Blast From The Past

The Scooby Doo cartoon madness started in 1969 and since then Velma, Daphne, Fred and Shaggy have been influencing pop culture and the gothic thriller genre. What, also, was the unique world view the series was promoting?

Pirate Queen Ching Shih ruled the China seas in the 1800s, bending the British, Portuguese and Chinese rulers to her will. Who knew?

Siddhartha Gautama was born where Nepal now is around 500 BCE. More than 2000 years later, are there many people who've really had more impact on the way we are, think and live than him? Have a warming, meditative, relaxing etc etc etc start to BFTP's second season - we are so excited to be BACK!

Adventurer, trailblazer and record-breaking pilot, Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, but disappeared in her attempt to cross the globe in 1937. Join Billy and Anna's romp through the conspiracy theories that have popped up about her disappearance (some less convincing), and think about her impact on the world of aviation. Also she had excellent freckles. But: has it gone too far? Has her legacy overshadowed other fantastic women in history?

Victorian man JRR Tolkein became known as the father of high fantasy because of the epic world he created in Middle Earth. For BFTP's 20th episode, Billy and Anna chat a lot about hobbits, a lot about Harry Potter, a lot about the moral corruptibility of humans, and Billy can't help but get his nerd on.

Billy and I are so happy to be back together in the same room this week, and for this episode we're getting SUSPICIOUS. Who knew the Illuminati was an actual group, formed in Bavaria in the late 1700s? Join Anna and Billy to trace their journey through to the 21st century, where we chat about the Illuminati conspiracy theory in its modern format.

Walking talking human encyclopedia Tom is back and this week we're chatting about the longest-serving First Lady of the USA and driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the ripple effects she set in force that we still see today.

David Bowie's a complete legend! Gender bender, glam rock pioneer and rejecter of the boring - music and pop culture buff Dan H joins us again to ask how drastically different 2020 music and our wider society would be without him.

Princess Diana's brutal death in a Parisian tunnel in 1997 whilst being chased by the Pap decidedly changed the perception of privacy in the UK media. But is her impact on the royal family itself still having ripples today? Our wonderful guest Izzy joins us in the lockdown series once again.

Izzy forges through lockdown-induced tech issues to join us in discussing the explorer Christopher Columbus, whose travels at the turn of the 16th century opened up the Americas to rampant colonisation. How has this essential genocide of the lives and cultures that existed there already moulded the Americas today - and can we say Columbus is responsible for capitalism?!