(2015 CE · Northern India & ~930 to ~895 BCE · Tyre)

The Narrator remembers how he started perhaps the happiest time of his life. As with so many things, it began badly. A little girl with a perfect memory for people's faces grew up to by first the Queen then the Queen Mother of  the great Phoenician City of Tyre, and she took a special interest in a man who never grows older.

Based on the Intro and Chapter 1 of Middle by Geoff Micks.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks and Paulette Anderson Micks (his mother!)

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixaby 

Support the show

In 2015, a man who has been alive since the last Ice Age bought a tape recorder. Over the course of three days he dictated his life story as fast as he could while waiting for a woman to visit who he believes will finally be the death of him.

In Season One of The Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast we followed our narrator from his first life in Paleolithic Wales, across Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe, to becoming a bronze smith and a tin trader sailing the Adriatic, the Aegean, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea. He was the tour manager and best friend of Dedi, the world’s first magician. He was a family friend of Daedalus, Icarus, Iapyx, and Ariadne. He survived the Minoan eruption, and played a small part in both starting the historical Trojan War, and inventing some of the stories that would one day be collected into the Odyssey. The first day of tape-recordings ends with our narrator telling of the decades he spent as a field slave during the Bronze Age Collapse, which reminds him that his visions of the future can mean many things. He goes to bed with a palpable sense of relief.  

Meanwhile, that same evening, the woman who he believes may finally be the death of him arrives in a nearby city and checks into a youth hostel. She has the mysterious ability to tell how people will one day die just by looking at them, and she has travelled from the far side of the world to find him. 

That was Season One. For Season Two, you can look forward to so much more. Where everything you have heard so far was drawing from archaeology, anthropology, and mythology, Season Two is a journey through the untold side of recorded history you will not want to miss. Our narrator will become a prosperous Phoenician, a very happy and a very sad Carthaginian, a deeply reluctant Roman, and eventually a casual Christian in a devout empire that struggles to live through a plague they fear means the end of the world.  

You will hear about people whose names have rung out throughout the centuries, and people whose names have been forgotten by everyone except our narrator, and many more people —good and bad— who fall somewhere in between.

We will also hear a lot more about the woman who has checked into that youth hostel.

Season Two is going to build upon Season One and go places you never imagined. Join us each Monday for a new episode that will take you on a journey through the history you know, and the history you never knew you never knew, all told by a narrator who experienced it all first hand and is now free at last to tell you his life’s story with whatever time he has left.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby 

Support the show

An end-of-season extra episode offering some updates on the podcast, background on the content, suggestions for additional reading material, and also some much-deserved credit to the people who helped make Season One and the book it was based upon possible. 

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Support the show

 (~1170 BCE - ? · The Eastern Mediterranean & Parts Unknown & 2015 CE · Northern India)

The Narrator remembers one of the darkest times of his life when he was enslaved for many decades by all-but-forgotten raiders remembered as 'The Sea Peoples' during the Bronze Age Collapse. Meanwhile, the young woman he fears will finally be the death of him gets off her train and checks into a youth hostel in the nearby city of Rishikesh. 

Based on Chapter 15 and the Outro of Beginning by Geoff Micks.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks, Paulette Anderson Micks, Melissa Buttrill, and Rohan Makdani

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixaby 

Support the show

 (~1190 - ~1170 BCE · The Aegean)

The Narrator talks about the truth as he remembers it behind The Iliad and The Odyssey based on the time he spent with people whose legends have been told and retold for more than three thousand years now.  

Based on Chapter 14 of Beginning by Geoff Micks.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixaby 

Support the show

 (1190 BCE · The Aegean)

The Narrator talks about the small, unknowing part he played in setting off what would be remembered as the Trojan War.  

Based on Chapter 13 of Beginning by Geoff Micks.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixaby 

Support the show

 (~1210 BCE · Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, & Parts in Between)

The Narrator talks about the Bronze Age's Black Sea tin trade, and a memorable business deal with a powerful man among the Cimmerians, one of the many Steppe peoples who lived along southern coast of what is now Ukraine.  

Based on Chapter 12 of Beginning by Geoff Micks.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixaby 

Support the show

(~1600 BCE · Crete & the Aegean)

The Narrator talks about the volcanic eruption of modern-day Santorini, and the tsunami that destroyed what today is called the Minoan civilization.  

Based on Chapter 10 of Beginning by Geoff Micks.

For more information on this events in this week's episode than could be delivered in the narrative structure of the story, here is a link to the Wikipedia article on the Minoan Eruption to get you started.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixaby

Support the show

(~1650 BCE · Crete, the Aegean, & the Eastern Mediterranean)

The Narrator tells of the fateful flight of Icarus, son of Daedalus, brother of Iapyx, and spurned suitor of Ariadne. It bears little resemblance to what Greek myth-makers would conjure up in centuries still to come.  

Based on Chapter 10 of Beginning by Geoff Micks.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixaby 

Support the show

(~1650 BCE · Crete, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean)

The Narrator tells of the early days of his friendship with Daedalus and his sons Icarus and Iapyx, who are not as the myths remember them. 

Based on Chapter 9 of Beginning by Geoff Micks.

Please note: The ending is a deliberate editing choice, not an error.

Enjoying the show? Tell us a little about yourself, submit a comment, and/or ask a question through this short survey.

For more, visit my podcast website and personal website. 

Follow me on Bluesky. 

Follow me on Substack.

Join my Facebook page.

Support me on Patreon.

Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixaby

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixaby 

Support the show