Send us your messages or topic ideas. Think Alfred was great? Check out his grandson. Raised by his badass warrior aunt, Æthelstan was famously pious, a bit of a clever cloggs and a decent fighter. He came to the throne later than most but would have a major impact on the development of England, calling himself the "king of the whole of Britain." Was this really the case? Find out in the pod.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. On the 30th January 1972 a peaceful protest march in Derry, Northern Ireland turned into a civilian massacre. 14 people lost their lives as the British military opened fire on unarmed crowds. It was an event that started the longest and bloodiest year in the history of the Troubles. What made it even worse was the British establishments attempts to cover up what happened and paint the victims as terrorists, a slur that would last until 2010, nearly 40 yea...

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Dance, dance, dance till you're dead, literally. In 1518 the poor inhabitants of the city of Strasbourg were struck with the most unusual affliction, they began to strut their stuff and just couldn't stop, so what caused this horrifically peculiar outbreak? Slip on your blue suede shoes and listen in to find out!

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Creepy staccato voices, playful jingles, and random numbers. Welcome to the weird and haunting world of number stations, shortwave radio made especially for your friendly neighbourhood spy. Delve into these cold war mysteries with us. Special shoutout and thank you to the Conet project, a series of recordings made of the stations made with painstaking care.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Unemployment, benefit cuts, the rise of facism, royal mishaps and lack of quality housing...No it's not present day Britain, but the era of the Great Depression, the 1930's. In a truly hodgepodge episode, we pick out some of the things around the decade that piqued our interest. So come and learn about how history truly seems to be repeat itself.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Bienvenue les amis and welcome to an episode all about one of the greatest catastrophes in France's history. The decimation and near extinction of its wine industry. All caused by a tiny visitor from the new world wreaking havoc. Makes a change form the usual...Come and learn how this crisis was averted and European wine was left forever changed.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Back in the 1930's three upper class blokes got together to start the first big social history project in Britain. The fruit of their work was Mass Observation, a project that gathered the real thoughts and opinions of ordinary working people on everything from the public to the very private... Hear the exciting story.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. The first English colony in North America ended in a mystery that has entranced people for centuries. Colony leader John White left and returned three years later to find no trace of hundreds of people, including his own daughter. We trace the brief history of the colony's from it's early beginnings to its slightly mysterious end...

Send us your messages or topic ideas. One of the most controversial social psychological experiments ever, Milgram's Obedience tests shocked the real world for its results, and the psychological world for his methods. Find out what they were, their impact and also who the people were behind them.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Sex, politics, Russians, dodgy police. This story has it all. Tory sex scandals may not be an eyebrow raiser anymore, but here's where it all began. This is the affair that rocked the British political establishment and gave birth to the media lust for saucy stories. Find out all about this crazy cast of characters featuring a socialite osteopath, a cabaret star and a horny Tory MP among others.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. How about a nice cup of Rosy Lee, cha, builders or just a plain brew? Tea is one of the mos popular drinks in the world, the second as it stands, but how much do we know about where its from? How its made? Or even what the right amount of milk (if any) we should pop in it. Join us as a we take a brief tour from its origin to the modern day, that takes us to China, India and back to Blighty.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a silver beach ball with extensions. It's Sputnik 1, the world's first satellite, launched by the USSR on October 4th 1957 to the shocked, amazed and terrified world. Come here the story of how it was made possible, fuelled by a fierce intellectual rivalry between a charismatic ex-Nazi and a former enemy of the Russian state, turned hero.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. We tend to think of serial killers as a modern thing and indeed the term is very recent (in the grand scheme of things!) but what about before we knew the term? Were there serial killers roaming the streets of...well Rome? Was saucy Jack just copying some French nobles and claiming to be original? Join us as we look at some of the worlds "first" serial killers from the ancient world to the middle ages.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Although they've been gone over 700 years, the Knights Templar fascinate and inspire many across the globe. We take a look at the real organisation, how they began, what they got up to and their grisly downfall. Sadly the real story is less mysterious and magical as popular legends suggest, but if you love prayer and horses, you're in for a treat!

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Where would the world be without the trusty post? The medium of many a crank, soppy poet and aggressive coupon chancers everywhere. We take a look at one of the longest running public mail systems, a national institution (quite literally), that enabled communications far and wide across Britain and beyond for half a century. It wasn't quite the world's first public system, but had some notable firsts including the postmark and the stamp. Not too shabby.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Wotcha saveloy? Were going to get a bit Piccadilly today aren't as we delve into the wondrous world of cockney, the people and the slang, so hold on your Alan Wickers for the Harry Lime of your fork and knife. Translation: Cockney history fun.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Life for women in the 19th century was hard, really hard. As a married woman you basically didn't exist, everything that was yours, was actually your husbands, even your kids. Then along came Caroline Norton, a strong minded, intelligent author who challenged the laws of her day after suffering at them first hand. Hear her story and how she helped champion the first pieces of feminist legislation in the UK.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. Come discover the birth of Great Britain and learn about the 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England, which the Scottish totally, honestly, wanted... and launched one of the biggest empires the world has ever seen.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. The wonderful succulent world of fruit awaits. We've been scoffing it for centuries, but how did the fruit we all come to know and admire from afar on our kitchen tables (or tv's in some cases...) get there in the first place. So prepare to go bananas and enjoy an appealing bunch of juicy facts.

Send us your messages or topic ideas. When we think of great Prime Ministers, Lord North is probably close to the bottom of the list. A corpulent and charismatic figure, he led the British Government during the war of American Independence, a staggering defeat that finally knocked him out of office after 12 years in power (and after attempting to resign several times before he finally managed to...). Learn about the man and his motivations and whether history was right to be less than k...