Past Lives podcast artwork
History

Past Lives

by Patrick Wyman
History

Today: #101 in History on our combined chart.

Chart positions today

If you like Past Lives, try…

Lore podcast artwork
Lore
Aaron Mahnke

Ranking history

History builds daily. We started tracking this show on the History chart recently, so the trend line appears after a second day of data.
View as table
DateApple Podcasts
Oct 1#92

About the show

History is built by people like you, and Past Lives is here to bring their stories to life. Every week, we’ll focus on the lived experiences of real people in the past, from the Stone Age to the near-present. Peasants, laborers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, and the enslaved are far too often overlooked in favor of kings, generals, and politicians; not here. On Past Lives, we keep the focus where it belongs: on the real people who populate our shared past. By understanding them, we can strive to better understand ourselves. These people were us, and we are them. They mattered, and so do you.

Latest episodes

  • The Man with a Knife for a Hand (Lombard Italy, Late 6th Century)

    September 30, 2026 · 31 min

    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…

  • Introducing What Could Go Right?

    September 30, 2026 · 1 min

    What if, despite all the challenges we face, humanity is actually making progress? Check out the podcast What Could Go Right, by the Progress Network. It’s a current affairs show that tries to find a more balanced way of looking at what’s…

  • Xin Zhui, the Best-Preserved Mummy of All Time

    September 23, 2026 · 26 min

    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…

  • How Do You Get Bitten by a Lion in Roman York?

    September 16, 2026 · 29 min

    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…

  • The Siberian Ice Maiden and the Scythian World

    September 9, 2026 · 29 min

    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…

  • Weapons Sacrifices and the Long Road to the Viking Age

    September 2, 2026 · 29 min

    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…

  • Professor Peter Mancall on Understanding Colonial America

    August 26, 2026 · 53 min

    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…

  • Tollund Man

    August 19, 2026 · 29 min

    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…