Death Came in Waves: |Part 1| The White Plague

Only If You Can Keep Up · Oct 8, 2026 · 45m

We planned to cover two of history’s most terrifying killers in one episode… and wildly underestimated how much there was to say.

So today became Part 1: Tuberculosis.

Before antibiotics, TB was known as consumption and the “White Plague,” a slow-moving disease that could tear through families and communities while doctors struggled to understand what was causing it. We’re digging into what tuberculosis actually does to the body, how it spread, why people once thought it could be hereditary, and what it was like to live in a time when a persistent cough became a death sentence. Oh and…