History Hit Podcasts

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...

WWII Britain: The Home Guard's Silent Assassins

WWII Britain's Home Guard wasn't a bumbling dad's army but in fact included factions of highly trained silent killers and spies hiding out in...

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology may seem like something from a sci-fi movie plot, but it’s a very real thing and has likely affected many areas of your life,...

Chairman Mao

Leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1949 until his death in 1976, Chairman Mao reshaped the nation's course of history, founding the...

How The North Turned Christian

Christianity's inroads into the pagan north of England began with the marriage of Æthelburh of Kent to King Edwin of Northumbria. A...

Gay Identity in Nazi Germany

Berlin in the early 1930s was a place of incredible liberation for its queer community. 

There were over 100 gay clubs, and Magnus...

Elizabeth I's War with Ireland

Queen Elizabeth I, Gloriana, victor over the Spanish and patron of the arts ushered in a Golden Age for England. But she was also Queen of...

Pocahontas: The True Story

Despite her's being a household name, how much do we really know about Pocahontas? Where did she come from? How old was she? And what was her real...

City of Peace

What would a visitor have seen entering the City of Peace? Deana and Ali tour the medieval metropolis that is Baghdad. Capital city of the Abbasid...

Battle of Kursk with James Holland

This year marks 80 years since one of the more ferocious clashes of the Second World War: the Battle of Kursk. With a combined 8,000 tanks between...

Stealing the Crown Jewels with Al Murray

In 1671, an Anglo-Irish officer, the self-styled Colonel Blood attempted to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. The thwarted...

The Ancient Greek Computer: The Antikythera Mechanism

In the recent Indiana Jones: The Dial of Destiny movie, the Antikythera Mechanism is used for time travel but in reality it was actually more of a...