Subject to Change

 Everyone has heard of the Silk Road but this is The Silver Way . It is the story of the Manilla galleons, massive ships that sailed annually for 250 years from 1565 to 1815. Silver from Spanish South America in exchange for Chinese goods with the exchange taking place in Manilla in the Philippines. It was the first true globalisation linking the economies of China and Europe.  Our discussion rang...

The story of the siege of Constantinople in 1453 is a rich one. Roger Crowley tells the story absolutely brilliantly here. So many fascinating (and at times heartbreaking) stories within the bigger story. A city with an unbroken history of over a thousand years faces its deadliest enemy. And don't miss Roger's book on the subject. Narrative history at its finest.

In the year 617 the Roman Empire stands on the brink of extinction. In the West the empire is long gone. And now the Persians have conquered much of what is left and have arrived outside Constantinople where the emperor Heraclius is reduced to begging to be allowed to keep his throne. The Persians turn down the deal, the war continues and Heraclius leads a desperate counter attack. James Howard-Jo...

Stephen Greenblatt wrote a fascinating book The Swerve about the rediscovery in 1417 of a work of philosophy from antiquity. The Nature of Things was written by Lucretius a few years before the birth of Christ. It provides an account of the world profoundly at odds with religion - atomism and epicureanism. Stephen's thesis is that over time the implications of this work changed the course of...

In 1889 a woman calling herself Pearl Hart holds up a stagecoach in Arizona. In this episode John Boessenecker talks about Pearl Hart and his book Wildcat . Pearl's life from poverty to prostitution to stage coach robbing and prison sounds miserable. But the woman herself was beautiful, smart, full of life and hard not to admire. In fact the whole family and in particular her sister Katie led...

Edward Watts startled me with his claim that the Western Roman Empire didn't fall in AD 476. And he has other revisionist takes on Roman history. (Domitian a much better emperor than Trajan??) I love Roman history and enjoyed this episode hugely. His book The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea  is absolutely terrific. A superb balance between the detail and a sw...

Zareer is a a renowned historian and broadcaster. Clive of India is out of fashion these days but Zareer remains an admirer. In this episode Zareer rises to my challenge of a 5 minute history of India from the days of Alexander, talks about Clive's life, achievements and gruesome death and hits back at recent attempts to portray Clive as some kind of sociopath.

Laurence Bergreen threads the needle for me. He tells Magellan's story in a way that is exciting and moves with pace but leaving in all the 'maybes' and 'buts' that a story like this needs. His book Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe is an absolute pleasure.

It is hard to describe Peter Henderson's adventures without lapsing into cliche. Hair raising, eye popping and so on. A news cameraman and reporter (and latterly an entrepreneur) in some of the world's most notorious hotspots of the last few decades he has found himself in appalling danger again and again. The stories are great fun to listen to but for many of them I am glad it was him a...

Thony Christie has a blog called the Renaissance Mathematicus . It covers the history of science and is one of the wonders of the blogging world. I asked him to talk to me about the history of astronomy and he delivered a masterclass.

David Rooney is the author of About Time: A History of Civilisation in Twelve Clocks . He talks about clocks (in the widest sense of the word - sundials, waterclocks, orbiting satellites and more) and about how time is used to demonstrate and exert power. He is quite simply a delightful speaker who knows his subject inside and out and knows how to get you to share his enthusiasm. Such a pleasure!

Freddie, Abe and I talk about movies. Three blokes talking about feminism in movies. Well of course. But much more besides. Films discussed include Mad Max Fury Road, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, that Ghostbusters remake . . . I asked everyone to recommend one hidden gem. Freddie delivered his one, Abe crammed in three and I cheated and came up with five: Freddie S.F. W. Abe The Man Who Wasn&apo...

Julian Sancton is a wonderful guide to the Belgian expedition to Antartica in 1898.  The crew of the Belgica included Roald Amundsen and Frederick Cook who went on to become among the most famous explorers of their time. Julian's book is a classic of the genre. Check out on Amazon in the UK and in the US .

Kenji Tierney is a wonderfully engaging speaker. Starting with memories of being introduced by his grandmother to sumo by way of watching TV with her he gives a wonderfully learned and fascinating talk on sumo and its development. The story of how the Japanese tried to impress Commodore Perry with a sumo wrestling exhibition and he responded by putting on a minstrel show is just one of many fascin...

Robin Gaster's book Behemoth, Amazon Rising: Power and Seduction in the Age of Amazon is available to buy on, naturally, Amazon. If you want to understand where Amazon came from, why it is so successful and why it needs to be tamed this is a great place to go. I spoke to Robin on my podcast. I still can't make up my mind. It seems I buy half my stuff from Amazon - but Robin makes a good...

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. Here she recalls her life as a young girl in Kobe during World War II and we talk also about the kamikaze pilots of that period. Her books Kamikaze Diaries and Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms and Nationalisms have been highly influential in explaining how the highly educated young men were led to their fate.

Roger Crowley tells the story of how Portugal built its empire in the Indian ocean from 1498. The Portuguese were there to trade but also as zealots and crusaders. The story is one of discovery, courage, violence and often unspeakable cruelty. It is astonishing to learn how one of Europe's smallest and poorest countries could undertake such a project. Roger's book Conquerors: How Portuga...

Mike Dash wrote the definitive book about the Batavia and its wreck near the coast of Australia in 1629. We talked about the events leading up to the wreck and the bloody reign of terror and murders that followed. Mike's blog A Blast from the Past is also an absolute goldmine for people interested in history. I'd also highly recommend Gareth Harney's Twitter thread about the events...

An absolute joy to spend an hour and a half with history professors David Abulafia and Bret Devereaux. We started with the founding of Alexandria and travelled back and forth in time and all around the Mediterranean. The starting point for the discussion was David's magnificent book the Great Sea but Bret had plenty to add. (Check out his blog here).

Peter Pomerantsev is the author of two outstanding books. The first is Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible . It has some wonderful stories which he made into programmes while working in Russian TV from 2006. Fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking. The next is This is Not Propaganda (adventures in the war against reality) . This is about online propaganda, troll farms and influence operatio...

Bean blogs on naval warfare here . He writes on modern naval warfare (well, from the mid 19th century). His first love is battleships but it goes much wider than this. We talked about battleships (the Yamato in particular), the fate of the French fleet in WWII, whether carriers are obsolete and the Falklands War. If you like this kind of thing then, well, this is the kind of thing you may very wel...

David Goodhart is one of the most acute and level headed observers of British society writing today. His influential The Road to Somewhere unpicked the divisions leading to the Brexit vote and he has followed that with Head Hand and Heart arguing for a rebalancing of esteem and resources away from the cognitive jobs and towards manual workers and caregivers. We discussed both books and he is an ab...

Professor of ancient history Bret Devereaux concludes his two part evaluation of military strategy in the Lord of the Rings. The Witch King gets two thumbs up. I'm rag tag and bobtail. Check out the blog for more on the Siege of Gondor, Lord of the Rings and much, much more.

Roger Crowley takes us through the struggles between the Ottoman Turks and the Knights of St John in the Mediterranean in the mid 1500's.  Astonishing stories. My favourite line 'Once the Venetians learned Bragadin had been skinned alive they were determined to have the battle, on their own if need be'.  Roger's book Empires of the Sea is top rank narrative history - highly rec...

Bret Devereaux is a teaching assistant professor of history at North Carolina State University and is the author of this magnificent blog that covers ancient history generally with military history as the main focus. One of the genius ideas in the blog is to illuminate the subject by analysing fantasy literature. In this episode we talked about the battle of Helm's Deep (with forays into Worl...