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
32:11
Hannibal vs Rome: The Road to Cannae
31 July 2022One of the greatest military commanders in history - it's no wonder Hannibal and Rome so frequently fought.
In the second episode of our...
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53:13
Eleanor of Aquitaine
30 July 2022From an age in which women’s lives were obscured and poorly recorded, one shines brightly from the darkness. Eleanor of Aquitaine - born...
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30:19
North Korea & the Kim Dynasty
29 July 2022With Kim Jong-un having issued a new threat of nuclear war just this week on the anniversary of the Korean War armistice in 1953, we take a look...
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49:48
Witches
29 July 2022What comes to your mind when you think of a witch? Broomsticks? Black cats? Warts?
Early modern witchcraft expert, John Callow, is Betwixt...
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23:53
The Long Death of Slavery
28 July 2022We celebrate abolition - in Haiti after the revolution, in the British Empire in 1833, and in the United States during the Civil War. Yet, over...
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33:01
The Tudors and Food
28 July 2022What food - and how much of it - did people eat in the Tudor period? Where did they get it? When did they eat it? What arrangements for cookery...
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29:29
Yorkshire's Roman Mystery: The Ryedale Hoard
28 July 2022In May 2020, four unique Roman artefacts were unearthed near Ampleforth, North Yorkshire by two amateur metal detectorists. A bronze bust that is...
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41:01
Anne of Cleves
27 July 2022Anne of Cleves was the ‘last woman standing’ of Henry VIII’s wives and the only one buried in Westminster Abbey. How did she manage it? Was...
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32:46
Contactless Payment
27 July 2022*tap* *tap* *tap*
That’s the sound of physical cash being consigned to the dustbin of history by us tapping cards/phones/watches...
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23:47
A Short History of the Ottoman Empire
26 July 2022The Ottoman Empire was gigantic; at one point it reached the walls of Vienna to the Persian Gulf and beyond. It was established at the end of the...
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29:51
The Norse Walrus Ivory Trade Crash
26 July 2022The first of Greenland’s Viking settlements were established in the tenth century. But by the fifteenth century, they had all but vanished,...
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40:20
America's Serial Killer Family
26 July 2022When the Bender family disappeared from Labette county, Kansas, in 1873, they left a dozen bodies buried in the garden of their home.
But...
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23:23
The Biggest Prison Breakout of WW2
25 July 2022During World War II, in the town of Cowra in central New South Wales, thousands of Japanese prisoners of war were held in a POW camp. On the icy...
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37:57
The Kosovo War
25 July 2022The war in Ukraine has left many of us aghast that open armed conflict could again erupt on the European continent... except the idea of a...
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40:56
The Cultural Impact of Colonisation
25 July 2022Ruffs, Pipes and Pearls
When Francis Drake returned home from the Spanish West Indies, he carried with him pearls to present as gifts to...
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31:20
Putin, Power and Personality
24 July 2022Vladimir Putin has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm. He invades his neighbours, most recently...
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29:11
Air Conditioning
24 July 2022No summer blockbuster. No Las Vegas and no skyscrapers in Dubai. No chocolate bars when the weather gets hot. Air conditioning is one of those...
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39:10
Hannibal vs Rome: Terror at Trasimene
24 July 2022Towards the beginning of the Second Punic War on 21 June 217 BC, a Carthaginian force under Hannibal launched a vicious ambush on a Roman army...
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43:43
Going to Church in Medieval England
23 July 2022Parish churches were at the heart of English social life in the Middle Ages. But how did they come into existence? Who staffed them? And how were...
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27:37
The Korean War: The Korean Experience
22 July 2022In July 1945 when Korea was divided by the 38th parallel into North and South, families were suddenly torn apart by a border that would change the...
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44:06
Sex & Shopping
22 July 2022From facilitating affairs to public facilities, how has shopping changed our lives?
And where did the one-stop shop, the palace of splendour...
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