What Came Before

July 14th, 1789. In a city simmering with hunger, fear, and revolutionary fervor, the eyes of Paris turn to a single, ominous structure: the Bastille.

It was the ultimate symbol of royal tyranny, a place where the king could make his enemies disappear without a trial. Its fall would become the single most iconic event of the French Revolution.

For three decades in the 15th century, England was ripped apart by a dynastic civil war known as the Wars of the Roses. The red rose of Lancaster, the ruling house, was pitted against the white rose of York, its ambitious challenger.

What began as a political struggle over the weak and ineffectual King Henry VI soon exploded into open warfare, launching a cycle of betrayal, revenge, and slaughter. This episode untangles the complex claims and fierce personalities, from the brilliant Edward IV to the notorious Richard III and the formidable "Kingmaker" that defined the conflict.

This episode tells the story of the great solar storm of 1859, from the amateur astronomer who first saw the flare to the global chaos that followed. We then explore how a similar event today could cripple power grids, destroy satellites, and plunge our planet into a prolonged blackout.

Discover the science behind space weather and the race to protect our civilization from a cosmic knockout punch.

In the year 69AD, the Roman Empire was torn apart by a devastating civil war. Following the death of Emperor Nero, a power vacuum emerged, leading to the rapid and violent rise and fall of four different emperors: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and the eventual victor, Vespasian.

This episode explores that tumultuous year, a conflict that revealed the true power of the legions and forever changed how a Roman emperor was made.

This episode explores the single invention that dragged the world out of the age of scribes and into the modern era: the printing press.

We begin not in Germany, but centuries earlier in China and Korea, uncovering the remarkable but often overlooked history of woodblock printing and the world's first movable metal type. We then travel to fifteenth-century Mainz to meet Gutenberg himself, revealing how his true genius lay not in one device, but in creating a complete and efficient system for manufacturing books, from his unique metal alloy to his powerful press.

Finally, we...