Plagues, Urban Inequality and Restricted Books

Should we worry about the world getting healthier? Thomas Bollyky thinks we should. Jane Stevens Crawshaw looks at cleanliness and disease in Renaissance cities & Penny Woolcock films Oxford and LA. Rana Mitter presents.

For the first time in recorded history, parasites, viruses, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death and disability in any region of the world but that doesn't mean our cities are healthier and more prosperous. Jane Steven Crawshaw from Oxford Brookes researches plague hospitals and quarantine. From cleaning up C15th Venice and Milan, Rana Mitter also considers C21st Oxford and Los Angeles in new films by Penny Woolcock which explore their different mythologies. Her recent projects have also included the different responses she and a gang member have walking down the same street and a range of views on personal gun use. Jennifer Ingleheart reveals the books deemed too racy for Oxford undergraduates that were hidden away in the Bodleian Library's Phi Collection.

Thomas Bollyky is director of the global health program and senior fellow for global health, economics, and development at the Council on Foreign Relations. His book is called Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways.

Fantastic Cities - an exhibition of Penny Woolcock's work runs at Modern Art Oxford until March 2019.

The Story of Phi, curated by Jennifer Ingleheart, is at the Bodleian Library until 13th January 2019.

Hear more from Penny Woolcock discussing her career at the Free Thinking Festival https://bbc.in/2E31s0U

Producer: Torquil MacLeod