The rise of the Roman Republic was built on conquest and war, but also on the massively expanding economy of Italy as a whole and Rome in particular. What was it like to live through that, and what...
Runic writing carries connotations of magic and fantasy, but it was a widespread, useful, and long-lasting system of writing. Professor Tom Birkett has written a fantastic overview of runic writing...
Let's imagine a Macedonian soldier during the time of Alexander the Great. How did this man, whom we'll call Red Cleitus, spend the vast amounts of coin he plundered and earned as he and his comrad...
Patrick's new book, Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World, launches May 5th, 2026! Check out this audiobook preview chapter on two murders around 5,300 years ago, he...
Check out a scripted episode of Patrick's new show, Past Lives!Nearly 2,700 years ago, a woman and her daughter were ripped away from their homes in what is now Iran by the soldiers of the Assyrian...
We've talked about how rich classical Athens was, but what did that mean for an average person living at the time? In this episode, we follow the life of a composite character, an Athenian citizen ...
Like many of you, I first fell in love with history through the movies. Dr. Jason Herbert hosted a podcast called Historians at the Movies, now retitled Reckoning with Jason Herbert, that focuses o...
Patrick has a new history podcast, Past Lives! It's all about the experiences of real, everyday people throughout the human past, people just like you. Listen to the first full episode, "On Histori...
Ancient Greece was rich compared to other ancient societies, and Athens was the richest place of all within ancient Greece. But why? The answer lies not just in the silver lodes of Attica or access...
From Patrick Wyman (host of Fall of Rome and Tides of History) comes Past Lives, a brand new podcast! Every week, we’ll focus on the lived experiences of real people from the past, bringing their s...
The Hundred Years War was the defining conflict of the Middle Ages, but today's guest - Professor Michael Livingston of the Citadel - argues that it actually lasted for 200 years. That's just one p...
As the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age, the economy of the Mediterranean shifted dramatically. It expanded to encompass the entire sea for the first time, everywhere from the Levant to Iberia, ...
Professor Eric Cline, author of the outstanding book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, returns to the show to discuss his new book: Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Let...
Millions of people called ancient Egypt home, and the vast majority of them weren't kings or high priests; they were humble farmers and laborers making their living from the rich black soil surroun...
Carbon dioxide is central to the story of Earth from its beginning more than 4 billion years ago all the way up to the present. Peter Brannen joins me to discuss his new book - The Story of CO2 Is ...
We don't usually think of the Neo-Babylonian Empire as one of the economic powerhouses of the ancient world, but this short-lived state actually oversaw one of the most stunning periods of economic...
What was the ancient economy? Can we even speak of such a singular thing? Today, I introduce the next block of episodes on Tides, an in-depth examination of the cutting edge of knowledge on the anc...
The ancient world was a lot bigger than Greece and Rome. Dr. Owen Rees joins me to discuss his new book on this broader conception of antiquity - The Far Edges of the Known World - and we traverse ...
Thucydides is perhaps the greatest historian to ever live, a man whose work on the Peloponnesian War has been read, digested, and debated for more than 2400 years. Robin Waterfield and Professor Po...
The Celts invaded Greece in 280-279 BC, an entirely unforeseen breakthrough of a nearly unknown people into the mainstream of the Hellenistic world. Tens of thousands of Celts poured through the pa...
