History Hit Podcasts

How to Survive the Plague

A feature of outbreaks of plague between the 14th and 18th centuries was the publication of books and pamphlets, known as ‘plague tracts’,...

The Heist of the Century: The Missing Irish Crown Jewels

In the shadowy halls of Dublin Castle, 1907, a daring heist shook the British Empire. Four days before King Edward VII's royal visit, the...

Japanese in America: Railroads, Internment Camps & Little Tokyo

When the US turned to Japan looking for workers in the late 19th Century, they probably never foresaw that one day soon they would imprison those...

Massacre at Teutoburg Forest

2000 years ago, in the year 9 AD, a Roman Army walked into a trap deep in wilds of Germania. Over 15,000 men were massacred at Teutoburg Forest,...

Rewriting the First Crusade

The Crusades still capture the imagination today, for all of their professed good intentions they were also bloody ideological...

What The Ancient Greeks Got Wrong About The Female Body

Why did the Ancient Greeks depict a womb as an octopus in their textbooks?

Their writings and (mis)understandings of the female body might...

Machu Picchu: The Lost City

Part 1/4. Dan takes the podcast to the Peruvian Andes as he follows in the footsteps of intrepid American explorer Hiram Bingham who revealed...

President Woodrow Wilson: Progressive? Warmonger? Overrated?

The 20th Century is up and running and the next President in our series, Woodrow Wilson, is in for a challenge. Reconstruction is over, Europe is...

The Romans and India with William Dalrymple

Ancient India was the single greatest trading partner of the Roman Empire. For centuries, Indian sailors navigated the Indian Ocean and Red Sea to...

The Black Death: The Deadliest Plague

It was beyond Biblical in its horror. Around half of all Europeans are estimated to have died in the Black Death. Death ravaged towns and...

Elizabeth I Slept Here: Longleat House

Queen Elizabeth I’s travels round England - known as ‘progresses’ - were never a quick day-trip or city break. They involved scores of...

Hitler's V1 & V2 Rockets

As the world closed in on the Third Reich in the final chapter of World War Two, a desperate Adolf Hitler turned to his so-called 'Revenge...

Smallfolk Under Siege: Visions of Medieval Violence

In the year 940 in North-Eastern France, a young peasant girl began to experience vivid visions that mirrored the brutal conflict engulfing her...

Could You Survive Victorian Surgery?

What was it really like inside a Victorian operating theatre? Did people really smoke cigars and eat oysters while they watched high risk surgery...

British Brides for American Tobacco: A Tudor Trade

In 1621 the Virginia Company of London put out a call for young, handsome and honestly educated women to become wives for the planters in its new...

The Alexandrian War: Caesar's Mistake

In 47 BCE, Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt as a victorious general, ready to make an easy alliance with the Pharaoh. Instead, he found himself...

Omens, Signs and False Prophets

In the autumn of 1621, hundreds of starlings were seen fighting in the sky above Cork. The following May, the city was ravaged by fire.  The...

Macabre Death of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was a poster boy for the macabre whose work thrilled readers throughout America and beyond. How did he end up in a gutter in...

How WWII Started

On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, France and the United Kingdom declared war on the Third Reich. This was the...

Battle of Teutoburg Forest: The Roman Invasion

Tristan Hughes travels to the site of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, one of the most epic defeats of the Roman army when an alliance of...

Tolkien: Middle Earth & the Middle Ages

For millions of Tolkien lovers around the world, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are more than just fantasy fiction. Their rich mix of...