The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States,

Canada, and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch.

Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting, fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling,

wonderful, and tragic stories of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders,

environment, and geography.

I invite you to come along for the ride!

Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, the unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes,

Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscover the forgotten stories that changed our world.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

Hi everyone, welcome to a podcast episode where I answer any question that you can throw at me.

Today's question is, if I were sent back in time, and I wanted to take over the world,

I'm sure that's something that all this think about a lot, what language would be the most useful?

Well, that all depends on what language would be the most useful for you to know.

And I teach a course at a local university on history, and I presented a variation of this question to my students.

We were looking at the period right before the rise of Islam, about 500 AD or CE,

and I wanted to give them some context about what the world was like at this point,

and I asked them if you wanted to take over the Middle East, which the Rashi-June Kailafate,

the political entity that arose during the time of Muhammad and directly afterward,

and basically did take over the Middle East, well, language would be the most useful.

And I asked some different students in the class, and some thought, well, Latin would be useful,

because you have to talk to the Pope, because he's really powerful in the Middle Ages, right?

Or yeah, Greek would be useful, because the Byzantine Empire is powerful.

...