What drives ordinary people to rise up and risk everything? In this powerful conversation with Afua Hirsch, Lyndal Roper, one of the foremost scholars of early modern Europe, brings to life one of the most dramatic and devastating uprisings in European history. In the 1520s, tens of thousands of peasants across Germany took up arms, demanding justice, equality, and a new social order inspired by the radical ideas of the Reformation. For a brief moment, it seemed the old world might be overturned. Then came a brutal and bloody reckoning. Drawing on vivid first-hand accounts, Roper uncovers the hopes, beliefs, and fears that fuelled this extraordinary movement. Both gripping and deeply human, this is a story of courage and catastrophe; revealing how a fight for change can ignite, spread, and ultimately be crushed with shocking force.