Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan explore the lives of extraordinary historical figures, questioning their reputations and legacies. They examine figures like Nina Simone, Picasso, and Napoleon, asking whether their contributions or flaws should define how we remember them. The podcast re-evaluates big lives from a modern perspective.
Episodes
Inbox: The People Australia Forgot | Santilla Chingaipe
What did one line on a gallery label reveal about Britain’s First Fleet? How did people who resisted slavery in the Caribbean end up in Australian penal colonies? And, what happens to Australia’s founding story when you put those people back into it?Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan talk to filmmaker and author Santilla Chingaipe about her book Black Convicts.At the National Gallery of Victoria, Chi
Tupac Shakur | Poet and Provocateur | 2
Why did the US vice president want Tupac’s debut album pulled from shops? What did Tupac see in a newspaper that made him write ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby’? And, what happened when the persona he built began to take over?In Part 2 of the Tupac Shakur series, Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch trace his rise from young rapper to film star and a target in America’s culture wars.After a Texas state trooper is
Inbox: A Ghost Story for Palestine | Amy Abdelnoor
Content warning: this episode includes discussion of war, killing and the ongoing violence in Gaza.Why did a cactus in an empty Palestinian village become the start of a novel?What happens when the ghost of a girl killed in 1967 asks a teenager from North London for help?And, why did Amy's tutor tell her, aged 20, to choose another cause?Peter and Afua talk to novelist Amy Abdelnoor about her
Tupac Shakur | Born Into the Struggle | 1
Content warning: this episode includes violence, drug addiction and references to sexual abuse.How did a pregnant Black Panther with no legal training defend herself against 156 charges, and win?Why did she name her son after the last Inca ruler, executed in Cusco in 1572?And, how did a ballet-dancing theatre kid become the rapper a US vice president said should never have been released?In the fir
Inbox: Oranges, Sunshine and a Storm Coming | Sebastian Faulks
What were British soldiers doing in Palestine in 1945, between the oranges, the swimming and the bombs?Why does the Christmas show in Sebastian Faulks's Jerusalem swap Gilbert and Sullivan for Oscar Wilde?And, how did a novelist who plans everything end up with a twist he never saw coming?Sebastian Faulks tells Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch how his father's posting, hundreds of hours of
Legacy Live: Elif Shafak | 16 November, Kings Place
Come and join us live! On Monday 16 November, Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch will be on stage at Kings Place in London with the wonderful Elif Shafak.Her extraordinary new novel, In One Brief Moment All Eternity, tells the story of Gustave Flaubert, the creator of Madame Bovary, through the eyes of the women whose lives shaped his, and whose stories have largely been forgotten. It's about who
The Earth Transformed | The Eye of the Storm | 4
What did a run of terrible Caribbean hurricanes have to do with American independence?How did a volcano in Indonesia help give us Frankenstein?And, why were so many of the people fighting for civil rights also fighting for the planet?In the next part of The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch follow the storms, eruptions and campaigners that changed the course of history.Why Europea
Inbox: Barbara Cartland, The Great Dictator | Matthew Sweet
How did a woman lying on a sofa with a Pekingese on her lap write 723 books?Why did the queen of pink chiffon put shoe polish on her eyelashes?And, if she sold around 750 million copies, why can't you find her books in a shop today?Matthew Sweet, author of the first biography to take Barbara Cartland seriously, tells Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch how a Doctor Who audio play about alien bookw
The Earth Transformed | Africa and Us | 3
Why were the first cowboys in the Americas from West Africa?What does it mean in Akan culture when a man "eats from another woman's pot"?And, could a mosquito be the reason Ghana never became a settler colony like South Africa or Kenya?In the next part of The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch put Africa at the centre of the story, and find it at the centre of ours to
Inbox: Six Men, Three Vans and a US Air Base | Iran, Putin and Oil
How do six men in three vans outside a Cotswolds air base end with America flying its bombers home?What can 300,000 tonnes of Russian diesel actually do for American drivers?And, are a quiet corner of England, an airport in Riyadh and the war in Ukraine all part of the same story?In this Legacy Inbox episode, Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch try to work out how the week's biggest stories fit to
