Ghosts, grief and the paranormal

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

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

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, 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

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

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

In 1775, a respectable lady, a mild-mannered apothecary and his fast-living identical twin stood accused of pulling off a scam that had earnt them a fortune. But as their trial unfolded, the defendant...

22 Aug 20258min

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