History Hit Podcasts

How to Prepare for Nuclear War

With Putin's war in Ukraine raging on, the threat of a nuclear conflict feels as real as ever. But since the Iron Curtain fell, our understanding...

Assassins vs Templars: The Knights Templar

An order of crusading monks draped in white robes marked with a red cross: the Knights Templar perhaps don’t sound that daunting when you first...

Roman Beast Hunts

This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and cruelty against animals.

The Romans were - and still are - infamous for the...

Ouija Board

The Ouija Board was patented in 1890. But in did not appear out of thin air. It was only one in a long, long line of devices attempting to pierce...

The Real Dick Whittington

Dick Whittington - who died 600 years ago this month - is a familiar name to generations of pantomime goers. But Richard Whittington’s real life...

Sordid Soho

From the Chevalier de Saint-Georges to the Merry Monarch to Madame Jojo and Madame Trenti, the district of Soho in London has played host to many...

WW2: What Happened at Yalta?

In early 1945, with an inevitable defeat of Nazi Germany on the horizon, the Allied leaders of the United States, Britain and Russia came together...

Cooking for Churchill: Georgina Landemare

Clear soup, Irish stew and steamed puddings - this was the war work of Georgina Landemare, the Churchills' longest-serving cook.

Throughout...

A History of America in 5 Foods

You are what you eat - and so is America. Various foods have played their part in the country’s history. Anna Zeide, author of US History in 15...

Sardinia: Mysteries of the Bronze Age

Shrouded in mystery, the Nuragic culture was an enigmatic Bronze Age Civilisation that lived on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. With their...

17th Century Revolutionary England

In the 17th Century, people experienced major social and economic problems that intertwined with religious disagreements and political debates....

The Great Storm of 1703

A Stuart time capsule has emerged from beneath the sand after 320 years. In early December 1703, barometers across South-Eastern England plunged...

The Electric Chair

In 1890, the Governor of New York called for a new method of capital punishment. A more modern, efficient, scientific method was being sought....

Islam vs Christendom

As two of humanity's great religions, Islam and Christianity have shaped much of the world's history. Empires across the globe have risen and...

How Norse Myths Shape The Way We Think

Thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the legends of Thor, Odin and Asgard are familiar to millions today. Yet the histories of these myths are...

Lord Byron: Incest, Adultery & Daddy Issues

How debaucherous do you have to be to be remembered as the original bad boy? How mad, bad and dangerous to know was Lord Byron? And how much of it...

A Short History of Bank Collapses

Looking back at the past few weeks, it seems like banks are collapsing left, right and centre; but what exactly does this mean for us? Are these...

Iroquois Confederacy

At its height the Iroquois Confederacy (or Haudenosaunee) - a union of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations - controlled lands...

Who Painted Anne Dudley? A Tudor Mystery

For centuries, the name of an accomplished and popular portrait painter in the court of Elizabeth I has remained unknown. The renowned art...

Saddam Hussein's Rise & Fall

Perhaps one of the best-known modern dictators, Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq for nearly 30 years before eventually being overthrown in 2003 by the US...

Soviet "Bone Music"

While rifling through a stall at a flea market in Leningrad- now St Petersburg- composer and music producer Stephen Coates came across something...