Before the first story, a quick hello. In this short introduction, I talk about how Beyond the Ages works, what you can expect from each episode, and a bit about why I started this show. Stick around to the end for a preview of Episode One — the fall of Constantinople and the end of a thousand-year empire.

A merchant ship docks in Messina in near-total silence — no cheering, no unloading, just dread. What comes ashore will kill nearly half of Europe within four years and tear apart a social order that had stood for centuries. This is the story of the Black Death, and the world it left behind.

Weeds are creeping through the canals of the greatest city the medieval world ever built. This is the slow, quiet collapse of the Khmer Empire — and how Angkor, once the beating heart of a civilization, was surrendered to the jungle.

The Qin dynasty's brief, brutal unification of China collapses into civil war, and two men — a savage, celebrated warrior and an unlikely commoner — fight for what's left. This is the war that ended with an empire at peace, and a peasant on the throne as the first Emperor of Han.

A kingdom built on absolute authority collapses in less than a decade — a king loses his crown and then his head, foreign armies mass on the border, and a revolution meant to build a fairer world starts consuming its own. This is the French Revolution, from the halls of Versailles to the rise of Napoleon.

Hitler sent an entire army to take one city on the Volga — and the city fought back street by street, house by house, room by room. This is Stalingrad: how a summer offensive meant to break the Soviet Union instead became the battle that broke the German Sixth Army.

In 1303, the Sultan of Delhi set his sights on a mountain fortress that had never bowed to outside rule. What followed was a siege that became legend — a test of whether imperial ambition could break a defiance that ran all the way down to the stone. This is the siege of Chittorgarh.

Fewer than two hundred Spanish soldiers, thousands of miles from any help, walk into the heart of an empire of millions — and within hours, its emperor is their prisoner. This is the fall of the Inca Empire, the ransom that filled a room with gold, and the collision that changed two worlds forever.