Tony Robinson is best-known for playing turnip-brained Baldrick who always had 'a cunning plan' in the iconic TV show Blackadder. He's presented countless documentaries throughout his 50-year career, including 20-years on Channel 4's Time Team, inspired by his passion for history and for digging deep into the past to understand more about the present. That's his thing!
In his history podcast, Tony is delving into weird and wonderful stories that grab his attention. He’s asking: Why was Stonehenge built? What did the past smell like? Why were pies invented? Why do our dogs love us so much? When did tattoos stop being taboo? What do bones tell us about past humanity? When did Jelly become a thing? Who wrote the Bible? Who is Putin and what makes him tick? No subject is off limits, because everything has a history.
Along the way, Tony is joined by experts and special guests, including Miriam Margolyes, Stephen Fry, Raksha Dave, John Lloyd, Alice Roberts, Ben Elton, Grace Neutral and David Mitchell.
So join Tony Robinson as he hosts his cunningly curated history podcast. New episodes drop Thursdays.
Tony Robinson's Cunningcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow Cunningcast
@Cunningcastpod
Host: Sir Tony Robinson
@SirTonyRobinson
Producer: Melissa FitzGerald
X | @melissafitzg
----X----
If you enjoyed my podcast, please follow the show and leave us a rating or review.
Thank you, Love Tony x
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tony Robinson is best-known for playing turnip-brained Baldrick who always had 'a cunning plan' in the iconic TV show Blackadder. He's presented countless documentaries throughout his 50-year career, including 20-years on Channel 4's Time Team, inspired by his passion for history and for digging deep into the past to understand more about the present. That's his thing!
In his history podcast, Tony is delving into weird and wonderful stories that grab his attention. He’s asking: Why was Stonehenge built? What did the past smell like? Why were pies invented? Why do our dogs love us so much? When did tattoos stop being taboo? What do bones tell us about past humanity? When did Jelly become a thing? Who wrote the Bible? Who is Putin and what makes him tick? No subject is off limits, because everything has a history.
Along the way, Tony is joined by experts and special guests, including Miriam Margolyes, Stephen Fry, Raksha Dave, John Lloyd, Alice Roberts, Ben Elton, Grace Neutral and David Mitchell.
So join Tony Robinson as he hosts his cunningly curated history podcast. New episodes drop Thursdays.
Tony Robinson's Cunningcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow Cunningcast
@Cunningcastpod
Host: Sir Tony Robinson
@SirTonyRobinson
Producer: Melissa FitzGerald
X | @melissafitzg
----X----
If you enjoyed my podcast, please follow the show and leave us a rating or review.
Thank you, Love Tony x
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Vladimir Putin casts a shadow over our lives, but it wasn’t always that way, there was a time when the West was in love with Putin, so what’s happened? Today Tony and his guests Mark Galeotti and Anna Arutunyan unpick the man from the myth.
They discuss how Putin was shaped by a tough childhood in Leningrad, his KGB years and formative time in East Germany, how he rose through the political ranks in the 1990s as a ‘everyone’s favourite bag-man’, until he was hand-picked to be Yeltsin’s successor.
At first President Putin restored order and wealth to a chaotic Russia, but he also built a system of fear and cronyism around him, similar to a Medieval court. They argue that once he could have been remembered as a stabiliser, instead he is now viewed as a paranoid strongman, whose need for control has dragged Russia into repression and conflict.
Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson | Instagram @sirtonyrobinson
Producer: Melissa FitzGerald | X @melissafitzg
With
Mark Galiotti | X @MarkGaleotti
Honorary professor at UCL and director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence, Mark has been studying Russia since 1988 and was banned indefinitely from it in 2022.
‘Downfall: Putin, Prigozhin, and the fight for the future of Russia’ (Ebury/Penguin, June 2024)
'We Need to Talk About Putin: How the West gets him wrong' (Penguin, 2019)
Anna Arutunyan | X @scrawnya
Russian-American writer who spent two decades as a journalist in Moscow, where she wrote for The Moscow News and other publications around the world. She served as senior Russia analyst for the International Crisis Group before leaving Russia in 2022 and is the author of five books about the country, its politics, society and its wars. She is currently associate director of Mayak Intelligence and lives in the UK.
‘Rebel Russia: Dissent and Protest from the Tsars to Navalny' (Polity Books, May 2025)
‘The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s Power Cult’ (Interlink Books, 2014)
Follow us:
Instagram @cunningcastpod | X @cunningcastpod | YouTube @cunningcast
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If you enjoy this podcast please do share it and leave us a rating or review.
Thank you, Love Tony x
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
