Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. There are times in my career, especially

on this podcast, so I have to pinch myself, but I actually can't quite believe I'm doing

this. And this episode is one of those. I was lucky enough to talk to the very brilliant

Dr. Irving Finkel, not ever forgets him. If you were a casting director and you wanted

to find say, an expert, a curator at the British Museum who knows more than anybody about

ancient Assyria, who spends their time piecing together tablets, uniform, early forms of

writing to learn more about that long dead civilization, but one that shaped so much of subsequent

human history. Picture that person in your head. You are picturing Dr. Irving Finkel. He

looks every inch, the brilliant, the eccentric, the knowledgeable, the friendly, the kind, the

hugely intelligent and wise ancient Assyria next bad that you've got currently in your head

right now. He's an absolute legend. I want to talk to him on the podcast and he said,

let's talk about ghosts. Let's talk about the first ghosts that appear on the human record.

And that means the ancient Assyria writing down their thoughts about ghosts, what to do about

them, what form they take, how to get rid of them, how to placate them. And I said, Dr.

Irving Finkel, you're the boss. Let's talk about ghosts. So we did. We talked about ghosts

and you're about to hear that conversation. It was as you would hope extraordinary. If

you want to see other extraordinary history content and listen to it, you can do so history

at TV. It's like Netflix for history folks. I may have told you about this before. I can't

remember. You go to history.hit.tv history.hit.tv. You sign up for a small subscription and

then you're part of a revolution, which is making proper history shows and podcasts for

proper history fans and listeners like you. Christmas is coming up. You can gift it folks.

No problems with supply chain here. As long as the internet doesn't break, in which case

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