Empire

Persia was the first great superpower. The empire built by Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and the rest of the Achaemenids stretched from India in the east to the Mediterranean in the west, from Russia in the north to the Gulf of Oman in the south. It laid the foundation for empires of the future. It was destroyed by Alexander the Great, but Iran has risen many times since...

Born the son of a khan, a tribal chieftain, Cyrus would go on to be a titanic figure of world history. He took Persia from being a minor regional power to the first superpower the world has ever seen. Conquering all of modern day Iran, then Turkey, and finally defeating the power of the day, Babylon: Cyrus undoubtedly deserves the sobriquet of the Great. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones to discuss the life of the founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great...

In the 1760’s a clever, young, ambitious Scotsman named Alexander Dalrymple began advocating a theory as to the existence of a great southern continent. The idea of a landmass that would counterbalance the known world had long been the stuff of legend. Now Dalrymple wanted to prove it. Momentum built behind his expedition which was a product of the evidence-based scientific approach of the Enlightenment. Soon they had a ship, a Whitby-based collier called The Endeavour...

The Persian Empire that Darius took control of was already mighty and powerful; his predecessor, Cambyses, had conquered Egypt, further expanding its territory. But it was under Darius it reached its zenith. Stretching all the way from the Mediterranean in the west to India in the east, from the Gulf of Oman in the south to southern Russia in the north, Persia under Darius was truly a global superpower...

With Alexander Dalrymple sidelined, Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks are ready to set off on an expedition to track the Transit of Venus and see whether there really is a great southern continent. Over the next three years, they will encounter the indigenous populations of the Pacific antipodes for the first time, nearly get shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, and change the course of world history...

Ionia has revolted and so Darius turns his gaze away from India and towards Greece. He crushes the rebellion, quelling all resistance. He then looks to take much of the Greek mainland and many city states acquiesce before his envoys, but not the Athenians. So the might of the Persian army land at Marathon, ready to face down the belligerent Greeks. What follows is one of history’s most famous battles...

Antarctica, the great land of ice. It was first spotted in the early years of the 19th century but it wasn't until 1895 that humans, in the form of a Norwegian expedition, actually landed on one of the world's most inhospitable places. With that expedition the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration begun. Over the next 20 years some of history's great adventurers attempted to tame the continent. Scott of the Antarctic, Roald Amundsen, and the protagonist of this week's story, Ernest Shackleton...

August 480BC; the might of the Persian army, roughly 100,000 soldiers, face down a few thousand Greeks, led by Leonidas and his brave 300. In light of their overwhelming advantage, an embassy of Xerxes asks the Spartans to lay down their weapons. Their response, 'come and get them'. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Paul Cartledge to discuss the heroic last stand of Leonidas and the 300 at Thermopylae...

As the timber creaked under the pressure of the Antarctic ice, Shackleton knew his voyage aboard the Endeavour was doomed. What the ice gets, the ice keeps. And so followed one of the most obscenely daring - to the point stupidity - and heroic rescue attempts. Shackleton was determined to leave no man behind, so he set off on the high seas on a tiny lifeboat, with a few men, and no navigational equipment, in the hope he could bring back a bigger ship to save his men...

Leonidas and the 300 have been defeated at Thermopylae, leaving the way to Athens open. With the Persians advancing, many Athenians flee to the island of Salamis in the hope it will give them shelter. From there, they see flames lick the sky as the Persians burn Athens. But their leader, Themistocles, has readied the fleet for one last battle with Xerxes...