History Hit Podcasts

The Wars of the Roses: Dynastic War

Part one of this comprehensive trilogy covering the Wars of the Roses left the Yorkist lords attained and in exile. From this point, the 15th...

Sex Toys

Hidden in bedside tables or proudly displayed on mantelpieces, wherever you keep them (if you do), sex toys have come a long way since the first...

Post Traumatic Stress: A History of War Trauma

Whether talking about shell shock, war neurosis, combat trauma or PTSD; the impacts of war zones on those who fight in them or encounter them have...

How to Survive in Medieval England

If you travelled back in time to the Medieval period this very second, do you think you would survive? The short answer is probably not. If you...

The Founding of Jamestown

415 years ago this month, 104 English men and boys landed in North America and established a settlement they called Jamestown in...

Climate Optimism with Lily Cole

Environmental activist and model Lily Cole is On Jimmy’s Farm to discuss how we can protect the planet we love, and the healing power of...

The Birth of Physiology

The treatment of mental health has been rapidly growing and improving over the past few decades, but it actually goes back thousands of...

Codebreaking at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park, Britain's key decryption centre during WWI, is known for the success of breaking the Nazi Enigma codes - experts have suggested...

Operation Pedestal with Sir Max Hastings

By the summer of 1942 Malta had been under siege by Axis forces for over a year and the situation on the island was bleak with food and fuel...

Prozac

How — and why — did Prozac become the best-selling antidepressant of all time? 

As it is Mental Health Awareness Week, we are...

Mental Health in Victorian Britain

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK so we’ve got a special episode exploring the surprising way Victorians approached mental...

The First English Autobiographer: Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe was an English Christian mystic, known for writing "The Book of Margery Kempe", a work considered by some to be the first...

Bedlam

Bedlam: a scene of uproar and confusion, a noisy situation with no order or, originally, the slang name for a mental hospital in London… which...

The 1650s: Britain's Decade Without a Crown

In 1649 Britain was engulfed by revolution. Charles I was executed for treason and within weeks the English monarchy had been abolished and the...

How to Treat Depression in 17th Century England

To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, Not Just the Tudors casts a 21st century eye over "one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and...

Black Ops: A Life in the CIA

Enrique ‘Ric’ Prado found himself in his first firefight at age seven. The son of a middle-class Cuban family caught in the midst of the...

VE Day

For most of us, VE Day conjures up black and white images of carefree servicemen and women dancing and beaming in Trafalgar Square, of Churchill...

LSD

How did LSD go from accidental discovery to the counter cultures go to drug?

On April 19th 1943 Albert Hoffman had the first ever LSD trip...

Pandora

According to Greek myth, Pandora was the first human woman - moulded from the earth by Hephaestus on the instruction of Zeus himself.

We've...

The Wars of the Roses: Origins

The Wars of the Roses is a complex and fascinating period of English history that dominates the second half of the 15th century and leads to the...

Declaring The War On Drugs

As the Cold War came to an end, US President George H.W. Bush defined his 1992 election bid in terms of the War on Drugs. It was said that there...