Hello, I'm Greg Jenna and good news, Your Dead to Me is back for a new series. Here we go. Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Marybeard and Patton Oswald. I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dor-Leon with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and been very quickly knocked down.

And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Mosniak and Ria Lina.

I'm excited.

You're dead to me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously.

Listen first on BBC Sounds.

Coming up in today's program, immunity.

Could a problem with your immune system be making you more susceptible to coughs and other troublesome infections? Or are you just unlucky? I'll be learning more about a simple blood test that can tell the difference. Thyroid problems and pregnancy, why careful control is important and what mothers and doctors should be doing about it.

And painkillers, I'll be looking at the real story behind recent headlines

suggesting that codeine-based drugs pose a significant threat to the nation's health.

And, as is so often the case, the truth is quite different.

It's not a problem of people going in and buying a little coating.

The problem is an overprescription of powerful opioids,

and those powerful opioids can lead to dependence and addiction quite quickly.

More on that, later, but first another subject that's generating plenty of headlines,

Ebola.

In the news again this week, following the first case resulting from spread within Europe.

But what's caught our eye here at Inside Health are the predictions of just how big this could get,

up to 1.5 million cases by early next year.

But why have the estimates risen so rapidly from just 20,000 cases a month or so ago to well over a million today?

Dr Jimmy Whitworth is Head of Population Health at the Welcome Trust.

What has happened is that we've had more information come in from WHO and we've been able to see much more clearly what the trajectory of the epidemic is likely to be.

A few weeks ago, this looked as though we were getting relatively small numbers of cases, week by week, fairly stable.

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