What Came Before

The late Roman Republic had survived reform, faction, and civil bloodshed, but Caesar's march across the Rubicon pushed it past the point of no return. Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/@WhatCameBeforePodcast Apple Podcasts : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-came-before/id1839699689 Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/show/3eRPO23EzaKSZYL7rJ0XPt Am...

In 1954, the CIA and MI6 dug a tunnel from West Berlin into the Soviet sector to tap military phone lines. It was one of the most audacious intelligence operations of the Cold War. There was just one problem - the KGB knew about it before the first shovel broke ground. Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/@WhatCameBeforePodcast Apple Podcasts : https://podcast...

In February 1820, a group of desperate radicals plotted to murder the entire British Cabinet at a private dinner, behead two ministers, and spark a revolution in the streets of London. This is the story of the Cato Street Conspiracy - the men behind it, the government spy among them, and the last public beheading in England. Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com YouTube : https://www.youtube.co...

In November 1605, a group of English Catholics led by Robert Catesby attempted to blow up Parliament and King James I. This is the story of the Gunpowder Plot - how it was planned, how it was betrayed, and how it ended. Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/@WhatCameBeforePodcast Apple Podcasts : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-came-before/id18396996...

In the summer of 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, seizing control of one of the world's most strategically vital waterways from its Anglo-French owners. What followed was a secret conspiracy, a coordinated invasion, and one of the defining humiliations of the post-imperial age. Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/@WhatC...

After the fall of Fort St. Elmo, the full weight of the Ottoman army turns on the twin peninsulas of Birgu and Senglea. Through months of relentless bombardment, underground mining, and massive infantry assaults, Grand Master La Valette and a dwindling garrison of Knights and Maltese civilians fight to hold walls that are crumbling around them, all while waiting for a relief force from Sicily that...

In the summer of 1565, the Ottoman Empire dispatched an armada of nearly 200 ships and 40,000 men to the Mediterranean island of Malta. Their target was the Knights Hospitaller, a Catholic military order operating as state-sponsored corsairs. In Part 1 of our two-part series on the Great Siege of Malta, we explore the history between these two factions and how the capture of a single Ottoman galle...

In the aftermath of Lord Asano's forced seppuku and the total confiscation of the Ako domain, over 300 samurai are abruptly cast out as masterless ronin . But behind their peaceful surrender to the Tokugawa shogunate, a dedicated core of retainers has secretly sworn a blood oath of vengeance. In this episode, we follow former chief retainer Oishi Yoshio as he orchestrates a brilliant campaign of p...

In the spring of 1701, a feudal lord named Asano Naganori was assigned to host imperial envoys at Edo Castle - one of the most important ceremonial duties in Tokugawa Japan. His instructor in court protocol was a senior official named Kira Yoshinaka. What followed was weeks of public humiliation that ended in an act of violence in the shogun's own corridors, a death sentence carried out before nig...

Churchill becomes Prime Minister as France falls and Britain stands alone. From the Dunkirk evacuation and the Battle of Britain to the forging of the Grand Alliance with Roosevelt and Stalin, we follow Churchill through the pivotal moments of the Second World War, and his life following the Second World War. The final episode of our Churchill series takes the story from its dramatic peak to its e...

From the green benches of Parliament to the mud of the trenches, this episode tracks Winston Churchill's turbulent path through the early 20th century. His meteoric rise as a Liberal reformer, the disaster of Gallipoli that nearly ended his career, and his decade-long political exile. We examine how the "Wilderness Years" transformed a political outcast into the lone voice warning the world of the...

Born into privilege but dismissed by his father as a failure, young Winston Churchill set out to prove the world wrong. From self-education in India to the last great cavalry charge at Omdurman and a thrilling escape from a Boer POW camp, this episode charts how a "social wastrel" forged his own legend to become a Member of Parliament by the age of 25. Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com YouT...

In the summer of 1683, the fate of Europe hung in the balance on the banks of the Danube. A massive Ottoman army led by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa laid siege to Vienna, intent on capturing the "Golden Apple" of the West. In this episode, we follow the desperate struggle of the city's defenders against starvation, disease, and underground mine warfare. Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com YouTub...

