History Podcasts | History Hit

 

 

History Hit 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

34:06

An Early Modern Teenage Werewolf

29 April 2021

The witch-hunts of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe are well-known. But did you know that some 300 people were convicted of being werewolves?...

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44:53

The Battle of Okinawa

28 April 2021

The last major confrontation of the Second World War and the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific theatre, the Battle of Okinawa ended in Allied...

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23:31

WW2: The Texel Uprising

28 April 2021

In the dying days of the Second World War, a group of Georgians rose up against their German overlords on the Dutch island of Texel. Thousands of...

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32:35

Blood and Iron: The German Empire

27 April 2021

German unification in 1871 immediately altered the balance of power in Europe and across the world, but what did its existence and expansion in...

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21:10

Chernobyl: Memories of a Survivor

26 April 2021

On April 26th 1986 reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded sending a vast plume of radioactive material into the atmosphere, but what...

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27:21

Secret History of Soviet Nerve Agents

26 April 2021

The use of nerve agents is synonymous with Russian espionage for those of us who remember the recent poisonings of Alexei Navalny, Sergei and...

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22:09

The Last Nuremberg Prosecutor

25 April 2021

Ben Ferencz at 102 years old is the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials and a direct witness to the horrors of the Nazi death camps....

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1:01:58

Cicero’s Fight for the Roman Republic

25 April 2021

Caesar Octavian, Mark Antony, Decimus Brutus and Cicero: the Battle of Mutina, April 43 BC, was a clash of giants. It also became the beginning of...

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27:49

Cellini: Bad Boy of the Renaissance

24 April 2021

Benvenuto Cellini was the bad boy of the Renaissance! His life was a story of murders, violence, war, the sack of cities, sodomy, imprisonment,...

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33:48

Football, Money and the European Super League

23 April 2021

The attempt to create a new European Super League might have been short-lived with the attempt to form a breakaway competition collapsing in the face...

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30:20

WW2: The Last Coastwatcher

23 April 2021

97 year old Jim Burrows OAM served as a Coastwatcher in the South Pacific during the Second World War. The Coastwatchers were an intelligence arm of...

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24:11

Shakespeare's Shoreditch Theatre with Heather Knight

22 April 2021

In this archive episode, Dan visits the site of The Theatre, the 16th-century playhouse where some of Shakespeare's works were first performed, to...

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39:11

Roman Prisoners of War

22 April 2021

We know all about the battles of the Roman Empire: the opposing sides, their weapons and incentives. But if history is written by the winners, what...

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2:53

Introducing: Gone Medieval

21 April 2021

From long-lost viking ships to kings buried in unexpected places; from murders and power politics, to myths, religion, the lives of ordinary people:...

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33:01

Lessons from the Antonine Plague

21 April 2021

A plague which affects people from across society, the mass exodus from city centres and numerous opinions on how best to stay well ... all familiar...

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27:10

Operation Argument with James Holland

21 April 2021

In this episode from the archives, Dan sits down with James Holland to talk about Operation Argument. Taking place in February 1944, this was the...

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24:57

Lady Mary and the First Inoculation

20 April 2021

In the 18th century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an aristocrat, courtier, brilliant beauty, intellectual, wife to the ambassador to the Ottoman...

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6:59

Introducing 'Leonardo: The Official Podcast'

20 April 2021

Here on The Ancients, we think that you will love Leonardo, the official podcast accompanying the murder-mystery period drama starring Aidan...

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20:20

Prisoners of Geography

19 April 2021

Five years ago Tim Marshall wrote the international best selling book Prisoners of Geography which examined how our politics, demographics, our...

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38:18

The Plymouth Blitz

19 April 2021

Thousands of houses, 26 schools, 8 cinemas and 41 churches destroyed; 640 separate air raid sirens and almost 1180 killed. Plymouth is not the...

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49:36

300 years of British Prime Ministers: Part 3

18 April 2021

In the third episode of our series chronicling the history of British Prime Ministers we travel from one of the Most famous occupants of the office,...

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