Legacy

How do six men in three vans outside a Cotswolds air base end with America flying its bombers home? What can 300,000 tonnes of Russian diesel actually do for American drivers? And, are a quiet corner of England, an...

Why does the ancient Greek word for bravery come from the word for man, and what did bronze spears have to do with it? How does one of the coldest decades in 2,000 years end with around 100,000 women on trial for...

Why did the cod in your fish fingers go to China and back before it reached your freezer? What does a medieval king blocking English wool from Flanders have to do with Xi Jinping's grip on rare earths? And, if China can...

What were the taxi drivers of 1990s Accra playing on repeat? How does a woman who swore she was "not a bit political" write a hit about being used up and spat out by the system? And, what does it take for the most...

Why are a million people about to queue at the British Museum for a strip of embroidered linen? What if the most famous picture of 1066 isn't a tapestry, was probably stitched in England, and treats the losing king as a...

Who says no to Elvis Presley — and is proved right eighteen years later? How does a girl from a one-room cabin with no electricity work out the economics of music publishing before most of Nashville has? And, in an age...

Why is a war fought 44 years ago back on the front pages? What happens when a combative president in Buenos Aires, a friend in the White House and an oil field due online in 2028 all point at the same islands? And, when...

Content warning: this episode describes torture, civilian deaths and the 2021 Kabul airport attack. Bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is shattered, and there was never another 9/11 — so who won? What does a war cost once you...

What happens to a trad wife influencer when she wakes up in 1855 and has to actually do it? Why were film producers bidding on this novel four years before it was finished? And when a story about white homesteaders in...

Content warning: this episode describes the aftermath of 11 September 2001, including torture and civilian deaths. How does a country go from the sympathy of the entire world to invading a nation that had nothing to do...

Who taught you that the Mongols only destroyed things? What if the empire that sacked Baghdad also invented blue and white porcelain, elected its leaders, and let the Khan's first wife decide on war? And why do the...

Content warning: this episode describes the events of 11 September 2001 in detail. What if the deadliest terror attack in history began with an American chequebook? What if the men who carried it out had once been...

How does a man go from calling Donald Trump a kook and a jackass to becoming his closest ally in the Senate? What do you give up to keep a seat at the table, and what do you actually get for it? And when the obituaries...

Who decided that the thing stopping people travelling was not money, but choice? What happens to a country when the holiday is designed so that the visitor never has to leave the compound? And of every hundred dollars...

Why does a kettle cost less than ten pounds? What kind of official refuses to send the army against protesters in one decade, then puts thirty million people out of work in the next? And when the man who built modern...