History Podcasts
The History Hit network gives you access to a growing range of podcasts presented by and featuring historians at the forefront of research and debate.
Scroll down to listen to the most recent episodes from our network.
Dan Snow’s History Hit explores the deep history behind today’s headlines – giving you the context to understand what is going on today. Everything has a history, every challenge made easier by understanding its nature, its genesis. In a world of fast opinions, we put historians into the debate, women and men who bring real knowledge built over careers spent researching.
The Ancients, hosted by historian Tristan Hughes, is dedicated to discussing our distant past. Historians and archaeologists join Tristan to discuss specific themes from antiquity, from Neolithic Britain to the Fall of Rome.
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb presents Not Just the Tudors. Together with expert interviewees, she covers the sweeping range of the early modern period: everything from the Aztecs to witches, Velázquez to Shakespeare, Mughal India to the Mayflower.
Gone Medieval is hosted by historians Matt Lewis and Eleanor Janega, who shine a light on one of the most fascinating yet misunderstood periods of history: the Middle Ages. In each episode, experts lead listeners beneath the skin of captivating stories to uncover new insights.
In Betwixt the Sheets join historian, Kate Lister as she unashamedly roots around the topics which seem to have been skipped in history class. Everything from landmark LGBTQ+ court cases, to political scandal, to downright bizarre medieval cures for impotence.
In American History Hit, join Don Wildman twice a week for your hit of American history, as he explores the past to help us understand the United States of today. We’ll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway, visit Chief Powhatan as he prepares for war with the British, see Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists, and uncover the dark history that lies beneath Central Park.
After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal joined History Hit’s award-winning podcast network in October 2023, hosted by actor, writer and historian Anthony Delaney and writer, broadcaster, historian Maddy Pelling. Together, the duo unpick history’s spookiest, strangest and most sinister stories – from the disappearance of HMS Terror to the origins of Halloween.
War historian and broadcaster James Rogers hosts our Warfare podcast, which opens up fascinating new perspectives on how conflict has shaped and changed our world. James teams up with fellow historians, veterans, and experts to reveal astonishing new histories of inspirational leadership, breakthrough technologies, and era defining battles.
Patented, hosted by Dallas Campbell, dives into stories of flukey discoveries, erased individuals and murky marketing ploys with the help of experts, scientists and historians.
Click on any of the listings below to listen to the most recent episodes from our network.
All Podcasts
48:15
Kate Mosse: Writing Historical Fiction
20 January 2022Kate Mosse is the multimillion-selling author of the Languedoc Trilogy - Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel. With her new novel The City of...
Listen Now
38:37
Alexander the Great & The Persian Thermopylae (Part One)
20 January 2022In January 330 BC, Alexander the Great faced one of his most difficult challenges to date. A small Persian force, entrenched in a formidable...
Listen Now
49:50
Who Was Joan of Arc?
20 January 2022Joan of Arc is a name that’s instantly recognisable to most. A controversial figure in her own day, she has remained so ever since, often being...
Listen Now
43:37
The SAS in the Falklands: Part One
19 January 2022In this episode from the archive, Dan Snow hears the incredible story of the SAS's involvement in the Falklands from the men who were actually there:...
Listen Now
25:37
The Child Soldiers of WWI
19 January 2022After the outbreak of the First World War, boys as young as twelve were caught up in a national wave of patriotism and, in huge numbers,...
Listen Now
34:55
Vikings: What Does Their Hair Tell Us?
18 January 2022If you've watched a film or TV show about vikings recently, you may well have noticed a distinctive hairstyle featuring an undercut and a...
Listen Now
36:07
28 Years on Death Row
18 January 2022Anthony Ray Hinton is an Alabama was held on death row after being wrongly convicted of the murders of two restaurant managers, John Davidson and...
Listen Now
51:45
Cardinal Wolsey
17 January 2022No advisor was more important to King Henry VIII than Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. He captured Henry's attention with his brilliance and became his...
Listen Now
36:48
Tony Blair & the Iraq War
17 January 2022In the 2022 New Year Honours list, alongside the names of Joanna Lumley, Moira Stuart and Emma Raducanu, was that of Tony Blair. Over a million...
Listen Now
1:01:38
Korean War: The Veterans Of Imjin River
17 January 2022Fought between the 22nd-25th of April 1951, the battle of Imjin River was part of a Chinese counter-offensive after United Nations forces had...
Listen Now
50:18
The Birth of the Roman Empire
16 January 202216 January 27 BC is a date sometimes associated with the beginning of the Roman Empire. It was on that day that Octavian received the name...
Listen Now
32:23
Eugenics with Adam Rutherford
16 January 2022Eugenics has been used in attempts throughout history, and across continents, to gain power and assert control.
In this episode, we trace...
Listen Now
47:46
An English Knight's Armour
15 January 2022Knights in their armour is one of the most enduring images of the Middle Ages, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind and a role that many of...
Listen Now
34:00
Britain's Only War Crimes Trial
14 January 2022In 1999, the UK’s first and only war crimes trial for murder perpetrated during the Holocaust took place. The extraordinary court case brought...
Listen Now
40:54
Tudor True Crime
14 January 2022The true-crime genre - stories of actual murders and other crimes that are then fictionalised - is not a new phenomenon. More than four...
Listen Now
41:52
Elizabeth I & Mary, Queen of Scots
13 January 2022Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots were cousins who never met - but their fates were intertwined. As their nations were engulfed in religious...
Listen Now
1:03:40
The Seleucid Empire: In the Shadow of Rome
13 January 2022At its height, the Seleucid Empire stretched from Thrace (modern day Bulgaria) to the Indus River Valley. Emerging from the tumultuous...
Listen Now
21:48
George Washington: The First President
13 January 2022George. Where did it all go wrong? George Washington could have had a comfortable career as a loyal member of His Majesty's Virginia militia and...
Listen Now
33:42
When the British Burnt the Capitol with Peter Snow
12 January 2022In 1814, a British expeditionary force landed in Maryland marched on Washington, brushed aside an American army and stormed into the US capital. The...
Listen Now
25:51
The Rule of Laws
12 January 2022The laws now enforced throughout the world are almost all modelled on systems developed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries....
Listen Now
30:45
Vikings In the Frankish Kingdom
11 January 2022The Kingdom of the Franks was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe, ruled by the Franks during Late Antiquity and the Early...
Listen Now