Pieces of History

In this episode of Pieces of History, I’m joined by Geoff Emberling to explore the history of ancient Nubia and the Kingdom of Kush - a civilisation too often overlooked in traditional accounts of the ancient world.
We begin with Geoff’s own path into archaeology and his work in Nubia, before stepping back to place the region geographically and culturally within the wider Nile Valley. From there, we examine how Egypt-centred narratives have shaped popular understandings of the past, and what they miss about Nubia’s political power, cultural confidence, and global connections.
For those encountering Kush for the first time, we discuss who the Kushites were, what their kingdom looked like at its height, and what Nubia’s pyramids reveal about Kushite identity, religion, and authority. We also explore the long and complex relationship between Kush and Egypt — from trade and rivalry to the Kushite conquest of Egypt during the 25th Dynasty.
Drawing on recent archaeology and fieldwork, Geoff reflects on how new evidence is reshaping our understanding of Nubia, and why placing it at the centre rather than the margins fundamentally changes how we view ancient history.
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In this episode of Pieces of History, I’m heading into the shadow world of organised crime with crime historian and author Scott M. Deitche, whose books and documentaries have become essential reading for anyone interested in the American Mafia. From Garden State Gangland to Cigar City Mafia and The Silent Don, Scott has built a career uncovering stories hidden in court files, surveillance tapes, and long-forgotten archives.
Our conversation focuses on the DeCavalcante crime family of New Jersey — a lesser-known but powerful organisation that operated alongside New York’s syndicates while carving out its own territory in Newark and Elizabeth. Scott charts their rise, internal tensions, brushes with law enforcement, and gradual decline, revealing how leadership, loyalty, and paranoia shaped their fate.
We also explore the challenges of researching groups built on secrecy, and the family’s pop-culture shadow through The Sopranos.
It’s a story of myth versus reality, and of how even the most hidden worlds leave a paper trail — if you know where to look.
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Scott M. Deitche - Tampa Mafia - tampamafia.com

In the second episode of Season Four, Pieces of History returns to the Belfast Hills for the next chapter of Phil Donnelly’s family journey, turning to the Joy–Dean line - a story rooted in the same landscape, but shaped by different choices and remarkable lives.
Phil’s research introduces Margaret Joy and Philip Dean, whose mid-1700s marriage crossed religious boundaries in a way that was bold for its time. We then follow one of the most surprising figures in the family tree: Fr. Joseph Joy Dean, who rose from the Hills to the Spanish royal court and later Rome, before returning to Dublin as a parish priest.
Back on Divis and Black Mountain, archaeological work at the Dean cottage reveals the realities of tenant farming, echoed in the life of Hercules Dean. Phil also uncovers the Redmond connection and the enduring tale of the “Maiden Lighthouse Lovers,” where family history meets folklore.
Across these intertwined stories, themes of resilience, migration, and faith emerge — showing how one family’s “little histories” can illuminate a far wider past.
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The latest episode of Pieces of History journeys into the Bolivian Amazon and a vast, seasonally flooded region known as the Llanos de Mojos — a landscape that is reshaping how historians and archaeologists understand the ancient Amazon.
Long imagined as an untouched wilderness, the rainforest is now known to have been carefully shaped over centuries. Research has revealed enormous human-engineered environments of raised fields, forest islands, canals, and causeways, built through long-term planning and everyday labour.
Joining me is Dr. John Walker, Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, whose work explores how pre-Columbian communities managed fire, water, soil, and vegetation to create sustainable agricultural and settlement systems. Drawing on his research, including his book Island, River, and Field, John explains why Mojos is best understood not as isolated “sites,” but as a lived, working landscape.
We discuss what the Llanos de Mojos actually looks like, how its systems functioned, why the myth of a pristine Amazon endured, how European contact reshaped these environments, and what Mojos ultimately forces us to rethink about humanity’s relationship with the natural world.
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Episode twenty-eight of Pieces of History takes us into the Belfast Hills, where the story of the Magee family offers a rare window into life in Hannahstown in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Through the research of Phil Donnelly, we uncover how ordinary families lived under extraordinary pressure - from the legacy of the Penal Laws to the quiet resilience of faith at hidden Mass Rocks. At the centre is Edward Magee of Carnaghliss, whose farm records and surviving fragments reveal rural life on the eve of famine.
We explore kinship ties with the neighbouring Dean family and follow the poignant story of young Edward, “the boy who was left behind,” reflecting the wider experience of famine, loss, and emigration.
Blending family history with landscape and memory, this episode shows how one local story can illuminate much larger themes in Irish history.
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