Was the Holy Roman Empire, Holy, Roman, or an...

Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show! Before cowboys became the symbol of the American West, there were the mountain men. They crossed unmapped passes, trapped beavers in icy streams, lived among Native peoples, and helped open the way for the great migratio ...  Show more

Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show! Few figures have inspired as much fear as Lavrentiy Beria. As the ruthless head of Stalin's secret police, he oversaw purges, mass arrests, deportations, and a vast system of terror that touched millions of lives. Yet af ...  Show more

Voltaire famously wrote that the "The Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” But Dr. Eleanor Janega believes that literally everything about Voltaire’s statement is wrong - in the medieval context.

In this explainer episo ...

Rome has attracted aspiring conquerors and leaders for millennia, not just as a great metropolis, but as an idea. It has long been a symbol of military might and universal power, defined by political and religious authority as well as great feats of engineering that would leav ...

16 January 27 BC is a date sometimes associated with the beginning of the Roman Empire. It was on that day that Octavian received the name Augustus, effectively becoming the first emperor of Rome. Augustus ordered the gates of Janus to be closed, marking an end to the period o ...

The Persian Empire followed in the footsteps of the Assyrians and Babylonians, but it was a much different entity than its predecessors, and its founder - Cyrus the Great - deserves to be mentioned among history's most accomplished conquerors. Professor Matt Waters joins me to di ...  Show more