You're Dead to Me

<p>Greg Jenner is joined in Ancient China by Professor Julia Lovell and special guest Phil Wang for a close look at The Terracotta Army.</p><p>In 1974, a family of farmers made arguably the greatest archaeological discovery of all time when they uncovered arrowheads and fragments of terracotta whilst digging a well. Join us as we examine one of the most astounding mausoleum sites in the world - one so large that much of it still remains to be explored.</p><p>This is a radio edit of the original

<p>In this special live episode, recorded at the 2023 Hay Festival, Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Gillian Kenny and comedian Seán Burke to learn about medieval Irish folklore.</p><p>Greg and his guests discuss the lore and stories from Gaelic Irish culture. Gaelic culture remained the dominant set of cultural and societal beliefs on the island of Ireland well into the 17th century until it was destroyed by a succession of English invasions.</p><p>But what were these beliefs and how did the Christi

<p>Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Spain by historian Professor Nora Berend and comedian Toussaint Douglass to learn about the colourful life and afterlife of the warrior known as El Cid. El Cid – real name Rodrigo Díaz – was a mercenary in eleventh-century Spain who fought for both Christian kings and Muslim rulers before setting himself up as ruler of Valencia. This episode explores his dramatic life in the period before religious divisions were key on the Iberian Peninsula, and an ambitious

<p>Greg Jenner is joined in nineteenth-century China by historian Professor Yangwen Zheng and comedian Sophie Duker to learn about the Qing dynasty ruler Empress Dowager Cixi. A contemporary of Queen Victoria, Cixi rose from low-ranked concubine to de facto ruler of China for nearly half a century, and lived through a dizzying array of events in China’s nineteenth-century history, including the Taiping Rebellion, the Opium Wars, and the Boxer Rebellion. Ruling through her son and then her nephew

<p>For our 150th episode, Greg Jenner is joined by historian Professor Iwan Morus and comedian Catherine Bohart to learn about the history of the telephone on its 150th anniversary. The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was granted the American patent for his new communication system 150 years ago, on the 7th March 1876, beating out fellow inventor Elisha Gray who had submitted his patent on the very same day. But Bell still had to convince people that this novel form of communic

<p>Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr David Veevers and comedian and quizzer Paul Sinha to learn all about the global history of spices and the spice trade. Nowadays, we take spices for granted, and our kitchen cabinets are full of ginger and cinnamon, cumin and coriander, pepper and nutmeg. But despite their contemporary status as a staple of diets around the world, the majority of spices are native only to Asia (barring notable exceptions like chilli peppers). In this episode, we tell the s

<p>Greg Jenner is joined in the ancient world by Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid and comedian Marjolein Robertson to learn all about the famous Mesopotamian poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Sumerian poems about a legendary king called Gilgamesh began to be composed sometime in the third millennium, and were told and retold throughout Mesopotamia until a Babylonian scholar named Sîn-leqi-unninni wrote down what has become the standard version. The tale he recorded tells of a tyrannical king of Uruk, Gilgamesh, a

<p>Greg Jenner is joined in late antique Egypt by Professor Edith Hall and comedian Olga Koch to learn about the life of mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria. An important mathematical and astronomical thinker, Hypatia is best known today for her brutal death at the hands of Christian fundamentalists. Born to a well-respected mathematician named Theon in fourth-century Alexandria, Hypatia received an unusually advanced education for a woman, and eventually took over her father’s school. But with