Adventures with dentures: The story of dentistry

The painful early roots of a profession we all rely on

• 39 mins

The One Thousand and One Nights

The ancient magical tales whose origins stretch from India to Persia to Arabia

• 40 mins

Pauline Viardot: 19th-Century diva

The Franco-Spanish singer and composer who charmed European society on and off stage

• 38 mins

Rabindranath Tagore: The Bard of Bengal

A portrait of the prolific writer who was an environmental thinker before his time

• 39 mins

One Hundred Years of Solitude: The story of Latin America

Gabriel García Márquez’s modern classic that fuses the magical with real life

• 39 mins

Unravelling the history of knitting

What are the origins of knitting and how did it spread to different parts of the world?

• 40 mins

The census: A snapshot of life

Charting the history of counting and classifying people the world over

• 39 mins

Tadeusz Kosciuszko, groundbreaking fort builder

The engineer who championed freedom on two continents

• 39 mins

Ukulele - a history of Hawaii's national instrument

The mini guitar that came to symbolise Hawaiian culture

• 39 mins

The birth of the modern car

Design milestones in the early history of motor vehicles

• 39 mins

Machiavelli, master of power

The life and reputation of Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince

• 39 mins

X-rays: New ways of seeing

The discovery of X-rays in 1895 and how it transformed our world

• 39 mins

Aramaic: An imperial language without an empire

A history of one of the oldest living languages in the world

• 39 mins

Falconry: The history of hunting with birds of prey

From nomads to nobles, the working relationship between humans and raptors

• 39 mins

The Wizard of Oz: A homegrown American fairy tale

The magical story of Dorothy, a plucky American heroine who follows the yellow brick road

• 39 mins

Tracing the roots of ancient trees

What can we learn from the oldest trees on earth?

• 39 mins

Emile Berliner, inventor of the gramophone

How mass-produced audio discs transformed our sound world

• 40 mins

Rain or shine? A short history of the weather forecast

A century and a half of scientific meteorology

• 39 mins

Ida Pfeiffer: 19th Century globetrotter

The eccentric traveller and collector who circumnavigated the globe twice

• 39 mins

The Panama Canal: The real story behind the engineering triumph

The Canal that joined up the Atlantic and Pacific oceans but how did it impact Panama?

• 39 mins

Ibn Sina: The Persian polymath

Best known for his Canon of Medicine, Avicenna helped shape modern science

• 26 mins

Inside the mind of crime writer Patricia Highsmith

A 20th century master of the psychological thriller

• 42 mins

Sailing by the stars: The pioneering voyages of David Lewis

One man's intrepid quest to revive ancient navigation

• 39 mins

A radiant light: The Indonesian poet Amir Hamzah

The romantic works and tragic life of a noble writer from Sumatra

• 39 mins

Mars: A history of the Red Planet

When might we send humans to one of our closest neighbours in our solar system?

• 39 mins

Luigi Pirandello: Italian dramatist who brought chaos to the stage

The radical, convention-breaking plays of an architect of modern 20th century theatre

• 39 mins

Louder! How the electric guitar conquered popular music

The origins and early years of making the guitar electric

• 39 mins

Algorithms: From the ancients to the internet

The 4,000-year history of the mathematical operations that now govern our daily lives.

• 39 mins

Toni Morrison: The legacy of a literary legend

How her influence as a writer extends across the globe

• 39 mins

Sushi: The Japanese dish with an ancient tradition

Sushi originally started in East Asia as a means of preserving fish

• 39 mins

The story of Evita

The life, work and remarkable afterlife of Eva Peron

• 39 mins

A dirty history of diamonds

The complex and sometimes shocking story of the diamond industry throughout history

