The 10 Best History Extra Podcast Episodes
1) The secret club for radical New York women
In downtown New York, in the early 20th century, a secret club of women met regularly, to discuss ideas, politics, art and their own lives. They forged friendships and alliances, and took up some of t...Show More
2) Hamilton: the man behind the musical
We explore the amazing life story of Alexander Hamilton, with Ron Chernow, whose biography of the American Founding Father inspired the hip-hop musical sensation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac...Show More
3) Medieval manuscripts and the First World War
Christopher de Hamel discusses his recent book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, which has just won the Wolfson History Prize. Meanwhile, we speak to Jonathan Ruffle, creator of the BBC Radio 4 dr...Show More
4) The book that transformed medieval England
It was an enterprise that helped transform a marginalised language into a global powerhouse. Lydia Zeldenrust tells Spencer Mizen how, some 550 years ago, a middle-aged merchant called William Caxton ...Show More
5) Mary Beard on the nude in western art
Ahead of her new BBC Two series The Shock of the Nude, classicist Mary Beard discusses some of the thorny issues surrounding the naked body in western art over the centuries. Later on in the episode s...Show More
6) Inside a Jim Crow asylum
In March 1911, twelve Black men were brought to a forest in Maryland. Under supervision, they cleared land and laid foundations for what would become the Crownsville Hospital, a segregated mental asyl...Show More
7) A Nazi mystery
Philippe Sands, author of the multi-award-winning memoir East West Street, talks to us about his new book, The Ratline, which charts his investigation into the dramatic life and mysterious death of th...Show More
8) The Mountbattens: success and scandal
The author and literary agent Andrew Lownie discusses his bestselling recent book The Mountbattens: Their Lives & Loves, which explores the colourful and controversial lives of Louis and Edwina Mountb...Show More
9) The Tommies’ final acts
Jonathan Ruffle, creator of the BBC Radio 4 historical drama Tommies, explores the situation on the front line in August 1918 as the First World War approached its end Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/p...Show More
10) WW2 the big questions: the Holocaust
How did the Nazis’ poisonous antisemitic rhetoric eventually culminate in the systematic mass-murder of millions? In the fourth episode of our five-part series tackling the big questions of the Second...Show More