Tides of History

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, hear about everything we...

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 Empire. Nanaya'ila'i...

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 farmer named Megakles...

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 on films depicting the...

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 Historical Storytelling,"...

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 to the sea; it was...

On May 5, 1993, three 8-year-old boys were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas. The tiny local police department launches an investigation but finds little physical evidence to lead them to a suspect...

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 stories to life. The...

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 problem with the way...

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, and laid the...

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 Letters and the Bronze...

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 surrounding the Nile. That...

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 the Story of...

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 growth anywhere...

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 ancient economy in the...

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 the globe from Africa...

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 Polly Low have produced...

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 passes of the Balkans...

While Alexander the Great's successors were fighting over control of his empire, Celtic-speaking migrants were moving east along the Danube River, mostly unseen and unnoticed by the Greeks to their south. The Macedonian...

The European Iron Age is known almost solely through archaeology, and the material record of the period is still showing us fascinating new aspects of ancient life. Professor Manuel Fernandez-Götz of Oxford joins me to...

We're most familiar with the Celts of the west, the people who eventually fought Julius Caesar in Gaul and left their languages along the Atlantic fringe. Yet thanks to mass migrations to the east, the Celtic world also...

When we think of Rome's most dangerous foes, our attention usually turns to Hannibal and his ilk, but it was really the Gauls of northern Italy who troubled Romans the most, and for the longest period. Who were they...

We have long thought of the Celts (or Gauls) as the antithesis of the ""civilized"" cultures of the Mediterranean, but new research shows that they were building cities and states at the same time as cities like Rome...

Most people today remember the Roman aristocratic woman Clodia as the target of one of Cicero's nastiest works, but Douglas Boin has written a wonderful new book - Clodia of Rome - that recovers just how central she was...

David Chaffetz, author of the recent and truly outstanding book Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires, joins Tides to talk about the long and intertwined history of horses and people in Central...