Tides of History

Updated: 20 Feb 2025 • 349 episodes
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Everywhere around us are echoes of the past. Those echoes define the boundaries of states and countries, how we pray and how we fight. They determine what money we spend and how we earn it at work, what language we speak and how we raise our children. From Wondery, host Patrick Wyman, PhD (“Fall Of Rome”) helps us understand our world and how it got to be the way it is. Listen to Tides of History on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to bonus episodes available exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/tides-of-history/ now.

Show episodes

The German Peasants' War was the largest popular revolt in Europe before the French Revolution, but it's largely been forgotten. Why? Professor Lyndal Roper of the University of Oxford joins me to discuss her absolutely outstanding new book, Summer of Fire and Blood, and we discuss peasants, resistance, and the heady d

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Pyrrhus of Epirus won costly but clear victories over the Romans in their first battlefield meetings, but couldn't win the war. Rome's dogged determination eventually won the war for them and placed them on the path to seemingly inevitable conflict with Carthage. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformat

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Early modern Europe was a violent place, full of duels, bloody encounters, and decades-long feuds. In many ways, it was more fractious and dangerous than it had been during the Middle Ages. Professor Stuart Carroll is an expert on the social and cultural aspects of violence in that age, and we chat about murder, confli

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30 Jan 2025 • EN

The Pyrrhic War

By 281 BC, Rome controlled much of Italy, but the city was still a minor player on the larger Mediterranean scene. That changed when King Pyrrhus of Epirus crossed the Adriatic with a powerful army of Macedonian pikemen and war elephants, setting in motion the toughest war the Romans had ever fought. Patrick's book is

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Vienna is working a delivery job when she hears about Cop City, a massive police training facility planned for Atlanta. She decides to join the activists trying to stop construction. When Vienna arrives in the South River Forest, she quickly finds a community, a cause and a love unlike any other. But the events of one

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While the Punic Wars mark the stage of Roman history with which most people are familiar, Rome's entrance onto the stage of Mediterranean power politics actually came a decade earlier, with a bloody, grinding war against the Hellenistic king Pyrrhus of Epirus. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation

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