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
33:12
The Muppets Take Moscow!
13 February 2023Car bombings, assassinations and a military takeover: these are just some of the things American TV producer Natasha Lance Rogoff and her team...
Listen Now
27:20
Snakes & Ladders: Tantric Mysticism, Cosmic Serpents and the Meaning of Life
12 February 2023It turns out that all those times you played Snakes and Ladders (Chutes and Ladders) as a child you were playing a game that once symbolised the...
Listen Now
36:16
Cleopatra's Daughter
12 February 2023Cleopatra VII is one of the most famous individuals from the ancient world. The final Queen of Ancient Egypt, and a woman who used her position to...
Listen Now
36:33
Origins of Treason in England
11 February 2023First defined in law in 1352, treason remains one of the most serious crimes a person can commit. And, remarkably, the core of the original...
Listen Now
35:00
Food, Sin & Shame
10 February 2023Why might a medieval nun drink the pus of an ill patient? Where does ‘fishy Friday’ come from? And what does all of this have to do with...
Listen Now
38:47
Nuclear Near Misses
10 February 2023What happens when a nuclear bomb is accidentally dropped onto foreign soil? Or when a nuke just goes missing? Rather worryingly, it happens more...
Listen Now
29:13
Pre-historic Women
10 February 2023For years we've understood that in the prehistoric hunter-gather world, the men did the hunting and the women did the gathering. Prehistoric man...
Listen Now
46:46
The Battle of Valcour Island
9 February 2023The first naval engagement of the American War of Independence took place on Lake Champlain, which straddles modern-day New York state and Vermont...
Listen Now
50:05
The Murder of Christopher Marlowe
9 February 2023This month on Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb investigates four of history’s most notorious murders and brutal crimes.
In...
Listen Now
55:55
Homo Erectus
9 February 2023Before modern humans walked the earth, and even before the Neanderthals, Homo Erectus dominated the plains of Africa. Eventually migrating across...
Listen Now
36:44
Dan, The Skeletons and The Battle of Waterloo
9 February 2023Dan Snow’s History Hit hits the road to Belgium and the Waterloo Battlefield to see the soldier’s bones found in an attic earlier this...
Listen Now
31:51
Farming
8 February 2023Exactly when, where, how, why our ancient ancestors ‘invented’ farming is one of the great questions of archaeology.
Surely if we can...
Listen Now
36:47
Medieval Leaders and Queens: Aethelfled, Hildegard & Jadwiga.
8 February 2023Aethelfled, a warrior queen who crushed the Vikings, Jadwiga, the first Queen Regent of Poland and Hildegard of Bingen, an 11th-century polymath...
Listen Now
26:34
The Monastery That Held Back the Vikings
7 February 2023For monks and monasteries in Anglo-Saxon England, obliteration by Vikings was a constant threat. Like Lindisfarne - first raided in 793 AD -...
Listen Now
28:59
The Real Casanova
7 February 2023Can you imagine being SO smooth-talking and seductive your surname becomes an actual noun in the dictionary to describe someone who has a...
Listen Now
27:02
The Real Casanova
7 February 2023Content Warning This episode contains adult themes and language that may not be suitable for children.
On this special network crossover...
Listen Now
41:15
Jamestown
6 February 2023In late April 1607, three ships carrying a hundred men and boys arrived in Chesapeake Bay, having set sail from London four months earlier. They...
Listen Now
41:33
The History of Britain's Black Airmen
6 February 2023When you think of some of the remarkable feats of airpower throughout history, you might think of the Dambusters, or the Battle of Britain. But...
Listen Now
28:31
Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s Queen Consort
6 February 2023Charles I's Queen Henrietta Maria was perhaps the most reviled consort to have worn the crown of Britain's three kingdoms. To this day, she...
Listen Now
30:35
The Murder of Charles I
6 February 2023It's 1660 and General Edward Whalley and his son-in-law board a ship bound for the New World. They're on the run, wanted for the murder of King...
Listen Now
41:40
Spam: Birth of a Monster
5 February 2023Spam Spam Spam, glorious Spam! Who invented Spam Emails? Just how much Spam activity is there online? And how will we survive once Spam AI gets...
Listen Now