Podcast appearances and mentions of rob monaco

The present is terrible and the future may be worse, so let's take refuge in the past. Monica L. Smith as an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles, whose latest book is Cities: The First 6,000 Years.In it she investigates why cities first emerged, how they have evolved, and why people are drawn to them. She was kind enough to pop by New Statesman towers to give us a flavour, and tell me why cities first emerged, where you can find their ruins and what they have to teach us today.If you like this one, by the way, you might want to check out episode 19, from way back in September 2016, when I spoke to the US history podcaster Rob Monaco about how it was we came to invent cities in the first place.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's podcast is a game of two halves. (Stephanie didn't manage to get a football reference onto the tape so I'm putting one here instead.) First of all, we talk about why it is people move to cities – or to be more specific, why people continue to move to London, when the experience of finding somewhere to live here is so completely bloody horrible. Stephanie relates her recent experiences with house-hunting and letting agents, while I look on with the serene sympathy of one who's insulated from this particular hellscape. That covers why people move to cities today – then we look at why people moved to cities in the past. To be more specific: several thousand years in the past. Rob Monaco is the US historian behind the frankly brilliant Podcast History of Our World. He runs me through the latest research on where the first cities could be found; discusses what motivated people to found them in the first place; and, most importantly, explains what sewers and street furniture would have looked like... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this weeks show we have Rob Monaco in Connecticut, from London we have Jonn Elledge of the New Statesman and Mic Wright, with host Roifield Brown in San Francisco. In a week that has seen a woman live broadcast the dying moments of her fiance to the world, we will look at the continuing political fall out in UK after Brexit and the volatile mixture of race, guns and the police in the US. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we turn to the fifth theatre of the war, Greece. We have a high speed historical overview, before getting into the narrative with Philip V of Macedonia in 217. Featuring special guest Rob Monaco of The Podcast History of Our World.