From the Vault: Ancient Oars on the Wine-Dark Sea, Part 1
Stuff To Blow Your Mind
iHeartPodcasts
4.4 • 5.9K Ratings
🗓️ 23 August 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the mysteries and marvels of oar-powered galleys and warships in the ancient Mediterranean world. How many oars did they depend on? How many rowers and how many levels of rowers? And what are we to make of Ptolemy IV Philopator’s 40-oar Tessarakonteres? Find out… (originally published 8/20/2024)
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:06.6 | There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. |
| 0:10.4 | You must excise it. |
| 0:12.8 | Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. |
| 0:16.7 | From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, |
| 0:20.0 | this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jules State and Ray Wise. |
| 0:29.1 | Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:40.4 | Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. |
| 0:42.6 | My name is Robert Lamb. |
| 0:43.8 | And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we're going into the vault for an older |
| 0:48.0 | episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. |
| 0:49.9 | This one originally published August 20th, 2024, and it's part one of our series about the ore-powered galleys and warships of the ancient Mediterranean. |
| 1:00.1 | All right. Let's do it. |
| 1:04.6 | Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio. |
| 1:14.6 | Okay. Production of IHeart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. |
| 1:16.9 | My name is Robert Graham. |
| 1:18.2 | And I am Joe McCormick. |
| 1:20.4 | And today on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we are going to be kicking off a series looking at paddles and oars, rowing and paddling the boats |
| 1:29.8 | of the ancient world. Rob, so you pick this topic out. What got you thinking about paddles and |
| 1:35.2 | oars? Well, I was kind of hungry for another dip into the invention style episode that we |
| 1:41.6 | frequently come back to, you know, something that talks about, generally, |
| 1:46.1 | or as often is the case, you know, some sort of ancient technology and how it comes about and |
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