Lewis Dartnell explains the important role geology has played in human history.

The world faces a unique environmental challenge. The scale of response to this looming catastrophe can be overwhelming. But economist and activist Andrew Simms believes that history provides us with a guide. It can inspire us to see that we have overcome greater challenges than those we face now...

Award winning broadcaster, journalist and author Gaia Vince talks to Dan about why humans evolved. Not just biologically but in terms of our language, culture and relationships. This is a big, wide ranging conversation about how we came to be - who we are over hundreds of thousands of years.

Professor Frank Snowden is currently on lockdown in Rome, experiencing at first hand life in a pandemic. For years he has written about the great waves of disease that swept across the world in the past. Now he is experiencing one. I talked to him about what pandemics have done to us. How they ha...

Dan chats to Tim Mohr, a Club DJ turned writer, who has a very different story of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tim talks about East German punks, who opposed the oppressive DDR government with their music and their actions, and describes how many of them were arrested because what they stood for ...

On Armistice Sunday, Dan talks to Dan Todman about remembrance, and the ways in which we think about the events of the First World War.

The question of wars and how we remember them has always fascinated me. With WW1 we always seem to talk about the enormous, tragic loss of life - captured so beautifully by the likes of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. But WW2 seems to be more about stoicism, Spitfires and speeches. Lucy Noake...

Padraic Scanlan joined me on the podcast to talk about how Britain rose to global power on the backs of enslaved workers. Modern Britain has inherited the legacies and contradictions of a liberal empire built on slavery. Modern capitalism and liberalism emphasise 'freedom' - for individuals and f...

John Darwin joined me on the podcast to discuss how steam power reshaped our cities and our seas, and forged a new world order.

In this bonus interview with Julie McDowall, she talks Dan through exactly how the British government prepared for a worst case nuclear scenario. They discuss surviving the attack, the women who planned to provide jigsaws to the survivors and how Britain might remake itself in the aftermath of ar...

Great leaders? Industrial change? Revolutions? If you thought these were the things that shaped history, think again. Back by popular demand, I was thrilled to be joined by bestselling author Lewis Dartnell. He explained how modern political and economic patterns correlate with events which happe...

Historian Michael Taylor joined me on the podcast to discuss the resistance of the British establishment to the ending of the slave trade.

Fergal Keane joined me on the podcast to talk about the profound influence the Irish have had on Britain over many centuries.

In this episode, Dan meets New York Times journalist and writer Bari Weiss, who grew up near and attended the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2018 this synagogue was the site of the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in American history. Dan and Bari delve into the lo...

Dan talks to Joshua Matz an Attorney and expert in American constitutional law.

Dan Plesch is director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of 'America, Hitler and the UN', co-editor of 'Wartime Origins and the Future United Nations', and has been a frequent contributor to the Guardian and other media. His late...

In May 1941, the Royal Navy pursued Nazi Germany's largest battleship, the Bismarck, in the greatest chase story in the history of naval warfare. Bismarck represented the single most important threat to the Royal Navy and the vital Atlantic convoys they sought to protect; her armoured protection ...

Since World War Two there have been rumours that a train full of loot and guns disappeared into a complex of tunnels - part of a secret military project which the Nazis never finished. At the time the Soviet Red Army was advancing into the heart of Nazi Germany. Join our adventurer on the first l...

Gwrych Castle dominates the road into North Wales. A sprawling Victorian ruin on land that belonged to the same family for over 500 years. It is now famous in the UK as the Covid convenient set for "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" which launched to huge audiences this weekend. But history fan...

James Holland comes on the show to discuss the Battles of Imphal and Kohima, the decisive clash of the Burma Campaign during World War Two.

Al Worden is an American astronaut and engineer who was the Command Module Pilot for the Apollo 15 lunar mission in 1971. He is one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon.

Dan Snow talks to screenwriter Anthony McCarten about bringing the iconic figure of Winston Churchill to the screen in the critically acclaimed Darkest Hour.

David Baddiel talks to Dan about the Second World War, Trump's Mussolini-isms, and why Jim Callaghan makes comedy difficult.

Mary Beard OBE, FSA, FBA is an English scholar and classicist. Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and the Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature. Mary Beard?s new book is entitled 'Women & Power: A Manifesto'.