Forget celebrities running around the Highlands... come back to the 16th century Tudor court when being a traitor meant literally losing your head.

Joining Kate today is Tudor historian and author Nicola Tallis, to expose the ultimate Tudor traitor: Thomas Cromwell.

Why did he work so hard to...

Bread cut with sawdust. Horses boiled to the bone. Men trading pet dogs and mice for scraps.

In the brutal winter of 1914 to 1915, the grand Austro-Hungarian fortress of Przemyśl came under siege. Cut off by Russian armies and doomed by the vanity of their own generals, the garrison survived by ...

The Battle of Agincourt is remembered as the ultimate David versus Goliath victory, where King Henry V’s small, exhausted army unleashed a devastating "hailstorm of arrows" to obliterate a French force twice their size. Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis uncover how this legendary clash was actual...

Why would the execution of a single Czech priest spark decades of bloody revolution across Europe? In 1414, the outspoken reformer Jan Hus was promised safe conduct to a church council, only to be arrested, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake. Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis as they uncov...

Join Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega for a rigorous session of medieval myth-busting! Did William Wallace really shoot lightning from his backside? Did Pope Gregory IX cause the Black Death by ordering a cat genocide? And did King Alfred actually burn those cakes? And the biggest question of al...

Is 1066 just the Battle of Hastings? Far from it. The war for the English crown was a year-long apocalypse. Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega dissect history's ultimate succession crisis. Follow King Harold as he crushes a Viking armada at Stamford Bridge, only to face William the Conqueror’s bru...

Demonic blood-sucking creatures have existed for thousands of years before Dracula showed up as alluring, suave and problematic.

Who were these figures who inspired what we know today as vampires? Why are a lot of these supernatural creatures female figures? And why did left-handed red heads on...

Ghost stories have haunted conversations since ancient times, from the Mesopotamians to the Romans to the Vikings.

The medieval period was particularly awash with ghost stories - after all it was an era of great plague, piety and corporal punishment. Ghost stories served as useful tools to upho...

Step onto the dusty and dangerous fields of the medieval tournament with the only knightly teammates worth having: Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis sound trumpets

They discover how chaotic and brutal melees evolved into a highly lucrative sport where losing knights instantly forfeited their ba...

From the elaborate burial rituals of Ancient Egypt to Victorian mummy unwrapping parties - mummification has fascinated humanity for centuries. But what is mummification really about? Because Hollywood, supernatural folklore and popular culture have muddied our understanding of the real history b...

Built in 1862, Borley Rectory became known as England's most haunted house. From ghostly nuns and unexplained disturbances to paranormal investigator Harry Price's controversial investigations, discover the history behind one of Britain's most famous haunting legends.

Was Borley Rectory truly ha...

Forget what you think about fairies... they are not cute and definitely not harmless.

In today's episode we're going back centuries to a time when fairies could take human form. They were even mentioned as part of the witch trials.

What are the rules of talking to a fairy? What are the differe...

It is one of history’s most compelling cold cases. What happened to the Ninth Legion, a crack unit of 5,000 Roman soldiers who vanished from the historical record without a trace?

Tristan Hughes is joined by Roman historian Dr Simon Elliott to investigate the fate of the legion that helped conq...

The story goes that in 1895 Bridget Cleary was burned to death by her husband who believed she was a 'changeling' fairy.

In today's episode, Anthony and Maddy interrogate the stories we've been told about this murder in rural Ireland and if an interesting story of supernatural belief has gotten...

Dan Snow investigates the real history of the Illuminati.

Obviously, a secret sect doesn't control global events - despite what the internet says. But the myth of a shadowy cabal of elites grew out of a very real secret order, and one that went extinct within a decade. So what is the true story ...

What happened to King Tut's 'Little Tut' during mummification? The rumour is that he took a hard one to the afterlife, but what can we know after several millennia and a very rough excavation?

Dr Campbell Price came into the studio to bust a few myths about the boy Pharaoh. But not to worry, for...

Before Boudicca, another British leader brought the Roman war machine to a grinding halt. Meet Caratacus; the cunning King of the Britons who spent seven years outmaneuvering the empire.

Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Miles Russell to uncover the forgotten story of this charismatic guerrilla fi...

You've heard of the witch trials, but have you heard of the werewolf trials?!

This fascinating history takes us to back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when panic spread through villages in mainland Europe leading to a number of people being tried and executed as werewolves.

What evidence did ...

When the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, one remarkable avian survivor traded the skies for the sea. Tristan Hughes and paleontologist Dr. Steve Brusatte explore how prehistoric penguins emerged on ancient Zealandia, lost their flight and grew into colossal apex predators. How did these giant o...

Did the Nazis run a eugenicist breeding program? How did they encourage larger families? And what was their surprising angle on extramarital pregnancies?

In essence, what was the Lebensborn policy?

Taking us through Nazi family policy today is Lisa Pine. Lisa is Fellow of the Institute of Histo...

How much can we really know about the historical Jesus? The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have shaped Christianity for nearly 2,000 years, but they were written decades after the events they describe. So how should we treat them as historical sources?

Tristan Hughes is joined by Profes...

In 1845 two Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror & HMS Erebus, departed Britain on an expedition into the Arctic. Along their ill-fated icy expedition, they disappeared almost completely, becoming one of history's greatest maritime mysteries…

In this episode, Anthony and Maddy follow the trail of clues ...

To many she's known as Lady Jane Grey, but history should remember her as Queen Jane I.

She was only queen for 9 days in 1553, but this made her the first ever queen of England when she was just 16.

What happened in her short life that made her suddenly the most powerful woman in England? How d...

They called her a treasonous nymphomaniac who bankrupted France for diamonds and cake. The revolutionaries didn't just execute Marie Antoinette - they waged a brutal smear campaign to ruin her first. But what if almost everything you’ve been told about 'Madame Déficit' is a lie? From fake royal s...