100. Thermopylae: Xerxes, Leonidas, and the 300
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
99. Marathon and the Rise of Greece
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
98. Darius the Great: Ruling from India to the Mediterranean
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
97. Cyrus the Great: Building the First Superpower
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
96. Empires of Iran
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
95. The History of Putin's War
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
Welcome to the Empire Club
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
94. The Bloody History of Russia & Ukraine
The history of Russia and Ukraine has been irrevocably entwined for centuries. When the Bolsheviks took over and Civil War erupted across the Russian Empire, Ukraine was one of the bloodiest centres o...
2 Nov 202351min
