Subject to Change

Jasper Sharp is probably the UK's leading expert on Japanese film and he joined me on the show today with Scott Sumner. Scott has a famous economics blog that has a side line in movie reviews. The pair of them were on really good form discussing a list of six movies that Jasper came up with. I think that even people unfamiliar with Japanese film should have fun! The films we discussed were: E...

John McWhorter and Tom Holland are a perfect pairing. They are absolutely delightful company both with a dry sense of humour. I was keen to bring them together because I learned they share a love a dinosaurs. Absolute fanatics it turns out. I got the sense they really enjoyed chatting to each other and I hope you will enjoy listening. An interest in dinosaurs helps but is not required!

Roger Crowley is one on the best (if not the best) narrative historians of the Middle Ages. Here is on great form talking about the Siege of Acre in 1291. The Crusaders have been pushed back and back with Acre the last meaningful holdout. They are up against the formidable Mamluks led by Sultan Khalil. Can they hold out? Roger's book The Accursed Tower (like all his books to be honest!) is a...

Stacy Schiff is one of America's most acclaimed historians and biographers. Her book The Witches  is a detailed, almost forensic, history of the Salem witch trials on 1692. She very kindly came on the podcast to talk about it and she is every bit as good a storyteller in person as you would imagine from reading the book. I found her book and our conversation really quite troubling in what it...

Christopher de Bellaigue's book The Lion House  is a brilliant history of the first part of Suleiman the Magnificent's reign. I love history and I can't remember loving a history book more that this one. As I say in the podcast, I think it is an unabashed masterpiece and such a pleasure to read. Christopher tells the story in particular of two men at the court of Suleiman and their...

Professor David Abulafia's wonderful book The Great Sea covers so many topics. Today we talked about slavery. Until recently I hadn't been aware of the sheer scale of the enterprise. Slavers from the Barbary ports raided as far north as the coasts of England and Ireland. In the east the Mongols brought slaves to the Black Sea ports where they were taken by Italian merchants past Constant...

Scott Sumner is an economist with a well known and much quoted blog. But it is the bit of the blog that he devotes to movies that interests me. He watches a ton of films and then does a thumbnail review and rating. For example: For example here is his review of The Bad Sleep Well:  The first time I’d seen this Kurosawa film, and I’d say it’s his most underrated effort. Loosely based on Hamlet, but...

I have always found the war Octavian fought against Antony and Cleopatra hard to understand. How did Antony find himself losing without even fighting a proper battle given all his experience as a general and commanding an army equal to or stronger than his opponent's? Barry Strauss explains the campaign brilliantly. You can find his book The War that made the Roman Empire here . Highly recomm...

Anna Keay's book The Restless Republic is just brilliant. It covers the period following the execution of Charles I when Britain became a republic. It is fascinating to see how the period (and the characters) mix revolutionary ideas with deep traditionalism. Anna approaches the subject by telling the stories of a number of people - men, women, powerful and powerless - who illuminate the times...

Following on from last week in this episode things reach boiling point. Marriage alliances are discarded, invasions undertaken D day style, brutal battles are fought as Perdicass marches to destroy Ptolemy. All this and possibly one of the most audacious and consequential heists in all of recorded history. And crocodiles, lots of crocodiles.

Tristan Hughes has writen a brilliant book about the years immediately following the Death of Alexander the Great. As Tristan says, history didn't just stop at Alexander's death and start again when Rome takes on Carthage. And in fact this period is one of the most fascinating and eventful in ancient history. It is also one of the most confusing and I hope this podcast is both entertaini...

Really thrilled to have Bret Devereaux and Ed Watts on the podcast together. We looked at Gladiator as a film (two thumbs up!) and also unpicking some of the history. Ranging far and wide we covered the battle scenes, gladiators, the role of an emperor and lots, lots more. Ed argues that Commodus was doing okay until stabbed in the back by his sister and Bret gives a masterclass in how not to name...

I chatted to Battleship Bean and John Schilling about nuclear war. We discussed the wonderful Dr Strangleove and tried to unpick some of the realities of a nuclear war. How powerful are modern weapons?  Would they knock out electrical systems world wide?  Would such a war result in nuclear winter? A book I mentioned in the podcast and which I recommend (though Bean is not a fan) is Command and Con...

What happens when a Habsburg prince abandons European luxury to rule a bankrupt, divided Mexico? Emperor Maximilian's journey from triumph to tragedy reveals the human cost of imperial ambition and misguided honor. After their triumphant entry into Mexico City, Maximilian and Carlotta faced the monumental task of governing a nation torn by civil war. Despite liberal reforms that surprised his...

Karl Marx called it 'one of the most monstrous enterprises in the annals of international history'. This seems unfair to the young Hapsburg royals who travel to Mexico in 1864 to become its emperor and empress. Highly liberal by the standards of the day and with the best of intentions they will face a terrible struggle to rule and (ultimately) to try to survive. Edward Shawcross has writ...

In the Dutch Republic of the 1630's trading in tulips went mad with bulbs and even parts of a bulb changing hands for astronomical prices. Historian Mike Dash traces the extraordinary story from its beginnings centuries before up to and beyond the inevitable crash. I can't recommend Mike and his books enough. Hard core history and a fantastically accessible reading style. His book Tulipo...

James Howard - Johnston returns to talk about the astonishing upending of the world order that happened just a few years after the death of Muhammad. The Persian empire destroyed and the Roman Empire reduced to a Byzantine rump. It is a long episode and slightly scholarly but I honestly don't think you can understand the world we live in today without some understanding of these extraordinary...

Paul Lockhart is brilliant on the history of guns (and firepower more widely). He is interested not just in the weapons themselves but how they changed the nature of the nation state itself.  Once gunpowder is introduced everything changes. Warfare increasingly becomes something only a powerful state can really afford and a Darwinian competition starts to unfold from the 1500's onwards. Liste...

Ed Watts is one of the most engaging writers and speakers on Roman history I have talked to. In this podcast we talk about the fall of the Republic  - why and how it happened and who was most to blame. The podcast picks up the themes of his excellent book Mortal Republic  which is highly, highly recommended.

In October 1950 the Americans are racing to the Yalu river, trying to bring the war in Korea to a decisive close. Unknown to them a huge Chinese army has been sent to oppose them and the forces meet at the Chosin Reservoir.  Both sides have to fight not only each other but the appalling cold as the Chinese try to surround and annihilate the Americans. Hampton Sides' book On Desperate Ground i...

 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...