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
43:42
The Glencoe Massacre
14 March 2023Glencoe in the Scottish highlands is a beautiful landscape with a dark past. While folks from all over the world travel to this beautiful valley...
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29:39
The Erie Canal
13 March 2023Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. Alice Shay tells Don how...
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42:49
The US & the Iraq War
13 March 20232023 marks the 20th anniversary of the US and its allies invading Iraq under the pretence to remove dictator Saddam Hussein and his apparent...
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1:02:41
Anne Boleyn’s Final Year
13 March 2023Anne Boleyn’s reputation is buried beneath centuries of labels: home-wrecker, seductress, opportunist, witch, romantic victim, Protestant...
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41:45
Ares: God of War
12 March 2023Ares is the god of war and bloodlust in Greek mythology.One of the twelve Olympian gods, Ares was often depicted as a fierce and bloodthirsty...
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32:08
Cold War Origins of Tanks in Ukraine
12 March 2023The war in Ukraine is being fought with tanks designed in the Cold War. The US Abrams. The German Leopard. The British Challenger. All have been...
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36:58
Drag Queens
12 March 2023RuPaul. Lily Savage. Bianca Del Rio. Dame Edna Everage. These iconic drag queens are household names, but have you ever heard about Princess...
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33:25
Battle of Towton
11 March 2023What do skeletal remains from the fifteenth century tell us about one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Wars of the Roses?...
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42:35
Women Rebels: The Spanish Civil War
10 March 2023From aristocratic rebels to Civil Rights activists, tens of thousands of people travelled to Spain during the Civil War - and not all of them were...
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43:46
Fighter Pilots of the Korean War
10 March 2023The Korean War was a vital moment in world history - changing geopolitics on the Korean Peninsula and beyond forever. With nearly 5 million dead,...
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34:21
Samuel Adams
10 March 2023One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Samuel Adams was a political force of nature. Stacy Schiff tells Don how Adams, fuelled by...
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31:17
First Ladies of the United States
9 March 2023Don talks to former White House reporter Kate Andersen Brower about how the role of First Lady has changed - and stayed the same - since the...
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41:21
Septimius Severus
9 March 2023Given his incredible career, you'd perhaps expect the name of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus to be better known. Born in North Africa in 145AD,...
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47:51
The Myth of 'Western Civilisation'
9 March 2023'Western Civilisation' is often thought of as a continuous thread through the centuries - from classical antiquity to the countries of the modern...
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25:12
The Psychiatric Hospital that Fought the Nazis
9 March 2023There are descriptions of suffering early in this episode that some listeners may find distressing.
As hospitals and institutions across...
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29:27
The First Computer Program
8 March 2023This is the story of the first modern computer program and the extraordinary woman who wrote it, Klara von Neumann.
The program Klara wrote...
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29:44
The Women Who Organised the Battle of Britain
8 March 2023In a suburb of North-West London, among housing estates and residential streets lies a secret bunker, you may never have heard of it but it's one...
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41:59
From Eve to Austen: Women in Literature
7 March 2023Why might a woman have willingly confined herself to a cell for the rest of her life? Why have so many female authors in history published under...
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39:38
Medieval Women with Eleanor Janega
7 March 2023What made for the ideal woman in the Middle Ages? In her new book The Once and Future Sex, Dr. Eleanor Janega looks at what beauty,...
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27:38
Uniting Europe After WWII
7 March 2023Count Coudenhove-Kalergi was one of the most influential 20th Century European thinkers that you've never heard of. He was a pioneer of European...
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36:56
New Amsterdam
6 March 2023Before New York was New York, it was New Amsterdam. Dutch colonists arrived on the East Coast in the early 17th century, creating the New...
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