I'll latch onto your post to also recommend the podcasts "The Fall of Rome" [0] and "Tides of History" [1], both by Patrick Wyman. He's a PhD who specialized in Late Antiquity, and often looks at Roman history/society from the lens of networks, trades, and the movement of people and goods over time. The one caveat I have is to bear with him in terms of the repetitive/boring ads he sticks into the middle of his episodes. I like to imagine his podcasts as an audio version of a History Channel show -- at least what the History Channel was supposed to be rather than what it's devolved into.

[0] https://fallofromepodcast.wordpress.com/

[1] https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/wondery/tides-of-history

Thanks for the recs, those look fantastic! While we're talking history podcasts, Revolutions (by Mike Duncan of The History of Rome), The Age of Napoleon, and Hardcore History are also great.

Check out the next series Revolutions by the same guy, Mike Duncan. Its absolutely fascinating and when he gets to the French Revolution he goes into so many sub stories and details.

Revolutions is fantastic. I actually listened to many of the early seasons before doing The History of Rome. It was truly enlightening to learn how the New World revolutions and French Revolution were interconnected. And it's also interesting to understand how the Roman roots of the pre-modern world and the precedent of the English Revolution informed all of the late-18th and early-19th century revolutions.