History Hit Podcasts

Spectrophilia: The Ghost Fetish

If you happen to be a Spectrophiliac, then October must be a particularly exciting time for you.

What is a spectrophiliac? Well, it's a...

Who were the Banū Mūsā brothers?

The Medieval scholars of Baghdad were obsessed with math and saw it as the ultimate harmony of the universe. Deana and Ali explore the lives and...

Battle of the Alamo

A 13 day siege. 90 minutes of fighting. An almost 200 year legacy and the most popular tourist site in the state of Texas.

The 1836 Battle...

HMS Terror: Cursed Arctic Expedition

Was ever a ship more aptly named? In 1845, HMS Terror (and its forgettably named sister ship HMS Erebus) set off from Victorian Britain. Their...

Burke & Hare: Scotland’s Most Notorious Serial Killers

They’re the most famous grave-robbers in the world…except they never actually robbed any graves. Discover the true story of Burke and Hare’s...

Goriest Murders in Ancient Rome

This episode is a bloody delight: from flesh-eating fish and humiliating deaths inside sacks, to a deadly re-enactment of the Icarus myth. For a...

The Origins of Halloween

From its prehistoric origins until today, Halloween has always had the Shiver of Terror running through it. First as a pagan festival of...

Shakespeare's son Hamnet with Maggie O'Farrell

When it comes to Shakespeare's biography and his inner life, there's a certain lack of evidence. But what if Shakespeare actually signposted us to...

The Murders That Shocked Georgian London

Laundress-turned-murderess, Sarah Malcolm horrified Georgian London in 1733 when she was found guilty of killing three women she worked for while...

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Debunking the Myths

On this special edition of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega pays a visit to our sister podcast Betwixt the Sheets to be the guest of its...

Hades: King of the Underworld

This episode contains references to death and sexual assault.

Hades is King of the the dead and the Underworld in Ancient Greek...

The Black Death: the Rise of Women, Witches & the Peasant’s Revolt

There’s not much good to come out of a plague, especially a bubonic plague in the 14th century. A pandemic which definitely didn't involve zoom...

Welcome to After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Introducing After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal, the podcast that takes you to the shadiest corners of the past, unpicking history’s...

President John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams didn't just share a name with his father. He also followed in his footsteps to take the Presidency, and then lose it after one...

Ötzi the Iceman

Ötzi, otherwise known as the Iceman, is a renowned glacial mummy uncovered in 1991 in the Tyrolean Alps between Italy and Austria. Found by...

Theoderic the Great

In the year 493, the leader of a vast confederation of Gothic warriors personally cut down Odoacer, the man famous for deposing the last Roman...

William the Silent, Father of the Netherlands

What encouraged a young man who had spent most of his formative years being raised by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to bite the hand that feeds...

Figures of Baghdad | Trailer

In Figures of Baghdad, we’ll get to know some of the great minds of the Abbasid Empire, all of whom are characters you can find in Assassin's...

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...

What if the South Won the Civil War?

What if the Civil War had ended differently, with the South seceding from the Union? Would slavery have continued? Would the southern states have...

Origins of Medieval Universities

The University of Vienna is one of the oldest in the world. Founded by Rudolph IV Habsburg in 1365, it has been teaching students for centuries....