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
38:10
Prison Hulks: Floating Hells for Convicts
13 June 2024Convicts, illegal dissections, disease, all taking place on ships described as "Wicked Noah's Arks" where conditions were even worse than in...
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34:26
Shakespeare's Players: Burbage and Kempe
13 June 2024Among the male players who performed thousands of new plays in the Elizabethan repertory, the most famous were Richard Burbage and Will Kempe,...
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48:03
Civil War Rivals: Robert E. Lee vs Ulysses Grant
12 June 2024100 years ago, in the spring of 1864, the Overland Campaign ignited a ferocious clash between two titans of US military history: Ulysses S. Grant,...
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44:12
Moses & The Exodus
12 June 2024The story of Moses and the Exodus is one of the oldest and most well known in history. It is full of instantly recognisable episodes like the...
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42:15
The Early Years of the British Empire
11 June 2024The British weren't always imperial global players with an empire of viceroys, redcoats and industrialised trade systems. The early years of the...
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56:25
The Betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots
11 June 2024Mary Queen of Scots had a life that resembled a Game of Thrones plot: she had awful taste in men, and a cousin in Queen Elizabeth I of England,...
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46:02
Edward the Confessor
11 June 2024One of the last kings of Anglo-Saxon England, Edward the Confessor regained the throne for the House of Wessex and is the only English monarch to...
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29:49
The Challenger Disaster
10 June 2024On January 28, 1986, the nation watched in horror as the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew...
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46:32
Enfield Poltergeist: 1970's Suburban Horror
10 June 2024The Enfield Poltergeist is Britain's most infamous haunting - set in the late 1970s on the outskirts of London, it continues to be told and...
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43:44
Six Wives: Jane Seymour
10 June 2024Six wives - six lives that we think we know everything about. But beyond their mostly doomed marriages to Henry VIII and, in most cases,...
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50:58
Lost on Mount Everest: The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine
9 June 2024Dan unravels the mystery surrounding George Mallory and Andrew Irvine's daring attempt to conquer Mount Everest in 1924 - a feat that could have...
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36:24
The War on Crime: The 1930s and the New Deal
9 June 2024How did the United States go from a country defined by its lawlessness in the 1920s and early 1930s, to one where many political standpoints rest...
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54:58
The Parthians
9 June 2024The Parthians were heavyweights of ancient Mesopotamia. Hailing from what is now modern day Iran, they charged onto the scene by destroying the...
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45:55
Tudor Origins of the Condom
7 June 2024What were condoms like in Tudor times? Before you were able to pop to the supermarket to pick some up, where did people buy them?
Joining...
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38:18
The Anarchy: Disruptive Women
7 June 2024The Anarchy is an intriguing and often forgotten period of history. There are fascinating characters and moments of deep political importance...
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39:57
Inside North Korea
6 June 2024With closed borders, a totalitarian regime, electricity blackouts and widespread poverty, North Korea is a brutal place to survive; even...
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32:14
Pegasus Bridge: The First Assault of D-Day
6 June 2024Just after midnight on the 6th of June, 1944, 181 British glider-borne infantry crashed to earth in the Normandy countryside. They clambered out...
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29:17
D-Day: The Deception that Made it Possible
6 June 2024Please note that this episode contains explicit language.
On the 29th of May, 1944, less than a week before D-Day, General George S. Patton...
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1:45:53
D-Day: The Land Invasion
6 June 2024Dan and military historian Stephen Fischer record a moment by moment play of the dramatic and bloody first crucial hour and a half of D-day, as it...
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26:41
D-Day: The Air Invasion
6 June 2024In the second episode of our D-Day series, we look to the skies. In the build-up to Operation Overlord, thousands of Allied pilots in heavy...
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51:27
D-Day: The Sea Invasion
6 June 2024This is the often forgotten chapter of the D-Day story.
To begin our series for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, we turn to the...
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