This Is How An Empire Falls

Mitch Jeserich is in conversation with Professor Kyle Harper to talk about one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. Central to this issue are question such as how does an empire fall? What’s the role of climate change and pandemic diseases in the collapse of Rome’s power.

Guest: Kyle Harper is a historian of the classical world and the Senior Vice President and Provost at his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire.

About The Fate of Rome:

The book explores how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. Kyle Harper takes us from Rome’s pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted. Harper describes how the Romans were resilient in the face of enormous environmental stress, until the besieged empire could no longer withstand the combined challenges of a “little ice age” and recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague.