researchers to study the impact of the environment, separate from genetics.  

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank play a key role in aiding low- and middle-income countries during a pandemic.

While the death and disease threats from COVID 19 during the pandemic period are huge, the devastation to the global and local economies are also enormous and there's plenty of research to inform what the effects will be on health, wellbeing and life expectancy.

An increase in the diagnosis of cancers and their subsequent treatment could get caught up in the potential widening of health disparities in the community as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

At the moment human vaccine trials are testing whether the vaccine is safe, what dose you need to induce a good antibody response and finally whether that antibody response is enough to prevent infection with this coronavirus. All that takes time.

Coronaviruses are well-studied in animals. What lessons does veterinary medicine have for this pandemic?

Last week, the US announced approval to use a drug named remdesivir, made by Gilead, in people sick with COVID-19.