Gerard Mercator: The man who revolutionised mapmaking

The mapmaker who defined the modern world

• 44 mins

The 1918 Spanish Flu: The mother of all pandemics

The last global pandemic and what it can tell us about tackling Covid-19 .

• 44 mins

Hazel Scott: Jazz star and barrier breaker

An exceptionally talented musician who always stood her ground

• 41 mins

The California Gold Rush

Who made a fortune and who was crushed in the rush for gold in California in 1849?

• 44 mins

Goethe: The story of colour

How colour affects our mood and thoughts

• 44 mins

Aesop and the Fables

A black slave wrote 700 animal tales in Ancient Greece. Why are they still best sellers?

• 44 mins

Babylon, city of wonders

From The Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens to why there are 60 minutes in an hour

• 44 mins

Joan of Arc: Making a martyr

How a teenager fought to save France

• 44 mins

Bertha von Suttner: A champion of peace

The writer who became the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize

• 39 mins

Silk routes: 2000 years of trading

Luxuries and everyday goods that travelled West and East

• 44 mins

Valkyries: Fierce women of war

Choosing dead heroes from the battlefield, to fight with Odin in the apocalyptic Ragnarok

• 44 mins

Up close with tango

The dance that seduced the world

• 44 mins

Chaucer, father of English poetry

The man who in the 14th Century made English a language fit for literature

• 44 mins

Tolstoy: War and Peace

An epic sweep of war and love and family life set in 19th century Russia

• 44 mins

Picasso, artist of reinvention

How an artist changed our way of seeing

• 44 mins

The Fall of the Roman Empire

Why did the once mighty Rome crumble and fall to invaders in 476AD?

• 44 mins

Ray Bradbury, a master of science fiction

Celebrating the author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles

• 44 mins

Secrets of the Great Pyramid

Exploring the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt

• 44 mins

Lal Ded, mystical Kashmiri poet

A free-spirited woman whose pithy words challenged social norms

• 39 mins

Smallpox: The defeat of the speckled monster

Exploring the 200 year campaign to wipe out a killer disease

• 44 mins

Who were the Huguenots?

The myths and mysteries surrounding French protestant refugees

• 44 mins

Queen Tamar: The myth of a perfect ruler

Georgia’s most iconic female sovereign

• 39 mins

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Investigating how a thriving African American community was razed to the ground

• 44 mins

Elizabeth Fry: 'The angel of prisons'

How a nineteenth century Quaker philanthropist shook up the prison system

• 39 mins

Writer Jorge Luis Borges: Mixing the magical with the mundane

Teasing and thought provoking: the works of the Argentinian master of pithy stories

• 44 mins

Telling the time: From sundials to satnav

A brief history of how we tell the time

• 44 mins

Paul Robeson: Singer, actor and civil rights activist

Exploring the life of a man who campaigned for disenfranchised people around the world

• 44 mins

Dido of Carthage: A love story gone wrong

What makes the legend of Dido so appealing to the arts and beyond?

• 39 mins

Comenius, a pioneer of lifelong learning

The life and work of the father of modern education

• 44 mins

The woman whose cells changed medical history

The story of Henrietta Lacks who unwittingly left behind an extraordinary medical legacy

• 39 mins