⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! When Alaric of the Visigoths sacked Rome, it shocked the world—not least because Rome hadn’t been sacked in a thousand years. But also, while Rome was a Christian city by now—it had been for decades—the Visigoths were Christian too.  And they weren’t recent converts, either. They had all been Christian for over 160 years. Theirs was the earliest conversion of a Germanic people in recorded history. And their Christianity was different than the state religion of Rome. How did that happen, and why? Join us as we try to answer those questions. Sponsors and Advertising This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get 15% off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code HISTORY. This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode about Amalasuintha and the end of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, we said we were next going to turn to the Visigothic Kingdom. But the story of the Visigothic Kingdom can’t be told without knowing a little more about the history of Gothic religion.  Both Visigoths and Ostrogoths were Christian by the time they appear in ancient sources. They were the earliest Germanic group to convert to Christianity. But what was their religion like before that? We know almost nothing about it. But not nothing entirely. Join us as we draw back the curtain on a mysterious world lost to time—the world of Gothic paganism. Sponsors and Advertising This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get 15% off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code HISTORY. This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ This is an episode about a plague that killed up to 100 million people by the time it was done—as many as 60% of its victims. It’s the first documented occurrence of a pandemic that we have, and it’s the first documented outbreak of the deadlyYersinia pestis. No, we're not talking about the Black Death of Medieval Europe. We're talking about the Plague of Justinian. The Plague of Justinian was just one part of the fallout of the global volcanic eruption of 536 AD. Three eyewitness accounts have survived--and, in the grand tradition of this podcast, we decided to read them to you whilst Yule-level drunk. Buckle up. It is a wild, plague-tastic ride. Sponsors and Advertising This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get 15% off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code HISTORY. This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, we told you all about the rise of Theodoric the Great and the founding of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy. Now, we’re going to tell you all about the women in his family—and the effect they had on his kingdom. Theodoric had a wife, a sister, and three daughters—all of whom played an important role in his empire-building. His wife was the daughter of another powerful Germanic tribe—the Franks—and he married off his sister and two eldest daughters to form strategic alliances. But three times he married off his kin, and three times it blew up in his face. Amalasuintha was Theodoric’s youngest daughter—and when he died, she was the last woman standing. For a few years, the Ostrogothic Kingdom had a Queen—but these were turbulent times. Join us as we explore the rule of Amalasuintha and the lives of Theodoric’s other tough-as-nails female kin. Sponsors and Advertising This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get 15% off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code HISTORY. This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠ What was the worst year to be alive? Some researchers have a very specific answer to this question: 536 AD.  This is a year when the global temperature dropped, and it was winter all year round—for multiple years. The sun disappeared for 18 months as the world was covered in a veil of sulfuric dust. Crops failed. People starved, and fell to eating each other and warring over scarce resources. From China to Mexico, thriving civilizations collapsed. And the culprit? A volcano. Or maybe multiple volcanoes. But which ones are still a mystery. This is a historical mass murder, and it’s still unsolved.   Sponsors and Advertising This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get 15% off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code HISTORY. This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! After 75 years under Hunnic dominion, the Ostrogoths seized their freedom and set about taking over control of the Western Roman Empire. The man who led them was named Theodoric the Great. He was a member of an ancient Gothic family called the Amali, which went all the way back to the Crisis of the Third Century. Supposedly. Theodoric was the founder of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, which upended a thousand years of Roman rule in Italy. While Alaric sacked Rome, he couldn’t hold it. He didn’t try to hold it. Theodoric did hold it, and rule it. This is his story. Sponsors and Advertising This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get 15% off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code HISTORY. This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, we talked about how the Visigoths came to be: forged in the fire of the Gothic War of 376-382 and the immigration crisis that went along with it. Now, we’ll take a look at what happened to their kin who stayed on the northern side of the Danube—the Greuthungi who were not allowed to cross. What happened to them was 75 years under Hunnic dominion.   This time changed them. Some were brutally exploited. Still others were enriched beyond their wildest imaginings, riding at the head of a Wild Hunt that devoured all in its path—utnil, when next they met their kin who crossed the Danube, it was on opposite sides of a battlefield.   Join us as we map the rise of the Ostrogoths. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last few episodes, we’ve told you what we know about pre-Roman Gothic archaeology, culture, and history. We’ve told you about conditions both inside and outside the Roman Empire that kicked off the Migration Era.   And now we’re going to tell you the story of one of those Gothic Wars in detail: the war of 376-382 AD. A war that may have occurred during Alaric’s childhood—and that may have been a radicalizing event for him and for thousands of people who followed him.   It’s the war—and the accompanying immigration crisis—that sets off a chain of events in which a people called the Visigoths rise—and the most famous of them, a man called Alaric, leads them all the way to the gates of Rome. This is where it all begins. