The Permian Extinction: When Life Nearly Died
It was the biggest mass extinction event in Earth’s history. 250 million years ago, a 252 million years ago, Earth faced its deadliest crisis. 97% of all life was wiped out in the Permian Extinction –...
18 Sep 202558min
541 AD: The Worst Year in History
Was this the worst year in human history? Bubonic plague sweeps across the Mediterranean. The sun vanishes behind volcanic ash. Crops fail, famine bites, and the Roman empire lurches towards collapse....
14 Sep 20251h 4min
Fall of the Sumerians
Tristan Hughes continues our special series on Great Disasters, journeying back to ancient Mesopotamia with Dr Paul Collins to explore the fall of the Sumerians.4,000 years ago, the great cities of Su...
11 Sep 20251h 1min
The Minoan Eruption: Bronze Age Cataclysm
More than 3,500 years ago, a massive volcanic eruption devastated Thera - modern day Santorini - engulfing the Bronze Age world in ash and fire. Entire landscapes were buried, ash darkened the skies, ...
7 Sep 202555min
How Greece Shaped Rome with Mary Beard
Professor Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins join Tristan in this episode all about Greece and Rome - the two greatest civilisations of classical antiquity.How did the Romans borrow, adapt, and sometime...
4 Sep 202553min
The Sumerians
More than 5,000 years ago, in what is today southern Iraq, one of the world’s first civilisations emerged. A civilisation often credited with the invention of writing, the wheel and cities. The Sumeri...
31 Aug 202550min
The Sea Peoples
Tristan Hughes sits down with Professor Eric Cline to explore the enigmatic Sea Peoples, often blamed for the catastrophic Bronze Age collapse over 3,000 years ago.Together they explore surviving sour...
28 Aug 20251h 11min
Origins of Homo Sapiens
Where do we come from? The origins of modern humans stretch back hundreds of thousands of years, and new discoveries are reshaping how we understand our species’ story. In this episode, recorded on lo...
24 Aug 202541min
