New Zealand: everything you wanted to know

Queen Victoria was – so legend has it – famously 'not amused'. But, as Dr Bob Nicholson reveals in this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, the long-lived queen did have a sense of humour – as did her subjects. Speaking with David Musgrove, Bob explores what made people laugh in ...  Show more

What do your hands reveal about you? Historian Alison Bashford joins Elinor Evans to explore the extraordinary history of how people have interpreted the human hand. From ancient divination to cutting-edge medical diagnostics, her book Decoding the Hand reveals how palm reading o ...  Show more

In his new book, The World’s Din: Listening to Records, Radio and Films in New Zealand 1880–1940 (Otago University Press, 2018), Peter Hoar, a senior lecturer in radio and media history at Auckland University of Technology, explores how new technology shaped how New Zealanders ex ...  Show more

When fossils were discovered in the US during the 19th Century, it altered American understandings of science, religion, race and more. So what was the Hadrosaurus Foulkii, and why did it have such an enormous effect?

Caroline Winterer, William Robertson Coe Professo ...

Did Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke purposefully wait for the History of the World podcast to get to the Māori episode, before she performed her viral haka in the New Zealand parliament? Some discussion about the Māori episode and also about the podcast itself. 

How could recording people having sex be 'for science'? Same question for sleeping with your colleagues? Well, these were just two of the practices embraced by the subject of today's conversation.

Donna Drucker is returning to the podcast to discuss pioneering sexolo ...