Dan sat down with Angela Saini to talk about the history behind race and the history of interactions between civilisations.

The Palace of Westminster is one of the world's most famous buildings: 'the mother of parliaments'. Since the days of Simon de Montfort parliaments having been meeting at this location in the heart of London. Though plagued by controversy and destruction over its long history the site's significa...

BAFTA winning historian and Joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces Lucy Worsley takes Dan on a tour of Kensington Palace, one of the principle royal residences since 1689. It was the childhood home of Queen Victoria who was born on the 24 May 1819. The rooms of the royal residence are bein...

The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across into Arabia and the north coast of Africa, was home to one of the most extraordinary empires in history: the Ottoman Empire. Along its routes flowed ideas, goods, disease and death. In existence for 600 years, it also saw the swe...

Most history is hierarchical: it’s about popes, presidents and prime ministers. A very small section of society has wielded very great power. But what if that’s simply because they are responsible for creating the historical archives? What if we are missing out on understanding equally powerful b...

Windsor Castle has a legendary connection to the British monarchy: the longest-serving royal palace in the whole of Europe. Ever since the days of William the Conqueror, the Castle has dominated this strategic point on the banks of the Thames, overlooking west London. Over the next 1,000 years ki...

We live in a golden age of objection. Not since the 1960s has the Western world been so embroiled in street protests – women’s marches, anti-Trump demonstrations and alt-right parades in America, anti-Brexit marches in Britain, and strikes across continental Europe – as in recent years. It is saf...

Great leaders? Industrial change? Revolutions? If you thought these were the things that shaped history, think again. Back by popular demand, Lewis Dartnell returns to the show. He explains how modern political and economic patterns correlate with events which happened not decades or centuries ag...

Katie Wignall, founder of Lookup London, shines a light on the stories of several heroines who transformed the East End of London: Annie Besant, Annie Brewster and Sylvia Pankhurst. From writers to activists and nurses, Katie explains how the legacy of these women endures to this day.

In the late 1850s, Britain and France were involved in an arms race. Both sides were embracing new technologies like armour plating to try and create the ultimate battleship. In 1860 this produced the revolutionary HMS Warrior, a product of Britain's naval mastery in the 19th century and the Indu...

As a way of life, as heritage, and as art, folk singing has long met at the crossroads between the past and the present. It draws old songs into common memory, hearkens back to a simpler way of living, reminds us of the communities that came before us and enshrines new traditions into living memo...

Orlando Figes talks to Dan about social and technological developments and their links with cultural changes back in the 19th century.

‘Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes...

Africa is the second largest continent in the world and is home to the second largest population; but it is second-to-none regarding its ethnic diversity. Throughout history Africa has been the home of many thousands of ethnological groups; the historic sites, places, cultures, kingdoms and civil...

We were delighted to have comedy royalty on the podcast. Omid Djalili talked to me about one of his earliest stage creations, first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1993. Over the next four years it was performed 109 times in 10 different countries. The backdrop of this epic storytel...

Religious belief looks more precarious in the modern world than ever before. But is that the truth? Dan Snow explores the role of unbelievers throughout history, to discover if we're uniquely unbelieving now, or whether there have always been those who wouldn't believe. This project was made poss...

We are a land animal. But millions of us have taken to the sea to live, fight, travel, eat, escape and seek fame and fortune. I am obsessed with the sea. On how humans have built ever more efficient and capable ships to exploit its riches and opportunities. This is an conversation I’ve been longi...

The British Army is one of the world’s most experienced fighting forces. From Blenheim to Waterloo, from Balaclava to the Somme, it has played its part in the history’s most bloody conflicts. But as these troops executed Herculean tasks in the worlds harshest terrains, what were they wearing? How...

I invited Kate Lister to join me after the enormous popularity of her last appearance on the pod. But this time we talked about how our sexual habits are both dulled and invigorated in unprecedented times - wars, plagues, pandemics. We discussed licentious widows who let loose during plagues, the...

Andrew Simms is an author, analyst and co-director of the New Weather Institute. He comes on the show to explain how history is full of examples where humans have proven their capacity to make radical transformation. He explains why we must be capable of similarly-extraordinary things today to co...

A council estate in Wales keeps a secret of a man who gave so much. Chris Lloyd finds out why.

The Great Famine, or the Great Hunger was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 - 1849. Over one million people perished. Presenter and producer Matt Sullivan explains several extraordinary stories that occurred during this harrowing period in Ireland's history.

High on the peak of the Cotswolds stands one of the most remarkable buildings in Britain. Built as a folly in the final days of the 18th century, Broadway Tower sprung up during the height of the French Revolutionary Wars under the distracted watch of the architect James Wyatt. In the following y...

A recent study published in the science journal Nature tracked the emotional tone of books and newspapers over the past 200 years and suggested that the British were happier in the 19th century. This rang alarms at History Hit HQ. So we got Hannah Woods on the pod pronto to talk us through the re...