The Earth Transformed | The World in Motion | 2
If almost every early migration out of Africa failed, how did any of us get here?Why does an Akan word that once meant "person from beyond the cornfields" now mean a white person?And, when British politicians talk about net migration, who are they leaving out?Peter Frankopan takes Afua Hirsch through 50,000 years of people on the move, using the new illustrated edition of The Earth Trans
Inbox: The Correspondent | The Power of Letter Writing | Book Club
What happens when an author gets rejected eight times, writes a ninth novel in hand-written letters, and ends up at number one on the New York Times bestseller list? Why are we so drawn to storytellers, tradwives, and 73-year-old law clerks who reject email in favor of pen and paper? And, what does a 73-year-old fictional letter-writer have in common with the rise of the AfD in Germany and the pol
The Earth Transformed | Her Story and the Natural World | 1
Why does the ancient Greek word for bravery come from the word for man, and what did bronze spears have to do with it?How does one of the coldest decades in 2,000 years end with around 100,000 women on trial for meddling with the weather?And, what links a woman blamed for a hailstorm in the 1590s to ten young protesters superglued to an oil company's headquarters in London?Afua Hirsch reads Pe
Inbox: The Invisible Machine Behind Everything | Ed Conway
Why did the cod in your fish fingers go to China and back before it reached your freezer?What does a medieval king blocking English wool from Flanders have to do with Xi Jinping's grip on rare earths?And, if China can now build cars far more cheaply than Europe or America, could the West lose its car industry altogether?Ed Conway, Sky News economics and data editor and Times columnist, takes P
Dolly Parton | Unproblematic White Queen | Feat. Kelechi Okafor |2
What were the taxi drivers of 1990s Accra playing on repeat?How does a woman who swore she was "not a bit political" write a hit about being used up and spat out by the system?And, what does it take for the most unmistakably white icon in American country music to become the unproblematic queen of a Nigerian girl growing up in Peckham?Afua Hirsch hands the Dolly Parton question to her fr
Inbox: The Bayeux Tapestry and the Arrow Nobody Can Prove | Sue Brunning
Why are a million people about to queue at the British Museum for a strip of embroidered linen?What if the most famous picture of 1066 isn't a tapestry, was probably stitched in England, and treats the losing king as a hero?And, if the arrow in Harold's eye was stitched back in by 19th-century restorers, how sure are we of the one thing everyone knows about 1066?With the Bayeux Tapestry in
Dolly Parton | It's Dolly Parton's World and We're Living In It | 1
Who says no to Elvis Presley — and is proved right eighteen years later?How does a girl from a one-room cabin with no electricity work out the economics of music publishing before most of Nashville has?And, in an age that agrees on almost nothing, how did Dolly Parton end up claimed by drag queens, evangelicals and everyone in between?Peter Frankopan opens on the phone call that cost Dolly Parton
Inbox: The Falklands Campaign | Milei, Trump and Oil | Book Club
Why is a war fought 44 years ago back on the front pages?What happens when a combative president in Buenos Aires, a friend in the White House and an oil field due online in 2028 all point at the same islands?And, when 99.8% of the people who live there have already voted, whose islands are they to argue over?Fresh from Sir Lawrence Freedman's two-volume official history of the Falklands campaign,
9/11: 25 Years On | The Reckoning | 3
Content warning: this episode describes torture, civilian deaths and the 2021 Kabul airport attack.Bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is shattered, and there was never another 9/11 — so who won?What does a war cost once you count the hospitals that closed and the food that never arrived?And what does it mean that the United States signed an agreement with the people it went to war to destroy?Twenty-five
Inbox: Yesteryear | Waking Up in 1855 | Book Club
What happens to a trad wife influencer when she wakes up in 1855 and has toactually do it?Why were film producers bidding on this novel four years before it wasfinished?And when a story about white homesteaders in pre-Civil War America contains noBlack people at all, what is it quietly telling you?Peter asks Afua what she read over the summer and gets a debut novel, afour-year-old email she'd forg
9/11: 25 Years On | The Forever War | 2
