The first 300 episodes of the Create Your Own Life Podcast.
Latest episodes
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26 min
Caesar and Pompey's Secret Deal at Luca That Ended the Republic
In April of 56 BC, Julius Caesar met Marcus Licinius Crassus at Ravenna and Pompey the Great at Luca, modern Lucca in Tuscany, and the three men renewed the First Triumvirate by di…
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29 min
Julius Caesar: The Man Who Broke Rome | 100–50 BC
Julius Caesar broke the Roman Republic years before he crossed the Rubicon, and this episode follows how he did it, from his birth in 100 BC through the consulship of 59 BC and the…
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22 min
Pompey: The General Who Could Have Been Caesar | 106–48 BC
Pompey could have been Caesar. He chose the Republic, and the Republic destroyed him. Every structural ingredient Caesar would later use to end the Roman Republic, Pompey had first…
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49 min
The Republic Didn't Die From One Man. It Died When Offices Got a Price Tag.
The Roman Republic didn't collapse because one man grew too powerful. It collapsed because the offices themselves acquired a market price, and everyone kept showing up to work.In t…
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21 min
Spartacus: The Slave Revolt That Set Up Rome's Collapse
Hollywood sold you a hero in chains. Forget it. That's not what broke Rome.What broke Rome was what happened after Rome won.By 73 BC, Rome had stopped running on its citizens. It w…
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23 min
Sulla: The First Man to Break Rome
Caesar didn't break Rome. 50 years before Caesar ever mattered, Sulla did — and he did it while trying to save the Republic.Rome spent 400 years building constraints to stop a king…
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18 min
The War Rome Almost Lost to Its Own Allies
The war that nearly killed Rome wasn't fought against foreigners. It was fought against the men Rome refused to call Romans.For 100 years, Rome took the sons of its Italian allies…
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20 min
What If Aurelian Never Died? The Rome That Never Fell
A counterfactual thought experiment — a departure from the usual researched history on this channel. Thanks to subscriber @history1099 for the idea.In the real world, the Emperor A…
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32 min
Marius: The Reform That Accidentally Destroyed Rome
You don't need a bad man to destroy a republic. You need a competent one with a practical problem and a solution that works a little too well.Gaius Marius should never have mattere…
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29 min
The House of Romanov: 304 Years to a Basement in Yekaterinburg
On July 17, 1918, the Romanov family was shot in a basement in Yekaterinburg — and most history files it under "murder." That's too small. The dynasty didn't die that night. It die…
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23 min
The Real Reason the Roman Senate Killed One of Its Own in 133 BC
You don't need a tyrant to kill a republic. You just need permission.133 BC. The Capitol. Broken benches, snapped legs, senators pouring out of a meeting to attack an election alre…
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19 min
Alexander the Great's Empire Died in Months, One General Made It Last 300 Years
When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC with no heir, his generals tore his empire apart in a single decade. One of them — Ptolemy — took the strangest piece of all, Egypt, and tur…
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34 min
The Real Reason the Roman Republic Actually Died (It Took 100 Years)
Rome didn't fall to conquest. It killed itself over 100 years, one broken norm at a time.The Roman Republic held together for nearly 500 years through a system of layered checks an…
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32 min
Charlemagne's Empire Wasn't Destroyed by Vikings. It Was Divided by Lawyers.
Nobody toppled Charlemagne's empire with a sword. Nobody burned it down with a torch. It was taken apart with a law.Most history counts the battles. This channel reads the contract…
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36 min
The Real Reason the Roman Republic Lasted 500 Years
NOTE: two editors notes were left in this episode. A YouTube viewer caught it and shared the timestamps with me. Two hours after release, we fixed and swapped the file, but your de…
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56 min
The Hautevilles: The Norman Family William the Conqueror Was Jealous Of
Every schoolchild in the English-speaking world learns William the Conqueror's name. What most of them never hear is that William spent his final years bitter about another Norman…
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29 min
Marcus Aurelius Was the Best Emperor Rome Ever Had — And It Wasn't Enough
Rome didn't fall because it ran out of great men. It fell because it reached a point where being great simply wasn't enough anymore.Marcus Aurelius was arguably the most competent…
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50 min
Henry VIII: The King Who Turned His Father's Ledger Into a Weapon.
Henry VIII didn't break with Rome for faith. He broke with it for property.That's the part most history books leave in the margins. The standard story is that Henry wanted a divorc…
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1 h 05
Money, Borders, Power: The Pattern That Actually Killed Rome
The Roman pattern didn't end with Rome. It just kept running at a smaller scale.Everywhere the Western Empire had held together — Hispania, Gaul, North Africa, Italy, Britain — the…
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28 min
Henry VII: The Tax Accountant Who Reinvented the English Monarchy
Henry VII rebuilt England with a ledger instead of a sword.The myth remembers him as a cautious survivor of the Wars of the Roses — a miser, a tax collector, the kind of king who w…