In the spring of 1989, a spontaneous wave of grief for a fallen leader transformed into a massive movement that paralyzed the Chinese capital. For seven weeks, millions of students and workers occupied Tiananmen Square, erecting the "Goddess of Democracy" and challenging the Communist Party to live up to its own ideals. As martial law failed to break the will of the people, the hardline leadership...

In 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a decade-long campaign to purify the Communist Party that plunged China into total anarchy. This episode traces the descent into chaos, from the mobilization of the Red Guards and the violent destruction of the "Four Olds" to the factional street battles that brought the nation to the brink of civil war. Contact: whatcamebefor...

In 1958, the People's Republic of China embarked on one of the most radical social experiments in human history: the Great Leap Forward. Aiming to surpass the industrial output of the West in just fifteen years, Mao Zedong mobilized the nation to replace capital with sheer willpower. This episode details the unprecedented restructuring of Chinese society, from the collective life of the People's C...

In the finale of the series, we enter the "House of Special Purpose" - the ominous code name for the villa where the Romanov dynasty met its end. As the White Army closed in on Ekaterinburg in the summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks made a cold calculation: the Tsar could not be allowed to live as a banner for the counter-revolution. We follow the family's descent from imperial boredom behind painted-o...

The most consequential revolution of the 20th century did not happened with a change of the guard. In this episode, we dismantle the myth of the "storming" of the Winter Palace to reveal the reality of the Bolshevik seizure of power: a methodical, invisible coup d'etat masterminded by Leon Trotsky. While the citizens of Petrograd rode the trams and attended the opera, the Military Revolutionary Co...

By the summer of 1917, the optimism of the February Revolution had dissolved into violence. Alexander Kerensky, the "Persuader-in-Chief," attempted to save the crumbling nation with a suicidal military offensive that destroyed the last remnants of the army's morale. The resulting power vacuum triggered the "July Days," a premature uprising of armed sailors that forced Vladimir Lenin to shave his b...

In the spring of 1917, the German General Staff decided to deploy a new kind of weapon against the Russian army: a revolutionary exile named Vladimir Lenin. In this episode, we follow the journey of the "plague bacillus", Vladimir Lenin, as he travels from a cramped apartment in Zurich to the steps of the Finland Station. Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/@...

In the bitter winter of 1917, the 300-year rule of the Romanov dynasty ended with a bread riot. What began as a march by female textile workers demanding food spiraled into a revolution when the Tsar's ultimate enforcers, the Cossacks, refused to charge the crowd. We follow the chaotic escalation from snowballs to machine-gun fire, leading to the decisive moment when Sergeant Kirpichnikov convince...

When World War I began, the Allies believed the "Russian Steamroller" - an army of millions - would crush Germany by Christmas. Instead, the Imperial Army marched into a catastrophe that would break the back of the regime. In this episode, we move from the palaces of Petrograd to the frozen trenches of the Eastern Front to witness the military collapse of the Russian Empire. We tell the tragic sto...

After the chaos of the 1905 Revolution, the Romanov dynasty had one final decade to save itself from extinction. In this episode, we explore the strange twilight of the Russian Empire, a period dominated by two men who could not have been more different: Pyotr Stolypin, the ruthless Prime Minister who tried to force Russia into the 20th century with the "hangman's noose," and Grigori Rasputin, the...

In May 1941, the balance of the war at sea shifted on a knife-edge. The German battleship Bismarck , the most powerful warship in Europe, slipped into the North Atlantic with orders to sever the convoy lifelines sustaining the United Kingdom. What followed was one of the most intense naval operations in history, spanning thousands of square miles of ocean. In this episode, we follow the narrative...

In January 1066, the death of King Edward the Confessor triggered a succession crisis that would change the course of English history. Three men laid claim to the English throne: Harold Godwinson, the powerful English Earl; William, the bastard Duke of Normandy; and Harald Hardrada, the last great Viking warrior. In this episode, we reconstruct the narrative of the momentous year that followed. We...