History Hit Podcasts

The Nazi-Soviet Partnership

On 23 August 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed a pact in Moscow. This pact...

How Dogs Became Man's Best Friend

Mike Loades joined me on the podcast to talk about the history of dogs, and they are intertwined with human history.

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The Dambusters

On 16–17 May 1943, Royal Airforce Squadron 617 succeeded in Operation Chastise to use bouncing bombs to breach the Möhne and Edersee dams,...

Adolf Hitler: The War Years

At the beginning of 1940 Germany was at the pinnacle of its power. By May 1945 Hitler was dead and Germany had suffered a disastrous defeat....

The Garamantes: Farming the Sahara

Greco-Roman historians including Herodotus, Tacitus and Pliny the Elder would have us believe that the Garamantes were simple uncivilized cattle...

How Slavery Built Modern Britain

Padraic Scanlan joined me on the podcast to talk about how Britain rose to global power on the backs of enslaved workers. Modern Britain has...

Disinformation and the White Helmets in Syria

Chloe Hadjimatheou joined me on the podcast to talk about the death of James Le Mesurier, the man who co-founded the White Helmets, a Syrian civil...

The Atomic Bomb

On 6 August 1945, an American B29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over Hiroshima. Three days later, Nagasaki was at the...

Spartacus: Life or Legend?

‘I’m Spartacus!’ In the field of epic film making, the 1960 historical drama ‘Spartacus’, is legendary. Directed by Stanley Kibrick,...

Scotland's Enigmatic Ancient Structures

Brochs. Early archaeologists believed that they must have been built by the Danish, that the indigenous population could never have managed it. More...

Big Data and History

Dan Hoyer and Peter Turchin joined me on the podcast to talk about the new transdisciplinary field of Cliodynamics, which uses the tools of...

Soviet Spy Masters

Espionage. The word brings to mind the Cold War - Stasi informants and surveillance bugging in East Berlin. Or today’s media promoted anxieties...

Mary Queen of Scots with Kate Williams

Dan Snow and Kate Williams talk about the rise and fall of Mary Queen of Scots.

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Diary of an MP's Wife

Sasha Swire joined me on the podcast to talk about her diary, written during the Cameron years. Her husband was an MP and junior minister at the...

Germans at the Somme

The Battle of the Somme is remembered in Britain as one of the bloodiest events of the First World War, and perhaps all time. There were over a...

Charles Dickens

In today's episode, I was joined by John Mullan, Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. He has...

Old Testament Warriors

It’s probably the most famous book in the world, and it’s also essentially the only literary source which covers the genesis of warfare and the...

Ghost Hunter!

Kate Summerscale has written one of the Sunday Time books of the year exploring the world of poltergeists and ghosts in the build up to the Second...

German Plots Against Hitler

They may even have helped Adolf Hitler to reach power in 1933, but at the very top of the German hierachy some brave insurgents had begun, by 1936,...

Sylvia Pankhurst

Rachel Holmes joined me on the podcast to discuss the life of British suffragette and socialist Sylvia Pankhurst. Sylvia found her voice fighting...

Spartacus: Life or Legend?

‘I’m Spartacus!’ In the field of epic film making, the 1960 historical drama ‘Spartacus’, is legendary. Directed by Stanley Kubrick,...