***This episode contains a description of mass murder***

As the Black Death moved across Europe, something darker and more insidious spread ahead of it. An antisemitic conspiracy theory that blamed European Jews for the plague. Across Europe, Jews were persecuted and often executed en masse.

Maddy and Anthony are joined by Joshua Teplitsky, Professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies Jewish life in Early Modern Central Europe and is currently working on a book about plague in Prague during the early eighteenth century.

Edited by Max Carrey. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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(Part 1/2) With Britain engaged in the First World War in Europe, Irish rebels sensed an opportunity.

Irish revolutions had fought for independence from Britain in the past, would the Easter Rising be any different?

In this first of two-parts, Anthony and Maddy talk to Dr. Conor Mulvagh, lecturer in Irish History at University College Dublin, about the dramatic events that lead to the 1916 Easter Rising.

This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

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It was a plague like no other. It provoked strange cures like no other. Anthony Delaney takes Maddy Pelling in search of the oddest cures concocted in the face of the Black Death, busting a few myth along the way (sorry Plague Doctor, but you're in the wrong century).

Edited by Max Carrey. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

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(Part 2/2) Joan of Arc, mystic leader of a French army, was captured and sold to the English who tried her as a witch. What do the final days of this iconic figure tell us? With so much myth swirling around her, how can we get at the real Joan d'Arc?

Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Edited by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

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Around 50% of everyone in Europe died during the Black Death. It's very hard to make sense of that. What did it look and feel like to live through this calamity?

Today Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney are joined by historian Helen Carr whose new book Sceptred Isle: A New History of the Fourteenth Century is out in May.

Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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(Part 1/2) So many things make Joan of Arc iconic. The fearless, crossdressing warrior saint who dies a martyr's death. Today Maddy begins a two-part exploration by telling Anthony the story of who Joan of Arc was and how she rose to fame.

Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Edited by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

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The myth goes thus: the Black Death reached Christendom at the Siege of Caffa when Mongols catapulted diseased bodies over the walls. Where did we get this story? What actually happened at Caffa? And how did the Black Death really enter Europe?

Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney are joined by Professor Hannah Barker, medieval historian from Arizona State University. She's the author of That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500 and "Laying the Corpses to Rest: Grain Embargoes and the Early Transmission of the Black Death in the Black Sea, 1346-1347".

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

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During the victory celebrations of World War One, a rising star is found dead in her bed after a suspected overdose.

22-year-old Billie Carlton’s death caused shockwaves across the nation, adding fuel to a growing moral panic about sex, scandal and drugs.

Anthony and Maddy are joined by Virginia Berridge, Professor of History and Health Policy at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, to explore the path to drug criminalisation in postwar London following the death of Billie Carlton. Together, they uncover the extraordinary history of drugs in Soho - London’s most notorious neighbourhood in the 1920s.

Historic Soho has been brought to life in the new BBC show Dope Girls, which tells the story of Soho when female gangs ran the nightclubs after the First World War. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer now. 

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

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Why did two servants living in Plymouth, England, poison their whole household in 1675? How did they sneak arsenic into the food? And what on earth is pottage?

Today Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney talk to Dr Blessin Adams, author of "Thou Savage Woman: female killers in early modern Britain".

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Untimely deaths followed the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter. Coincidence or ancient curse? When the tomb of King Tutankhamun was sealed more than 3000 years ago, it was rumoured to be protected by a curse, which would ruin the life of anyone who disturbed the pharaoh's final resting place. A mere two weeks after the tomb was discovered in 1922, one of the explorers died from a fatal mosquito bite. This wasn't the end of the bad luck, there was more to come... Anthony and Maddy are joined by Egyptologist Campbell Price to unpick fact from fiction, and get to the bottom of one of the most notorious curses in the world.

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.