History Extra podcast

Professor Jill Burke explores the intimate history of Renaissance beauty culture – from hair removal and poisonous makeup to homemade cosmetics

Artificial intelligence has been hitting the headlines in recent months but, as Michael Wooldridge explores, our fascination with – and fear of – AI has a long history

Emelyne Godfrey speaks about the unorthodox life of Kitty Marshall – a cricket-ball-wielding, martial-arts-trained suffragette ready to go fist-to-fist with the police for votes for women

Andrew Seaton tackles listener questions about the UK’s National Health Service as it marks its 75th anniversary

Peter Hart tracks one tank regiment’s experience of the Second World War – from life in an inflammable vehicle to camaraderie amid the threat of German shells

In this HistoryExtra podcast series, we chart some of the key moments in the transformative history of the US Civil Rights movement. Expert historians share [Read more]

The brutal murder of black teenager Emmett Till appalled America, and added fuel to the fledgling civil rights movement. Experts Devery Anderson and Adriane Lentz-Smith revisit the event

Journalist Patti McCracken discusses the “Angel Makers of Nagyrév” – the all-female murder ring whose poisonings shocked early 20th-century Hungary

Leo McKinstry discusses the forgotten RAF force that helped neutralise the ‘U-boat menace’ in WW2

David Clarke explores how recent interest in UFOs and visitors from above fits into a longer history of our fascination with aliens