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, we took a look at the outside forces driving the engine of the Migration Era: Hunnic migrations and invasions, constant displacement and conflict at the Roman borders. But Goths lived inside Rome too—in the heart of the Italian peninsula, and also in the outer provinces, in territories that were conquered by force. This story isn’t just about Goths that lived outside Rome. It’s also about the Goths that lived inside the Empire—as everything from slaves to soldiers to free citizens. How they were treated within that empire fueled and fed the wheel of the Migration era. Hatred of immigrants played a major role in Migration-Era conflicts--in ways scarily similar to events today.   Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! It was the beginning of the Migration Era where the Goths’ history with the Roman Empire begins. The Migration era was a cycle of wars and conflicts lasting hundreds of years. Alaric’s sack of Rome was only a small part of it.    What started it? Nobody knows. But it would have been an extremely chaotic time to be alive, when ordinary people had to leave all that they’d built and flee in the face of invaders—who were also refugees fleeing violence that had wiped out their own homes. There would have been no safety anywhere.   The Migration Era was a vortex of death, where displaced victims, starving refugees, desperate people often wound up enacting the next round of violence on the populations they crashed into. And in this episode, we try to plumb the depths of that vortex. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, we delved into the archaeology of the pre-Roman Goths. But what about Gothic culture? What do we know about pre-Roman Gothic culture, before the Goths were Romanized?   To get a real sense of what is authentically Gothic is really difficult. We don’t have much information about the Goths’ daily lives or culture. We know almost nothing about their pre-Christian religious practices and beliefs. What we do have is a lot of military history from a Roman lens, and accounts from chroniclers like Tacitus—which have a lot of issues.   In this episode, we try to peel back the layers and discover what we can about pre-Roman Gothic culture. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! The Roman Empire stood for a thousand years. Many causes have been given for its downfall—but if just one group of people could be said to be culpable, it would be the Goths.   They stormed its borders en masse, scored outsized victories that no one had won before, killed two emperors and raised up their own, sacked the city of Rome after a thousand inviolable years; and built their own kingdoms within the Empire’s decaying corpse. Their name has inspired the names of architecture, literature and fashion into the modern day. Whenever you set the date of the fall of Rome, there’s no question the Goths were instrumental in felling it. So who were these people? Who were the Goths?   In this episode, we’re going to find out. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In Enemy of My Dreams, Jenny based her heroine Julia partially on Julia the Elder—rebellious daughter of Augustus who got herself exiled to Pandateria for being, as the ancients say, “too slutty.” Julia the Elder refused, REFUSED to rein it in. And for that, we adore her. But accounts of her life are told by men, sometimes her political enemies. She may have been a victim of slander, or engaged in deeper plotting that her dad wanted to keep secret. And while Julia the Elder was exiled for roughly five years, her daughter, Julia the Younger, was exiled for 20. Join us as we explore the lives of these indomitable women with historical fiction author and classics scholar Tana Rebellis, author of the Exile Duology and expert in Julio-Claudian exile. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In 450 AD, the Imperial Princess Honoria--daughter of Galla Placidia--was desperate to escape her arranged marriage. So she made an indecent proposal--to Attila the Hun. On this single action, cities were torched. Saints were raised. Thousands died. And Venice was founded. Find out how it all went down. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! He was a fierce barbarian warlord—a man who had stood between his people and the Roman Empire since the sack of Rome. She was a Roman Imperial princess with a core of iron strength. Born enemies, the love of Ataulf and Galla Placidia is marked by tragedy—but in its time, it burned hot enough to reshape an Empire. This is their story. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! This week’s Book Club author interview is none other than up-and-coming romantasy and historical romance author Jenny Williamson, discussing her upcoming debut Enemy of My Dreams: her huge historical crush on Alaric of the Goths, the inspiration for her entirely-made-up hot-mess heroine, and how she adds “verisimilitude” to her fight scenes. Join Genn and guest co-host Liv Albert, of Let’s Talk about Myths, Baby!, as they crack open a beverage, and conduct a wild and slightly tipsy author interview. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Who was Alaric of the Visigoths, really? It’s a difficult question to answer. Alaric left no manifesto. There is nothing in his own words to explain his motivations for sacking Rome, or all the choices he made leading up to that fateful day. All we have are the assumptions of his enemies, which sometimes don’t’ make a lot of sense. Enter Douglas Boin. His groundbreaking biography, Alaric the Goth: an Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome, explores Alaric’s experience as an immigrant, marginalized by the Roman Empire and fighting for his place in it. Join us as we explore the life and times of this fascinating historical figure and what his life still has to tell us. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! This week, we feature a conversation with the OG romance novelist—the one all our romance novelist friends list among their favorites. Nalini Singh has an impressive, multi-decade career with several long-running, blockbuster romantasy and paranormal series featuring sexy shifters, fallen angels, and dangerous psychic warriors. Join us as we explore these fascinating worlds and discuss the secrets to a long-running career in romance and fiction. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! On August 24, 410 AD, Alaric and the Visigoths sacked the city of Rome. Before he sacked it, he starved it. Before that, he went toe to toe with the Roman Empire for fifteen years—uniting disparate tribes, holding a people together, and achieving more against Rome than any barbarian leader before him. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! It's the end of Season 12--and what a year it's been! We had some big things happen in 2024 and we hope that 2025 will be even bigger and more exciting. Join us as we discuss what it was like covering the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, our upcoming books and novel projects, and our plans for the podcast going forward. Thank you so much for taking this journey with us! Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices