Advertise on podcast: Movies We Dig | Film, Antiquity and Everything in Between

We wish we had our own magic time-traveling sands as we review 2010's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Is it a creative re-imagining of a popular game? No. Is it a fun action-adventure with comedic tones? Also no. Does Alfred Molina run an illegal ostrich-racing circuit? Yes he does. We could have been watching Prince of Egypt... As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been well over a year (and season) since we last checked in on Wiros and Yemos (AKA Romulus and Remus) to see how their little city of Rome is managing. While both brothers are still alive, they are definitely not prepared to handle the wildcard that is Titus Tatius, King of the Sabines and Son of Sancus. Helping us to separate the original founding myth from an imaginative modern retelling are The Partial Historians, Dr. Rad and Dr. G! We discuss the Sabine Women, masculinity in the ancient world, and just how seriously everyone takes religion in this series. Come for the archaic Latin, stay for the great honey bath debate! If you like this episode and want to listen to the Movies We Dig and The Partial Historians react to the first episode of Romulus Season 2, check out our YouTube Channel and look for our Romulus Watch Party! To learn more about The Partial Historians, be sure to visit their website for podcast episodes and books on ancient Rome or check out their socials at Instagram or Bluesky. And if you like what you hear and want to support their work, check out their Patreon page! As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back and this time untethered from history with a new season of your (but not Colin's) favorite gladiator show: Spartacus: House of Ashur (2025). Also helping us rewrite history in some pretty radical ways is Dr. Monica Cyrino. We talk gladiators, sex, crucifixion and more, everything a growing ludus needs. What does a gladiator-turned-aspiring-nouveau-riche-fight-promoter have to do to get any respect in this town? Who's the worst GM in NFL history? Is love real? Has anyone checked to see if Caesar's alive? Find out the answers to all that and more here on Movies We Dig! You can find work from Dr. Cyrino here on Linktree, including books, audiobooks, YouTube, papers and more! And if you are interested in more scholarly work on Classical reception, check out the new American Journal of Classical Reception published by Johns Hopkins University Press! As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maybe, like, the fourth or fifth best entry in the Transformers series? Yes we're talking Gods of Egypt (2016) a... film. Joining us is extra special guest, Dr. Julia Troche, who is here to help educate us on ancient Egyptian mythology and the many hidden benefits of lettuce. We talk gods, Egypt, robots, forced-perspective, arm workout routines and much more. Listen now or you'll need to spend money to get into the afterlife and a giant cosmic snake will devour your soul! To learn more about Julia's work with The American Research Center in Egypt Missouri Chapter visit ARCEMO.org. You can also stay up-to-date with her research by following @profjuliatroche on Instagram. If you would like to check out some of Dr. Troche's writing, here's an article on Letters to the Dead. Or if you would like to check out her book, Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt, use this link. In unfortunate news, the University of Iowa recently proposed that the Classical Languages major--a major focused on the study of Ancient Greek and Latin--be eliminated later this year. If, like us, you care deeply about the study of Ancient Greek and Latin and want the University of Iowa’s proud tradition of teaching these languages to continue, join us in demanding that the University of Iowa abandon its proposal to eliminate the Classical Languages major. If you would like to help support the campaign to save Classical languages at the University of Iowa, please do so at here via the Change.org petition. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If ever a series made us feel our age, it's this one! Once again, we return to Rick Riordan's fantastical world of teenage demi-gods with Disney's second season of Percy Jackson & The Olympians. Since your hosts are lost at sea when it comes to this series, we called upon a true aficionado and fellow Mnemosyne member, Lexie Henning, to help us navigate the world of prophecies and Party Ponies. Inevitably we find ourselves moored in discussion of early 2000s YA novels and their pitfalls. In the end, the sirens reveal to us the fatal flaw of adapting such tomes to the screen: No one is truly satisfied trying to relive the childhood memories of generations past. To learn more about Lexie and her work with The Ozymandias Project, visit www.ozymandiasproject.com. You can also follow Lexie on her socials at Instagram and Bluesky. If you would like to read the op-ed essay mentioned in this episode, you can access a free copy via this link. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Grab your spears, grow out your dreads and get ready to hunt some mammoth because we're going back, waaaay back to 2008 and 10,000 BC, Roland Emmerich's stealth prequel to Stargate. And what conversation about Stone Age tribes battling Atlantean Pyramid Enthusiasts (Aliens?) would be complete without our resident pseudo-archaeology expert, David S. Anderson. We talk mammoth hunting strategies, megafauna, why farming was a mistake and all walks of conspiracy theories from star-aligned pyramids to Shakespeare-wasn't-real. If you would like to learn more about David and stay updated about his research and tabletop card game Excavation!, then follow him on his social media pages at Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As part of our "Unfinished Business" season, we return to the Netflix animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. It wouldn't surprise the three of us to learn that you might have missed the second (and final) season of this series, but we spend a good chunk of time discussing why that may have been the case. So let's all dive in to the story of a tomb raider turned repatriation advocate and help stop a random tech billionaire from forcing the world into a hard reboot. Hmmm, prescient. