We are very very vulnerable' says the brilliant science author and journalist Laura Spinney. Her fantastic book 'Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World' is a shocking account of the flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people a century ago. What was Spanish Flu a...

Pen Vogler joined me on the pod to discuss the origins of our eating habits and reveals how they are loaded with centuries of class prejudice.

Jennet Conant is the author of Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Navigating a Dangerous Era and the New York Times bestsellers The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington and Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course o...

During the Second World War, from 1941 onwards, Stalin's Soviet Union was joined in a close but awkward coalition with the Western allies. Military aid and intelligence flowed to the Soviets but virtually no troops. The exception was a small group of US airmen who were sent to Russia to set up an...

I was delighted to be joined by Keisha Blain, an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She took me far into the past - years before Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks - to the roots of North America's long tradition of Civil Rights activism. We discussed how African American women pl...

John Dickie joined me on the pod to discuss the international story of an organisation which now has 6 million members across the globe. Tracing the origins from local fraternities of stonemasons at the turn of the fifteenth century, John took me on the freemasons' journey from Britain to America...

Joining me on the podcast today are Alice Doyard and Anthony Giacchino to discuss their film Colette: The french resistance fighter confronting fascism which has been shortlisted for the Oscars 2021 in the Documentary Short category. The documentary tells the story of Colette Marin-Catherine who ...

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Craig Bennett, current CEO of Friends of the Earth in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, talks to Dan about the situation, the positives we can glean from climate change right now, and the history of campaigning.

Dan talks to German military historian Robin Schäfer to discuss German perceptions of the First World War

Antony Robbins, Communications director Museum of London.

In the winter of 1962-63, the UK experienced a different kind of lockdown as freezing temperatures and ten weeks of snow kept people trapped at home in one of the coldest winters on record. Today, I'm joined by Juliet Nicolson who was eight years old at the time and has written a book all about t...

Dan visited Gallipoli to mark 100 years since the start of the Gallipoli Campaign on April 25th 1915.

In December 1915, some 135,000 allied troops, nearly 400 guns and 15,000 horses were collectively trapped in the bridgeheads at Anzac, Suvla and Helles. It was clear that the operation to seize control of Dardanelles and the Bosporus straits and capture Constantinople (now Istanbul) from the Turk...

Gandhi is a complex and sometimes controversial figure, so Dan chats to Ramachandra Guha to find out what shaped Gandhi's worldview and how his early life informed his actions.

Gary Lineker's grandfather was one of the 'D-Day Dodgers': men who fought in the Italian campaign, who were accused of missing the supposedly harder fighting in Normandy. Of course, this wasn't true. The Italian campaign was one of the hardest military campaigns of World War Two, and Dan talks to...

Dan Snow talks to acclaimed actor Gary Oldman about the challenge of taking on the role of Winston Churchill in 'Darkest Hour', and the role of art in interpreting history.

Dan explores the birth and development of chemical warfare during the First World War.

Historian Robert Saunders from Queen Mary University of London talks about the elections in the past that he feels have most resonance and parallels today.

Northumbrian patriot' Dan Jackson, who has just written a book on the history of Northeast England and its people, comes on the podcast to talk about Northumbria's prestigious past.

1984 is one of the greatest books ever written, and continues to both haunt and inform public perceptions of totalitarianism. Dan talks to Dorian Lynskey, who has written a biography of this critical text, discussing Orwell's reasons for writing and 1984's relevance to the present day, as well as...

Eamonn O'Keeffe is a young Oxford Researcher in the midst of a PhD. He stopped off in Wakefield Library to look at a journal Yorkshire farmer Matthew Tomlinson to see if the author had any opinions on the subject of his research: military music. Tomlinson did not. However what O'Keeffe found in t...

We know the story of enigma, but what was the German Alan Turing doing in the heart of the Reich? German codebreakers had similar successes to the Allies, and in this episode, Dan chats to Christian Jennings about cracking codes, the Battle of the Atlantic, and how to use a Romanian Opera Program...

2,000 years ago, the heroic general Germanicus Caesar died at Epidaphnae just outside Antioch on the Orontes. Roman historian Lindsay Powell unravels the mystery surrounding the demise of Ancient Rome’s most popular son and explains why he was such a remarkable figure.

Dr Innes McCartney is a Nautical Archaeologist. He is Research Fellow at Bournemouth University and author of Jutland 1916: The Archaeology of a Naval Battlefield.