177. The Vietnam War: Lyndon Johnson, Americanisation, and Operation Rolling Thunder

Leonidas and the 300 have been defeated at Thermopylae, leaving the way to Athens open. With the Persians advancing, many Athenians flee to the island of Salamis in the hope it will give them shelter....

28 Nov 202348min

August 480BC; the might of the Persian army, roughly 100,000 soldiers, face down a few thousand Greeks, led by Leonidas and his brave 300. In light of their overwhelming advantage, an embassy of Xerxe...

23 Nov 202354min

Ionia has revolted and so Darius turns his gaze away from India and towards Greece. He crushes the rebellion, quelling all resistance. He then looks to take much of the Greek mainland and many city st...

21 Nov 202344min

The Persian Empire that Darius took control of was already mighty and powerful; his predecessor, Cambyses, had conquered Egypt, further expanding its territory. But it was under Darius it reached its ...

16 Nov 202351min

Born the son of a khan, a tribal chieftain, Cyrus would go on to be a titanic figure of world history. He took Persia from being a minor regional power to the first superpower the world has ever seen....

14 Nov 202354min

Persia was the first great superpower. The empire built by Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and the rest of the Achaemenids stretched from India in the east to the Mediterranean in the west, from Russia in the n...

9 Nov 20237min

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022, but how did we get to this point? After the brutality of the Second World War, Ukraine was completely under the control of Moscow. Then in the 198...

7 Nov 202353min

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Empire Club. Do you want bonus episodes? Do you want discounts on the books mentioned in the weeks podcast? Do you want reading lists? Do you want ad-free listeni...

6 Nov 202311min