Histories of the Unexpected

In this fourth and final RELEASE for HALLOWEEN 2023, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis discuss the unexpected history of FEAR! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this third RELEASE for HALLOWEEN 2023, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis discuss the unexpected history of MONSTERS! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this second RELEASE for HALLOWEEN 2023, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis discuss the unexpected history of ZOMBIES! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this RERELEASED episode for HALLOWEEN 2023, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis try to breathe new life into the unexpected history of CORPSES! Which is all about the eccentric Cornish landowner Sir James Tillie (1645-1713), who demanded that upon his death his body should be tied to a chair facing the River Tamar in a purpose-built mausoleum at Pentillie Castle (and h...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis uncover the UNEXPECTED history of PINK! Which is all about the history of death by duelling in eighteenth-century England (the transition from swords to pistols as the weapon of choice), masculinity and codes of honour. It's also all about elite status in ancien regime Europe, porcelain and female power at the Fr...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis don their shades of history, bag the sun beds by the pool of the past, relax and pontificate on the UNEXPECTED history of SUNSHINE! Which is all about religion and worship of sun deities (via Ra, the falcon-headed Ancient Egyptian sun god, and the tomb of Nefartari in Egypt's the Valley of the Queens!) as well as...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis get rather maudlin and nostalgic about the UNEXPECTED history of HOMESICKNESS! Which is all about colonial settlers, the US civil war, nineteenth-century immigration, WW2 and modern childhood in America! It's also all about displacement of Jews during the Holocaust, the kindertransport, recipes and childhood diar...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis prostrate themselves upon the ground and humbly beg forgiveness with the UNEXPECTED history of APOLOGIES! Which is all about British politeness and bumping into people as an experiment; public apologies and historical reconciliation for slavery, the holocaust and atrocities in WW2 (including the Statement by Prim...

RERELEASED for your listening pleasure, one of our favourite episodes from our back catalogue: the unexpected history of GLOVES! The gloves are off as the general of generations, Professor James Daybell, and the seadog of centuries, Dr Sam Willis, take us on a rip-roaring ride through the unexpected history of the glove. From the Holy Roman Empire to one of Japan’s most popular sports. Join the in...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis clutch the walking stick of the past to uncover the UNEXPECTED history of FRAILTY! Which is all about the history of old age, loneliness, well-being and medical history (via the seventeenth-century English diarist Sarah Cowper). It's also all about the history of accidents (falling off things, stumbling and fatal...

In honour of mothers around the world, past and present, a rerelease of our episode on the Unexpected History of MOTHERS! THE UNEXPECTED HISTORY OF MOTHERS! A boy’s best friend is his mother’   (Norman Bates –  Psycho,  written and directed by Joseph Stefano and Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). Welcome to Histories of the Unexpected where you will discover the history of things yo...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis stretch their weary limbs, yawn and check their proverbial watch all in order to unpick the UNEXPECTED history of WAITING! Which is all about industrialisation, boredom and anxiety, and the history of queuing (via Winston Churchill and WW2 and Margaret Thatcher), power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis scale the great heights of the UNEXPECTED history of WALLS! Which is all about ancient Rome (via Ovid's Metamorphoses and Pyramus and Thisbe), Hadrian's Wall, graffiti in Pompeii, and the House of Maius Castricius. It's also all about Medieval Castles and the Crusades, and the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. Who kn...

STRIPES! In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis try on the city slicker pinstripe suits and speculate on the history of STRIPES! Which is all about the Carmelite order, the banning of striped clothing and stripes as a marker of social stigma (via the sartorial garb of the gangster). It's also all about the eighteenth-century maritime world (including...

Happy Valentine's Day to our listeners! For this episode let us join the Cupid of history,  Professor James Daybell  and the Casanova of historical crime,  Dr Sam Willis as they, with arrows notched and ready to fly, bring you from the back catalogue: the unexpected history of LOVE. Our two star crossed history hunters take the lead along love’s fickle twisting and turning path, fro...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis don the waders, bait the hook of history and cast out to land the unexpected history of FISH! Which is all about the fascinating history of cod (via the Vikings and Mr Birds Eye), it's about Samuel Pepys, the Royal Society, Sir Isaac Newton and Willughby and Ray’s exceptionally unsuccessful De Historia Piscium (T...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis get all mechanised and programme the unexpected history of ROBOTS! Which is all about AI and the rise of ChatGPT, popular culture, science fiction and imagining good and bad machines (think C3PO, R2D2 and Metal Mickey). It's also all about the Brazen Head automaton and the late medieval polymath Roget Bacon, via...

In this RERELEASE episode from the archive the Histories of the Unexpected team explain how the history of Christmas is actually all about BAD LUCK - Who Knew! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this latest RERELEASED episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis don their most Artic-like winter wear to track down the extraordinarily unexpected history of SNOW! A festive taster for all our listeners! Who knew! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis take stock of half a century (in honour of the Daybell's milestone Birthday!) to unwrap the extraordinarily unexpected history of THE NUMBER 50! Which is all about models of how we interpret the past, the headlines on 3 December 1972, and the remarkable meanings and symbolisms of the number 50!! It's also about t...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis pinch the historical pus out of the extraordinarily unexpected history of SPOTS! Which is all about female beauty and false advertising in the nineteenth century in the United States of America, and the strangely titled Arsenic Wafers, which it was advertised were entirely safe and ensured a blemish free complexi...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis shout TALLY HO! and follow the historical scent of the extraordinarily unexpected history of FOXES! Which has nothing whatsoever to do with fox-hunting, but is in fact all about the remarkable sport of fox-tossing (as well as aerial golf!), and Basil Brush and the history of British light entertainment. It's also...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis get all hush, hush (we'd love to tell you, but then we'd have to kill you....) about the extraordinarily unexpected history of SECRETS! Which is all about Elizabethan Catholics, recusancy laws and priest holes (and a recent adventure at the wonderful Harvington Hall); it's about secret codes and ciphers, and the...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis tackle the extraordinarily unexpected history of BEARS! It's not all about Teddy Bears - Paddington, Winnie-the-Pooh and Rupert bear - in fact it's all about bear attacks and how to avoid them; keep bears at pets (via Lord Byron). It's also all about accidents and bear-baiting in Shakespearean England, and travel...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis tackle the extraordinarily unexpected history of MUMBLING! Yes! It does have a history, and this one takes us back to the basics of the concept of histories of the unexpected, which is the historical equivalent of rambling around the past like a bull in a historical china shop. Mumbling is all about historical de...