19. How it all began

This week's podcast is a game of two halves. (Stephanie didn't manage to get a football reference onto the tape so I'm putting one here instead.)First of all, we talk about why it is people move to cities – or to be more specific, why people continue to move to London, when the experience of finding somewhere to live here is so completely bloody horrible. Stephanie relates her recent experiences with house-hunting and letting agents, while I look on with the serene sympathy of one who's insulated from this particular hellscape.That covers why people move to cities today – then we look at why people moved to cities in the past. To be more specific: several thousand years in the past.Rob Monaco is the US historian behind the frankly brilliant Podcast History of Our World. He runs me through the latest research on where the first cities could be found; discusses what motivated people to found them in the first place; and, most importantly, explains what sewers and street furniture would have looked like...

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