Tides of History

By Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Society & Culture History

What's Tides of History about?

Everywhere around us are echoes of the past. Those echoes define the boundaries of states and countries, how we pray and how we fight. They determine what money we spend and how we earn it at work, what language we speak and how we raise our children. From Wondery, host Patrick Wyman, PhD (“Fall Of Rome”) helps us understand our world and how it got to be the way it is.

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Alcohol and Agriculture in ...

01.21.2021

Stanford University's Professor Li Liu is one of the world's leading experts on prehistoric East Asia and one of the world's primary inventions of farming. I ask her about that, the deep continuities of Chinese civilization, and her recent research ...

Tides of History episodes:

01.21.2021 Alcohol and Agriculture in Prehistoric East Asia: Interview with Professor Li Liu Stanford University's Professor Li Liu is one of the world's leading experts on prehistoric East Asia and one of the world's primary inventions of farming. I ask her about that, the deep continuities of Chinese civilization, and her recent research ...
01.14.2021 Agriculture and Complex Societies in the Americas, 4000-1500 BC Agriculture was invented in no fewer than three, and probably four, places in the Americas. It went along with sedentary living and complex societies, but in complicated ways: fishing villages along the Andean coast grew into the cities of Norte ...
01.07.2021 The Americas from Foraging to Agriculture, 10,000 BC-4000 BC The initial migrations to the Americas get most of the attention, but people didn't stop living there in the aftermath of those first movements of peoples; they spread out over the Great Plains and the forests of the eastern United ...
12.31.2020 Agriculture, Migration, and the Births of Language Families: Interview with Professor Peter Bellwood The relationship between agriculture, migration, and the distribution of today's most prominent language families is direct but complex. Professor Peter Bellwood, one of the world's leading experts on prehistory, explains how farming led to population growth and movements of people ...
12.24.2020 Classic Tides \| Europe After the Black Death Plague, war, and a worsening climate drastically changed Europe in the years and decades after 1350. This new state of affairs laid the groundwork for the explosion around 1500 that gave rise to the modern world. This episode originally aired ...
12.17.2020 Neolithic China and Jomon Japan East Asia was one of the world's primary centers of agricultural innovation. Farming was invented there, rice and millet domesticated, and the people who did so grew in numbers and sophistication. Some of the world's most-spoken language families grew out ...
12.10.2020 East Asia in Prehistory Hominins have lived in East Asia - what's now China, Korea, and Japan - for millions of years, at least as far back as Homo erectus if not further. And as the glaciers began to recede for the last time ...
12.03.2020 Why Were There So Many Neolithic Farmers? And What Can Big Data Do For Archaeology? Interview with Professor Stephen Shennan Professor Stephen Shennan is one of the world's leading experts on the early farmers of the Fertile Crescent and Europe. In this interview, I pick his brain about why early farmers were so, uh, fertile, and produced so many descendants; ...
11.26.2020 Classic Tides \| Peasants' Rebellions and Resistance Peasants and common folk were oppressed by their social superiors, but they didn't accept that as a natural state of affairs: They resisted in small, everyday ways, and they rebelled, sometimes spectacularly. This episode originally aired on September 20, 2018. ...
11.19.2020 Neanderthals, Our Closest Kin: Interview with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes What were Neanderthals really like? Our closest relatives shared an incredible amount in common with us, argues Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of the wonderful new book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art. But we shouldn't pigeonhole them; Neanderthals ...
11.12.2020 Ötzi the Iceman: The Neolithic Ice Mummy Five thousand years ago, a man died more than 10,000 feet high in the Alps of northern Italy. He had been shot in the back with an arrow, the corpse left behind, where he was frozen into a glacier along ...
11.05.2020 Who Were the Proto-Indo-Europeans? Today, everywhere from Bengal to British Columbia, some 3.2 billion people speak an Indo-European language. All of these diverse languages are descended from a common ancestor spoken long before the advent of writing. But where and when was that, and ...
10.29.2020 The Lost Civilization of Old Europe: The Copper Age and the First Cities The first farmers of Europe and their descendants persisted for thousands of years. In the Neolithic heartland of eastern Europe, along the Danube River and through the northern Balkan Mountains, they built a unique civilization: Old Europe, with its artificial ...
10.22.2020 Classic Tides \| Peasants and the Medieval Countryside When we think of the medieval world, our minds usually turn to knights, royalty, and clergy. But the backbone of the medieval economic and social order was the humble peasant. In this rebroadcast from 2018, we explore the world and ...
