History Hit Podcasts

Tudor Sex

WARNING: This episode includes adult themes and explicit words.

Why did Henry VIII want everyone to know about his wet dreams? What animal...

Diving for Lost Slave Shipwrecks

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, European slave traders forcibly uprooted millions of African people and shipped them across the Atlantic in...

Sex & The Tudors

There’s not an infinite number of ways that humans can act on sexual desire. Human bodies haven’t changed, but the cultural landscape around...

Gardening for Mental Health with Sue Stuart-Smith

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week this month, and Jimmy will be joined by a selection of guests who will tell us how nature can have an impact...

The World of Stonehenge

Described as the "most important piece of prehistoric art to be found in Britain in the last 100 years", an elaborately decorated 5000 year-old...

Agincourt: Myths Explained

Agincourt is a name which conjures an image of plucky English archers taking on and defeating the arrogant and aristocratic knights of the French...

Hitler's American Gamble

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941 remains etched in public memory as the turning point of WW2. But in fact, it was Hitler’s...

Small Inventions, Big Impact

Staples, paper clips, and washers - small inventions that improve our everyday lives and have even saved lives. In this episode Dallas is joined by...

Death, Desire, Power & Scandal: The House of Dudley

The Dudleys were the most brilliant, bold and manipulative of power-hungry Tudor families. Every Tudor monarch made their name either with a...

Psychiatric Drugs

*WARNING this episode includes adult themes and conversations about mental health and drug use.*

In 2020, the UK government revealed that...

Valkyries

In Norse mythology, the Valkyries determine who lived and who died on the battlefield. Translated as “Chooser of the Fallen” in Old Norse,...

John Donne: Poet of Love, Sex and Death

John Donne (1572-1631) lived myriad lives. Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling,...

Walter Raleigh's Quest for El Dorado

Sir Walter Raleigh remains one of the enduring names from the Elizabethan era. He was a true Renaissance man - a statesman, soldier, writer,...

Was WW2 Stalin’s War?

Stalin, the 'Man of Steel' and supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century, is readily associated with his ruthless regime inside...

Falklands40: The Sinking of the Belgrano

On this day 40 years ago the HMS Conqueror, a British nuclear submarine, propelled silently through the South Atlantic stalking the Argentinian...

Robots

Many of us became familiar with robots through science fiction — R2D2, C3PO, Rosie from the Jetsons, Marvin the Paranoid Android. In comparison,...

The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

The rise of Christianity in the first few centuries AD is one of the most significant stories in world history. But it’s also an incredibly...

Falklands40: The Black Buck Raids

The Falkland Islands lie 8000 miles from Britain making the Falklands War a particularly tricky one to fight; it required some seriously...

Medieval Masters of Invention

In today’s Gone Medieval podcast, Matt Lewis joins Dallas Campbell - host of our sister podcast Patented: History of Inventions - to explore...

Shoes

I’m something that you wear, I always come in twos, I get put on your feet. I’m not socks, I am … SHOES.

Humans have been protecting...

Stalin's Secret Operation: The Katyn Massacre

As the reality of atrocities in Ukraine continues to be uncovered, we look back at a massacre of Polish officers in the Second World War, the...