History Hit Podcasts

Jericho

The ancient city of Jericho is often thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the world. Made famous by the biblical tale of...

The Ancient Origins Of Sex

Going back hundreds of thousands of years, bumping uglies had to start somewhere.

What was the first sexual position? Was sex even for...

The WW2 Witch Trial of Hellish Nell

What made a working class woman from Edinburgh become such a threat to British intelligence services during the Second World War, that they tried...

The Tet Offensive: Turning Point of the Vietnam War?

January, 1968. Fighting in Vietnam has been ongoing since the 1950s. Ho Chi Minh and the leaders of the communist forces in Hanoi have concocted a...

Tower of London: Most Infamous Prisoners

From William Wallace and King Henry VI, to Anne Boleyn and Sir Walter Raleigh, London's iconic Tower of London has held some of history's most...

How to Survive in Ancient Rome

This episode contains a reference to animal cruelty

Would you be able to survive in ancient Rome?

Today, Tristan Hughes is joined by...

Medieval Werewolves, Ghosts & Zombies

How did Medieval people fight against the Undead? What motivated their Ghosts? And why do stories of Werewolves persist until today?

Anthony...

Princes in the Tower: The Tudor Pretenders?

The unsolved mystery of what happened to the Princes in the Tower - Edward V and Richard, Duke of York - is possibly English history’s greatest...

3. Thomas Cochrane: From Disgrace to Freedom Fighter

3/3. After a meteoric rise to fame, Cochrane finds himself in front of a court and stripped of his titles for fraud on the London Stock Exchange....

Napoleon's Penis & Other Iconic Body Parts From History

Perhaps without you realising it, history is marked by iconic body parts.

From Frida Khalo’s monobrow, to Queen Victoria's swollen armpit,...

The Romanovs

The Romanov family were the first imperial dynasty to rule Russia, reigning from the early seventeenth century until the Russian Revolution of...

The Tudors & the American West Coast

In the summer of 1579, Francis Drake had to land in a ‘fair and good bay’ on the western coast of the New World when his ship - The Golden...

Tudors in Love

From Henry VIII declaring himself as the ‘loyal and most assured servant’ of Anne Boleyn to the poems lavished on Elizabeth I by her suitors,...

How To Keep Fit in the Middle Ages

If your new year's resolutions include getting more exercise, drinking less, or eating well, you might be surprised to know that medieval people...

Exploding Kings & Red Hot Pokers: Gruesome Deaths of Monarchs

Edward II died by red-hot poker. William the Conqueror exploded on his way into the coffin. Mary II went down covered in so many pustules she was...

Fall of the Aztec Empire

The Aztec Empire was a large and sophisticated one, stretching at its height from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico. But in August 1521,...

Zeus

Zeus, the chief deity in Greek mythology, is the Olympian god of sky and thunder, and is king of all other gods and men.

His tale is one of...

The Slave Revolt That Created A Country

Haiti was under French colonial rule in 1791 when the revolution began, resulting in the largest and most successful slave revolt in modern...

Prohibition

On 17 January 1920, the 18th Amendment came into effect in the United States. It made the manufacture, sale and transportation of 'intoxicating...

The Black Medici Prince of Florence

In the cut-throat world of Renaissance Florence, Alessandro - the illegitimate son of a Duke and a mixed-race servant - attempts to reassert the...

Blood Countess of Hungary: Sixteenth Century Serial Killer

The inspiration behind countless gothic novels, Countess Elizabeth Báthory is said to be one of the most prolific serial killers of all time,...