Content warning: this episode describes the aftermath of 11 September 2001, including torture and civilian deaths.How does a country go from the sympathy of the entire world to invading a nation that had nothing to do with the attack?What does a blank cheque from the UN Security Council actually buy?And if torture only counts as torture when the pain is equivalent to organ failure, what exactly is
Inbox: Genghis Khan and the Empire We Got Wrong | Marie Favereau
Who taught you that the Mongols only destroyed things?What if the empire that sacked Baghdad also invented blue and white porcelain, elected its leaders, and let the Khan's first wife decide on war?And why do the Mongols still have a worse reputation than any other empire in history — including the ones that lasted longer and killed more?In this Legacy Inbox episode, Peter is joined by Marie Faver
9/11: 25 Years On | The World That Made 9/11 | 1
Content warning: this episode describes the events of 11 September 2001 in detail.What if the deadliest terror attack in history began with an American chequebook?What if the men who carried it out had once been armed, trained and celebrated by the West as freedom fighters?And what if the whole thing was set in motion more than twenty years earlier, on Christmas Eve?Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan
Inbox: Lindsey Graham and the Price of a Seat at the Table
How does a man go from calling Donald Trump a kook and a jackass to becoming his closest ally in the Senate?What do you give up to keep a seat at the table, and what do you actually get for it?And when the obituaries settle on calling you a pilot fish, has anything you did survived you?Lindsey Graham flew home from Kyiv on a Friday and was dead by Saturday evening, aged 71 — Peter Frankopan and Af
Modern Travel | The Full Package | 5
Who decided that the thing stopping people travelling was not money, but choice?What happens to a country when the holiday is designed so that the visitor never has to leave the compound?And of every hundred dollars you spend at an all-inclusive, how much do you think actually stays there?Gerard Blitz opened his first holiday village on a Majorcan beach in 1950 on the theory that what people wante
Inbox: Zhu Rongji and the Price of Modern China
Why does a kettle cost less than ten pounds?What kind of official refuses to send the army against protesters in one decade, then puts thirty million people out of work in the next?And when the man who built modern China spent his last twenty years saying nothing at all, what was he saying?Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch disagree, at length and on the record, about whether the architect of the mod
Modern Travel | The Age of the Skies | 4
When did flying stop being the most glamorous thing a person could possibly do?What kind of industry fixes its own prices by law, and then competes on how much champagne it can pour?And what happened to the man who broke it?Sir Freddie Laker swept floors at an aircraft factory, worked out that the entire airline business was upside down, and got taken apart for it — Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch
Inbox: Hecuba, Exile and Coming Home | Arwa Omaren
What happens to a person when the country they were born in decides they were never really from there?What does a play about the women of a sacked city, written 2,400 years ago, have to say to an actress walking out of Syria on foot?And how do you stand on a stage in Edinburgh and make an audience laugh about the worst thing that ever happened to you?At the Edinburgh Fringe, Peter Frankopan meets
Modern Travel | Rise Of The Seaside | 3
Who decided that the sea — cold, dangerous and full of smugglers — was somewhere you went for fun?What kind of doctor prescribes plunging into the Channel naked in the dead of winter, and then drinking it?And how did the towns Britain built to enjoy itself end up among the most deprived places in the country?The holiday — the whole idea that ordinary people are owed one — starts with a Brighton do
Inbox: Why Dictators Love the World Cup | Feat. Karim Zidan
Why does every dictator, sooner or later, want to host the World Cup?What did a military junta that never wanted the tournament discover once the goals started going in?And when a hundred thousand people are dancing in the street, who is that actually working for?Peter Frankopan sits down with investigative journalist Karim Zidan, who has spent a decade tracking how autocrats turn football into pr
Modern Travel | The Other Grand Tour | 2
What happened when the people written out of the Grand Tour wrote their own account of it?What did an eighteenth-century Bengali diplomat see in London that made him call the British a conceited race?And how did a man from Bihar end up as shampooing surgeon to the King of England?Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan follow the travellers the Grand Tour left out — enslaved servants, Black abolitionists,
