182. The Lady Macbeth of China
Having garnered absolute power through bloody means, Empress Wu Zetian begins seeing apparitions, haunted by her violent schemes. With her husband incapacitated, the Empress at first held counsel on h...
2 Sep 202451min
181. The Dragon Empress: China’s Game of Thrones
The inculcation of Buddhism from India as the state religion in China was enabled by the violent rise of China’s only ever woman Emperor. Raised by pious Buddhist parents, Wu Zetian left a trail of bo...
28 Aug 202434min
180. Gold & God: Connecting India & Ancient Rome
It was actually India, not China, that was the greatest trading partner of the Roman Empire. During this era, it’s clear that sea travel was the fastest, most economical and safest way to move people ...
26 Aug 202441min
179. The Golden Road: Rise of the Indosphere
For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literatu...
21 Aug 202441min
178. The Vietnam War: Nixon, Vietnamisation, and the Fall of Saigon
With Richard Nixon now in the White House and not wanting to have his presidency consumed by Vietnam like his predecessor’s was, he begins to search for ways to disentangle America from the war. It be...
19 Aug 202455min
177. The Vietnam War: Lyndon Johnson, Americanisation, and Operation Rolling Thunder
With the death of JFK, Lyndon B. Johnson took over the Presidency and immediately had to wrestle with America’s relationship with Vietnam after the killing of Diem. Right from the start he prophesised...
14 Aug 202456min
176. The Vietnam War: The Rise of Ho Chi Minh
Vietnam, or Indochina as it was known, had been under French colonial rule since the nineteenth century. This was until the Vietnamese nationalist group, the Viet Minh, took on the French in 1946. Ho ...
12 Aug 20241h 2min
175. The CIA vs Fidel Castro
Following the fall of Batista, the Cuban revolution took a more radical turn. Castro was not a communist to begin with, but as those around him became increasingly Marxist, the CIA’s desire to regain ...
7 Aug 202454min
