Hello and happy Memorial Day to all of you out there enjoying a long weekend in the States; for all of my U.K. listeners, happy Spring Bank holiday! I’m not going to lie, that’s possibly the least sexy way of saying “long weekend” that I’ve ever heard, but I digress. For everyone else, welcome to the last day of May.

Today, we’re actually going to take a bank holiday ourselves from the normal T+M timeline, but this doesn’t mean that we’re leaving you stranded with nothing to listen to. Quite the opposite, in fact…

Today we have the pleasure of working with Kristin Robyn Terpstra of the History Cache podcast. She has been gracious enough to allow me to download one of my favorite episodes from her show and highlight it here, and I think you’re honestly going to love it. First off, it features one of the great female personages of all time, Olympias. If you’re not familiar with her, don’t worry, Kristin is going to get you up to speed. But as a quick introduction, Olympias is best known as being the mother to Alexander the Great and wife to Phillip II of Macedon. She’s known for being an absolutely imposing figure and ruthless mother, as well as someone who enjoyed keeping snakes in her bed, because who doesn’t keep snakes in their bed, amiright?!

All of that leads us to point number two, which is that Olympias is actually far more compelling than these simple anecdotes about her would lead people to believe. She was a complicated, fascinating person, and Kristin does a wonderful job of moving past the stereotype to help us understand a little bit more about who the real Olympias may have been.

And all of that leads me to Kristin; if you’re not already listening to the History Cache, seriously, what are you waiting for. This lady can tell a story like no one else, and her ranges of topics are so varied that there’s something available for everyone. Tribes in the Amazon rainforest? Check. Shackleton and Antarctic exploration? Check. Multiple real life 20th century heist stories? Check and check. All of this is to say that Kristin is standing by to tell you something that you may or may not already know, and either which way, she’s going to tell it to you in a way that will have you binging in short order, and sad when you get to the end of her 43 episode catalogue.

With all of that as prologue, please, settle in and get ready to enjoy Part 1 of Kristin’s Olympias trilogy. And when you’re done, be sure to subscribe to History Cache to catch the rest of the story. I’m going to stand to the side now and let my friend and fellow podcaster do the rest of the talking; Kristin, take it away!