Ancient History Fangirl

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! You’ve been transported almost 2,000 years into the past, to the streets of Pompeii. It’s a brisk autumn morning, around, oh…10 AM…and all hell is about to break loose. What's your next move? You could live through it, maybe. If you were lucky. And made all the right choices. At exactly the right time. The actions you take in these first...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Cultures on every continent have flood myths, and China is no exception. One of China’s founding myths is one about a singular hero, Yu the Great, and his brilliant works of water engineering that tamed a deadly flood—roughly four thousand years ago. But did this great flood really occur? Was there really a Yu, or someone like him? Join u...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Off the coast of Israel there is an underwater megalithic stone circle dating back to the 7000s BC – that is perfectly preserved, keeping its secrets from another time. This is the story of a prehistoric city (well, village) off the coast of Israel. Thousands of years ago, it sank beneath the waves. Its discovery was revolutionary and cha...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! This is an episode about a plague that killed up to 100 million people by the time it was done—as many as 60% of its victims. It’s the first documented occurrence of a pandemic that we have, and it’s the first documented outbreak of the deadlyYersinia pestis. No, we're not talking about the Black Death of Medieval Europe. We're talking ab...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! What was the worst year to be alive? Some researchers have a very specific answer to this question: 536 AD.  This is a year when the global temperature dropped, and it was winter all year round—for multiple years. The sun disappeared for 18 months as the world was covered in a veil of sulfuric dust. Crops failed. People starved, and fell...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Imagine a desert stretching over 1,500 miles along the Peruvian coastline, between the high Andes to the east and the vast Pacific coastline to the west. A place of brilliant colors and contradictions. This is the driest desert in the world. Astronauts use it to simulate conditions on Mars. This is the home of the Nazca Lines: huge, beaut...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Teotihuacan is an ancient pre-Colombian city in central America, founded two thousand years ago. It’s the home of some of the most iconic Mesoamerican monuments in existence, including the Pyramids of the Moon and Sun. The city was abandoned after about 750 years of habitation. When the Aztecs first encountered it, it had stood empty for...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Deep in the western Sahara—in perhaps one of the driest parts of the driest desert in the world—there are cave paintings that depict people swimming. These cave paintings date to 10,000 years ago. Back then, there would have been plenty of water to swim in. It was a time when the Sahara was green. Join us as we pull back the curtain on a...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Crater Lake is a caldera lake in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon—the remnants of an ancient volcanic eruption. It’s the deepest lake in the country and one of the deepest in the world. And this place is steeped in lore: unexplained events, murders and suicides, disappearances and hauntings, and a strange 200-year-old floating log that pro...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Mammoths existed on our planet for roughly five million years, and they were perfectly adapted to the ice age world they inhabited. So perfectly adapted that when the last ice age ended, so did they. No woolly mammoths have walked the earth for the last 10,000 years. Or did they? It turns out that the last mammoths didn’t disappear 10,000...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Ten thousand years ago, there was no North Sea. Instead, there was a vast landscape that connected the UK and Ireland to the rest of Europe. Archaeologists call it Doggerland. This was a Mesolithic paradise. A great biodiversity hotspot where we had all the food and raw materials we could ask for within arm’s reach—an immense forest and w...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! The story of The Ten Plagues of Egypt is important in both Jewish and Christian mythology. It’s a dark, haunting tale that features a capricious God meting out increasingly terrible punishments on the Egyptian people for their Pharaoh’s refusal to release the Israelites from slavery. But that’s not all there is to this story. It’s also a...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In this episode, we return to the beach at Actium with author, historian, and academic Barry Strauss as our tour guide. His new book, The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium, discusses the infamous sea battle Marc Antony and Cleopatra fought against Octavian and Agrippa for love, for supremacy, for th...

This episode originally appeared as a Patreon Exclusive episode. Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In the second installment of our Cleopatra x King Herod arc, the slow-motion train wreck continues. Herod makes increasingly ill-advised decisions as schemes and intrigue simmer around him. Meanwhile, Cleopatra influences things from afar, empowering Herod's enemies and rela...

This episode originally appeared as a Patreon Exclusive episode. Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our episode Cleopatra x Marc Antony: Lovers in a Dangerous Time (Part 3), we alluded to a story about King Herod (yes, that King Herod) and Cleopatra—and an epic feud between them. We didn’t have time to go into that story in the bigger arc on Cleopatra and Marc Antony, b...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! After the disaster at Actium, Marc Antony's entire army--100,000 strong--surrendered to Octavian. Marc Antony and Cleopatra fled to Alexandria to negotiate the terms of their defeat. Those were dark, foreboding days. Friends and allies fled the palace. Marc Antony fell into a deep depression, while Cleopatra searched desperately for a way...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! As Marc Antony and Cleopatra lived and loved in Alexandria, Octavian whipped up a toxic garbage fire of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia in Rome--and then declared war. Not against Marc Antony, but against Cleopatra. Soon, the lovers would be forced to defend their home, their family, and their life together on the shores of the Ambracian...

We're re-releasing this episode in honor of Maya Deane's book Wrath Goddess Sing coming out in paperback. Available wherever books are sold! Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Many of us have preconceived notions about what the Illiad was like. Prepare to have those notions blown away. In this episode, debut author Maya Deane methodically strips away the lenses of the Vict...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! After four years of marriage with Octavia, Marc Antony followed Cleopatra to Alexandria—and settled into life there. He oversaw festivals and athletic contests, cheered Cleopatra on as she ruled Egypt, and showered her and their children with honors and territories. For all intents and purposes, he was the consort of Egypt’s beloved Phara...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! When Cleopatra and Marc Antony met by the River Tarsus, Antony was smitten. And when Cleopatra went back to Alexandria, he forgot about invading Parthia and followed her home. The two then spent a magical few months in Alexandria, where they threw each other lavish banquets, made bets and compacts, played ridiculous practical jokes on eac...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Shakespeare wrote about them. Hollywood glamorized them. For thousands of years, they've come down to us as the ultimate star-crossed lovers: the Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra, and the Roman commander Marc Antony. In the wake of Caesar's death, Cleopatra fled to Egypt--and began picking up the pieces. Meanwhile, Marc Antony defeated Caesar's...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! When Cleopatra met Julius Caesar, sparks flew. The daring Egyptian queen beguiled the conquering Roman general—and then enlisted him to fight her battles. Outnumbered five to one in a city full of ancient wonders, Cleopatra and Caesar spent the next ten months barricaded in a luxurious palace while outside, the enemy howled for their bloo...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! When Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt, he walked into a civil war between the country’s new co-rulers: Ptolemy XIII and his sister Cleopatra. The romance between Caesar and Cleopatra is one of the most epic of ancient times. But we can’t tell you that story until you understand who Cleopatra was. And to understand Cleopatra, you have to und...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! It's the end of our Women of Myth season, and wow, has it been a whirlwind! We had a blast on this season and we hope you did too. We'll be back July 6 with a brand-new season--one that's all about ancient history and returns to our roots. Listen in to hear some behind the scenes info, and all about our plans for the coming few months and...

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Feminism in Lord of the Rings: let’s discuss. How were women depicted in the famous trilogy, and how has that depiction changed from the books to the movies and then to the Rings of Power TV show? Join us and Liv Albert from Let’s Talk About Myths Baby! for a very serious, very scholarly contemplation of women and feminism in Lord of the...