Inbox: The Secret Global History of Bruges
What's a garnet mined in Sri Lanka two and a half thousand years ago doing in a silver hairpin dug up near Bruges? Why are the Duke of Burgundy and the conqueror of Constantinople staring each other down for the first time in history? And, how did most of Belgium forget that its own counts once sat on the throne of Constantinople?Afua turns interviewer as Peter opens the doors on Bigger Picture, t
Modern Travel | The Original Gap Year | 1
What actually turned a teenage aristocrat into a "finished" gentleman in the 1700s? Why did one incredibly long, incredibly expensive holiday end up inventing the whole idea of "the West"? And why can you still trace a straight line from that holiday to Frankenstein, the contents of half of Britain's country houses, and this year's tenth anniversary of the Brexit vote?Send a nineteen-year-old aris
Legacy Inbox: The Gold Britain Still Won't Return
What does it take to get a room of ex-military festival-goers in rural Wiltshire to agree Britain should return its stolen gold? And why does an obsolete Victorian law still make it a criminal offence for the British Museum to give any of it back? Afua Hirsch just spent a week testing both — with a Buckingham Palace thought experiment, a courtroom-style cross-examination, and a verdict on two cent
World Cup | Migration and the New Asia | 7
What does it mean when the sons of empire become the heroes of the nation that once ruled them? Four years later, what happens when one of those same colonies turns round and beats France on the biggest stage there is? And could two World Cups, played four years and one continent apart, actually tell you where the world's centre of gravity was heading next?Peter and Afua trace France '98 and the f
World Cup | Big Business | 6
How does a country where football is a minority sport end up hosting — and cashing in on — the biggest World Cup in history? What happens when FIFA stops behaving like a sporting federation and starts behaving like a multinational? And when the tournament generates $14 billion in a single World Cup, who's actually footing the bill?Twelve global sponsors, three and a half million fans through the t
World Cup | The End of the Cold War | 5
How does a country only three decades free of colonial rule end up humiliating the reigning world champions in the opening match? What happens when the last World Cup of the Cold War arrives just months after the Berlin Wall comes down? And can football ever really just be a game, when Roger Milla is dancing at a corner flag while an old world order quietly falls apart around him?Cameroon stun the
Gary Lineker | Nation, Identity and the Beautiful Game | 2
What does it mean to cheer for the country that once colonised yours? Forty years on from the Hand of God, does one match still define how a nation sees itself? And when Ghana play England, who exactly is Afua Hirsch supposed to be supporting? Gary Lineker returns to relive 1986 — the Golden Boot, Maradona, and a quarter-final played four years after the Falklands War — before the conversation tur
Gary Lineker | The Polictics Of The World Cup | 1
hould football and politics ever really be kept apart? What happens when the host nation is at war with one of the teams competing in its own tournament? And when FIFA hands its brand-new peace prize to Donald Trump, has the beautiful game lost the plot completely? Gary Lineker sits down with Legacy for the first of three conversations on the World Cup, drawing on forty years inside the game to e
World Cup | The World of Dictators | 4
What happens when a World Cup final is played a few hundred metres from a torture centre? How does a newly independent nation humiliate the champions of Europe — and still get knocked out by a fix in plain sight? And when a boy from the slums of Buenos Aires beat England with his fist, was it the cruellest cheat in football — or perfect revenge? Afua and Peter follow the World Cup through its dark
World Cup | The World Cup and the New World Order | 3
What turns a football team into a country's most powerful weapon? How does a game invented to entertain end up laundering the reputations of dictators? And when seventy years of European control collapsed in a single afternoon's vote — who took the game, and what did they want with it? From the sunlit genius of Brazil in 1970 to a backroom ballot in Frankfurt, Peter and Afua track the moment foot
World Cup | Post Colonial World | 2
What happens when the nations that invented football start losing their grip on it? How does a team representing a country that doesn't officially exist end up touring the world and unnerving an empire? And why did thirty-one African nations refuse to play at all?Afua and Peter follow football into the age of decolonisation — Algeria's phantom side, Nkrumah's Black Stars, a seventeen-year-old in t
