Sex, violence, arson, theological disputes...the story of the Nika Riots has it all. Today, in response to a listener question, I'm telling one of history's most underappreciated stories about an utterly bananas and ultimately catastrophic breakdown in law and order that began with a rivalry over chariot racing. But the full story, like all sports stories, is about so much more than that. It reveals profound and perhaps unsettling truths about our human nature and the strange forces I've come to call allegregores.

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