In this special episode Dan Snow teams up with Alice Levine, Jamie Morton and James Cooper from My Dad Wrote A Porno to talk about to chat all things sex and history. Expect slow thrusting, Henry The Eighth sexual slander and more filth than you can shake a bread dildo at.

You have the power to ...

She joins Jimmy on the farm to talk about wild swimming; the health benefits, risks, and impact on the environment.

Open water swimming boomed during the pandemic, with searches for the term “wild swimming” increasing by 94%, according the Outdoor Swimming magazine’s annual report. Many swimmers...

While Ukraine fights to defend itself from Russian forces, Putin makes a nuclear threat to the west and the rest of the world. Dr Jeremy Garlick, Associate Professor of International Relations and China Studies at the University of Economics, Prague, explains the strategies currently being used b...

Ernest Shackleton's famous shipwreck the Endurance has been found! This is the exclusive behind the scenes story of how the international crew of the Endurance22 expedition made the discovery of a lifetime.

Having not been seen since it was crushed by the Antarctic pack ice in 1915, the Enduranc...

Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships - but is there more to her than a beautiful face? To mark Women's History Month, Tristan is joined by author and broadcaster Natalie Haynes to discuss Helen's place in mythology and history. Often viewed through the male gaze, Natalie helps s...

We've all heard epic tales of early medieval kings, but what about the queens? It doesn't get much more spectacularly brutal than Brunhild and Fredegund, two sixth century queens who fought a bloody civil war against one another that lasted no less than four decades.

The rival matriarchs also co...

After World War One women outnumbered men by the highest margin in recorded history, even compared to after World War Two. This had wide-reaching implications for the social, demographic and economic fabric of post-war society.

Today Dan is joined by Mary McKee and Paul Nixon from Findmypast to ...

March 15th 44BC is perhaps the most notorious date in all of ancient history. On that fateful day, the Ides of March, 55-year-old Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of disaffected senators.

In this episode–the first of our special Ides of March miniseries this month–T...

24th of February 2022 marked the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This episode of Gone Medieval looks at the origins of its capital city, Kyiv, and how today it has become central to this ongoing conflict. Host Matt Lewis is joined by Dr. Olenka Pevny from the University of Cambridge. T...

This year is the 150th anniversary of the world's first national park of its kind, Yellowstone. Each year nearly four million people visit the park but many are unaware of how it was founded.

Its founding act as a snapshot of key forces in post Civil War America; reconstruction and the Republica...

Jake talks to Jimmy about how the natural world has an impact on his mindset and mental wellbeing. He explains lessons he’s learnt from interviewing people like Bear Grylls and Kelly Holmes on his podcast, High Performance, and shares how he tries to live a greener life.

Jake also chats about hi...

In April 1945, weeks before the Nazi defeat, nine women made a last-ditch escape from the concentration camp at Ravensbruck. The group, who had all been imprisoned for resistance activity, then undertook a perilously 10-day journey across Nazi frontlines.

In today's episode, Dan speaks to Gwen S...

It's not often we cover current affairs on The Ancients (the clue is in the name), but in light of Putin’s claims that Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia”, we wanted to highlight Ukraine’s extraordinary ancient history. From the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age.
To provide an overview of the cou...

On today's episode, Dan takes the podcast out onto the Antarctic ice to find penguins, seals and the expedition scientists conducting experiments. He joins Dr Stefanie Arndt of the Alfred Wegener Institute as she researches climate change in the Weddell Sea's ice. Dan catches her just as she disc...

Famous throughout antiquity, yet retold only in fragments today - who is Sappho? Her poetry inspired generations, from Catullus to Byron, so how come we know so little about her life? This week Tristan is joined by Professor Margaret Reynolds from Queen Mary University in London to piece together...

The historic cathedral town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk may well be familiar to listeners to Gone Medieval - perhaps from our episode 'Saint Edmuntd: England's Lost King' or the town’s mention during our hunt for the 'Viking Great Heathen Army' on Dan Snow's History Hit. In its heyday, Bury St ...

After the death of Chinggis Khan, the founder and first Emperor of the Mongol Empire, the land became the largest contiguous empire in history.

The Horde, the western portion of the Mongol empire, was the central node in the Eurasian commercial boom of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and...

You wouldn't think Jimmy, a livestock farmer, and bestselling vegan authors, Henry Firth and Ian Theasby (aka the BOSH! guys), would have much in common when it comes to their opinions on diet. But after having an open, judgement-free conversation... it turns out they have many similar thoughts a...

The chairman of the world’s greenest football club, Dale Vince, joins Jimmy on his farm today. Forest Green Rovers is powered by renewable energy, serves vegan food to players, and was the first ever football club to receive UN certified carbon-neutral status. The stadium, in Gloucestershire, has...

Russia has launched an invasion of Ukraine. As European leaders gather and Ukraine makes preparations to defend itself, the world watches. In light of this escalating situation host of the Gone Medieval podcast, Matt Lewis steps in for Dan and runs through a brief but complex history of the relat...

Please note that this episode contains spoilers from the film ‘The Duke’.

Kempton Bunton was a taxi driver who stole Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first and remains the only, theft in the Gallery’s history. Kempton proceeded to send ran...

1066 is a year carved into the history of western Europe. It radically transformed the cultural, political and built landscape of England in a way that is hard to overstate - and yet its immediate aftermath is often forgotten. By Domesday, just 20 years later, around 94 percent of England's land ...

Discovered by local farmers in 1974, the Terracotta Army is one of the most astounding archaeological finds on record. A piece of funerary art, dedicated to the First Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang, it contains over 8,000 figures of soldiers, chariots, and horses. This week Tristan is joined by X...

Dan updates us from Antarctica about whether the SS Agulhas II has managed to break free from the ice that had surrounded it.