Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre.

For suggested phone numbers for confidential support, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website.

The Silk Road was an ancient network of trade routes that started in China in the second century BC.

Via a combination of roads and sea routes, goods like silk, paper and spices were transported from the producers in Asia to markets in Europe.

Eventually, it wasn't just goods that were traded. There were also ideas, customs, religions and even diseases.

The Silk Road expanded throughout different continents and civilizations for several centuries, a connected Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, a marketplace across the world.

Two major expansions can be traced back to the Silk Road. One of these was the introduction of Buddhism into China.

The second was the Black Death.

Vermin accompanied some of the goods along the Silk Road and upon the Vermin were fleas.

These fleas carried the bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death, and as the fleas entered Europe, so did the plague.

It's estimated that in the 14th century, between 100 and 125 million people died from the Black Death, reducing the world's population by somewhere between 30 and 60%.

The Silk Road is recognised as the very first true globalisation that the world experienced, the free trade of goods and the passing of ideas and customs from one society to another.

It changed everything.

It would be many centuries later that a very different kind of marketplace would open up on a modern platform, a new trade route using the same name.

Silk Road

Ross William Ulbrich was born on March 27, 1984 in Austin, Texas.

From a young age, he was described as social, curious, kind, helpful and resourceful.

He joined the Boy Scouts and got to the rank of Eagle Scout, just like his father had.

After school, Ross earned a full scholarship to study physics at the University of Texas in Dallas.

He fell in love with a girl at university, and at the time of his graduation in 2006, he proposed to her.

But his girlfriend confessed that she'd been seeing various other men on the side, and all plans for a wedding were called off.

Ross returned to his hometown and tried to figure out what to do with his life.

...