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Today we fol­low a sleuth who has spent over a decade work­ing to solve an epic mys­tery hid­ing in plain his­tor­i­cal sight: did any­one sur­vive the erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79AD? 

Tired of hear­ing the con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive that every Pom­pei­ian per­ished with­out any evi­dence to back it up, Clas­si­cist Steven Tuck decides to look into it him­self. Although he is near­ly two mil­len­nia late to ground zero, he uses all the avail­able evi­dence to reimag­ine the dis­as­ter from the per­spec­tive of the peo­ple on the ground. Could any­one have sur­vived the vol­cano? If they did, could they have sur­vived what came after that: earth­quakes, tsunamis, pumice stones hurtling like mis­siles from the sky? If some­one did sur­vive, what hap­pened to them after that??! To find out we have to think, feel and pos­si­bly even eat like Ancient Romans. 

An against-all-odds sto­ry of a dis­as­ter with­out warn­ing, a mass dis­ap­pear­ance with­out a trace, and odd­ly, a par­tic­u­lar­ly stinky fish sauce, care of spe­cial guest Chef Samin Nosrat.