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ancient Rome. MWD's podcasts are masters of the world, the heat of its takes heard from the Iberian peninsula in the west through the halls of the great library of Alexandria in the east. As oppressed people everywhere writhe under the Roman lash, freeman and vassal are united in one compulsory listenership. But there is a new wind, exploring this Cohen Brothers' 2016 comedy on the eccentric personalities here at Capitol Pictures. We talk sword and sandal cinema, the Red Scare, Jesus, Marxism, split nature of man, and more, all of course with extreme taste and panache. Would that it were so simple... As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Once again, we sift through our backlog of episodes to take another look at a mostly forgotten film, this time with fresh eyes and new takes. What we find is a film about a Roman legionary that is actually, dare we say, good!? Joining us on the journey to find The Eagle is special return guest, Roel Konijnendijk. From a Roman military fortress to the wilds of Scotland, we discuss the charm of this underrated film. While it has a few problematic elements, one can't help but root for the budding "bromance" between Channing Tatum's Marcus Aquila and Jamie Bell's Esca as they travel together to restore their honor. And really, isn't the eagle just the friends we made along the way? Be sure to follow Roel on Bluesky and read his posts as Iphikrates on r/askhistorians. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chug your milk, don your ruffled shirts and get ready to shoot lightning bolts through your lymphatic system because we're re-animating Guillermo del Toro' latest creature-feature: Frankenstein (2025). Returning to play god with us is Dr. Marina Escolano-Poveda, Senior Lecturer in Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. We talk the horrors of science, the sins of the father(s) and the benefits of a classical education for developing Creatures, along with all the changes, big and small, between del Toro's adaptation and Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. Be sure to follow Marina on Instagram under the handle @hypatiaheuresis. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The holidays are upon us, so we figured it was a good time to delve into a remake of a remake that nobody really asked for. That's right, we're talking about 2016's Ben-Hur! And sorry to say, this one might have sent your hosts off the rails. We discuss the major changes from the 1959 film, including Messala's backstory, the inciting incident that destroys the Ben-Hur family, and the interesting choice to cut Judah's trip to Rome. What do we learn? Mario Kart rules apply to chariot racing and the Pope gets a lot of interesting asks. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this season's attempt to highlight films that might have fallen under the radar, the Movies We Dig Crew revisits Agora along with special guest, Dr. Marina Escolano-Poveda. Despite (or more likely, because of) the film's the unorthodox setting in Late Roman Alexandria, the central story focusing on the life of Hypatia (played by Rachel Weisz), and amazing use of costuming and set design, there's a good chance you've yet to see this one. And while we might have our hang-ups on the lack of a real plot, you would be hard-pressed to find a better film that depicts the ethnic, religious, and social complexities of Roman Egypt. Be sure to follow Marina on Instagram under the handle @hypatiaheuresis. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What's your favorite scary movie? Ours is Scream 2! Joined by super special guests and professional Scream-heads (Screamers?) Lizzy Adams and TJ Bolt, we breakdown the metatextual masterpiece that is the Scream franchise, starting with the 1997 follow up to the original cult classic: Scream 2. We talk ancient Greek tragedy, horror as genre, VHS cassette tapes and all things 90's. You can read more about ancient literature and modern horror by Lizzy and TJ in their contributions to Eidolon. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What better way to start our season of "Unfinished Business" than with a Part I film that was never supposed to get a sequel? Well, at least until that streaming money was just too good to pass up. With the help of fellow Mnemosyne: Memory Collective member Emma Pauly we take a look at Mel Brooks' world history comedy spanning the Stone Age, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition, and the French Revolution. While this film might not be our favorite installment in Brooks' filmography, it offers a great opportunity to talk about comedy as a genre, both in the past and present. While not all the jokes land, we are ultimately reminded that laughter is a powerful tool to help us face (and combat) the darkest moments of human history. Be sure to follow Emma on Instagram under the handle @academicmaenad. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Get ready for Season 6 of Movies We Dig, where we are determined to leave no stone left unturned! If you want to be in the know for upcoming episodes and special events, be sure to follow our socials. And show some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show wherever you like to listen to your podcasts! As always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show! Stay up-to-date on all the Movies We Dig news by visiting movieswedig.com or checking out our socials. Movies We Dig is also part of Mnemosyne: The Memory Collective, a podcast network and creator collective for historians, archaeologists, artists, and other creators and educators dedicated to sharing content about and featuring the ancient world that is accurate, accessible, and inclusive. To learn more about the collective and its contributors, check out collectivemem.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.