QUOTE (Tormund Midgetsbane @ May 9 2008, 13.56)

Anyone else have a favorite podcast? I walk for about 2 miles every day at lunch, so as often as he puts them out I listen to Dan Carlin's Common Sense and Hardcore History podcasts. He's very entertaining and eloquent. The Common Sense podcast is current event politics and the History show is a bit more fun than reading dry history stuff. His treatment of those terrible ABC Obama/Clinton debates in the last show was fantastic.

Anyone got any favorites to share or reccomendations for me?

His pollitical shit I can really do without. But the hardcore history stuff is pretty entertaining. (even more so when his politics don't bleed through, which they do on occasions) Though the most recent one with Victor David Hanson is a waste. The guy (Hanson) starts off criticizing historians (and other social sciences types) for going into things with preconceived notions when he's built his entire career upon cherry picking evidence to support his preconceived notions of cultural superiority.

One of the 'If you liked this, see this' links by the hardcore history part on Itunes is a great 30+ part podcast on the history of Rome, starting from Romulus/Remus and just now getting to the early days of Pompey, Cicero, and a few others. Its actually pretty good.

http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com
Informative, occasionally witty, more toned down than Hardcore History, but no less interesting.
Can also be reached via Itunes.

Anyone else got some good history based podcasts? I've grown a bit addicted.

Just discovered BBC's radio series 'In our Time'. Essentially professors discussing any number of topics, with a large number of them historical. Good, interesting stuff. The quality of the commentators varies, but typically quite good. Often the shows seem too short even at 45 minutes. The main drawback is that the archived old shows are only available on Realplayer, which is a fucking abomination that I won't allow on my computer. (I found a program that lets me play realplayer filetypes without actually downloading that piece of shit)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20030501.shtml

Discovered a new one. Pretty damned good too. The history of 12 select Byzantine emperors. Covers the wars, the intrigues, the great works, the fleeting attempts at reclaiming past glory, the triumphs and defeats. The 3 parts on Justinian and the one part on Heraclius are particularly good. About halfway through now. Heavily suggest it.

http://www.anders.com/lectures/lars_brownworth/12_byzantine_rulers/

Also can be found on itunes.

After listening to the entire Byzantine Emperor series I feel this burning desire to don a sword, charge the walls and try to reconquer Constantinople for Christendom. Great fucking series. Heavily suggest it. Starts good and gets better as it goes. (last two parts are exceptional)

QUOTE (Argive @ Jan 12 2009, 00.42)

Ditto! I just finished it too. Lars Brownworth is a pleasure to listen to. This is the kind of thing that makes you wonder what the purpose of fantasy is, when real life is such a fascinating story. I am absolutely dying to visit Istanbul now and see the Hagie Sophia. I am extremely grateful to this thread for recommending that podcast. I'd love to hear about any other history ones.

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is pretty decent. He's enthusiastic and entertaining at the very least.
The history of Rome series I liinked earlier is excellent and still ongoing. About 40 parts now and he's only just gotten to Caesar.

I also mention BBC's 'In Our Time' radio show that has a HUGE archive of shows. Pretty much a discussion of various historical, philosophical, or cultural topics with various professors. Interesting enough stuff.

The History of Rome one is probably the next best thing I've heard to the Byzantine one. If you've got Itunes, browse through the other ones they suggest on screen. A few decent ones in there as well.

QUOTE (RedEyedGhost @ Jan 22 2009, 00.37)

Just finished this and it was pure unadulterated awesomeness. Thanks for the rec

Anymore like it?

The 30+ part history of Rome series is about the next best thing I can think of. But I haven't quite found anything that matched the Byzantium one. Probably my personal Fav

I will add yet again, for anyone who hasn't listened to it...the Byzantium Emperor series is fucking awesome. Listen.

QUOTE (Elrostar @ Jan 25 2009, 23.39)

Well, I'm now embarking on the Byzantine podcasts. After that I've got the history of Rome ones loaded up and ready to go.

I'm quite excited to see how they turn out

Awesome. Let us know what you thought of them when you're done.

QUOTE (Elrostar @ Jan 30 2009, 21.12)

Currently well into them. Liking them so far, although the author seems to be oddly worshipful of Gibbons as a historian. I find this to be rather odd given what a completely wrong and misleading picture Gibbons painted of the Byzantine empire and what an enduring legacy that image has had on our society.

My only real in-depth encounter with Gibbons was for a term paper on the First Crusade. So I read some of what he wrote about Constantinople at that period, which he described as a pretty terrible place, practically collapsing under its own decadent weight. Not exactly what I could consider accurate or reasonable, but the man clearly had an agenda.

Anyway, I'll write more when I'm finished.

He gets to Gibbon pretty directly in the final Podcast retrospective and he's not a fan. But he does recognize what most people recognize, that Gibbon was arguably our first modern historian. Incredibly influential in the later study of history. And for all the cultural baggage he brought to his histories, he was the first to make extensive use of primary sources and indeed poured over them vigorously to write the works that he did. Yes it was colored heavily with his own cultural preconceptions, so much so that it overwhelmed the legitimacy of the narrative in many places. But that still doesn't change the fact that Gibbon was a landmark in the study of history, produced the first great modern work of this area and period, and must be recognized, even if its just to refute.

QUOTE (Mathis @ Jan 30 2009, 22.34)

Its mostly concerned with wars of conquest with occasional asides on architecture and schisms in early christianity.

Great conflicts are fun and interesting. And they've always had a prominent, often dominant place in the writing of history.