World Cup | Origins In Empire | 1
How did a game scribbled into rules by Victorian schoolboys end up watched by four billion people? Why do the countries that were colonised take such fierce joy in beating the ones that colonised them? And by the time Mussolini was watching from the stands, was the World Cup ever really just about football?Peter and Afua follow football out along the empire's trade routes — from a London rulebook
1776 | America 250: What the Culture Says | 2
What does a country sing about when it can't agree on its own founding? Why has Hollywood, which will film literally anything, never made a great movie about 1776? And when both the Black Lives Matter marchers and the January 6th rioters claim to be the true heirs of the Declaration of Independence, who actually owns the revolution?From Hamilton's founding hustlers to Beyoncé's cowboys to a White
1776 | The Legacy For Our Culture | 1
Why did African Americans spend a century celebrating the Fifth of July instead of the Fourth? Why did a sitting US president personally try to end a journalist's career over one newspaper series? And two hundred and fifty years on, why can't America agree on what its founding document actually means?A 250-year-old promise of equality collides with slavery, revolution and a modern-day tenure battl
1776 | The Women Washington Could Never Catch | 2
Who really built American freedom — and why does the answer make so many people so uncomfortable? What happens when an enslaved woman takes the Declaration of Independence more seriously than the man who wrote it? And, when the President of the United States turns the full machinery of government against one young Black woman — why can't he catch her?Belinda Sutton petitioned a court for fifty yea
1776 | The Founding Mothers | 1
The Declaration of Independence said all men are created equal. But what did that mean to the women who heard those words and knew they were being lied to? Who were the women the founding fathers never mentioned — and what did they do about it? And, if America was founded on the idea of freedom, why did it take another century — and a civil war — to even begin to make good on that promise? Afua an
Declaration of Independence | The Brand | 2
Who wrote "all men are created equal" — and then went home to more than 180 enslaved people? What does a document actually mean when it excludes women, Indigenous peoples, and one in five of the very population it claims to liberate? And, was the Declaration of Independence a genuine statement of universal human rights — or the most successful rebranding exercise in political history?Peter and Afu
Declaration of Independence | Follow The Money | 1
What if the Boston Tea Party had less to do with liberty and more to do with a smuggler protecting his profit margins? What if hurricanes tearing through the Caribbean helped light the fuse of revolution? And, what if the men who gave birth to America were not visionary idealists but wealthy merchants who had simply run out of patience with British trade restrictions?Peter and Afua pull back the c
Founding Fathers | Saints and Sinners | 4
Was Alexander Hamilton the real architect of American capitalism — or just the most self-destructive genius in the room? What does it mean that the man who shaped the nation's finances spent his career surrounded by an economy built on enslaved labour he understood firsthand? And, if the founding fathers were so brilliant, why is America still fighting about what they actually built?Peter and Afua
Founding Fathers | The Original Brexit | 3
Who was the boring lawyer who quietly built the machine that made America work? Was John Adams so relentlessly right that even his allies couldn't stand him? And, how did the man who wrote the most beautiful words on human equality spend decades owning the woman who bore his children?Peter and Afua tear into the contradictions of 1776 — the forgotten architect, the honest man nobody liked, and the
The Founding Fathers | The O.G.'s | 2
What turned America's most famous British loyalist into its most dangerous revolutionary? What does a public humiliation in a Whitehall chamber have to do with the Declaration of Independence? And, if the man who designed the American constitution believed men were angels, would he have bothered?Peter and Afua trace how a candle-maker's son who pulled lightning from the sky and a sickly scholar ob
Founding Fathers | The invention of the United States | 1
How did a collection of desperate survivors, religious outcasts, and petty criminals become the architects of the world's most powerful nation? What does it mean to build a society on the language of liberty when that society is entirely dependent on enslaved labour? And are Americans still reckoning with a founding story that was never quite what it seemed?Peter and Afua go back to the very begin