10.15.2020 Prehistory Mailbag! Archaeology, Language, and the Advantages of Farming How do we know what we know about the deep past? What languages did people speak in prehistory? And why, if the life of an early farmer seemed to be so miserable, did farmers have so many children? I answer ...
10.08.2020 Megalithic Europe It didn't take long for the first pioneering farmers of Europe to establish mature and stable societies. The monuments of these societies are still with us today: enormous earthen tombs and standing stones, silent reminders of a lost civilization. If ...
10.01.2020 The Neolithic Revolution: Europe's First Farmers Farming came into existence in the Fertile Crescent, but it didn't stay there. By 5000 BC, agriculture had spread east and west, reaching both Central Asia and the Atlantic Ocean. But how did this happen? Did indigenous hunter-gatherers adopt farming, ...
09.17.2020 How Did People Domesticate Animals? An Interview with Professor Greger Larson The domestication of animals has transformed the way that people eat, clothe themselves, and live over the past 10,000 or so years, but what in the world does "domestication" even mean? How did this happen, and why did people start ...
09.10.2020 The First Farmers The domestication of plants and animals has remade the way that people feed themselves, organize their societies, and interact with the landscapes around them. But for most of the human past, this isn't how people subsisted. When, where, and how ...
09.03.2020 After the Ice: The Younger Dryas, the Mesolithic, and the Birth of a New World For most of Homo sapiens' time out of Africa, we lived in a world defined by ice. But by around 20,000 years ago, the ice had begun to melt, the glaciers retreating back toward the poles and mountain ranges. This ...
08.27.2020 How Should We Understand the Deep Human Past? Interview with Professor John Hawks Professor John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the world's best communicators on the deep human past and paleoanthropology, joins me to talk about archaic humans, genomics, and whether the concept of different human species even makes sense ...
08.13.2020 New Insights on the First Americans: Interview with Professor Jennifer Raff Our understanding of the past is constantly in flux, and there's no field where that's clearer than with the early settlement of the Americas. I'm joined by Professor Jennifer Raff of the University of Kansas, an anthropological geneticist, to discuss ...
08.06.2020 Who Were the First Americans? The Americas were the last continents Homo sapiens reached. Why did it take so long for people to enter this vast and promising expanse of land? Who were they, and where had they come from? In today's episode, we explore ...
07.30.2020 Trapped in Ice: The Paleolithic World Twenty thousand years ago, the world was locked in ice. The glaciers advanced from the poles and mountain ranges, swallowing huge portions of the planet's surface and making the rest colder and drier, a more difficult place to live. Yet ...
07.16.2020 Ancient DNA and the Human Story: Interview with Geneticist Eske Willerslev Ancient DNA is the key that's unlocking the deep history of humanity, allowing us to answer questions about our collective past that we never dreamed of addressing even 20 years ago. Eske Willerslev is a pioneer in the field of ...
07.09.2020 The Ghosts of Archaic Humans Until very recently, Homo sapiens - our species - was only one of several varieties of humans on this planet. As our ancestors spread outward from Africa in their great migration, they encountered those other species. The results of those ...
07.02.2020 Bone, Stone, and Genome: Understanding Humanity's Deep Past Welcome to a new season of Tides of History! Over the next year, we'll be traveling from the very origins of our species through the peopling of the planet, the Ice Age, and then to the beginnings of agriculture, cities, ...
06.18.2020 Did I End My Early Modern Series in the Right Place? Interview with Keith Pluymers How do we tell when one period ends and another begins? What are the fundamental characteristics of the early modern period? My dear friend (and friend of the show!) Keith Pluymers, assistant professor of history at Illinois State University, returns ...
06.11.2020 The Globalization of the Year 1000: Interview with Professor Valerie Hansen Around the year 1000, merchants, explorers, and missionaries linked the world together from Newfoundland to China. Trade goods, people, and above all ideas flowed across a rich assortment of routes, connecting previously distant places into a single unit. This was ...
06.04.2020 Alaric, the Goths, and the Sack of Rome: Interview with Professor Douglas Boin Alaric was one of the most famous barbarians of antiquity, and yet we know little about him - or at least, we knew very little, until Douglas Boin's excellent new book came out. It's entitled Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's ...
05.28.2020 John Maynard Keynes and His Legacies: Interview with Author and Journalist Zach Carter John Maynard Keynes was one of the most important figures of the 20th century, creating the economic structures and ideas that defined the Second World War and its aftermath. I spoke with Zach Carter, author of the wonderful new Keynes ...
05.14.2020 Malta, Lepanto, and the End of an Era We reach the epic conclusion of our series on the early modern period with the Great Siege of Malta and the Battle of Lepanto. Listen ad-free on Wondery+ here Support us by supporting our sponsors! The Great Courses Plus - ...
