Dan visits one of the greatest objects on planet Earth: USS Texas, the only dreadnought of its kind anywhere in the world. The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. USS Texas was a second-class battleship built by the United States in the early 1890s, the f...

I was thrilled to be joined again by one of our most popular guests, John Nichol. John shot to international prominence when he served in the first Gulf War. When his Tornado was shot down in 1991 he was captured, tortured and paraded on television provoking worldwide condemnation and leaving one...

I was thrilled to be joined by H. W. Brands. He's authored 30 books on American history and his works have twice been selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. On the 70 year anniversary since the start of the Korean War, he took me through the remarkable course of events which saw an immense...

Dan made a stupid comment on twitter. Irish history twitter melted down. So we did a pod on why. 100 years ago the Irish War of Independence was being fought in Ireland as the UK government sought to keep Ireland within the Union while the Irish independence fighters seized control of much of the...

Roger Moorhouse discusses the Polish campaign of 1939 comprehensively, separating the myths from reality and outlining the abject horrors that the Poles suffered under the twin occupation of the Nazis and the Soviets. Producer: Peter Curry

The Battle of Prokhorovka was one of the largest tank battles in military history. Taking place on the Eastern Front, it was fought on 12 July 1943 as part of the wider Battle of Kursk. Two elite SS divisions were obliterated, and about 300 panzers were destroyed as the Red Army began to turn the...

Dan picks up from where he and Professor Ali Ansari left off as they discuss the history of Iran in the 20th century. Ali Ansari breaks down the White Revolution, the Islamic Revolution and why western negotiators have struggled to agree terms about Iran's nuclear program in recent years. Produce...

In the February 1945, the U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin met at an old Romanov palace in Crimea, which had once been enjoyed by Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Over eight days the 'Big Three' discussed and debated iss...

Today marks 100 years since Nancy Astor, the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons, was elected. Rachel Reeves, the current Labour candidate for Leeds West and a former member of the Shadow Cabinet, chats to Dan about the history of women in Westminster. She highlights the challeng...

Of all the clubs in the world, perhaps the most extraordinary is the Guinea Pig Club, a group of Second World War veterans that suffered terrible injuries and were then treated by pioneering surgeon Archibald McIndoe. Today there are only a handful left. Dan visits Jan Stangreciuk, one of the few...

Chris Bryant joined me on the podcast to tell the story of the gay British politicians who were among the very first to warn Britain about the danger of Hitler’s rise to power and the most vocal in demanding an end to the government’s policy of appeasement.

Udham Singh, legendary in India but barely known in the western world, was present when the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar was perpetrated. Legend has it he picked a clump of bloody soil and swore to avenge the massacre. Twenty-one years later, he walked into Caxton Hall in order to shoot ...

101 years ago this week, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a serious stroke which left him prone to "disorders of emotion, impaired impulse control, and defective judgment." As President Trump confronts his own health crisis, I talked to John Milton Cooper, Jr., Professor Emeritus at the Universi...

Getting to the moon was no easy feat, no matter how confident Kennedy may have sounded in his famous 1961 speech. NASA built a team from the ground up, and there were plenty of moments where it seemed as if they weren't going to make it. Fong tells stories of just how close they came, and how ris...

Lipika Pelham talks to Dan about the Dutch Jewish community in Amsterdam, how the Sephardim Jews ended up there and what they endured during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Tim Cook joined me on the pod to discuss how Canadian contributions are frequently overlooked or diminished in discussions of the War. Most major war histories are written by British or American authors, who give little credit to the Canadians as a separate fighting force.

Ben Monro-Davies is a journalist who has interviewed all the surviving participants of the cabinet meeting in which Margaret Thatcher announced her decision to resign. He and Dan listen to the recordings, and chat about their significance, and the way Mrs Thatcher and others responded to her fall...

9 November 1989 was one of the most significant dates in 20th century history. The Berlin Wall fell, changing the entire geopolitical situation and marking the start of the decline of Russia's world standing. Author Rory MacLean was present when the Wall fell, and he talks about the jubilation of...

80 years ago this week, one of the most extraordinary evacuations in military history was under way: 'The Miracle of Dunkirk'. But how, and why, did the Allies find themselves in such a dire position? On this podcast, I was joined by one of the great historians of the Second World War, Peter Cadd...

Duncan Weldon's new Radio 4 Series looks at the economics of the Second World War, and crucial they were in determining the outcome of the war. He joins Dan to talk about why no participants expected France to fall so quickly, and why Norway mattered economically. Producer: Peter Curry

Did Hitler shoot himself in the Führerbunker, or did he slip past the Soviets and escape to South America? There have been innumerable documentaries, newspaper articles and twitter threads written by conspiracy theorists to back up the case for escape. Luke Daly Groves has made it his mission to ...

In October 1942 the British launched a small raid on the Channel Island of Sark. A cast of characters who gave their colleague Ian Fleming ideas for a new secret agent character, James Bond, crept ashore and captured German prisoners. A scuffle broke out and two of them were killed. The commandos...

Wolfe Frank, who was the Chief Interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials, translating over a third of the six million words spoken, was one of the most interesting characters in the courtroom. Historian Paul Hooley speaks to Dan about this man, who hated Hitler and had an idiosyncratic relationship wit...

The Channel Dash or Unternehmen Zerberus (Operation Cerberus) was a German naval operation during World War II. A Kriegsmarine (German navy) squadron consisting of both Scharnhorst-class battleships and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen along with escorts, ran a British blockade from Brest in Brittan...