History Hit Podcasts

USA at War: Who Funds it?

The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan marked the beginning of the longest wars in US history - but how were they funded for upwards of two...

Falklands40: Battle of Goose Green

Please note that this episode contains descriptions of combat and some explicit language.

At the Battle of Goose Green the Second Battalion...

Saint Brigid: Turning Bathwater into Beer

Saint Patrick is a household name, celebrated around the globe every March. But what do we know about another of Ireland’s patron saints,...

Tattoos

“As ancient as time, as modern as tomorrow.’

Why have tattoos been reinvented in so many cultures - and with so many different meanings...

The Wars of the Roses: Rise of the Beauforts

As part of our Wars of the Roses special month, there’s one family that demands more attention than they usually get: The...

The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

He was nicknamed ‘the man with the iron heart’ by Hitler, and was tipped to be his successor. But on the 27th May 1942, Reinhard Heydrich was...

Death, Dissection & Grave Robbing

Genital warts fashioned into necklaces, teeth harvested from the battlefield and blood vessels eternalised in wax: these are some of the things...

SAS Founder: Warrior or Phoney?

David Stirling was an aristocrat, innovator and special forces legend that earned him the nickname 'The Phantom Major'. His formation of the...

History of the Countryside with Matthew Kelly

The English Countryside. An ever changing environment, or a static, preserved landscape in the service of humanity since the dawn of...

The Man Who Broke Michelangelo's Nose

Pietro Torrigiano is credited with introducing Renaissance art to England in the early years of the 16th century and designed the tomb of Henry...

Greeks vs Romans: Empires at War

Greece and Rome, they are the heavyweights of ancient history. But what happened when they came face to face with one another? Tristan is once...

The Treadmill

Before they found their way into gyms, treadmills had a much darker history. In the 19th Century, they could most commonly be found in...

Moscow 1941: Hitler's Nemesis with Jonathan Dimbleby

While the Allies reeled from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and Hitler's declaration of war on the United States, a ferocious battle was...

The Telescope

The telescope marked, arguably, the first invention to truly transform a human sense. For the first time it allowed our eyes to observe the...

Our Obsession with Nostalgia

Longing to go back to the 'good old days' is nothing new. For hundreds of years, the British have mourned the loss of older national identities...

Vasectomy

What do you think of when you think of birth control? Is it condoms, IUDs, the pill? What about vasectomies?

From monkey testicles to...

Trade After the Roman Empire

Rivers, Silk roads and camels - how did international trade adapt and survive beyond the Roman Empire into the middle ages? In today's episode Cat...

How Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt Divided Berlin

Berlin’s fate was sealed at the 1945 Yalta Conference: the city, along with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up between the victorious...

Religious Exiles in Early Modern Europe

Facing persecution in Elizabethan England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than...

Killer Robots: AI at War

What if we could take people completely out of the equation when planning military strikes? ‘Lethal autonomous weapons systems’ use...

Putin's Rise to Power

Catherine Belton joins Dan on the podcast to discuss the remarkable story of Vladimir Putin's rise to power. After working from 2007-2013 as the...