Archive of Dan Snow's History Hit 🎧
To get the latest episodes of Dan Snow's History Hit,
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🎧 Band of Brothers
HBO's Band of Brothers remains one of the greatest mini-series ever made. 20 years after the award-winning series debuted, Dan speaks to Robin Laing who played Edward 'Babe' Heffron about life on set, how they created an entire frozen forest inside an air hanger during a sweltering August and his...
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🎧Finding Queen Cynethryth's Lost Abbey
Queen Cynethryth of Mercia was one of the most distinguished rulers of Anglo Saxon Britain. Wife to King Offa, ruler of the Mercians (the most powerful kingdom in Anglo-Saxon Britain) and the only woman to have coinage minted in her image. So how did she end up in Cookham Monastery in Berkshire? ...
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🎧 Discovered! Rare Celtic Coins in the New Forest
In a special episode of the podcast, Dan and his team hit the road after receiving a call about the discovery of a hoard of rare Iron Age coins, at a secret location in the New Forest. At the St Barbe Museum in Lymington, Dan speaks to the detectorists who made the discovery of a lifetime and to ...
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🎧 Ridley Scott on Gucci, Gladiator and the Blitz
Please note that this episode contains the use of explicit language right from the very beginning.
Ridley Scott, a prolific director and producer, is responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed films of all time. While "Alien" (1979) and "Blade Runner" (1982), are regarded as signifi...
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🎧 The Beginning of Life on Earth
Today we’re going back to the beginning – no Romans, Celts, Egyptians or Macedonians in sight. We’re going much further back, covering billions of years of prehistory as we look at the emergence of life on Earth. From the rise of the earliest microscopic membranes to the arrival of the dinosaurs....
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🎧 Arnold Schwarzenegger on Churchill's Birthday
Actor and former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger joins Dan in conversation on today's podcast about Winston Churchill, who was born on this day in 1874. They talk about Arnie's admiration for the former British Prime Minister as a leader and a thinker, how he modelled his own governo...
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🎧 Ibn Fadlan: The Real 13th Warrior
Ibn Fadlan might be familiar to many based on modern-day renditions from films such as The 13th Warrior. Ibn Traveled from Bagdad to Russia, journaling his encounters and cultural observations. Amazingly his manuscripts were preserved, but what do we know about him? In this episode, Cat is joined...
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🎧 Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was many things a writer, politician, journalist, painter but the defining aspect of his career was as a war leader. Warfare infused his life from its very beginning due to his relation to the Duke of Marlborough and a childhood re-enacting the Battle of Waterloo in the ground o...
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🎧 The Complicated Legacy of F W de Klerk
The result of his complicated legacy, the death of South Africa's last apartheid president, F W de Klerk, on November 11 2021 generated a flood of differing assessments. De Klerk wrote himself into the history of South Africa on February 2 1990, when he announced the unbanning of the African Nati...
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🎧 This Year at Vindolanda
One mile south of Hadrian’s Wall, Vindolanda was a busy fort and military community on the edge of the Roman Empire. Now, the site is busy again, this time with archaeologists. In this episode we return to Northumberland to speak to Dr Andrew Birley and Marta Alberti who, alongside their team of ...
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🎧 How To Live Like A Monk
Monks. We know that they dedicated their lives to serving God, but what did it mean to be a Monk? In today's, episode Matt is joined by the Five-Minute Medievalist, Danièle Cybulskie. Author, historian, and Podcaster (to name a few), Danièle is well known to many Medieval history enthusiasts. We ...
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🎧 The Menka Ruins: Village of the Breadfruit Goddess
The sacred site of Menka, this island is unlike no other. Also known as the village of the Breadfruit Goddess or the Ruins of Menka, this isolated volcanic island is known to have had inhabitants for thousands of years, but how did they not only survive; but thrive? In today's episode, we're join...
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🎧 The British Spy who Saved Jews from Hitler
Thomas Kendrick was at the very centre of British Intelligence operations throughout the first half of the twentieth century. He combined a public face of an English gentleman whilst privately masterminding MI6's spy networks throughout Europe. Perhaps his finest hour came in the run-up to the Se...
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🎧 From the Punjab to the Western Front
Over a million Indian soldiers served during the First World War, but many of the records of the soldiers who fought valiantly for the Allied cause had been lost - hiding their stories from history. Until now. Discovered in a basement of a museum in Lahore, Pakistan, where they had been left unre...
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🎧 The British Monarchy
The British Monarchy is a thread that has run throughout the history of Britain but over the centuries it has been a constantly evolving institution. From the warrior kings of early England steeped in violence to the largely symbolic constitutional monarch of today, Tracy Borman helps Dan chart h...
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🎧 Who Decides What is Treasure?
Discoveries are becoming quite common in today's society, from the Crusader's Sword Lost at Sea to the small gold bible recently discovered by a metal detectorist which we recently covered on Gone Medieval. Many of these finds are categorised as treasures and therefore belong to the Crown. But wh...
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🎧 The Assassination of JFK: Explained
Everyone who was alive at the time remembers the day President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, Texas on the 22 November 1963. On this anniversary Dan gives a moment-by-moment account of the day that shocked the world and speaks to Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post journalist and...
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🎧Greg Jenner: Ask a Historian
When and why did we start keeping hamsters as pets? When was sign language first used in the UK? If you were planning a bank heist, which historical figures would you call on? These are just some of the burning historical questions that public historian and podcaster, Greg Jenner, is tackling in ...
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🎧 Alexander the Great Mania? Caracalla's Macedonian Phalanx
Alexander the Great and Caracalla. One often considered the most successful military commanders of all time, the other, one of the worst emperors of Ancient Rome. So is it possible that the latter modelled himself and his army on the former. In this second episode with Dr Alex Imrie, we return to...
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🎧The Magic Circle & Hoaxes in History
Hoaxes and magic were widespread in 18th century Britain. From a woman who claimed to birth rabbits, to a man who said he’d climb into a bottle in front of a live audience, many of the claims sound laughably unbelievable to us today. But at the time, these sorts of hoaxes were widely influential,...
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🎧 The Legacy of the Minoans
Minoan Crete has kept people captivated for millennia, appearing in countless modern cultural practices till this very day. But who are the Minoans? In this episode, Tristan travels down to Oxford to talk to Professor Nico Momigliano, a leading expert in the history and legacy of the Minoans. Joi...
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🎧When the World's Armies Came to Salisbury Plain
During World War One, Britain and its empire mobilised soldiers on a hitherto unprecedented scale. That required a huge logistical effort to feed, equip, house and train them. No place reflects these efforts better than Salisbury Plains. Now mainly sleepy villages and farm land, these plains were...
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🎧 Sutton Hoo: Viking Mounds and Burial Grounds
Centuries ago, an Anglo-Saxon noble was buried within a 90-foot ship in a mound at Sutton Hoo. It serves as the richest burial ever found in northern Europe to date. Discovered in 1939, not much survived of the original ship. However, an imprint of the ship remains on the earth. In this episode, ...
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🎧 We Didn't Start the Fire: Dien Bien Phu
This episode of the podcast comes from a show called ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ which is a modern history podcast inspired by the lyrics of the legend that is Billy Joel. In this episode, Dan chats with the wonderful Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce about the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which took plac...