Hello and welcome to another episode of the ancient warfare podcast.

My name is Jaspoortez.

I'm the editor of the magazine.

With me are Maritam, Mike Cole, which is not strange, and Michael Livingston, which is unusual.

And in this case, Mike is not here as a member of the podcast team,

but as a guest together with Michael, I'm going to try and keep doing that so that we know

who's talking and who we're asking questions of. And they're here as guests because they

have just written a book that isn't out yet, but we got a copy from Osprey to look at.

It's called The Killing Ground,

and it is a biography of Thermopylae,

with 27 different battles or actions at that one site in Greece,

through the ages.

So it's going to be ancient warfare and then a lot of not ancient warfare,

although I don't know.

There is a fair bit of ancient warfare.

So we don't have to be ashamed that it's the ancient warfare podcast.

Maybe we should start how, you know, why would you, you know, what would you stop it,

not just stop it, the first one?

I think when Michael and I were actually discussing the idea and solidifying it,

and Michael, correct me if I'm wrong here, that was one of the things like you, Michael

really had some brilliant, brilliant insight into how the battle could be reinterpreted and

where all the major sources had gone wrong on it and really had said, you know, we could,

...