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

First impressions: The printing press

How the machine pioneered by 15th Century entrepreneur Johannes Gutenberg changed history

• 44 mins

Unlocking the mysteries of cuneiform tablets

We explore the system of writing that developed 5,000 years ago in Ancient Mesopotamia

• 44 mins

Alexandre Dumas: The man behind the Musketeers

The adventurous life of the much-loved French novelist

• 44 mins

Umm Kulthum: Egypt’s singing superstar

Exploring the life of a woman whose voice still captivates people across the Middle East

• 39 mins

The Kingdom of Aksum: Africa's trading empire

An ancient state in the Horn of Africa that is famed for its monumental stelae structures

• 44 mins

Mugham: the sound of Azerbaijan

Transcendental music from the Caucasus

• 44 mins

Famous hats in history

The uses and meanings of headwear from prehistory to today

• 44 mins

Alexandre Yersin and the race to fight the plague

The life and work of a pioneering Swiss microbiologist

• 44 mins

Olympe de Gouges: France’s forgotten revolutionary heroine

The French social activist, feminist and playwright who was executed at the guillotine

• 40 mins

Toussaint L’Ouverture: Hero of the Haitian slave rebellion

The charismatic freed slave who was the true embodiment of French Revolutionary ideals

• 39 mins

Eleusinian Mysteries: Secret ceremonies promising happiness

The enigma at the centre of ancient Greek religion

• 39 mins

Mermaids: Tales from the deep

A history of sea creature folklore from around the world

• 38 mins

Sister Juana, a great mind of Mexico

An outspoken nun who was also a daring poet

• 39 mins

The Kalevala: the Finnish epic that inspired a nation

The collection of folk songs and poetry that articulated Finnish independence

• 39 mins

Abraham Maslow’s psychology of human needs

An influential 20th-century thinker who identified what motivates us

• 39 mins

Making waves: the history of swimming

Different strokes for different folks, embracing the story of swimming around the world

• 40 mins

BR Ambedkar: The Dalit hero of India

The life of perhaps the greatest social reformer in 20th-century India

• 39 mins

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