• 39 mins

Sarah Bernhardt: Queen of stage and screen

The 19th Century French actress who defined modern celebrity

• 39 mins

A focus on spectacles

Looking at the history of an invention many of us take for granted

• 39 mins

The Devils: Dostoevsky’s novel of political evil

Dostoevsky’s study of terrorism and poisoned ideals in pre-revolutionary Russia

• 40 mins

The Malayan Emergency

One of the earliest Cold War conflicts in Asia

• 39 mins

Mary Somerville: The queen of 19th-Century science

The 19th-Century polymath who popularised science for generations of readers

• 39 mins

Laskarina Bouboulina, the mother of modern Greece

An intrepid sea captain who commanded daring naval attacks with her own fleet of ships

• 39 mins

The original Goths

How did a Germanic tribe come to inspire an architectural style and a global subculture?

• 39 mins

Algae: Slime life

The evolution of life’s original alchemists

• 39 mins

Don Quixote: Spanish masterpiece

The multi-layered masterpiece by Miguel de Cervantes

• 39 mins

Antarctic Treaty: Protecting the icy continent

Safeguarding peace and wilderness with the Antarctic Treaty

• 38 mins

Harry Houdini: Escape artist and showman

Pulling back the curtain on the master of illusion

• 39 mins

Boudica, warrior queen

The Iron Age English warrior queen who led a rebellion against the Romans

• 39 mins

Writer Agatha Christie: Murder and mystery

How the queen of crime achieved her extraordinary success

• 39 mins

Copper: From mining to microprocessors

The shiny red metal our lives depend on that has powered human development

• 39 mins

Pleasure and pain: The philosophy of Jeremy Bentham

The radical ideas of the 18th-century legal reformer Jeremy Bentham

• 39 mins

Machu Picchu: Secrets of a forgotten city

The enigma of the Inca mountain retreat

• 39 mins

Sofya Kovalevskaya: The eventful life of a maths pioneer

A brilliant Russian whose scientific discoveries helped to reshape European universities

• 40 mins

Joseph Heller's Catch-22: A novel of twisted logic and absurd bureaucracy

Bridget Kendall explores a novel that gave rise to a new term in the English language

• 39 mins

Franz Liszt: Hungarian pianist and painter in sound

A charismatic musician who transformed classical concerts

• 40 mins

Vincent van Gogh: The struggling artist

Charting the highs and lows of the influential Dutch post-Impressionist painter

• 39 mins

The invention of numbers

How numbers and counting shaped our world

• 39 mins

Pinocchio: The real story of the mischievous wooden puppet

The original Italian novel about the wooden puppet with the growing nose

• 39 mins

Money: From coin to cryptocurrency

The origins of coins, paper money, shares and other financial instruments

• 39 mins

Margaret Fuller: Early feminist and war correspondent

A brilliant American journalist determined to live her life to the full

• 39 mins

The Truman Doctrine: Beginnings of the Cold War

The speech that committed the USA to a 40-year struggle with the Soviet Union

• 40 mins

Kwame Nkrumah: Ghana’s Pan-African idealist

Assessing the complex legacy of a man who campaigned for a United States of Africa

• 39 mins

Mirror Mirror on the wall: The history of the looking glass

The magical role of the mirror that's revealing ground-breaking secrets of the universe

• 39 mins

Emperor Nero: Bad boy of Ancient Rome

Historical accounts of the notorious Roman emperor skew our interpretation of his legacy

• 39 mins

Fertiliser and poison gas: The legacy of chemist Fritz Haber

The scientist who helped feed billions, and unleashed a new kind of death

• 40 mins

Vikings and their quest for silver

How Viking trade and raids transformed medieval economy and society

• 39 mins

Eunuchs and empires

The painful route to power for some young boys and men

• 39 mins

Insulin: The discovery that transformed diabetic care

Tracing the discovery of a hormone that has helped millions manage diabetes

• 39 mins

The Koryo Kingdom: Medieval dynasty that united Korea

Progressive, pluralistic and united – the remarkable era of the Koryo Kingdom

• 39 mins

The Popol Vuh: Central American epic that survived Spanish conquest

One of the most mind-bending mythological sagas ever written

• 39 mins

Ice cream: A cool history

How snow and ice were transformed into one of the world’s most popular desserts

• 43 mins

Samurai: Japan’s elite warrior class

The changing image of Japan’s fabled fighters over the centuries

• 39 mins

Radio waves and plants: The life of JC Bose

How physics and biology entwined in JC Bose's search for the unity of all life on Earth

