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History Hit


This podcast investigates the curious history of invention and innovation. Did Thomas Edison take credit for things he didn’t actually invent? What everyday items have surprising origins? And would man have ever got to the moon without… the bra? 


Each episode host Dallas Campbell dives into stories of flukey discoveries, erased individuals and merky marketing ploys with the help of experts, scientists and historians. 


Expect new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. 


Patented: History of Inventions

If you can never connect to a printer, if furniture jumps out to stub your toe, if when you do the dishes the water jumps out the sink to soak you - then you are victim of the inanimate malice of things.

The belief that all things are essentially out to get us us has a name - Resistentialism. This is a theory created by columnist Paul Jennings. On one level it's clearly a joke, on another level though he was convinced of its truth. Dallas, a man who has spent a lifetime celebrating tech, agrees.

Paul's daughter joined Dallas to help explain her father's theory about the spiteful behaviour of inanimate objects. Les choses sont contre nous.

Produced by Charlotte Long and Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

Things vs. Humans: the spiteful behaviour of inanimate objects

400 years ago on the River Thames a mad genius showed off the world's first submarine. A crowd of thousands including King James watched as Cornelis Drebbel disappeared beneath the murky water, only reemerging after three whole hours had passed.

The same genius also came up with perpetual motion machines, self-regulating ovens, chemical air conditioning for Westminster Cathedral, and a project to provide central heating for all of London by building a perpetual fire on a hill outside the city, transporting the flames in pipes to people's houses.

Elon Musk eat your heart out.

Dallas's guest today is the amazing Vera Keller, historian of technology and author of a new book "The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge"

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

First Ever Submarine

Fire is the unsung hero of human evolution. We could not have turned into the big-brained, deep-thinking animals we are on raw food alone. The moment two million years ago that our forebears first started using fire to cook, was the spark that started everything off.

That's according to today's guest - Richard Wrangham one of the world's leading anthropologists and author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Alex Carlon & Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

Inventing Fire: the First Spark of Humanity

For most of their history, High Heels were resolutely masculine. The most manly of manly footwear. How did they turn into burning icons of femininity? And now that the heyday of women's high heels is over, what lies ahead for them?

Dallas's guest today is Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Alex Carlon, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Rise and Fall of High Heels

What do all incredibly cool people have in common? They wear Sunglasses. Whether you're Miles Davis or Audrey Hepburn, James Dean or Bob Dylan, your sunglasses are never far away.

Who invented sunglasses and who made them so cool? Was there a moment when sunglasses went from being just an instrument for protecting your eyes to becoming an iconic symbol of high fashion?

Vanessa Brown, author of Cool Shades: The History and Meaning of Sunglasses knows everything about sunglasses and she joins Dallas to answer all your burning questions about sunglasses.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Alex Carlon, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Sunglasses

The Titan submersible implosion was a tragic example of marine exploration going wrong. Today Dallas speaks to one of the world's leading marine archaeologists about Titan and the history of deep-sea submersibles leading up to it. Why and how did we begin exploring the ocean depths? What drives us on? And what lessons should be learned from Titan?

Edited by Tomos Delargy, Produced by Alex Carlon, Senior Producer Charlotte Long

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Deep-Sea Submersibles & the Titan Disaster

Why are men in charge? Who invented Patriarchy?

Was it chest-thumping primate ancestors? Was it spear-wielding hunter gatherers? Was it at dawn of agriculture and the creation of property? Or was it something more subtle?

These are the questions that Angela Saini has set out to answer in her new book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule. She and Dallas talk through the mother of all origin stories.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Patriarchy

In 1950, a new word ‘brainwashing’ entered the English language. From the paranoia of the Cold War a new type of Evil Scientist had emerged — the Mind Controller. But was there any truth to the fear?

In the 1950s the CIA went to an eminent psychology Donald Hebb and asked him to investigate the possibility. His idea was to test what happened to the brain when it is starved of everything that anchors it to reality. Of anything to see, to listen to, to touch or smell.

With nothing to hold onto, will the mind drift loose? Could it be reprogrammed?

Dallas's guest today is Charlie Williams, a researcher at Queen Mary University in London who explores the history of brainwashing in the Cold War.

Produced by Alex Carlon and Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Donald Hebb: Brainwashing in the Cold War

No invention conjures up the 'Old World' as much as the Sword. It's an utterly iconic object that whisks us back to knights in shining armour. But what were Medieval swords really like? Who owned them? And what did they mean at the time?

Today we're bringing you an episode from another History Hit podcast we thought you'd love - Gone Medieval hosted by Matt Lewis and Eleanor Janega.

This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Medieval Swords

In a leaky shed in Paris, Marie Curie turned two tons of pitchblende (aka special rocks) into a single test tube of radium chloride - its green glow lighting up the walls. It must have been a magic...if radioactive!...moment.

Today on Patented we talk with Patricia Fara about Marie Curie. A giant in the history of science but a woman whose story has been twisted and mistold over the years.

Edited and Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Marie Curie

Invented in the mid-1800s, bicycles have had enduring popularity. Across cultures, they have been embraced, promising freedom and mobility at a low price point. 

Today on the show we are joined by Tim Harford, host of the podcasts Cautionary Tales and The BBC’s 50 Objects That Defined The Modern Economy. 

Tim and Dallas discuss the history of the bike, from the invention story through to bicycle booms, the C5 Sinclair and the rise of dockless bike sharing schemes. 

Listen to the episode of Cautionary Tales about the Sinclair C5 here: https://timharford.com/2022/04/cautionary-tales-the-false-dawn-of-the-electric-car/

The Bicycle with Tim Harford

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