x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

New Books in Ancient History

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow

history

All Episodes

27:30

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/09/21

In Scotland’s Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight (Luath Press, 2025), Stuart McHardy delves into the rich tapestry of pre-Christian Scottish beliefs, uncovering the enduring presence of ancient mythologies in today’s landscape. Long before the arrival of Christian monks, the Scots revered a pantheon of deities, with the Cailleach Goddess at its heart.McHardy skillfully weaves together ancient oral traditions, place names, local folklore and the shapes of the land itself to reveal the lingering

en

84:30

Owen Rees, "The Far Edges of the Known World: Life...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/09/15

When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his bleak and barbarous new surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of his world was where civilization ceased to exist. Our own fascination with the Greek and Roman world has for centuries followed this perspective, shrouding cultures at the far reaches of their influence in myth. But what was it like to live on the edges of these empires, on the boundaries of the known world? In The

en

58:06

“Plato and the Tyrant” with author James Romm

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/09/13

In 388 BCE, Plato, at the age of about forty and in the midst of writing The Republic, visited for the first time the then-Greek city state of Syracuse, on the eastern shores of Sicily. Syracuse was ruled by a tyrant, Dionysius, who on death was followed by his son, also a tyrant. Over the course of his three separate visits to Syracuse over the years, encountering both father and son, Plato arrived at the model for tyranny laid out in The Republic. That’s the argument of James Romm’s splendid

en

58:49

Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, "Landscapes of Warfare:...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/09/04

Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East (University Press of Colorado, 2025) by Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni offers an in-depth exploration of the Urartian empire, which occupied the highlands of present-day Turkey, Armenia, and Iran in the early first millennium BCE. Lesser known than its rival, the Neo-Assyrian empire, Urartu presents a unique case of imperial power distributed among mountain fortresses rather than centralized in cities. Through spatial analysis, the

en

62:16

Oswyn Murray, "The Muse of History: The Ancient...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/09/03

The study of ancient Greece has been central to Western conceptions of history since the Renaissance. The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present (Harvard UP, 2024) traces the shifting patterns of this preoccupation in the last three centuries, in which successive generations have reinterpreted the Greeks in the light of their contemporary worlds. Thus, in the eighteenth century, the conflict between Athens and Sparta became a touchstone in the development of

en

80:39

Matthew D. C. Larsen and Mark Letteney, "Ancient...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/09/01

Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (open access) examines spaces, practices, and ideologies of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean basin from 300 BCE to 600 CE. Analyzing a wide range of sources—including legal texts, archaeological findings, documentary evidence, and visual materials—Matthew D. C. Larsen and Mark Letteney argue that prisons were integral to the social, political, and economic fabric of ancient societies. Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration traces a long history of carceral

en

59:20

Walter Scheidel, "What Is Ancient History?"...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/08/25

It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity’s pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.For Scheidel, ancient history is when the

en

46:39

Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Winter Dreams: A Historical...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/08/23

Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age (Reaktion, 2025) is an evocative history of the ways the old have thought, felt and expressed themselves over two millennia, tracking the experience of ageing through artistic, literary and historical records. While old age is often depicted as ‘sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’, Dr. Barbara H. Rosenwein shows that the elderly have always retained their emotional depth and desires. She explores how these have changed over time, as

en

44:57

Barry Strauss, "Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/08/19

Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire (Simon & Schuster, 2025) by Barry Strauss recounts the history and events of three major uprisings: the Great Revolt of 66–70 CE, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, culminating in the Siege of Masada, where defenders chose mass suicide over surrender; the Diaspora Revolt, ignited by heavy taxes across the Empire; and the Bar Kokhba Revolt.Strauss has a way with telling stories that makes his

en

97:18

Learning Ancient Languages: A Conversation with...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/08/18

Sanskritist and seasoned teacher Dr. Antonia Ruppel shares her views on the merits and pitfalls of academic enterprise, the brave new world of self-employed scholarship and the teaching of ancient languages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

44:10

Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/08/14

I’m Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors writing in, around, and about the Asia-Pacific region.How do you tell the story of India–not just the modern-day country, but the whole region of South Asia, home to over two billion people? Historian Audrey Truschke’s newest book, India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent (Princeton UP, 2025), starts at the very beginning: the rise of the

en

55:56

Tatiana Bur, "Technologies of the Marvellous in...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/08/11

