Smart Cookies

As an undying fan of Ridley Scott's Gladiator, I've always wanted to learn the real history of these celebrated, yet mysterious figures - and now I finally have the chance...Alexander Mariotti is a Roman historical consultant and a leading speaker on gladiatorial life, combat, and weaponry.Following academic work, his main focus has been working as an advisor to the media, featuring in countless documentaries, TV shows, and movies, most recently for the Amazon Prime TV show, Those about to die.We talk about gladiator origins, the Olympic games, ancient superstardom, as well as the UFC, modern gladiators, and the best films and TV shows depicting them.

Dr. Emmanuel Maggiori is a software engineer, writer, and speaker, who's on a mission to help develop a more balanced view about the tech and AI industries in the midst of the relentless hype. He's also the author of the books Smart Until It's Dumb and Siliconned: How the tech industry solves fake problems, hoards idle workers, and makes doomed bets with other people's money.We talk about the potential rise of artificial consciousness, the way large language models really work, doomsday AI predictions, the future of work and the many cons of Silicon Valley.

Professor Norman Finkelstein is a political scientist whose primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He's the author of many books, such as The Holocaust Industry, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it, and Gaza: an Inquest into its martyrdom.We talk about the origins of Zionism, the current state of Israeli society, the horror of the conflict in Gaza, the prospects of Kamala Harris... as well as his notorious debate with the popular streamer Destiny.

The story of dog domestication seems as simple as pie - humans took some wolf puppies, brought them over to the campfire and the rest is history... However, the truth is far less straightforward and far murkier, sometimes even downright bizarre.From rabbits and chickens, to dogs and cats, prof. Greger Larson, an evolutionary geneticist from University of Oxford breaks down the extremely complicated story of humans and the process of animal domestication.

Daniel McClellan is a scholar of the Bible and religion, and an honorary fellow at the University of Birmingham's Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion.He's also the co-host of the Data over Dogma podcast and runs a brilliant Tik Tok channel where he tackles common questions and misunderstandings about the Bible.In this amazingly illuminating conversation we talk about the origins of the Old Testament, the historicity of its personalities, the inconsistencies in the four Gospels, Jesus's stance on hell and homosexuality, as well as the scientific claims supposedly found in the Bible.

Chris Stringer is a physical anthropologist celebrated for his work on human evolution, as well as a research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. He comes back to Smart Cookies to share of his vast knowledge on my favourite archaic humans, the Neanderthals. We discuss their origins, culture, language, technology, interbreeding with Homo Sapiens, their eventual extinction... as well as the rise of garbage origin theories propagated by the likes of Graham Hancock.

In the second part of the fantastic conversation about the FRENCH REVOLUTION with historian David Andress, we discuss the downward spiral of Louis XVI, the relentless reign of terror, the bloody civil wars that rocked France... as well as the eventual rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Professor David Andress is a renowned historian of the French Revolution at the University of Portsmouth. In this episode we talk about the prelude to arguably the most important revolution of all time, the deteriorating social conditions before the storm, the emerging class of urban revolutionaries, the that were ideas driving them... as well as the events that finally push France into irreversible turmoil.

Thomas Lockley is Associate Professor at Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo, where he teaches courses about the international and multicultural history of Japan and East Asia.We talk about the REAL HISTORY behind the "Shogun" TV show, but also about feudal Japan, the Samurai, the arrival of Europeans... as well as Prof. Lockley's latest book "A Gentleman from Japan."

Peter Heather is Chair of Medieval History at King's College London. Some of his most famous books include The Fall of the Roman Empire, Rome Resurgent, Christendom, and most recently Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West.We talk about the last days of the western Roman empire, the role of barbarians, the rise of the Persian empire, decadence, popular cliches, the worst Roman Emperor of all time and many parallels of falling Rome with the West today.