Credits

Thin End of the Wedge came to life during the long summer of 2020. The inspiration to make a podcast in this form came from the example of Jaafar Jotheri. Jaafar is a kind, dynamic scholar with a track record of establishing productive collaborations between Iraqi and foreign experts, especially his younger colleagues. The virtual lectures he hosted in 2020 showed the appetite for, and importance of, the kind of content we’re producing.

A key goal of the TEW podcast is to make knowledge about the ancient Middle East more accessible to those who live in the Middle East today. The Arabic translations are due to the kindness of Zainab Mizyidawi, Lina Meerchyad, and May Alaseel. The Turkish translations will be due to the kindness of Pınar Durgun, Yağmur Heffron, and Nesrin Akan. 

The theme music for Thin End of the Wedge is a rendition of “Foq al-Nakhal” by Ruba Hillawi, an oud-player from Babylon currently researching her PhD at SOAS. Her music is also used in promotional videos. The videos also use music arranged by Richard Dumbrill, with vocals by Sevan Habib, an Armenian-born Syrian soprano. The Ancient Mesopotamia song was written and performed by Dan Nicky (Mr Nicky). All music used by Thin End of the Wedge is courtesy of the kind permission of the performers.

Thin End of the Wedge’s main image was drawn by Ahmed Amin. You can see more of his work here. And you can follow him on Twitter.

The photos used on this website were taken by Dr Osama Shukir Mohammed Amin FRCP(Glasg). Some of them have been cropped or modified to remove the background. I’m grateful for his kind permission to use his excellent images.

Thanks to Megan Lewis of Digital Hammurabi for kindly sharing the template I use for maps in the show notes for episodes. And to Ian Mjadlov for sharing his maps of the ancient Middle East, reproduced here on the ‘Where’ page.

I’m new to this, and have had to learn pretty much everything from scratch. I’m grateful for all the valuable advice from my colleague Sushma Jansari, host of The Wonder House podcast. If you’re interested in museums, go check that out. Thanks also to the many colleagues and twitter-users who gave useful advice.

And of course a big thank you to all my guests, without whom this podcast would literally be impossible. You can find details of all these awesome human beings here.