Doomed to Fail - Can you recommend an Ancient History podcast?

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Ep 2 - Part 2: Nero: The Fiddling TyrantRome’s most infamous emperor, accused of burning his own city and fiddling while it fell into chaos.Ep 12 - Part 2: Ancient Sport Rivalries - The Nika RiotsWhat started as a sports rivalry in Constantinople exploded into a massacre, leaving thousands dead in the Hippodrome.Ep 38: Volcanoes Pt 1 - Mt. Toba's Echo: Journey into Earth's Cataclysmic PastA volcanic eruption so massive it nearly wiped out humanity. Prehistoric disaster at an unimaginable scale.Ep 42: Volcanoes Pt 2 - Time Capsule of Tragedy: Exploring Pompeii's Frozen HistoryWhen Vesuvius erupted, it destroyed—and preserved—an entire Roman city in a single day.Ep 62: Mother of the Antichrist - Nero's mum, Agrippina the YoungerNero’s mother, power-hungry and ruthless. Some called her the “Mother of the Antichrist.”Ep 101 - The Immortal Persian King: Cyrus The GreatThe Persian king who built one of the largest empires in history—and a legacy that still echoes today.Ep 105 - Examining the Great Thinker: SocratesThe philosopher who annoyed Athens so much, they put him on trial and made him drink poison.Ep 114 - The Olympics Pt 1 - Ancient Origins to Parisian PottiesFrom naked athletes to chamber-pot disasters in Paris, the Games have always been a little messy.Ep 122 - Fire & Brimstone: NostradamusThe mystic who saw plagues, prophecies, and maybe your TikTok feed centuries in advance.Ep 207: Hey Ladies!!! - SapphoThe original rock star poet of ancient Greece. Queer icon, lyrical genius, and survivor through fragments.Ep 216: Ancient Incendiaries - Greek FireA weapon so terrifying it burned on water. Byzantine napalm that changed naval warfare forever. Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hello and welcome to doomed to fail. I'm Taylor, and with my friend Fars, we bring you stories of histories, greatest disasters, and epic failures, and really just interesting stories that can help us learn a little bit more about our past. So we've been doing this for about two and a half years, which is crazy. We have over 200 episodes, and we're having a really good time. And I wanted to give you, if you're a new listener or haven't listened to everything, a little bit of a frame around the stories that we're telling. So today I'm going to tell you about some of our ancient history episodes that you can listen to now.

And then also you'll see some overlap because some of these stories, you know, I've tagged them more than once because they tell different kind of stories depending on the frame. So we're talking ancient history. I'm going to start with, and I'm going to go in the episode order. So episode two all the way the beginning, episode two part two was about. Emperor Nero, the fiddling tyrant, who did not fiddle while Romeburn because he was on vacation, but he did try to help. He also did try to send people to Mount Vesuvius when, to Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted. We'll talk about that later. Episode 12, part two is on Manika riots, which also put into medieval history. It kind of just cusps that timeline. So it could be either, but it is a riot in a sports arena in Constantinople and a lot of people died. episode 38 two episodes in this ancient history list are from my volcano series so I did a seven-part series on volcanoes we learned so much episode 38 is volcanoes part one mount toba erupted about

70,000 years ago and we're all from the people who survived that because it kind of knocked us down to a couple thousand humans episode 42 is about Pompeii and when mount vesuvius erupted and what that looks like, how we learned about it. Did you know that Napoleon's sister, Josephine, he made her empress of Italy or whatever, and that she's one of the people who started the excavation at Pompeii. So super interesting. Learn about that there. Episode 62, talk about Nero's mom, Agrippina. A little bit about her and how she became the mother of such a, such a, I don't know, violent man. I call Nero the Antichrist because there's people who, you know, for whatever the stories are.

If the Antichrist comes back, he'll look like Nero. Episode 101 is about Cyrus the Great. So a little bit of Persian history. We'll talk about how he went into Babylon and was able to conquer by taking a river and pulling all the water out of the river and then walking into it. Super cool. Episode 105 on Socrates, it's about his life and the things that he knew. Episode 144 is the beginning of my Olympic series.

So last summer of 2024 were the Olympics, and I did a big series. on different stories, and we'll start with ancient Olympics. Episode 122 was on Nostradamus. He's on like the, also kind of on the end of ancient history, but no, maybe he's not in ancient history, maybe I'll take that out. No, I think he is. I'm going to leave him. Learned more about Nostradamus, put him in here.

And then episode 207 is about Sappho, the ancient Greek poet who is the, there's a lot of queer poetry. she's also, I would also tag her in like our pride collection. And then finally, just a very recent episode, very recent, episode 216 is on Greek fire, an ancient weapon that is still kind of mysterious. So follow us, go back and listen to those episodes, links with me in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening.