On Ancient History and Our Shared Heritage: Interview with Professor Walter Scheidel

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why does ancient history matter? Stanford's Professor Walter Scheidel returns to Tides to discuss his new book, What is Ancient History?, and provides an answer: The distant past is nothing more or less than the collective heritage we all, as a species, share.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge. And check out Patrick's new podcast The Pursuit of Dadliness! It’s all about “Dad Culture,” and Patrick will interview some fascinating guests about everything from tall wooden ships to smoked meats to comfortable sneakers to history, sports, culture, and politics. https://bit.ly/PWtPoD

Listen to new episodes 1 week early, to exclusive seasons 1 and 2, and to all episodes ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/tidesofhistory

Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletter

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad-free right now.
0:04.6	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:17.8	Hi, everybody, from Wondery.
0:19.4	Welcome to another episode of Tides of History.
0:21.5	I'm Patrick Wyman.
0:22.4	Thanks so much for joining me today.
0:25.3	What's the use of ancient history?
0:27.8	It's a pretty straightforward question, and if you're listening to this show right now,
0:31.2	I'm guessing you have some thoughts on the matter.
0:33.5	Your answers, and mine off the top of my head,
0:35.8	will probably revolve around understanding how
0:38.3	we got here and why, connecting with some deeper aspects of our humanity by making sense of people
0:43.1	in the distant past, or maybe you just really like statues and columns and guys with spears.
0:48.0	That's a sentiment to which I'm deeply sympathetic. But it really is a serious question.
0:53.2	We live in an age when humanities departments and universities are being defunded.
0:57.2	History is always one of the first things on the chopping block, and explaining to an average
1:00.8	person why they should care about what happened in Greece 2400 years ago, well, that's not
1:05.4	exactly easy.
1:07.1	But luckily for us, we couldn't possibly have a better guess today to help us explore this issue and hopefully get some answers as to why exactly we should be spending our time, which is limited and precious on ancient history.
1:19.5	Walter Scheidel is Dickinson Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Classics in History at Stanford University.
1:25.2	His work has really deeply influenced my approach to ancient history
1:28.2	for more than 20 years, and by most metrics, he's the most cited ancient historian currently
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wondery / Patrick Wyman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Wondery / Patrick Wyman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.