Podcasts

Culture of Prosperity

Medieval Muslims imagined themselves as scholarly warriors, poets, and philosophers, knights, and cavaliers. This elite culture and the way it...

Napoleon's Greatest Victory: Austerlitz

December 2nd is a special date for those fascinated by Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only is this the date he crowned himself Emperor of France in 1804,...

Henry VIII's Billionaire Wardrobe

Henry VIII was described as the 'best dressed sovereign in the world' by the Venetian ambassador Sebastian Giustinian. The Tudor King spent the...

How Brutish were our Ancestors?

Was life for our ancient ancestors brutish and short or did they exist as noble savages, free and living in harmony with nature and each other?...

Maya Sacrifice & Warfare

With a history stretching back thousands of years, it’s about time that the Ancients started looking at the extraordinary Maya civilisation in...

Marie Curie

In a leaky shed in Paris, Marie Curie turned two tons of pitchblende (aka special rocks) into a single test tube of radium chloride - its green...

Henry I of England

The fourth son of William the Conqueror, King Henry I, is remembered as a harsh but effective ruler. He skilfully manipulated the barons in...

How Fear Shaped History

What scares you? Some of humankind’s most common fears and phobias include fear of heights, flying, spiders, snakes, injections, germs, public...

WW2: Life in Tanks

What was it actually like to operate a tank during the Second World War?

In this episode, we explore the iron belly of tank warfare through...

Prehistoric North America

What could the prehistoric artists of North America have in common with the graffiti artists of today? Picked into the rocks of southwestern...

Girls on Stage and Page in the Elizabethan Age

Contrary to the idea that the early modern stage was male-dominated, girls actually played an active part in religious dramas, civic pageants,...

Homo floresiensis: Early Human ‘Hobbit’

An extinct species of archaic human, Homo floresiensis has been discovered solely in one, very specific location - the Indonesian island of...