Trapped History

Tune in to a fascinating Hall of Fame as Professor Chris French nominates Ellizabeth Loftus, a psychologist famed for her work on false, recovered and repressed memory. It's not just Elizabeth's life story here — Chris fills us in on the theory of false memory (remember getting lost in a supermarket?) and the controversies around recovered and repressed childhood memories which she researched and...

We might have heard of Amelia Earhart or even Amy Johnson, but who remembers Richarda Morrow-Tait, the first woman to fly around the world? Well, someone does because on 19th August this year, a blue plaque was unveiled at Cambridge Airport to mark the 75th anniversary of her truly momentous achievement. We featured Dikki in our first ever season and we couldn't pass up the chance to celebrate her...

Welcome back after our mid-season break! And what a return – with (drum roll) the mysteries, magic and mayhem of The Amazing Randi. He had everything a conjuror should have – the baffling genius, the cape, the beard, the mortal enemies – but more than anything, he had a mission: to uncover and expose cheats and frauds. Join Carla and Oswin as Goldsmith's Professor Chris French takes us on a roller...

Every episode, we ask our guest to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. Usually, it's someone we've never heard of but really should have. But sometimes, just sometimes, it's someone we think we know all about. In the historian Kim Wagner's nominee, prepare to find out something new about someone you thought you knew. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analy...

It's October 1961. The Beatles are in Hamburg, JFK in the White House, Yuri Gagarin has just shot into space. And a state-sponsored killing spree is going down on the streets of a capital city. But this isn't Rio, Washington or Johannesburg. This isn't Moscow or Port-au-Prince or Saigon. This is Paris, the City of LIght, and by the month's end, over 200 north Africans will have been murdered by th...

Join Oswin and Carla as we go back – way back – to a time before podcasts and instagram, before radio and photographs. Join us as we journey back to the 18th century and meet the people who made monarchy work. And they're not the people you might expect to meet. At a time when Britain's kings and queens barely spoke the language, please let us introduce you to Mehmet and Mustapha, two Turkish men...

We ask all our guests to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. Someone we've not heard of but should have. In this Season Four opener, please meet Mishal Husain's nominee: Fatima Jinnah, known as Madr-e-Millat or 'Mother of the Nation', a woman who broke the rules and the barriers as Pakistan emerged from the chaos of Partition. She became the conscience of Pakistan, who as opposi...

Mishal Husain joins Oswin and Carla for a truly special Season 4 opener, telling the tale of her family's journey through the stormy waters of Indian and Pakistani independence. It's a story of joy and freedom, but also one of fear, loss and terror. Shahid, Tahirah, Mumtaz and Mary live through Empire, world war, independence and partition. They meet the people who will shape their future, men lik...

With Jeremy Corbyn announcing that he’s standing as an independent in the upcoming general election, we thought we should revisit his time in the Trapped History studio. This all-new ‘director’s cut’ contains golden nuggets on the French and American Revolutions and on Charlotte’s campaigning for animal rights. It’s a real treat! On top of that, the former leader of the Labour Party was really exc...

Guitars, light shows, psychedelia . . . Any idea who might unexpectedly be making their way into the Hall of Fame? Tune in to hear Martin Gutmann's nominee. We guarantee you'll have heard of them before but not necessarily for Martin's reasons. It's a truly fascinating listen which might change the way you think about bands, friends and music. This podcast uses the following third-party services f...

He's the greatest explorer the world has ever known – the first to navigate the fabled North-West Passage, the first to reach the South Pole, the first to the impossible North. But how much do we really know about Roald Amundsen? More precisely, how much do we want to know? Surely, the tangled heroics of Scott of the Antarctic and of Ernest Shackleton make for more exciting reading than the carefu...

We ask all our guests to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. Someone we've not heard of but should have. Most of our nominees are long gone – but Dee Jarrett-Macauley follows in the footsteps of Pete Paphides and nominates someone who is well and truly alive and kicking: the great publisher and writer Margaret Busby, whose Daughters Of Africa anthologies changed the way poetry w...

