I've been listening to this recently, with some amount of scepticism as this seems a huge swath of history to cover accurately, and have been confused with his explaination of the Partition of Jin, where he seems to accept without question, people eating their children during a seige, a rising commander being absolutely blind to potential disloyalty and honest to goodness drinking from enemies skulls. Which at least to me all feel like artistic flourishes to a story which weren't neccessarily true.
Is he correct to accept those accounts of what happened? If the historical consensus does not take those literally, how concerning is it that he goes against this hypothetical consensus? I'm listening as a hobby, so am not looking for academic depth, but obviously don't want to learn things that are factually wrong.
Et meme si ce n’est pas vrai, Il faut croire a I'histoire ancienne.
[And even if it is not true, you need to believe in ancient history.]
~ Leo Ferre
The question of credulousness is always a valid one... on the other hand, given the dearth of primary sources from the period, what is the alternative?
Accounts from that period are - as with many accounts so ancient - based on very few sources. One of those few and earliest comprehensive records we've got are from Sima Qian's Shiji, which was compiled a cool 400 years after the events in question. Sima stands as China's own Herodotus, the first (or at least earliest surviving) "grand historian" of all that came before him... and just as with Herodotus, significantly more of a storyteller than, say, one too terribly concerned with the nuts-and-bolts accuracy. His accounts of numbers in battles, for instance, is generally considered pretty weak - as in, "go ahead and knock off a zero out of principle"-weak.
But the events themselves? Well, again, what's the alternative to accepting the general narrative of one of the only surviving works from the 1st century BCE, and the only one considered authoritative on the events in question (such as the Partition of Jin?
As for the questions about cannibalism - that might seem extreme of unlikely, but there are numerous recording of just such events happening in the course of city sieges across the imperial period. The latest one I can most readily recall is the Siege of Kaifeng, 1232-1233. From McLynn (though this is corroborated also by Hok-lam Chan's translation of Wang E's contemporary account):
Within Kaifeng conditions were almost indescribably piteous, with all the phenomena associated with long sieges – famine, disease, cannibalism, civil murder – raised to a new power of horror. With heat in the summer fueling disease and food desperately short, the Jin ate, first horseflesh, then the bones mixed with green weeds and finally a soup made of leather from saddles and military drums.
~ Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, his Legacy
So, ultimately the stories from the Warring States Period might be overblown, or outright fabrications ... then again, they might not be. At the end of the day, with little to no other recourse save relying on those few sources we have, we simply have to go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
... and if you're a podcaster, if the choice is between a good narrative story, and just saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
... well, I'm happy on which side of the fence I came down on.
Cheers!
Chris