Rasputin | How Rumour Broke an Empire | Feat. Sir Antony Beevor
How does a Siberian peasant mystic end up controlling the most powerful empire in Europe? Could the rumours that destroyed a dynasty have been entirely false — and did they matter anyway? And, without Rasputin, would there have been no Lenin — and would the 20th century have looked completely different? Peter sits down with Sir Antony Beevor — bestselling author of Stalingrad, Berlin, and D-Day —
Diets | One Stomach Flu Away From My Goal Weight | 2
What did it take for human beings to start controlling what they ate — and why did "health" so quickly become a coverstory for something else? How did a Venetian nobleman's wine-heavy calorie restriction become a blueprint for themodern diet industry? And, when tobacco companies, Hollywood, and the beauty industry all decided women's bodyanxiety was a market opportunity — who, exactly, was the die
Diets | Three Eggs and a Bottle of Wine | 1
What did Vogue actually recommend women eat in 1977 — and why did it make one food writer cry in thebathroom? How did the Greeks turn a six-pack into a moral argument? And, has the human obsession withcontrolling what we eat ever really been about health at all?Peter and Afua trace the long, strange history of dieting — from ancient Greek athletics and Romanfeast-and-purge excess, to medieval star
Mystics | Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Man In The World | 3
What happens when you raise a child telling him he's the Beast — and he decides to prove you right? Could a manwho genuinely repelled everyone around him have quietly shaped the culture we live in today? And, is the world ofsex, drugs, and rock and roll actually the legacy of a repressed Victorian occultist with a god complex?Peter and Afua descend into the dark, theatrical, and genuinely troublin
Mystics | Helena Blavatsky's Karma | 2
Who invented the spiritual vocabulary of the modern world — karma, reincarnation, yoga studios, the idea that you can be "spiritual but not religious"? What if the hidden masters living in remote Tibetan mountains who inspired her weren't real — but the New Age movement they sparked absolutely was? And can you change the course of Western spirituality forever while being accused of fraud, plagiari
Mystics | Nostradamus: The Arophecary | 1
Nostradamus has predicted every major disaster in history — or so the internet would have you believe. Peter and Afua get behind the myth to meet the real man: a plague-era apothecary, rejected by the medical establishment, whose greatest invention wasn't prophecy — it was selling certainty to an anxious world.Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.leg
The Age Of Cargo | The TEU | 3
Malcolm McLean was a frustrated truck driver who thought there had to be a better way. The metal box he invented now carries 90% of the world's traded goods — and quietly runs the global economy.Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.legacy.supportingcast.fmStay connected with Legacy:Instagram: @originallegacypodcastTikTok: @legacy_productionsExplore m
The Age Of Cargo | Globalisation and the Oceans | 2
From colliers carrying coal out of Newcastle to Marshall Plan grain crossing the Atlantic, Peter and Afua trace how the movement of goods by sea built the modern world. This is the story of bulk cargo — and why the ships that carried it changed everything.Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.legacy.supportingcast.fmStay connected with Legacy:Instagra
The Age Of Cargo | The Cargo Ship | 1
The cargo ship didn't just move goods — it moved civilisations. Peter and Afua trace 2,000 years of maritime trade, from Roman grain ships and spice routes to the Hanseatic League, the sugar plantations of Madeira, and the brutal economics of the triangular trade.Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.legacy.supportingcast.fmStay connected with Legacy:
Facelifts | The Gory Truth Behind the Celebrity Glow | 2
Afua and Peter explore the "undetectable" world of deep plane facelifts, examining why celebrities are finally trading surgical secrecy for viral transparency. They dissect the astronomical costs of modern "tweakments" and the rising pressure to match AI-generated perfection as surgery recipients get younger than ever before.Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adver
Facelifts | From Jericho to Kardashian | 1
Peter and Afua delve into the surprising 9,000-year history of facial modification, spanning from ancient trephining rituals in Jericho to the "eerily impressive" modern results seen on Kris Jenner. They analyze how surgical techniques have evolved through a symbiotic relationship between wartime reconstruction and a global, often problematic, pursuit of Eurocentric beauty norms.Join Legacy Plus f
