June 27, 1905. It’s the last morning of Ippolit Gilyarovsky’s life. He wakes up in a battleship on the Black Sea. The Potemkin. He’s a despised Russian naval officer who doesn’t care that his sailors are refusing to eat their lunch of rotten borscht. They’ll do it because he says so. And if they don’t, he’ll hang them. Why did these sailors, many of them pea ... Show More
Oct 12
Audubon’s Birds Come Home to Roost
October 12, 1820. John James Audubon—a failed shopkeeper, grist miller, and steamboat investor—sets off from Cincinnati on a flatboat down the Ohio River. He is bankrupt. The bank has taken everything except his clothes, his gun, and a portfolio of 62 bird drawings. His plan is t ... Show More
33m 7s
Sep 2024
Reason, Wrath and Rebellion on the High Seas
Early morning, April 1789. Captain Bligh is abruptly dragged from his cabin. Wrists bound, bayonet pressed to his chest, he and a few loyal sailors are forced into a tiny launch and set adrift on the vast Pacific Ocean. This far from land, no-one is likely to survive for long. Hi ... Show More
41m 14s
Oct 2023
90. The Russian Revolution: Overthrowing the Tsar
Russian politics is fast destabilising. Strikes, assassinations, and famines have made Russia increasingly turbulent at the turn of the century. Revolutionary politics is on the rise, as is dissatisfaction with the tsar. When compounded by the strains of the defeat in the Russo-J ... Show More
56m 1s
Oct 2022
Lenin Part 3: First Russia, Then the World…
The Tsar is deposed as the people of the Russian Empire rise up. Marooned in Switzerland, Vladimir Lenin prepares for an extraordinary journey home, by land and sea. It will involve the closest of shaves, multiple disguises, and the covert help of Russia’s deadliest enemy…
A Nois ... Show More
56m 24s