05.07.2020 The Battle for the Mediterranean For much of the 16th century, the Habsburgs of Spain and the Ottoman Empire waged an epic conflict for control over the Mediterranean. Follow along with two composite characters, a Barbary corsair and a Hospitaller knight, as they raid, pillage, ...
04.30.2020 Charles V and the Failure of Empire Charles V controlled more of Europe than any ruler in centuries, with resources other monarchs could only dream of. But that was never enough to give the Holy Roman Emperor more than a momentary victory; there was always a new ...
04.23.2020 Mike Duncan on Pandemics, Revolutions, and COVID-19 DISCLAIMER: If you do not think that this pandemic is a big deal; if you do not want to hear our personal political views; if you don’t care about present-day politics; if you think that this will somehow offend you; ...
04.16.2020 The Rise of Charles V Charles V was the most powerful European ruler since Charlemagne: king of Spain and Naples, Holy Roman Emperor, and ruler of a whole bunch else besides. How did all of these vast territories, and the central political role that went ...
04.09.2020 Pandemics in History All of us are dealing with the ongoing pandemic in different ways, and I decided to wedge myself into my closet to record an informal talk with you all about pandemics throughout history and what, if anything, they might help ...
04.02.2020 Genetics and the Transformation of Prehistory: Interview with Spencer Wells and Razib Khan Genetics has radically transformed our understanding of prehistory over the past two decades, revealing everything from the existence of brand-new, unknown species to interbreeding between Neanderthals and our human ancestors. I talked to geneticists Spencer Wells and Razib Khan, two ...
03.26.2020 Classic Tides: Plague, Climate, and the End of the Roman World In light of current events, we are re-posting one of my favorite episodes (from December, 2017) on natural disasters and the fall of the Roman Empire. Justinian was the last great Roman emperor, but his reign was plagued by disasters ...
03.19.2020 American Nations, American Union: Interview with Colin Woodard Few books have influenced my view of American history and politics more than Colin Woodard's American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. We've been divided since the beginning, Woodard argues, and this has influenced ...
03.17.2020 Classic Tides: The Black Death Revisited In light of current events, we are re-posting one of my favorite episodes (from June, 2018) on the Black Death. Between 1346 and 1351, the Black Death killed tens of millions of people - at least half the population - ...
03.12.2020 Suleiman the Magnificent and Ottoman Decline The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent was the high point of the Ottoman Empire, but for centuries, it has also been pegged as the beginning of the empire's long, slow decline into irrelevance. Is this true? Was Suleiman's reign simultaneously ...
03.05.2020 Suleiman the Magnificent and the Apex of the Ottoman Empire Suleiman the Magnificent ruled the Ottoman Empire for forty-six years. During that time, his armies fought everywhere from Iran to Vienna. His navies touched Indonesia and the Straits of Gibraltar. Under his reign, the Ottoman Empire reached its glorious peak. ...
02.20.2020 Pirates! With Leah Sutherland Leah returns to chat with Patrick about one of their favorite topics - pirates. It wouldn't be a Leah episode if we didn't range widely, so we also chat about essays and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Support us by supporting our ...
02.13.2020 The Ottomans, the Safavids, and the War for the Muslim World, 1501-1514 The Muslim world was a vast and diverse place, home to a variety of traditions and schools of thought. The Safavids began as a brotherhood of Sufi mystics, but soon transformed themselves from a religious order to the seeds of ...
02.06.2020 The Ottomans, the Mamluks, and the Clash for Control of the Muslim World While the Ottoman Empire spent most of its early history expanding into Christian Europe, it also faced east, toward the vast, wealthy, and dynamic Muslim world. As the Ottomans grew in prestige and power, a clash with the Mamluks of ...
01.23.2020 Pilgrims, Puritans, and the Battle for New England: Interview with Historian Peter Mancall The Pilgrims and the Puritans dominate our understanding not just of early New England, but also early America and the entire future course of American history. Yet their success and long-term influence weren't foreordained, and they weren't inevitable. Peter Mancall, ...
01.16.2020 The Rising Tide of the Ottoman Empire, 1453-1481 Mehmet the Conqueror captured Constantinople for the Ottoman Empire in 1453 and ended the thousand-year reign of the Byzantine Empire after an epic siege, but he was far from done. For the next three decades, Mehmet led Ottoman armies against ...
01.09.2020 The Dawn of the Age of Exploration What was it like to be on the cutting edge of the Age of Exploration, and what made these enormous leaps possible? To answer those questions, we follow the life of a composite character, a Portuguese sailor named Pedro, on ...
12.19.2019 The Last Battle of the Wars of the Roses What brought the son of a German shoemaker to a blood-soaked English field in June, 1487? In today's episode, we follow the life of a composite character, Hans, an artisan-turned mercenary, on his journey from Augsburg to Stoke Field and ...

