Category
War & conflict
Wars past and present. How they start, how they're fought, and what they leave behind.
In this category
Over the top: why WWI generals kept marching men into machine guns
An exploration of how the collision of nineteenth-century tactics and industrial-age technology created the lethal stalemate of the Western Front.
12 min
The Zimmermann Telegram: how one intercepted message pulled America into WWI
British codebreakers intercepted a secret German offer to Mexico, and revealing it helped tip a reluctant United States into the First World War — how intelligence changed the course of the conflict.
12 min
The siege of Leningrad: how a city survived 872 days of encirclement
Cut off and starved through multiple winters, the people of Leningrad endured one of the longest and deadliest sieges in history — a story of unimaginable suffering and stubborn survival.
12 min
Napoleon's march on Moscow: how Europe's greatest army destroyed itself
Napoleon took half a million men into Russia and brought a fraction home, undone not by a decisive battle but by distance, scorched earth, and the brutal cold.
12 min
The Ghost Army: how the Allies won battles with inflatable tanks and search effects
A secret WWII unit of artists and engineers impersonated whole divisions with rubber tanks, fake radio traffic, and recorded battle noise to fool the Germans about where the real armies were.
12 min
The Taiping Rebellion, the 19th-century civil war the West forgot
A failed civil-service candidate who believed he was Jesus's brother led a rebellion that killed tens of millions and nearly toppled imperial China — one of the deadliest wars in history, barely remembered in the West.
12 min
The Winter War: how tiny Finland humiliated the invading Soviet Union
Vastly outnumbered, Finnish troops on skis used the forests and cold to devastate a far larger Soviet army — a masterclass in how terrain and morale can overturn brute force.
12 min
Vasili Arkhipov, the Soviet officer who refused to fire a nuclear torpedo
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a submarine officer's lone refusal to authorize a nuclear strike quietly prevented catastrophe — how close the world came, and why almost no one knew.
12 min
About War & conflict
Wars past and present — how they start, how they're fought, and what they leave behind. The stream ranges from the Ghost Army's inflatable tanks and Operation Mincemeat's dead-man deception to the siege of Leningrad, the Winter War, and Vasili Arkhipov's quiet refusal that prevented nuclear catastrophe. Strategy, endurance, and the human decisions inside the machinery of conflict.
Fylom episodes are researched and written by AI. Automated checks help catch inaccuracies, but episodes aren't reviewed by a human and AI can still get things wrong. Treat them as a starting point, not a source of record — more in our accuracy disclaimer.