Published on January 21, 2026 (Episode 440)
Introduction
For a very long time, humans have been getting sick. Sometimes we have fallen ill more easily than at other times. From time to time, we have encountered diseases the human body had never before known. Sickness is always with us. And while injury—breaking a leg, a blow to the head—can usually be understood, sickness remains mysterious even to people in 2026 who trust the science. Imagine what this was like four thousand years ago.
“Why did one patient heal,” my guest Susan Wise Bauer writes, “while another rotted? And what about the shivering, miserable sufferer who simply awoke with a sore throat and cough, after going to bed healthy and filled with plans the night before?” In The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy, Bauer argues that the constant presence of sickness has deeply shaped the way human beings understand themselves and the world.
This episode invites listeners to reconsider sickness not as a background condition of history, but as one of its most persistent and formative forces.
About the Guest
Susan Wise Bauer is an author and historian whose work spans education, science, and intellectual history. Her books include The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (5th ed., 2024) and The Story of Western Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory. Her most recent book is The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy.
For Further Investigation
Susan Wise Bauer, The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy (St. Martin’s Press, 2026)
—The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
—The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade
—The Story of Western Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory
— The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (4th ed., 2024)
—The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had
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Reflection Questions
What is lost when histories of medicine ignore the experience of sufferers?
How did settled life, agriculture, and density change human vulnerability to disease?
In what ways do modern reactions to sickness resemble ancient ones?
Tags
Sickness; Disease; History of medicine; Epidemics; Belief; Science and society; Human fragility
