The history here is great. In the same way as its antecedent History of Rome by Mike Duncan, Robin Pearson does a great job of weaving this complex history into a tight narrative. In order to do this, there are a couple of stylistic and content choices that leave a little to be desired. In general, the treatment of the complex nature of developing eastern Christianity (as distinct from the Latin-West more generally encountered by the English-speaking world) is sparse and, at times, betrays a modern and dismissive bias. As reception and history told at different times are inevitably going to vary this can easily be forgiven, although given the large and prominent contingent of Greco-Christians in the UK where this was recorded, it does seem like a bit more research, in the form of interviewing or consulting these resources, could have been done.
Far more egregious is the utterly atrocious pronunciation, especially of Greek. In some ways this continues the legacy of History of Rome which often struggled pronouncing Latin and fumbled completely the times Greek came into the narrative. But here a simple dive into the pronunciation of names which is included in most of the history book sources referenced would have eliminated the most obvious blunders. Getting the complex nature of Greek vowels and their shift from classical to modern pronunciations is understandably, and even correctly, set aside. But the constant barrage of Ha-dgee-a Sophia or Tsh-alcedon when a seriously basic search (even typing them into Google translate for Modern Greek) can correct those, is incredibly annoying.
So in all, a fantastic podcast that picks up right where History of Rome left off, but with some semantic and content laziness that keeps it from being an all time great listen, at least for those of certain backgrounds.
