1816, the Year Without a Summer

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persi ...  Show more

At the Hay Festival, Misha Glenny and guests discuss the impact of the Norman invasion on the people and land of Wales and across the modern border with England in what became known as The Welsh Marches, march being a term for a militarized borderland. Hay was one of the first Ma ...  Show more

On April 10, 1815 the most powerful volcanic eruption in human history was recorded on an island in Indonesia. The ash cloud that formed by its explosion was as large and the entire United States and hovered 12 miles above the earth, reaching the stratosphere. The results were ca ...  Show more

The 2015 episode covers a volcano eruption in Sumbawa, Indonesia in 1816, that combined with several other factors to create an unusual -- and catastrophic -- series of weather events. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

When Mount Tambora erupted it spewed ash across the globe; blotting out the sun; poisoning crops; and bringing starvation, illness and death to millions. It may also have helped inspire great scientific and cultural advances - including the horror masterpiece Frankenstein. How we ...  Show more

The story behind one of the most deadly volcanic events in recorded history.