History Hit Podcasts

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...

Iron Age Wales: Before the Romans

The residents of Britain during the Iron Age are often collectively called 'Celts'. However, both before and during the Roman occupation, this...

UFOs

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? A UFO maybe? Or is it some reflective Lichen? Where does the idea of an Unidentified Flying Object come from and are...

The Wars of the Roses: Endings

All things must end. This final special episode on the Wars of the Roses deals with a series of endings and considers what finding a date for the...

Benediction: Recreating Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon is one of the most famous poets of the 20th century. But he is also famous as a soldier, decorated for his bravery on the...

Medicine & Misogyny

Using leeches to suck the blood from patients, mercury pills, and removing limbs with NO anaesthetic - healthcare throughout history hasn’t...

Medieval Myths and Legends

Various legends, characters and myths are associated with the medieval period. The British Isles is filled with prehistoric monuments - from...