Past Lives

What was it like to fight in a medieval battle? The discovery of a mass grave associated with the 1461 Battle of Towton, in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, offers concrete and horrifying answers. Here, we focus on one individual - Towton 16 - who had already spent much of his long life engaged in violent pursuits. At Towton, he finally met his end.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Kyle Harper is one of the most wide-ranging, curious, and rigorous scholars working today, and he's outdone himself with his latest book, available everywhere now -The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth from the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction. We discuss why our present biodiversity crisis is unlike previous mass extinction events, the big-picture history of life and humanity, and what, if anything, we can do about it.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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The history of the book is a fascinating topic, and Professor Andrew Pettegree has taught us all more about the business of print and how books actually circulated than anyone else. His new release, The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century focuses on the enigmatic booksellers who actually got the books from printers to readers, and why that step can't be taken for granted.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The small Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Edix Hill, in Cambridgeshire, isn't one of the more impressive examples of the type: no gold or silver or kings buried in boats. It nevertheless contains a wealth of information about daily life, how the ties of affection and kinship made a community, and even what happened when plague arrived in the English countryside.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Toward the end of the 6th century CE, a man was buried in northern Italy. He had lived an interesting life: born in what is now Hungary, he crossed the Alps as part of the great Longobard migration to Italy. Most surprising of all is the fact that he survived the amputation of his right hand, and replaced the lost limb with a knife.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When Chinese archaeologists opened a tomb in the city of Changsha in 1972, they found an undisturbed burial chamber filled with treasures from the early Han Dynasty. At the center was the body of a woman who looked like she had died only days or weeks ago, instead of more than 2,000 years.

Go see Patrick, Dr. Claire Aubin, and Manny Fidel draft teams of the greatest assholes in American history on Tuesday, September 29th in New York! Tickets available here: https://admitone.com/events/new-york/community/comedy/tgs-presents-draft-of-shame/54UI98

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Around 1800 years ago, a man was bitten by a lion in the city of York, in what is now northern England. Lions aren't native to York, so how did it get there, and why was it biting this man? The answers to those questions tell us a great deal about the Roman Empire as an interconnected, wide-ranging world, and the sometimes strange practices that interconnection made possible.

Go see Patrick, Dr. Claire Aubin, and Manny Fidel draft teams of the greatest assholes in American history on Tuesday, September 29th in New York! Tickets available here: https://admitone.com/events/new-york/community/comedy/tgs-presents-draft-of-shame/54UI98

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Around 270 BC, a woman died of breast cancer in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. Her tomb, cut into the permafrost, is one of the best-preserved archaeological sites on the planet. Thanks to the ice, everything from her extraordinary tattoos to the silk garments she wore has survived, providing a direct window onto the forgotten world of the Iron Age steppe and the Scythians who dominated it.

Go see Patrick, Dr. Claire Aubin, and Manny Fidel draft teams of the greatest assholes in American history on Tuesday, September 29th in New York! Tickets available here: https://admitone.com/events/new-york/community/comedy/tgs-presents-draft-of-shame/54UI98

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When we think of Scandinavia, it seems to be a long way from the Roman Empire, with hundreds of miles separating the Rhine and Danube frontiers from the bogs of Jutland and Sweden. Why, then, were hundreds upon hundreds of Roman-made weapons intentionally thrown into these bogs in the third and fourth centuries AD? The answer opens the gate that will eventually lead, many centuries down the road, to the warrior-kings of the Viking Age.

Go see Patrick, Dr. Claire Aubin, and Manny Fidel draft teams of the greatest assholes in American history on Tuesday, September 29th in New York! Tickets available here: https://admitone.com/events/new-york/community/comedy/tgs-presents-draft-of-shame/54UI98

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Professor Peter Mancall is one of the finest historians of colonial America working today, and he's written a banger of a book, the newest entry in the wonderful Oxford History of the United States series. It's entitled Contested Continent, and it's a book everyone who enjoys American history should read.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

More than 2,400 years ago, a man living in southern Denmark was hung from a plaited leather cord, then buried in a bog. There he stayed until 1950, when his perfectly preserved face emerged from the peat. We know him as Tollund Man, but who was he in life, and what can we know about the world he inhabited?

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bog bodies - the age-old remains of people who were submerged in bogs - are an eerie sight. Soft tissue remains, often to an even greater extent than mummies, bringing us face to face with people who died thousands of years ago.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Over more than two centuries, the rulers of Bronze Age China's Shang Dynasty sacrificed at least 13,000 people. Who were they? Where had they come from, and what were their lives like? Thanks to new studies, we can finally take our focus off the Shang elite and move it onto the victims.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What can we learn from the past? Professor James Romm, celebrated classicist and prolific author, joins me to discuss his new book Since You're Mortal: Life Lessons from the Lost Greek Plays. We chat about eternal wisdom, dad advice, and whether ancient authors really did have some insights worth sharing.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

More than 3,000 years ago, a queen was buried in the city of Anyang, China. Hundreds of bone, jade, and bronze artifacts were buried with her, and so were sixteen human sacrifices. This was Fu Hao, a priestess, queen mother, and general, and her tomb tells us precisely how the Shang Dynasty - China's first entry into recorded history - operated.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I've been waiting for someone to write a comprehensive, up-to-date history of the Black Death for years, and if that were all Professor Thomas Asbridge did with his new book The Black Death: A Global History, it would be a monumental achievement. Yet he's also succeeded in capturing the essence of an age in which societies were being crushed under the weight of mass death, the experiences of those who lived through it, and the plague's impact on the world that followed. A delightful conversation with one of the best medieval historians working today.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Who built the extraordinary tombs for Egypt's rulers in the Valley of the Kings? The residents of the nearby village of Deir el-Medina, where for centuries, a specialized workforce trudged back and forth to the Valley to carve out and decorate the stunning final resting places for generations of rulers. Now, thanks to incredible new archaeology, we can understand their lives and experiences.

Become a member now at www.patreon.com/cw/PastLivesMedia. You'll get access to the Past Lives Discord server and four pieces of bonus content per month (including a historian interview, book club, Q and A, and a sources and evidence discussion). Past Lives is a 100-percent independent production, and your support is what allows us to make this show. So, thank you.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.