Tatiana Bur, Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge UP, 2025) This open-access book investigates the ways that technological, and especially mechanical, strategies were integrated into ancient Greek religion. By analysing a range of evidence, from the tragic use of the deus ex machina to Hellenistic epigrams to ancient mechanical literature, it expands the existing vocabulary of visual modes of ancient epiphany. Moreover, it contributes to the cultural history of the

en

47:19

David Chaffetz, "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/08/03

No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating the horse allowed early humans to settle the vast Eurasian steppe; later, their horses enabled new forms of warfare, encouraged long-distance trade routes, and ended up acquiring deep cultural and religious significance.Over time, horses came to power mighty empires in Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, and, later, Russia. Genghis Khan and the

en

75:26

The Nomadic Origin of the State

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/08/01

Contemporary, commonly-accepted understandings of the history of Chinese state formation see the nomadic pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe as peripheral appendages to a centralized, agriculturalist empire. In his work, Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene argues against what he calls “the Sinocentric paradigm” in favor of an interpretation of nomadic pastoralism as the origin of the premodern state. In this interview, we discuss the conquest theory of state formation, how mobility is essential to state control,

en

53:55

Joanna Jurewicz, "Invisible Fire: Memory, Tradition...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/07/31

Invisible Fire by Joanna Jurewicz explores early Hindu philosophy through the Manusmṛti, Bhagavadgītā, and Mokṣadharma, showing that reality is a single cognitive field manifesting through subject-object perception. Drawing from Vedic roots and cognitive linguistics, Jurewicz argues that creation, bondage, and liberation are all epistemic processes. Misrecognition leads to suffering; liberation arises through refined cognition and self-recognition. The “invisible fire” symbolizes transformative

en

76:11

Scott Pearce, "Northern Wei (386-534): A New Form of...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/07/30

Emerging from collapse of the Han empire, the founders of Northern Wei had come south from the grasslands of Inner Asia to conquer the rich farmlands of the Yellow River plains. Northern Wei was, in fact, the first of the so-called "conquest dynasties" complex states seen repeatedly in East Asian history in which Inner Asian peoples ruled parts of the Chinese world.An innovative contribution to East Asian and Chinese history of the medieval period, Northern Wei (386-534) combines received

en

50:52

Dan-el Padilla Peralta, "Classicism and Other...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/07/30

Classicism and Other Phobias (Princeton University Press, 2025) shows how the concept of “classicism” lacks the capacity to affirm the aesthetic value of Black life and asks whether a different kind of classicism—one of insurgence, fugitivity, and emancipation—is possible. Engaging with the work of Sylvia Wynter and other trailblazers in Black studies while drawing on his own experiences as a Black classicist, Dan-el Padilla Peralta situates the history of the classics in the racial and

en

66:45

Caroline Johnson Hodge, "The God of This House:...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/07/28

Christianity is often thought of as a tradition of belief, interpretation, teachings, and texts. However, a scholarly focus on ideas overlooks how early Christian doctrine interacted with social exchanges in lay spaces.Author Caroline Johnson Hodge fills this gap, shifting our attention from liturgical settings to religion as it was lived outside the prescriptions of congregations. Through a careful reading of the material record alongside print sources, Johnson Hodge shows that in the first

en

46:26

Ory Amitay, "Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/07/23

When I sat down with Dr. Ory Amitay, his passion for myth, history, and ancient cultures was infectious. Our conversation about his new book, Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History, Oxford University Press, 2025, quickly revealed that for Ory, the real intrigue isn’t whether Alexander literally visited Jerusalem, but how and why this story was created and retold for centuries. Ory traced his fascination with this intersection of myth and reality back to his Israeli upbringing and

en

80:56

Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on...

New Books in Ancient History ·

2025/07/22

Much of world history is Indian history. Home today to one in four people, the subcontinent has long been densely populated and deeply connected to Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas through migration and trade. In this magisterial history, Audrey Truschke tells the fascinating story of the region historically known as India--which includes today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan--and the people who have lived there.A sweeping account of five millennia, from the dawn of

en

234 results

Similar Podcasts

The Old Front Line

Paul Reed

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

جنود خلدهم التاريخ

ALSUMOOD PODCAST

Film History - Daily

Inception Point Ai

Madonna - Biography Flash

Inception Point Ai