You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

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,

we've got a little bit of it all.

Hosted by children's author and museum educator Mick Sullivan, that's me, the show is fun,

funny, engaging, honest, and beloved by kids and parents alike.

Find the past and the curious at all the usual podcast places.

Hey, everyone, it's Jenny and Jen here.

This is a re-release from our back catalog, all about the worst year in recorded history, as some call it, 536 AD. Yeah, and you cannot tell the stories

that we've been telling you without acknowledging this year. What caused the worst year in recorded

history might have been a global volcanic winter that toppled civilizations all over the world.

It absolutely affected ancient Rome and brought with it famine, disease,

and major climate change that definitely had a ripple effect on how the empire functioned.

It delivered a crucial blow to the empire's foundations. And it was happening at the same time

as the events that we're covering in history right now in our goth series. Yeah, so Theodoric the

great died in 526 AD. His daughter, Amala Swintha, managed to hang on to power as queen until 534

AD. The events of this timeline occur, just one or two years later, I would say, during which time

war was raging for control of the Italian peninsula between

new Austrogothic leaders and Bellisaurus, a general operating on behalf of Justinian

I, the Eastern Roman Empire.

The war would rage on for another few decades.

Justinian and Bellasaurus would take back the peninsula, but they couldn't hold it for long.

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