Tides of History

Venice's lagoon is an unstable environment, but it has hosted one of the longest-lasting and most stable cities in world history. The history of Venice is many different things: politics on an imperial scale, industrial production, cultural influence, tourism, and above all, trade. Professor Dennis Romano is one of the most eminent historians of medieval and early modern Venice and author of the n...

The environment of China has been so thoroughly shaped by human activity that it's difficult to imagine it as a wild landscape, as it was at the end of the last Ice Age. Since then, first agriculture and then the state have altered it, replacing native flora and fauna on an enormous scale. Professor Brian Lander, author of The King's Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to...

The Zhou Dynasty ruled for longer than any other in Chinese history. Much of the cultural foundation of China was laid down during that age, from Confucius to Sun Tzu. While a powerful state at its inception, centralized power only functioned for a century at most during the Zhou; afterward, the ruling dynasty became increasingly irrelevant as a political force, and regional lords rose to rule ind...

The Shang Dynasty marks China's entrance to history, but it was very different than the China we know from later periods: Human sacrifice on a massive scale, shaman-kings conducting rituals to the ancestors, and loose alliances rather than bureaucratic administration defined the age. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in h...

Chinese history is defined, more than anything else, by the importance of the state: its origins, its development, and the precise lineage leading back from the present deep into prehistory. But rather than a straightforward story of progress over time, the origins of the state in China are shrouded in mystery, in multiple developmental pathways, stops, starts, and new beginnings. Patrick's book i...

As an age of bronze gave way to one of iron, and then classical empires, the importance of writing grew all across Eurasia. That means more written sources for us to work with, but it also tells us dramatically more than we could have known before about the languages people were actually speaking across the continents. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and F...

Cities are one of the defining features of the Iron Age Mediterranean, as urbanism spread across the sea and beyond to form the backbone of the classical age that would follow. Professor Simon Stoddart is one of the world's leading experts on this process, specifically how it happened in Etruria, and how that particular example compares to urban formation elsewhere. Patrick's book is now available...

Justinian is, without a doubt, one of the most impactful historical figures of the past 2,000 years. Professor Peter Sarris, a longtime favorite historian of mine, has written an oustanding new account of the man himself, his times, and his legacy, entitled Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint , available now. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years...

The Scythians transformed the Eurasian steppe. They built giant burial mounds for their powerful kings, raided and plundered their sedentary neighbors, and laid down the template for every nomadic empire that would follow over the next 2000 years, from Attila to Tamerlane. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, eb...

For millennia, the Eurasian steppe has been the highway connecting the distant ends of Europe and Asia. But at the beginning of the Iron Age, something important changed. A new people, the Scythians, rose to prominence, exploding outward from southern Siberia from the 9th century BC onward. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the Wor...

The Persian Wars came to an end in the spring of 479 BC, when the land forces of the allied Greeks met the Persian army in an epic clash at Plataea. But the legacy of the Persian Wars would last for decades and centuries to come, shaping memory, identity, and the future relationship between the Greeks and the Persians. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and F...

In excavating massive Iron Age burial mounds in southern Siberia, Dr. Gino Caspari is doing some of the most innovative archaeology in the world, and he's doing it in one of the most remote places on the planet. Dr. Caspari is an expert on the Scythians, the enigmatic, powerful people who ruled the vast grasslands of Eurasia during the Iron Age. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Refo...

The Persian invasion of Greece aimed to do one thing above all else: punish Athens for its transgressions against the Great King. After defeating Leonidas, the vast army descended on Attica and burned much of the city. But the Greek allies were waiting for them nearby, and the result was one of the largest and most decisive naval battles in history - the Battle of Salamis. Patrick's book is now av...

In 480 BC, the Persian Great King Xerxes descended on mainland Greece with one of the largest armies and navies the world had ever seen. The Persians swept through the approaches to Greece, winning allies and destroying their foes along the way, before meeting the Spartan king Leonidas at the Hot Gates of Thermopylae. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Fo...

The wars between the Persians and the Greeks have become a cornerstone of the idea of "Western Civilization," a defining moment when Greeks became Greeks in opposition to the outside world. But this series of conflicts was far more complicated than a simple civilizational clash; it was born of a particular world, and to properly understand the Persian Wars, we need to grasp the background that mad...

When we think about the wars between the Persians and the Greeks, our perspective is quite explicitly that of the Greeks. But how did the Persians view these conflicts, and what were they after? Professor John Hyland explains his fascinating research on how the Persians understood war and their war with the Greeks. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty...

While Cyrus the Great built the Persian Empire from the ground up, his successors expanded it until the new state stretched from the Indus Valley of Pakistan to the Upper Nile, Kazakhstan to the Aegean, the Balkans to the Hindu Kush. This new Persia was built not just to expand through conquest but to endure, becoming an empire that would last for 200 years. Patrick's book is now available! Get Th...

The kingdoms of Iron Age Anatolia survive only as whispers in the archaeological and historical record; others exist through enigmatic references and legends in the writings of foreigners; and still others left behind relatively abundant records, allowing us to reconstruct a thriving world of states that have been almost totally forgotten. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformatio...

What was life like in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah? Few people are better qualified to answer that question than Professor Avraham Faust, who has excavated and written extensively about the archaeology of the ancient southern Levant, with a compelling blend of breadth and depth. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the Wor...

Welcome to "The Pursuit of Dadliness." This is a podcast for folks who want to enjoy their passions and their hobbies, whatever those might be, and genuinely strive to get better at doing stuff and more knowledgeable about the world around them. That, to me, is the essence of Dadliness. If you like tall wooden ships, smoked meats, remembering mediocre athletes of yesteryear, home gyms, comfortable...

The Persians were unlikely successors to the Assyrians and Babylonians, a fringe people of no particular importance, until Cyrus the Great became the most successful conqueror the world had ever seen. He built an empire stretching from Central Asia to the borders of Egypt, the Aegean to the Persian Gulf, and laid the foundations for a state that would last for 200 years. Patrick's book is now avai...

Egypt's New Kingdom, the peak of its monumental building and international power, ended in the aftermath of the Bronze Age Collapse. Once again, Egypt fragmented into multiple smaller states. Yet millions of people still lived and died under the rule of those claiming the mantle of the ancient pharaohs, and Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period was far from a backwater. Patrick's book is now avai...

Despite controlling a huge swathe of the Near East for the better part of a century, the Neo-Babylonian Empire is nearly forgotten today, aside from one key act: the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people of the kingdom of Judah. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Pat...

The Persian Empire followed in the footsteps of the Assyrians and Babylonians, but it was a much different entity than its predecessors, and its founder - Cyrus the Great - deserves to be mentioned among history's most accomplished conquerors. Professor Matt Waters joins me to discuss Cyrus, the Persians, and the empires that shaped life for millions upon millions of people. Patrick's book is now...

It's summertime, and I hope you're reading some great books. Dr. Keith Pluymers joins me once again to talk about one that you all might enjoy, by the historian Pekka Hamalainen - Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick)...