Crime fiction history: everything you wanted to know
From Hercule Poirot to Sherlock Holmes, crime fiction has long been a popular genre. But what was the first crime novel? How has crime writing affected real-life cases? And what was the 'Detection Clu...
30 Aug 202544min
How Christianity came to dominate the Roman world
What if the 'fall' of Rome wasn’t a collapse, but a rebrand? In this episode, Alice Roberts delves into the dramatic transformation of the Roman world and the rise of Christianity, from cliffside buri...
28 Aug 202543min
The spy next door: Moscow's century-long plot to infiltrate the west
In 2010, the world was stunned when the United States exposed a covert Russian spy network operating on its soil. Seemingly all-American families living in white-picket-fenced suburbia were in fact de...
26 Aug 202546min
Edward the Confessor: life of the week
Edward the Confessor, England’s penultimate Anglo-Saxon king, has long been remembered as a saintly, pious monarch – but was he really the weak ruler whose indecision paved the way for the Norman Conq...
25 Aug 202549min
Britain and the Caribbean: from slavery to Black Lives Matter
Histories of British involvement in the Caribbean tend to focus mainly on the period of plantation slavery but, in her new book Empire Without End, Imaobong Umoren argues that we need to take a broade...
24 Aug 202530min
Nationalism: everything you wanted to know
Human beings tend to identify with being in a group, and, historically, few groupings have been more potent than the idea of the nation. But when did people first embrace the idea of the nation state?...
23 Aug 202545min
From dodos to 'lost' tribes: a history of extinction
After causing the extinction of the dodo, humans soon realised that we had the power to destroy entire species – and we continue to reckon with that power. Speaking to James Osborne, Sadiah Qureshi di...
21 Aug 202535min
