You start with one episode – Caesar’s assassination, maybe, or the fall of Troy, and three hours later you’re elbow-deep in the Kushan Empire wondering how you got there.
That’s the trick Tristan Hughes has been pulling off twice a week since 2020. As host of The Ancients, History Hit’s flagship podcast on the ancient world, he’s clocked more than 600 episodes of warm, curious, deeply researched conversation with the historians and archeologists piecing the past back together. Now, for the first time outside the UK, he’s bringing it to the stage.
An Evening with Tristan Hughes lands in Australia and New Zealand this August – a six-date run across Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Auckland, and Melbourne. Each night, Tristan will explore a different monumental chapter of ancient history (Mesopotamia, Rome, Kushan, Angkor Wat – the full tapestry is on the table), joined by a special guest, with his own past and inspirations as the thread tying it all together.
The pitch on the show page, “come for Julius Caesar, but stay for Prehistoric Tibet”, captures why The Ancients has become such a quiet phenomenon. It’s the breadth, but more than that, it’s how Tristan tells it. He came up the long way (Ancient History at Edinburgh; his first book, Alexander’s Successors) and the scholarship shows. But it’s the warmth and curiosity that has made the show what it is. He treats every civilisation, the famous ones and the ones you’ve never heard of, as if all the people in them matters. Because they did.
On stage, expect that same energy: vivid storytelling, a guest worth listening to, and 110 minutes (including interval) of the kind of history that reminds you how strange, intricate, and human the past actually was.
If you’ve ever finished an episode of The Ancients and wanted more, this show is for you.
Tickets on sale now. For media and other enquiries, please contact us.
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