Building the Future • 2017 • episode "6/8" • Origins: The Journey of Humankind

51:31

From the 15th to well into the 20th century, Europeans conquered and dominated the world. On behalf of Spain, Christopher Columbus sought a new sea route to India and instead found a "New World". His discovery was the starting signal for the "Europeanization of the Earth".

3/6 • The Story of Europe • 2018 • History

52:34

Episode covers Joseph Stalin's early life and his early political activities which resulted in his rose to power with the help of Lenin. June 1941 Hitler has thrown himself into a fight to the death against Stalin. Two decades earlier, in 1917, Joseph Jughashvili from Georgia is a member of Lenin's Bolshevik Party, who has just seized power in Russia. The country is torn by civil war.

1/3 • Apocalypse Stalin • 2015 • History

59:09

Julius Caesar is the most famous Roman of them all: brutal conqueror, dictator and victim of a gruesome assassination on the Ides of March 44 BC. 2,000 years on, he still shapes the world. He has given us some political slogans we still use today (Crossing the Rubicon), his name lives on in the month of July, and there is nothing new about Vladmir Putin's carefully cultivated military image and no real novelty in Donald Trump's tweets and slogans. Mary Beard is on a mission to uncover the real Caesar, and to challenge public perception. She seeks the answers to some big questions. How did he become a one-man ruler of Rome? How did he use spin and PR on his way to the top? Why was he killed? And she asks some equally intriguing little questions. How did he conceal his bald patch? Did he really die, as William Shakespeare put it, with the words Et tu, Brute on his lips? Above all, Mary explores his surprising legacy right up to the present day. Like it or not, Caesar is still present in our everyday lives, our language, and our politics. Many dictators since, not to mention some other less autocratic leaders, have learned the tricks of their trade from Julius Caesar.

2018 • History

59:04

Simon uncovers the truth about Spain's hero El Cid. He also investigates the horror of the Spanish Inquisition and in the process discovers an unsettling story about one of his own ancestors.

2/3 • Blood and Gold: The Making of Spain • 2015 • History

58:33

In this episode of Civilisations, Professor Mary Beard explores images of the human body in ancient art, from Mexico and Greece to Egypt and China.

2/10 • Civilisations • 2018 • History

52:26

1944: The Soviets continue on the path towards liberation. On the road to Berlin, they discover the horror of Hitler's extermination camps. Stalin's people have sacrificed the most: 9 million soldiers dead and 20 million civilians killed. Has he become Master of the World?

3/3 • Apocalypse Stalin • 2015 • History