Anthony Kaldellis, historian and author of 'The New Roman Empire', sat with Lex Fridman for podcast episode 498 to trace the full arc of Roman and Byzantine history. Kaldellis argues the Byzantine Empire was not a successor state or a medieval echo, it was Rome, continuous and self-identified as such for over a millennium after the western collapse in 476 AD.
The conversation is worth reading in full because of how Kaldellis dismantles the label 'Byzantine' itself, a term the people living under that empire never used. He forces a reckoning with how historians retroactively construct decline narratives, and why the eastern empire lasting until 1453 gets treated as a footnote rather than the main event.
The transcript is available at lexfridman.com/anthony-kaldellis-transcript. If you care about how empires die, how identity persists under pressure, or how historiography shapes what we think we know, this one is worth your time.
[WATCH ON YOUTUBE →]