• 39 mins

The unstoppable orange

The golden fruit that became a symbol of love and wealth

• 39 mins

Taras Shevchenko: The slave who became a symbol of Ukrainian independence

The life and work of Ukraine's national bard

• 39 mins

La Malinche: Mexico's great 'traitor'

The indigenous slave girl who helped the Spanish conquer the Aztecs

• 43 mins

Eleonora Duse: The first great modern actress

The early feminist icon who challenged theatrical convention

• 39 mins

Making scents: The story of perfume

How fine fragrance became what it is today

• 39 mins

Gandhi: Architect of Indian independence

How a shy, mediocre schoolboy went on to shake the British Empire and inspire the world

• 46 mins

The Art of War: Ancient Chinese guide to victory

A manual for achieving success on the battlefield, and in life

• 39 mins

Bluegrass: Virtuoso music of Appalachia

The rich history of music from America's rural south

• 42 mins

Brazil's Palmares: A beacon of freedom

An inspirational settlement of people seeking freedom from slavery

• 39 mins

Yves Saint Laurent: Fashion revolutionary

Bridget Kendall and guests on the glamorous world of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent

• 39 mins

Dreams: Prophecy, propaganda and psychoanalysis

How our sleeping visions have wielded great influence throughout history.

• 39 mins

A forgotten founder of climate science: Eunice Newton Foote

The first person to link CO2 with global warming, and why she vanished from history

• 39 mins

The Sun: Myths and magnetism

Understanding the star that makes all life on Earth possible

• 39 mins

William Cobbett: Champion of rural workers

William Cobbett: Industrialization and its impact on England’s rural population

• 39 mins

How the paparazzi transformed photojournalism

Why 1950s Rome was the birthplace of the paparazzi

• 39 mins

Süleyman the Magnificent: longest-reigning Ottoman sultan

The 16th century Ottoman sultan who shaped a vast empire across three continents

• 39 mins

From straw poll to opinion poll

Exploring the past, present and future of opinion polling

• 39 mins

The end of civilisation: Bronze Age collapse

One of the earliest examples of globalisation, and why it came crashing down

• 41 mins

Moths: The story of the butterfly of the night

The much maligned moth – pest or saviour?

• 39 mins

Uruguay 1930: The first football World Cup

How FIFA's global sporting spectacle began

• 43 mins

The Epic of Gilgamesh: A quest for immortality

One of the oldest works of literature can speak to us even today

• 39 mins

Alice Guy: The first female movie mogul

The pioneer of early cinema who was overlooked by history

• 39 mins

Margaret Sanger: Mother of birth control

The controversial campaigner who founded Planned Parenthood and helped develop the pill

• 39 mins

Belarus: The crossroads of Eastern Europe

History of Belarus from the Middle Ages to Lukashenka

• 39 mins

Calories: How to fuel a human

The invisible force that shapes the way we feed ourselves

• 43 mins

The Cynics: Counter-culture from Ancient Greece

Itinerant philosophers who advocated leading radically simplified lives.

• 39 mins

Forugh Farrokhzad: A trailblazing voice for women in Iran

How the courage and audacity of an Iranian writer continues to inspire

• 39 mins

Why do we have a seven-day week?

How this unnatural cycle came to organise our lives

• 45 mins

The writer Rachel Carson who fought insecticide wars

How Silent Spring, a book about DDT use, changed the way we think about the environment

• 39 mins

When money died: The world's worst inflation

Hungary, 1946, where prices doubled every 15 hours

• 43 mins