A conversation with Mark Roosien (Yale University) about the earthquakes that struck Constantinople in late antiquity and about how emperors and the people of the City reacted to them in the moment. We focus on the church liturgies that commemorated and tried to make sense of them. The conversation is based on Mark's book Ritual and Earthquakes in Constantinople: Liturgy, Ecology, and Empire (Cambridge University Press 2024).

A conversation with James Rives (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) on the history of ancient animal sacrifice in the Roman world. We focus on its decline and eventual demise in the third and fourth centuries. Animal sacrifice was caught up in the conflicts between the Roman emperors and the Christian Church, which endowed it with an importance it had not had before. The conversation is based on James' recent book Animal Sacrifice in the Roman Empire (31 BCE-395 CE): Power, Communication, and Cultural Transformation (Oxford University Press 2024).

A conversation with Ada Palmer (University of Chicago) about the invention of the idea of the Italian Renaissance and the functions that it serves in the western historical imagination. "Byzantium" is a similarly invented category that often works in tandem with "the Renaissance" to mark good and bad moments in the history of culture. The conversation is based on Ada's recent book, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age (University of Chicago Press, 2025). She is also an award-winning science-fiction author and one of the most successful and popular teachers at the University of Chicago, featured in the New York Times for the mock papal elections through which she teaches students about the inner workings of Renaissance politics.