Episodes

  • How an Empire Ends: Rome's Gothic Immigrants

    How an Empire Ends: Rome's Gothic Immigrants
    Apr 24 2025
    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
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • How an Empire Ends: The Migration Era

    How an Empire Ends: The Migration Era
    Apr 10 2025
    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
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    1 hr
  • How an Empire Ends: Culture of the Goths

    How an Empire Ends: Culture of the Goths
    Mar 27 2025
    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
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    1 hr and 48 mins
  • How an Empire Ends: Origin of the Goths

    How an Empire Ends: Origin of the Goths
    Mar 13 2025
    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
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Rebel Daughters of the Roman Empire (With Tana Rebellis)

    Rebel Daughters of the Roman Empire (With Tana Rebellis)
    Feb 27 2025
    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
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • RE-RELEASE: Attila the Hun and the Rebel Princess

    RE-RELEASE: Attila the Hun and the Rebel Princess
    Feb 20 2025
    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
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    37 mins
  • RE-RELEASE: Ataulf x Galla Placidia

    RE-RELEASE: Ataulf x Galla Placidia
    Feb 13 2025
    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
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    38 mins
  • AHFG Book Club: Enemy of My Dreams with Jenny Williamson

    AHFG Book Club: Enemy of My Dreams with Jenny Williamson
    Feb 6 2025
    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
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    1 hr and 21 mins
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