Poisoning the Soil • 2024 • episode "S1E2" • Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War

54:11

Learn how Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with an iron fist for almost 30 years. To maintain power, he used fear, intimidation and violence like few other dictators in history, but he made the fatal mistake of believing his regime could take on the world.

S1E2 • The Dictator's Playbook • 2019 • History

56:19

In this one-hour special, Rick Steves travels back a century to learn how fascism rose and then fell in Europe — taking millions of people with it. He traces fascism’s history from its roots in the turbulent aftermath of World War I, when masses of angry people rose up, to the rise of charismatic leaders who manipulated that anger, and the totalitarian societies they built.

2017 • History

58:53

Edward III rips up the medieval rule book and crushes the flower of French knighthood at the Battle of Crecy with his low-born archers. His son, the Black Prince, conducts a campaign of terror, helping to bring France to her knees.

S1E1 • Chivalry and Betrayal: The Hundred Years War • 2013 • History

51:13

Europe has seen Christianity as central to its Western identity. While true, many beliefs and ideas shaping Europe, including Christianity, originate in the Middle East. Long before the birth of Jesus, Judaism spreads across the Roman empire; Muslim Moors dominate the Iberian Peninsula.

S1E2 • The Story of Europe • 2018 • History

59:10

Continuing his fascinating journey to rediscover the central role played by the Ottoman empire in Europe and the Middle East, Rageh Omaar explores the huge contrasts in the times of two very different Ottoman sultans. The most famous Suleiman the Magnificent in the golden age of the 16th century and the troubled reign of Abdul Hamid II in the 19th century when the Ottomans were dubbed 'the Sick Man of Europe'. Rageh examines the cultural legacy as well as the physical, religious and political architecture of Ottoman rule to find out what a Muslim world run from Europe was really like. It reveals the backdrop to the relationship between Islam and Europe today, how the Ottomans became central in the power politics of Europe and what could have happened had they succeeded in their successive bids to seize Vienna, then a key European capital.

S1E2 • The Ottomans: Europe's Muslim Emperors • 2013 • History

59:28

Simon discovers surprises in Istanbul as it rose to become the imperial capital and Islam's most powerful city. Visiting the great mosques and palaces built by the Ottoman emperors, he tells the stories behind them - of royal concubines, murderous bodyguards and sultans both the powerful and the depraved. He shows how the Christians, Muslims and Jews of the city once co-existed before the waves of nationalist rebellions brought the Ottoman empire to its knees. In the 20th century the ancient capital was once more transformed by the new secular vision of Ataturk.

Part 3 • Byzantium: A Tale of Three Cities • 2013 • History