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Grownups, if there's a child in your life who is interested in, curious about, or fascinated by people and places from history, then my podcast, the past and the curious, might just be a hit in your home.

From the invention of microscopes to world-traveling dogs to fashions of the 1890s, gold rush ghost towns, and audiences going wild for walking competitions,

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So are we cannibals now or... It's been three weeks of siege, and already people are eating the dead.

You saw it this morning. Two men dragging a corpse into an alley. You didn't have

to follow them to know what they were going to do with it. You saw the hunger, the desperation

stamped on their faces. You think you know one of them, the man who used to sell you olives from

Sicily, a man with a wife and two daughters, none of which have been seen in

weeks. You kept your head down then, and hurried on your way, averted your eyes and pretended not to see

what you saw, safer that way, for any who dared walk the streets of Rome these days.

Today you are out on the streets again, and all is deserted. You make your way to the water fountain in the center of a square surrounded by towering

insulae.

You draw the water you need.

You've heard rumors that some of the barbarians outside the gates have gone into the hills

for the purpose of destroying the aqueducts, because while hunger will break a city,

...