Hey everyone, Scott here for a very brief announcement.

Let me know that I launched a new mini series based on the Ottoman Empire called Ottoman

Lives.

Ottoman history is sort of my bread and butter, it's what I research, so I'd like to think

this is a topic I know about well.

Let me just describe it very briefly and how you can find it.

This is a seven part series where I look at the Ottoman Empire not by giving a chronological

history because that's 600 years and that's a lot to go over, but instead looking at specific

figures that made the Ottoman Empire run.

They include the Sultan, the concubine, the peasant, the Janissary, the Herim Unic, the

holy man, and the outlaw.

So on the episode about the Sultan for example, you can learn about what it was like to have

four wives, several concubines, and run an empire that goes from Budapest all the way

to Baghdad and how it was really different running the empire from 1300 when you were

essentially a horseback mounted chieftain who led a tribe all the way up to 1900 where

you are a modern Sultan who may have known French, had telegraph networks, and were a few

years away from having an air force.

Then we look at the concubine, what was it like to be captured in his slavery and enter

the Ottoman Empire, enter their Herim, but then slowly work your way up the Herim chain

of command until you could potentially become the wife of a Sultan and even the mother.

And we have these Queen mothers who essentially ran the Empire when Sultans were too incompetent

to do so.

...