Histories of the Unexpected

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis invite you all to join them in uncovering the unexpected history of CLIQUES! Which is all about factions at the court of Henry VIII, and the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, the Cabal Ministry of Charles II, and the magic circle (including a magic teapot that will produce any beverage that you like!) It's also all a...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis uncover the utterly fascinating and genuinely unexpected history of GREED! Which is all about the seven deadly sins and Dante's Divine Comedy, Francis Bacon's Essay 'Of Riches', it's about feasting and Christmas at the court of Henry VIII, and the history of eating competitions! It's also all about Bernard Mandev...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis uncover the utterly fascinating and genuinely unexpected history of POISON! Which is all about eighteenth-century shopkeepers, assassination attempts on Queen Elizabeth I, Roman women, and the history of Bread! It's also all about Venice and powdered diamonds, weedkiller and the history of horticulture! Who knew!...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis uncover the historical truth of the unexpected history of HONESTY! Which is all about Abraham Lincoln (Honest Abe) and shopkeeping, oath taking and the bible, US presidents (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barack Obama and Joe Biden) and swearing in ceremonies, and honesty among schoolchildren! It's also all about truth s...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis uncover the nail-bitingly unexpected history of ANXIETY! Which is all about phobias, anxious masculinity and seventeenth-century patriarchy, separation anxiety, Freud and the London Foundling Hospital! It's also all about Elizabeth I and her famous Tide letter to Mary I (replete with manuscript hatchings!), the c...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis with knowing smirks all over their self-satisfied faces uncover the unexpected history of SMUGNESS! Which is all about toxic insults, contemporary politics and the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID jab, the myth of the over-confident Icarus (he of the melting wings, depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder as pair of legs pok...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis uncover the unexpected history of GRANDPARENTS! Which is all about oral history, WW2 and sociability during lockdown, as well as twentieth-century New Zealand, memory and identity, national grandparents day, Elizabeth Freke and the tragic death of a grandson! It's also all about monarch's grandfathers, Chinese re...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis shuffle the decks of history to deal us the unexpected history of CARDS! Which is all about The Prize Papers of the High Court of Admiralty, annotations, seventeenth-century political culture and the Popish Plot of 1678, fashionability, gaming and leisure as well as gambling and the threat to moral society. It's...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, Professor James Daybell and Dr Sam Willis lift the lid on the unexpected history of TEA! Which is all about seventeenth-century China and the history of medicine; wealth, display and female politeness, smuggling and the eighteenth-century novel. It's also all about neolithic archaeology, and the Cutty Sark! Who knew! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac...

Sam Willis and James Daybell explore the history of FUTILITY! Who knew it was so interesting and important? From a digital analysis of written sources 1590-2019 to the First World War via Oscar Wilde, hard labour in Victorian prisons - breaking rocks, turning crank wheels, moving cannon balls - to the charge of the Light Brigade - you'll never think about futility the same way ever again. Guarante...

In this fantastic episode Dr Sam Willis and Professor James Daybell explore the history of snails....who knew they were so interesting! From snails as symbols of resistance in occupied France in the Second World War, to the history of snail collecting, and snails in underwear and handbags and fighting giant snails...you'll never think about snails the same way ever again. Guaranteed! Hosted on Aca...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, discuss the fascinating and completely unexpected history of LEATHER! Which is all about the history of medieval birthing girdles (and 'bio-codicology!' - yes that is a term; the fabulous National Leather Collection and the quest to buy as many interesting items as you can for £5; it's about glove-making and William Shakespeare's father; a...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, clear their throats to pontificate about the unexpected history of RHYMING! Which is all about the history of the singing game and the transmission of dance songs across the centuries to children's playgrounds; it's about Renaissance verse, Petrarchan sonnets, Thomas Wyatt, the court of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and WWI; it's also all about...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, cast their beady historical eyes on the unexpected history of BAD HABITS! Which is all about the history of intoxication, alcohol, tobacco and drugs, as well as the material culture of early modern women's consumption of tobacco (think the hidden political meanings of snuff boxes) and female agency; it's also all about gambling, Sir Arthur...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, don their wellies and splash around in the past to jump into the unexpected history of PUDDLES! Which is all about the history of child the play, the historical derivation of nursery rhymes, Sir Walter Ralegh (the romantic puddle-coverer), and the famous children's author and illustrator Shirley Hughes; it's also all about the Cornish...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, strut their stuff on the catwalk of the past to strike a pose at the unexpected history of POSING! Which is all about seventeenth-century sartorial elegance and cutting a dash around town, as well as family paintings, photographs, and the history of the selfie. It's also all about Michelanglo's David and native Americans in the pictor...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, stroll elegantly and well-dressed around the archives to unravel the unexpected history of BUTTONS! Which is all about Robert Louis Stevenson, the outbreak of WWI, General John Joseph Pershing and American military uniforms, and Victorian clothing; it's also all about a conversation between Claude Levi-Strauss and Lucien Febvre and no...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, rampage around the archives to trumpet the unexpected history of ELEPHANTS! Which is all about drunken US behemoths, eighteenth-century biological inquiry, pachyderms on stage, a newsworthy postmortems; it's also all about early twentieth-century museums, and the Duke of Devonshire. Who knew! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, slither into the archives to capture the unexpected history of SNAKES! Which is all about fear and phobia, mythology (via Medusa, St Patrick, Jormungand, the Viking sea serpent and many more); it's also all about dreams and the US civil war, the Hopi Snake Dance, weaponizing venom for military uses, and also the invention of anti-veno...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, get all feel good and investigate the unexpected history of HUGS! Which is all about the science and psychology of hugging, babies and upbringing, greetings and the gendering of hugs, US Presidents and the politics of hugging; it's also all about free hugs, tree hugging and the Khejarli Massacre in September 1730. Who knew! Hosted on...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, investigate the fascinating unexpected history of TONGUES! Which is all about licking earthenware and the tongue as an important archaeological tool, Mary Bateman and tongue collecting, the removal of tongues, it's also all about tongue twisters and the history of elocution, and the cultural politics of sticking out tongues, as a gree...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, climb the rungs of the past to reach the unexpected history of LADDERS! Which is all about prehistoric cave art, the Crusades and the capture of Constantinople in 1204 (using flying ladders), lamp lighters in eighteenth-century Dublin; it's about accidents and superstition (falling off and walking under ladders); and it's about Ancien...

In this latest episode, the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, wade their way through the paperwork and bureaucracy of the past to action the unexpected history of MEETINGS! Which is all about campus novels of the twentieth century, state sponsored sabotage by the CIA's precursor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the history of secret meetings and the Ku Klux Klan, Nelson and naval warfare...

In this episode, the Histories of the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, stir the whey of history as they unwrap the unexpected history of CHEESE! Which is all about Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London of 1666, witches and magic (via fortune telling, love potions and malevolent acts with cheese!), Homer's Odyssey and a cheese-making cyclops, the Flemings, ethnic cleansing in the Middle Ages...

In this Homeschooling History episode, the Histories of the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, explore the fascinating history of UNCLES. From discussions of the Richard III and the Princes in the Tower to seventeenth-century kinship networks in the diary of Samuel Pepys and the personification of the US state in the figure of Uncle Sam, James and Sam rampage around history of uncles before settling o...