An audacious kidnapping in 1970s Paris
On 23 January 1978, Baron Édouard-Jean Empain was snatched from the streets of Paris, in an audacious kidnapping attempt. Before long, a ransom of 80 million francs was demanded. And to show they mean...
26 Tammi 202342min
Blood, sweat & marble: examining ancient bodies
Imagine an ancient Greek or Roman body, and the first picture that pops into your head is probably made of marble or stone – perhaps an austere bust, or a gleaming, musclebound sculpture, polished, co...
25 Tammi 202336min
A journey along the Iron Curtain
In 1946, Churchill declared that “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent”. But what exactly did this rhetorical border look like duri...
24 Tammi 202342min
Fleeing revolution: Russians exiles in Paris
In 1917, the Russian Revolution saw scores of Russian aristocrats and artists flee to Paris to escape Bolshevik brutality. Speaking to Matt Elton, Helen Rappaport highlights some of their stories, exp...
23 Tammi 202342min
The history of atheism: everything you wanted to know
When was the word “atheist” first used? How dangerous was it to question the existence of God in the Middle Ages? And how successful were communist regimes of the 20th century at stamping out religion...
22 Tammi 202350min
How FDR transformed the US presidency
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the presidency of the United States in 1933, he became the head of a nation facing immense hardship and disenchantment amid the Great Depression. No president, e...
20 Tammi 202351min
Indigenous American travellers in Europe
When we think about the first encounters between Europe and the Americas, we’ve traditionally imagined a one-sided story of “Old world” Europeans voyaging to the “New World” of the Americas. But what ...
19 Tammi 202342min
The PoWs who survived Nagasaki
The Japanese city of Nagasaki is probably best known for being the target of the world’s second-ever nuclear attack in August 1945. Yet the city was also home to hundreds of Allied prisoners of war, f...
18 Tammi 202334min