Poet, playwright, publisher. Campaigner, broadcaster, journalist. Six people in one, but if we've heard of Una Marson, it's usually because of her brief shining moment during the Second World War when she became the voice and face of the Caribbean through her pioneering work at the BBC. Tune in to hear about the six lives of Una Marson as Oswin and Carla are joined by her biographer and Orwell Pri...

We ask all our guests to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. Someone we've not heard of but should have. Most guests nominate someone who's, well, dead. But Pete Paphides joins Polly Vacher in nominating a living legend. In this case, the mesmeric Paolo Conte, Italy's answer to Tom Waits. Listen to Pete's nomination exclusively here. This podcast uses the following third-party s...

See if you can join the dots – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, The Beatles. Well, there’s one man who sits at the centre of it all, and it’s more than likely that you won’t have heard of him: Jackson C Frank. A damaged, wounded singer-songwriter who wowed the British folk scene and presaged psychedelia and punk, Jackson only produced one album – but its infl...

Every episode, we ask our guest to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: someone we haven't heard of but really should have. Today, it's the turn of @that.spitfire.bird, instagram's very own Jo Rogers. We take a quick detour into Tilly Shilling's orifice – no, really! – before finding out what a Messerschmitt 108 turned up when it taxied into Jo's life. Find all about the magnific...

The Battle of Britain is at its height. Spitfires and Hurricanes urgently need to get from the factories to the airfields and into the hands of ‘the Few’. Step forward Pauline Gower, a pioneering pilot of the 1930s, who alongside the 168 women who she brought into the Air Transport Auxiliary, would help ferry over 300,000 planes from where they were built to where they were needed. Tune in to hear...

Every episode, we ask our guest to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: someone we haven't heard of but really should have. As it's the holiday season, today we have a twofer for you: first, there's Peter's light-hearted nomination of the explorer Richard Burton, in all his magnificent messiness. And then, hear about the courageous Father Stanley Rother, a missionary among the Tz...

In 1880, the SS Jeddah was steaming across the Indian Ocean when her captain abandoned ship. He told his rescuers the 1,000 passengers had mutinied and that the ship had sunk. But this was a lie and the case became a cause celebre of British disregard – because the Jeddah ’s passengers weren’t any ordinary passengers. They were Indonesian and Malaysian pilgrims – Muslims on their way to Mecca to p...

Every episode, we ask our guest to nominate someone for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: someone we haven't heard of but really should have. Tune in this week to hear Jeremy Corbyn's nomination – the quite brilliant Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican writer, poet and philosopher from four centuries ago, variously known as The Phoenix of America and The Tenth Muse. Her's was an astonishing life...

She was a super-rich romantic novelist, sister to one of the most famous men in late-Victorian England. And then, out of nowhere, Charlotte Despard suddenly finds her true calling. Over the next 40 years, she is a suffragette, a socialist, a peace campaigner, an animal rights activist and an Irish nationalist. So who better to help Oswin and Carla tell her story than the Charlotte Despard of the 2...

Evelyn Dunbar was the only full-time female war artist in World War II. She recorded an almost exclusively female experience of war, painting Land Girls and members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force going about their work. Meticulously, quietly and with an air of supreme concentration. Join Oswin, Carla and the art historian Frances Spalding as we delve into Evelyn's life and art, understand life...

He was a war hero but never felt that he was. Ben Ferencz was sickened to the core by his experience of battling through Europe in 1945 – and of uncovering horrific evidence of war crimes, atrocities and genocide. And so he decided to do something about it. Tune in to hear the compelling story of the last of the Nuremberg prosecutors in the company of the great historian of our post-war world, Kei...

John La Rose is one of the most important – and most overlooked – cultural icons of the last 60 years. Helping to forge a Black British identity, he set up dozens of political, cultural and community organisations and campaigned for justice for the victims of police brutality and of the New Cross Fire. So earlier this year, it seemed obvious – and right – to name a street in his honour. But the fu...

You're falling through the sky above Belgium after your bomber has been hit. It's August 1941 and you're an RAF front gunner. Who will save you when you land? Who will look after you, hide you, keep you safe? Who will get you home? Meet the women of the Resistance, Dédée, Tante Go and countless others – the women of the Comet Line. Join Carla, Oswin and our special guest the historian Anne Sebba w...