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
35:27
Lenin's Rise & Fall
17 February 2023Vladimir Lenin is one name that is known across the world. Rising to power during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, he was the first Communist...
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34:19
Hag Horror: Older Women in Film
17 February 2023Why are women over the age of 50 so often cast as terrifying, decaying, manipulative people in Hollywood? When did this start? And how might it...
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50:50
Aphrodite: Goddess of Love
17 February 2023This episode contains graphic references.
Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty in Greek mythology.
Her origin story is one of...
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33:04
Harriet Tubman
16 February 2023Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most famous African American woman in the world, but she’s usually remembered in two-dimensions - the hero of the...
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29:18
The Colossus of Rhodes
16 February 2023One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Colossus of Rhodes has lived on in legend - with fact and fiction often blurring. A 108 ft high...
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39:26
The House of Guise: Europe's Most Murderous Dynasty?
16 February 2023The rich and powerful Guise family was one of the most treacherous and bloodthirsty in sixteenth-century France. They whipped up religious...
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29:08
Spies in the Sky
16 February 2023Spy balloons are really blowing up right now. The US has shot down one confirmed Chinese balloon and has engaged several other unidentified flying...
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36:29
Archimedes & the Eureka! moment
15 February 2023It’s the most famous bath of all time. But what exactly was Archimedes so excited about?
We discover the truth behind the legend of...
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34:19
The Tragedy of HMS Captain
15 February 2023As a crew of over 500 boarded HMS Captain in the autumn of 1870, none of them knew their fate was sealed in the offices of the dockyard. The...
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52:23
Agrippina: Rome's Most Powerful Empress?
14 February 2023She was a woman of unparalleled power, descended from Julius Caesar and Augustus. But how did she get there, whilst most of the rest of her family...
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41:22
Sandby Borg Massacre: The Evidence
14 February 2023When archeologists uncovered a jewellery hoard buried beneath the Iron Age ring fort of Sandby Borg in 2010, their excitement was palpable. Yet...
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33:45
Nicholas Said: The Extraordinary Life of a Traveller, Soldier and Translator
14 February 2023This is the remarkable story of Nicholas Said - born into a wealthy Muslim family in the ancient Bornu Empire, his childhood was interrupted when,...
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34:20
A History of New York in 3 Hotels
13 February 2023The Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza and the Algonquin all tell their own stories of New York City. Don talks to Anthony Melchiorri, host of Travel...
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49:22
Children in Tudor England
13 February 2023What was it like to grow up in Tudor England? How were children cared for, what did they play with, and which subjects were they taught?
In...
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20:44
How The USA Supplied WW2
13 February 2023Before America officially entered the Second World War in December 1941, it offered the allies significant support in terms of military supplies...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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