Older episodes

Tides of History

What's Tides of History about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Tides of History episodes:

Alcohol and Agriculture in Prehistoric East Asia: Interview with Professor Li Liu

Agriculture and Complex Societies in the Americas, 4000-1500 BC

The Americas from Foraging to Agriculture, 10,000 BC-4000 BC

Agriculture, Migration, and the Births of Language Families: Interview with Professor Peter Bellwood

Classic Tides | Europe After the Black Death

Neolithic China and Jomon Japan

East Asia in Prehistory

Why Were There So Many Neolithic Farmers? And What Can Big Data Do For Archaeology? Interview with Professor Stephen Shennan

Classic Tides | Peasants' Rebellions and Resistance

Neanderthals, Our Closest Kin: Interview with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Ötzi the Iceman: The Neolithic Ice Mummy

Who Were the Proto-Indo-Europeans?

The Lost Civilization of Old Europe: The Copper Age and the First Cities

Classic Tides | Peasants and the Medieval Countryside

Prehistory Mailbag! Archaeology, Language, and the Advantages of Farming

Megalithic Europe

The Neolithic Revolution: Europe's First Farmers

How Did People Domesticate Animals? An Interview with Professor Greger Larson

The First Farmers

After the Ice: The Younger Dryas, the Mesolithic, and the Birth of a New World

How Should We Understand the Deep Human Past? Interview with Professor John Hawks

New Insights on the First Americans: Interview with Professor Jennifer Raff

Who Were the First Americans?

Trapped in Ice: The Paleolithic World

Ancient DNA and the Human Story: Interview with Geneticist Eske Willerslev

The Ghosts of Archaic Humans

Bone, Stone, and Genome: Understanding Humanity's Deep Past

Did I End My Early Modern Series in the Right Place? Interview with Keith Pluymers

The Globalization of the Year 1000: Interview with Professor Valerie Hansen

Alaric, the Goths, and the Sack of Rome: Interview with Professor Douglas Boin

John Maynard Keynes and His Legacies: Interview with Author and Journalist Zach Carter

Malta, Lepanto, and the End of an Era

The Battle for the Mediterranean

Charles V and the Failure of Empire

Mike Duncan on Pandemics, Revolutions, and COVID-19

The Rise of Charles V

Pandemics in History

Genetics and the Transformation of Prehistory: Interview with Spencer Wells and Razib Khan

Classic Tides: Plague, Climate, and the End of the Roman World

American Nations, American Union: Interview with Colin Woodard

Classic Tides: The Black Death Revisited

Suleiman the Magnificent and Ottoman Decline

Suleiman the Magnificent and the Apex of the Ottoman Empire

Pirates! With Leah Sutherland

The Ottomans, the Safavids, and the War for the Muslim World, 1501-1514

The Ottomans, the Mamluks, and the Clash for Control of the Muslim World

Pilgrims, Puritans, and the Battle for New England: Interview with Historian Peter Mancall

The Rising Tide of the Ottoman Empire, 1453-1481

The Dawn of the Age of Exploration

The Last Battle of the Wars of the Roses

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