For many educated Westerners, writes todays guest, the idea that religion promotes violence and secularism ameliorates the problem is a settled certainty, a doxa, an unstated premise of right thi

In 1845 a water mold named Phytophthora Infestans which afflicts potato and tomato plants began to spread across Europe, killing potatoes from Sweden to Spain. The potato blight caused crisis everywh

This is the 400th episode of Historically Thinking. And while its a podcast that focuses on history, and how historians and everyone else think about the past, I do that each week through conversatio

This is Episode 399 of Historically Thinking. And whenever the dial turns to 100, my thoughts turn towards what this podcast is about. So it seemed to me a good time to talk with Anton Howes. - Anton

During the age of the European Renaissance, a new people was discovered. Not the Aztecs, or the Maya, or the Inca, but a mysterious people with an intriguing language who had once dominated Europe its

In April 1769 a small British vessel sailing along the southern coast of Hispaniola discovered a shipwreck near the current border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. An investigation found no surviv

Lists of important Roman historians would certainly include cerebral Polybius (who, to be fair, was also Greek); the friend of Augustus, Titus Livius; the austere Tacitus; and the gossipy Suetonius,.

It was the greatest popular uprising in western Europe prior to the French Revolution. By spring 1525, across regions of what are now Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and France, armed bands of peasants

If English speakersor French speakers, or Spanish speakers, or really most any speaker of any language other than Greekor Turkishthink about the Greek Revolution at all, then thats amazing. If the

Marcus Tullius Cicero lived from 106 BC to his murder in 43 BC. He was a writer, a philosopher, a traveller, a consul of the Roman Republic, and perhaps one of the last people to take the Roman Republ