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We’ve covered the deadly day in 79 AD when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii in a suffocating layer of ash and pumice. But we haven’t covered the aftermath: where did the survivors go? How were they received? And what did the recovery effort look like?

 Today, we’re joined by Elodie Harper—bestselling author of the Wolf Den trilogy, whose last installment, The Temple of Fortuna, has just been released. Join us in exploring how this eruption event left an indelible mark on the psyche of ancient Rome.

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Greek fire was an incendiary weapon of the ancient world—and perhaps the sole reason that the Byzantine Empire stood long after the rest of Rome. It was a terrifying weapon used for centuries to dominate on land and sea; intimidating vastly more powerful foes into backing down. Those who beheld its power always fled in fear.

Greek fire was a closely guarded secret of the Byzantine Empire. And eventually the recipe for making and using it was lost. Modern historians have tried and failed, many times, to reproduce it. We don’t know how it was made, or why it disappeared. It’s a mystery.

Join us as we explore the untold secrets of Greek fire.

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When we talk about the Vikings, who are we talking about, exactly? What can we learn about Viking culture by looking at their myths? And which of the ancient sources about them (if any) can we trust?

This week, we take a look at Norse mythology and history with Dr. Kelsey Fuller-Shafer, author of Norse Mythology: The Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Handbook: From Vikings to Valkyries, an Epic Who's Who in Old Norse Mythology (a kind of companion book to our Women of Myth). Join us as we get to know the Vikings.

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Communities all over the ancient world had a problem: their dead wouldn't stay in the ground. They rose up as shambolic corpses, gusts of wind and evil spirits, draining human life force and devouring flesh and blood.

The vampire myth is an ancient one, found on every continent. Join us as we explore the oldest vampire myths we could find from Sumeria, Greece, Rome, and Germania--and discover the clues they leave us about those cultures.

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Introducing History Daily, a podcast that tells the fascinating stories of what happened “on this day” in history, with host Lindsay Graham.

This is a History Daily episode about the Great Fire of Rome–another natural or potentially man made disaster that we felt was perfect for our odds and sods season–topics that just didn’t fit into past arcs or that we didn’t get to.

The day was July 18, 64 AD. When the Great Fire of Rome reduces two-thirds of the city to ashes, Emperor Nero uses the catastrophe as an excuse to persecute a new religious group: the Christians.

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The Celts of the Iron age—roughly 600s BC to 43 AD—had a real preoccupation with severed heads. They took heads in battle. They displayed the heads of their enemies in prominent places. But what did all this decapitation mean?

Some believe there was a set of religious beliefs around severed heads—but nobody knows what they were. And the severed head keeps popping up in later mythology and legend, creating more questions than answers. Join us as we investigate the very mysterious Cult of the Severed Head.

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The werewolf myth as we know it today generally involves getting bitten by a werewolf, transforming during the full moon, and being very susceptible to silver bullets. But werewolves in ancient Greece and Rome were a little different.

Join us for a spooky-season deep dive into ancient werewolf mythology from thousands of years ago. We'll take a look at the pre-Christian origins of the werewolf myth and its connections to death, starvation, cannibalism, and transformation.

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We’ve covered werewolves in the ancient world before—and their connection to the Berserker myth. But wait til you hear what happened to werewolf mythology when the Catholics got their hands on it.

This episode is a wild ride, taking you from the ancient Greek and Roman werewolves to a Medieval monster tied to the mysteries of serial killing, mental illness, domestic abuse, and the paranoia of the Witch Trials. It turns out Catholic werewolves stalked a very dark, very violent landscape—and we are just itching to explore it. Join us.

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In 1942, a forest ranger was hiking on an isolated trail deep in the Himalayas. Rising over 16,000 feet in elevation, he climbed a ridge that looked down a steep-sided funnel of ice and boulders. At the bottom was a small, perfectly circular glacial lake, frozen in a solid blue lens.

And there, strewn about the icy, rocky beach, lay skeletons. Hundreds of skeletons.

Nobody knew whose bones they were. Theories and folklore would proliferate over the years, but the mystery would remain—and the more scientists found out about Skeleton Lake, the more the mystery deepened.

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Men aren’t the only ones who think about the Roman Empire (Or the Roman Republic!) all the time. We do too–and so does Dr. Emma Southon, creator of the History is Sexy podcast and author of many fascinating, women-centered books on ancient Rome. 

Her most recent book, a Rome of One’s Own—the Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire, tells the story of 21 fascinating women often overlooked by history–who nevertheless played a huge role in shaping ancient Rome. These women are rebels, empresses, lovers, firebrands, entrepreneurs, sex workers, whistleblowers, and survivors–and through their stories, we can see this period in history in a whole new light.

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