A brand new podcast dedicated to exploring history's most iconic periods through the battles that shaped them. Featuring multi-episode series with each episode around just 15-20 minutes long, we bring history to life in bitesize bursts, recreating real-life stories you can enjoy in a spare moment. Or if you want to listen for longer, just binge them back to back.
Episodes
Sunday Jan 31, 2021
Sunday Jan 31, 2021
Religious rivalry is behind some of history's most intractable and bitter conflicts. Join us as we explore some of them, and why religion looks set to continue to create hotbed's of conflict for years to come.
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Wednesday Feb 03, 2021
Wednesday Feb 03, 2021
In their power to spark wars, ideologies can be just as powerful as religions. Once the Scientific Revolution and the European Enlightenment began a societal awakening about human existence and our relationship with our rulers, political revolutions swept much of the world - usually violently.
Come with us as we discuss ideology's impact on war and conflict, in national revolutions and international power plays.
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Saturday Feb 06, 2021
Saturday Feb 06, 2021
Whether it's for living space, resources, religion, culture, power, wealth or simply protecting your home, humans like to fight over land.
From the largest invasion in history, Operation Barbarossa, to the ongoing Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, we explore history's lessons on why land has always been one of major causes of Why We Fight.
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Tuesday Feb 09, 2021
Tuesday Feb 09, 2021
Fighting for freedom is one of the supremely powerful motivators behind conflict. Whether it’s slaves rising up, as they did under Spartacus in the Roman Republic and Toussaint L'Ouverture in Haiti, American and French revolutionaries throwing out the established order, or Geronimo in a heroic fight for the liberty of his people, freedom has galvanised and enthused the oppressed.
And we explore what it means today in the face of Chinese treatment of the Uighur people and the fact that the Human Freedom Index still defines 25 African nations as some of the least free in the world.
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Friday Feb 12, 2021
Friday Feb 12, 2021
It has fired imaginations and inspired epic poetry. It's also brought down nations and empires.
In this episode we cover one of the most primal causes of human conflict - men's fight over women. Its older than history itself, and we take a look at everything from the destruction of the Huron, Troy and the Ming Dynasty of China, to Mark Antony and Cleopatra and the Sabine women of early Rome.
Men's lust for and love of women have caused thousands of years of war.
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Monday Feb 15, 2021
Monday Feb 15, 2021
Revenge is one of the most formidable causes of war around. It has sparked bitter conflicts over thousands of years, and thousands of miles.
From Boudicca's anti-Roman raising of the British tribes to the modern-day War on Terror, and the merry-go-round of Franco-German revenge relations to Genghis Khan obliterating an entire Empire which killed some of his traders, revenge has caused and continues to cause wars which leave scars often lasting decades.
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Thursday Feb 18, 2021
Thursday Feb 18, 2021
The relationship between nations and their geography has shaped warfare for thousands of years, from the borders of the Roman Empire to modern day Russia.
Keeping enemies behind natural defensive frontiers, ensuring access to vital resources, and controlling the vital land routes and waterways - all these and more have caused and continue to cause savage conflict.
We cover the Greco-Persian Wars, the rise of Japan and the new frontier of space in our exploration of the role of Geopolitics in Why We Fight.
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Sunday Feb 21, 2021
Sunday Feb 21, 2021
Why do everyday people risk life and limb by going to fight in deadly combat? To put your body and mind in the midst of flying arrows or shrapnel, to risk the hacking of axes or the sights of a sniper, to sail on an ancient bireme or WW2-era battleship when there's a good chance you won't be coming out of it alive, is mortally terrifying.
We explore the motivations of the men and women who often gladly take up arms, from excitement to loyalty, radicalisation to brotherhood.
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Monday Mar 22, 2021
Monday Mar 22, 2021
September 480 BC. Up to 500,000 Persians were rampaging through Greece, having overwhelmed Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae the month before.
Several major cities had been taken and destroyed, including - unthinkably - Athens.
The Greeks had just one chance left to save southern Greece. Hold the Isthmus of Corinth where the narrow neck of land connecting the Peloponnese offered the only hope of resisting the Persian horde.
But to do this, the Greek fleets had to stop the Persians simply sailing around them. Less than 400 Greek triremes met 800 Persian ships at Salamis, in perhaps the most history-changing naval battle of all time. The future of Western Civilisation as we know it would hang on its outcome.
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Thursday Mar 25, 2021
Thursday Mar 25, 2021
The rising might of the Roman Republic was about to clash with the centuries-old power of Carthage, the greatest naval power the western Mediterranean had ever known.
The Battle of Cape Ecnomus in 256 BC remains the largest naval battle in history, by the number of men involved. 300,000 fought in 680 ships for dominance.
Part of the First Punic War, the battle would eventually lead to the rise of one of the world's greatest Empires, and the extinction of another.
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