The Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the weirdest things any of us has lived through. But there was another sickness that once stalked the nation and turned things very strange for a while.

8. An Answer

Jul 18th, 2023 29m 36s

Speculation that newly declassified US intelligence will contain smoking-gun evidence.Three years on from the start of the pandemic, the FBI - the US domestic intelligence agency - reveals it sees a lab leak in Wuhan as the most likely source o

7. The Suspicion Business

Jul 11th, 2023 31m 47s

Mysterious deaths in Soviet Russia and what they might tell us about the origin of Covid.When US intelligence agencies blamed a spate of unexplained Russian deaths in 1979 on a leak from a bioweapons facility, the Soviet government responded an

6. Back to the Market

Jul 4th, 2023 29m 13s

What really went on in that Wuhan market - and the curious case of the raccoon dog.It’s the early hours of 31 December 2019 and a cleaning squad is moving through the narrow lanes of a large, covered market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The Hua

5. Labs, Safety, and Risk

Jun 27th, 2023 29m

The lab leak theory goes mainstream. How safe are top-security laboratories?After the World Health Organization’s attempts to find the origin of Covid effectively rule out a lab leak, there’s a backlash. A new US president helps bring the lab l

4. Mission: Impossible

Jun 20th, 2023 28m 48s

A World Health Organization team heads to Wuhan. Will they find the truth?As the first year of the Covid outbreak draws to a close, a team of international scientists chosen by the World Health Organization is preparing to visit the city where

3. Uncertainty and Trump

Jun 13th, 2023 29m 19s

US President Donald Trump wades into the Covid origins debate.It’s April 2020 and at the podium of the White House’s press room, Donald Trump makes a geopolitically incendiary claim: he has a high degree of confidence that the origin of the vir

2. A Question of Trust

Jun 6th, 2023 28m 58s

A team of top scientists ask where Covid came from. But can they trust data from China?As the new virus takes hold in Wuhan, the Chinese state downplays its infectiousness and punishes a doctor who sounded the alarm. It raises the question of t

1. Batshit

May 30th, 2023 30m 18s

As a deadly new virus starts spreading in Wuhan, China, so do rumours about a lab there. In the remote, jungle-covered hills of China’s far-southwestern Yunnan Province, teams of scientists have spent years intensively researching one animal: b

Welcome to Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin

May 23rd, 2023 2m 15s

Cover-ups, coincidences, and conspiracy theories: where did Covid come from?John Sudworth was the BBC’s China correspondent when an unexplained pneumonia started worrying Wuhan doctors in December 2019. Since then, he’s been investigating the o

Rate