All Episodes
Displaying 81 - 100 of 123 in total
Episode 42 - The Portuguese and Spanish Colonies in the New World
OK, in the last episode, we had Columbus finding the New World, but thinking it was India. Meanwhile, Vasco de Gama found the actual India for Portugal. Then John Ca...
Episode 41- The Golden Age of Exploration
One of the things you might have noticed in the past few episodes, besides the fact that we were jumping around in time a bit, was that we actually got a bit into the ...
Episode 40 - The Hundred Years' War
OK, so in my original plan for the flow of the podcast, I wasn’t going to talk about the Hundred Years War, but the more I looked at what was going on in European Hist...
Episode 39 - Gutenberg and the Printing Press
Well, I was going to try to squeeze Gutenberg into the last episode, since he actually lived before the High Renaissance, and his invention kind of fit into the ethos ...
Episode 38 - The High Renaissance
Ok, here we are. The High Renaissance. Lots of great stuff happened during the Renaissance, but there was one particular period, about 35 years, where some of the gr...
Episode 37 - The Renaissance Begins
It’s hard to overstate how important the Renaissance was. It’s kind of one of the highest high points of all of human history. I mean, there are Renaissance faires...
Episode 36 - The Beginning of the Age of Exploration
Polo! Yes, in this episode, I’m starting with Marco Polo. There’s not a lot of people who I have looked at over the course of this podcast where I say, ‘Man, I w...
Episode 35 - The Far East and the Mongols
We’ve already talked about a lot of galloping hordes in this podcast, including the Goths, the Huns, and the Vikings. But there is one tribe that outstrips them all...
Episode 34 - Medieval Literature
Ok, I know, there’s nothing more eye-rollingly boring than medieval literature, right? Wrong! It’s super interesting, in the stories that are told, and in the develo...
Episode 31 - Feudalism
You probably have heard of Prince William and his wife Kate. You might have heard of their official titles, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Or William’s dad, Prin...
Episode 30 - The Vikings!
Last episode, we talked about the Charles the Hammer and his son Charlemagne, and the Carolingian renaissance in France and western Europe. After Charley and Charley...
Episode 29 - Charles Martel and Charlemagne
Last episode, we talked about the rise of Islam, and how it swept over the Middle East, Central Asia, and across North Africa. And I mentioned that the Islamic Caliph...
Episode 28 - The Rise of Islam
Ok, so Europe was reeling from the volcanic winter of 536, and then the subsequent Plague of Justinian in 541, and it was beginning to descend into the Dark Ages. B...
Episode 27 - What Has Been Going on in the Rest of the World while We Were Talking about Rome for 12 Episodes
Before we get fully into the Middle Ages, and all the cool barbarian stuff that happens there, like Vikings, let’s take stock of the rest of how the rest of the world ...
Episode 26 - Rome Falls, and the Dark Ages Begin
I’m going to begin this episode with a famous quote from Edward Gibbon, from his massive work, the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: The decli...
Episode 25 - Constantine, the Church, and the Creeds
In the late 200’s while the Roman Empire was struggling with a long series of bad emperors and empire-wide troubles with barbarians, Christianity was spreading all thr...
Episode 24 - The Height of the Roman Empire
From the time that Caesar Augustus took control and turned Rome into an Empire, until about 200 years later, Rome enjoyed a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity....
Episode 23 - The Early Church and the Bible
Remember how, a few episodes ago, we left Julius Caesar on the floor of the Senate, in a pool of blood? Well, that’s NOT how we left Jesus at the end of the last epis...