The Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe. It killed nearly a quarter of all Germans and transformed the map of the modern world. Professor Peter Wilson of Oxford University took me on a whistle stop tour through these tumultuous years - from defenestrations in Prague, Westphalian sovereignty and how the soldiers of WWI remembered these events three centuries later.
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...
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