Imaginary Worlds: Sinners Gives Hoodoo Its Due
Sinners got a historic 16 Academy Award nominations, which was remarkable for a film with vampires. But the film is also a rich exploration of race, religion, culture and music…
Not Just the Tudors: When Elves & Fairies Lived Among Us
In the mist‑shrouded Highlands, a quiet minister dared to trespass into forbidden realms. Convinced that fairies were not mere fables but a hidden nation with laws and lives of their…
History Extra podcast: What your hands say about you – according to history
What do your hands reveal about you? Historian Alison Bashford joins Elinor Evans to explore the extraordinary history of how people have interpreted the human hand. From ancient divination to…
History Extra podcast: Terrible puns and filthy limericks: the Victorian sense of humour
Queen Victoria was – so legend has it – famously 'not amused'. But, as Dr Bob Nicholson reveals in this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, the long-lived queen did have…
In our Time: The Theory of the Leisure Class
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America’s Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder…
HistoryExtra podcast: Going on strike in ancient Rome
Strikes and unions may seem like modern inventions, but they’ve existed for much longer than many of us realise. Historian Sarah E Bond talks to Jon Bauckham about how people…
History Extra podcast: Why Greenwich is the home of time
Why is a small observatory in south east London so important to the story of how we tell the time? Speaking to Elinor Evans, Emily Akkermans, Curator of Time at the…
Cautionary Tales – Powered By Orgasm: The Rise and Fall of a Sex Cult – with Ellen Huet
Run by the charismatic Nicole Deadone, OneTaste billed itself as a sexual wellness startup celebrating the power of female orgasm. But behind the celebrity endorsements and promises of healing, lay a darker reality. When Bloomberg…
Not Just the Tudors: When Europe met Islam
In the Early Modern period the boundaries between Christian and Islamic civilisations were far more porous than we imagine: Isaac Newton’s library included Arabic biographies of the Prophet Muhammad; the…
History Extra podcast: Giuseppe Garibaldi
He led one of history's most celebrated guerrilla campaigns, showed remarkable political acumen, and drove aristocratic English women wild. Is it any wonder that Giuseppe Garibaldi is one of the…