Rob Heard created an incredibly-moving memorial to the Battle of the Somme. In the new podcast, Dan talks to him about his inspiration and what the work means to him.

James Holland joined me on the podcast to discuss the allied invasion of Sicily on the 10th July 1943.

Henry VI came to the throne in exceptionally difficult circumstances. The untimely death of his warlike father, Henry V, placed the crown upon his head aged just 9 months. While England was in the ascendant in the Hundred Years' War in 1422, by the time he came of age his father's French conquest...

James Hawes @jameshawes2 is a former professional archaeologist and university lecturer in German, Doctor of German literature in the lead-up to WW1, novelist and Kafka biographer.

Simon de Montfort was a member of the English peerage, who led opposition to King Henry III. He played a major role in the constitutional development of the country and remains an important figure in British history. Producer: Peter Curry

Priya Atwal joined me on the pod to discuss the Sikh Empire, which stretched throughout northwestern India into Afghanistan and Tibet. We discuss the story of this empire’s spectacular rise and fall.

Prosthetics - an artificial feature or body part commonly used to either help restore functions of lost limbs, or change a person's appearance. Today, advancements in technology mean prosthetics can sense touch and be controlled by the mind - a far cry from their origins in antiquity as ivory emb...

Jill Lepore joined me on the podcast to discuss The Simulmatics Corporation. Founded in 1959, it mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge—decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica.

Dan talks to Simon Mayo about his new historical novel, Mad Blood Stirring, set in Dartmouth prison at Christmas 1814.

At the end of World War One, the Allies seized the German fleet and held it at Scapa Flow, in Orkney, until the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced. At least, that was the plan. The German navy covertly scuttled their own boats under the noses of their captors, rendering the fleet us...

Dan talks to Nicholas Walton about the role of Sir Stamford Raffles in the emergence of Singapore as one of the world's largest ports, and about the history of the country more generally, from the earliest days of Javanese agriculture to Singapore's involuntary independence.

David Boyle @davidboyle1958 has been fascinated by the navy since he was a boy, but also writes about politics, economics and management. His latest book, Lost at Sea: The story of the USS Indianapolis, combines his interest in naval history with his interest in great management disasters, becaus...

Francine Hirsch joined me on the pod to discuss the full story of the Nuremberg Trials, one in which the Soviet Union was a defining player.

Why are humans the only species to have escaped – only very recently – the subsistence trap, allowing us to enjoy a standard of living that vastly exceeds all others? And why have we progressed so unequally around the world?

Professor Oded Galor is an economist and the founding thinker behind Un...

I was thrilled to be joined by Andrew Bayliss, a Senior Lecturer in Greek History at the University of Birmingham. He's an expert on Sparta and Ancient Greece, and he joined me on the pod to mark the 2,500th anniversary of the battle of Themopylae, when 300 Spartans battled the Persian army. We d...

Dan speaks with Linda Norris, the Global Networks Program Director at International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, about how we look at history and the museums of the future.

Dan chats to Christer Petley about slavery, focusing on one particularly virulent slave-owner called Simon Taylor, one of the most powerful men in Jamaica in the 18th century.

Garrett Graff's tells the oral histories of 9/11, from archive material he has collated to interviews he has conducted with people who responded to events on the day, such as one of the key advisors to Dick Cheney. He tells Dan some of those stories, such as the couple of firefighter and World Tr...

In the early hours of September 2, 1666, a small fire broke out on the ground floor of a baker's house in Pudding Lane. In five days that small fire would devastate the third largest city in the Western world.

Adrian Tinniswood is a historian, teacher and writer, as well as a consultant to the N...

Ruth Ben-Ghiat joined me on the podcast to discuss what modern authoritarian leaders have in common and how they can be stopped. We discussed the strongman playbook from Mussolini to Putin, Johnson and Trump.

Dan chats with journalist and author Ed West about Ed's conservative views, which make him an anomaly among his peers. They explore why conservatives have lost almost every political argument since 1945, and why Ed worships on the altar of Edmund Burke.

Armand D'Angour, a renowned classical scholar, has found new sources that Socrates in fact received many of his ideas, particularly those about love, from a woman he had an affair with. This is a new look at a man often considered the father of western philosophy, and Dan talks to Armand in depth...

Lucie Green is a Royal Society University Research Fellow, Professor of Physics at University College London.;Dr Green's latest book is entitled 15 Million Degrees: A Journey to the Centre of the Sun.

I am very excited to be joined by Colonel Kevin W. Farrell, who spent over 30 years in uniform and commanded at the platoon, company, and battalion levels. He finished up in the army as the Chief of the Military History Division at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. I am fascinated to hear ...