Global Impact Of Economic Shocks | The Reconfiguration of the World of 1973 | 4
From the formation of OPEC to the Yom Kippur War, Peter and Afua trace how oil-producing nations finally seized control of their most powerful weapon — and how the shock of 1973 sent the entire global economy into freefall, from petrol queues in Europe to coups in Africa.Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.legacy.supportingcast.fmStay connected with
Global Impact Of Economic Shocks | 1973 - Oil and the 20th Century | 3
From the geology of the Gulf to the CIA-backed coup that toppled Iran's elected prime minister, Peter and Afua trace how oil became the defining force of the 20th century — and why the West's century-long obsession with Iranian oil still shapes the crisis unfolding in 2026.Join Legacy Plus for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.legacy.supportingcast.fmStay connected wi
Global Impact of Economic Shocks | The Cataclysm of Suez | 2
In this second installment of their series on economic shocks, Peter and Afua dissect the 1956 Suez Crisis, where Gamal Abdel Nasser's bold nationalization of the canal stripped the British Empire of its remaining credibility. They reveal the clandestine "Protocol of Sèvres" conspiracy and explain how a furious President Eisenhower leveraged the International Monetary Fund to bring a bankrupt Brit
Global Impact of Economic Shocks | 1915 and the Dardanelles | 1
Afua and Peter examine the brutal 1915 closure of the Dardanelles, revealing how a single geographic choke point strangled the Russian economy and paved the way for the Bolshevik Revolution. Drawing haunting parallels to modern conflicts in the Strait of Hormuz, they explore how Winston Churchill’s over-ambitious naval gambles led to a devastating legacy of human and financial loss.Join Legacy Plu
Great Environmental Shocks in History | How An Earthquake Splintered The World | 4
Afua and Peter examine the terrifying 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, revealing how a massive geological rupture in Japan unexpectedly triggered a radical energy revolution in Germany and shifted the scales of European geopolitics. From the heroic struggle of the "Fukushima 50" to the strategic vulnerabilities exposed by a reliance on Russian gas, they explore the sobering reality that even ou
Great Environmental Shocks in History | Before the Plague | 3
Afua and Peter explore the "Great Famine" of the early 1300s. Triggered by sudden global cooling and torrential rains, Europe's food supply was decimated and up to 70% of its cattle were wiped out through a terrifying bovine plague. This often-overlooked catastrophe didn't just cause mass starvation; it physically "scarred" a generation of children, leaving them uniquely vulnerable to the Black De
Great Environmental Shocks in History | Darkness at Noon - The Justinianic Plague | 2
A sudden, catastrophic dimming of the sun in 536 AD triggered the coldest decade in two millennia, launching a "volcanic winter" that saw harvests fail from Ireland to China. Peter and Afua explore this environmental shock that directly facilitated the first global pandemic of Yersinia pestis, shattering the imperial ambitions of Rome and Persia while paving the way for the explosive rise of Buddh
Great Environmental Shocks in History | The Remaking of the Ancient World | 1
Afua and Peter launch their new series on environmental catastrophes by revealing how a massive volcanic eruption in Alaska—10,000 kilometers away—secretly orchestrated the downfall of Cleopatra and the birth of the Roman Empire. They trace the "butterfly effect" from Julius Caesar’s bloody assassination and "bling" obsession to the failure of the Nile floods, proving that the ancient world was re
Iran | Feat. Christopher de Bellaigue | On The Eve Of Confrontation | 3
Iranian history is defined by a fierce sense of exceptionalism rooted in geography, language, and a unique intellectual enlightenment that Western narratives often ignore. This deep-seated identity now fuels an explosive youth rebellion that increasingly prioritizes personal freedom over national sovereignty, setting the stage for a violent final showdown with a millenarian regime that is prepared
Iran | Feat. Kim Ghattas | The Legacies Of 1979 | 2
Afua and Peter explore the seismic shift of 1979, tracing how a single revolutionary year transformed Iran from a U.S.-allied monarchy into a militarised theocracy determined to export its "Black Wave" across the Middle East. They analyse the regime's enduring "besieged mentality"—forged by a decade of war and perceived Western betrayals—and the defiant courage of a younger generation now dancing
Iran | Feat. Ali Ansari | Seen From The Inside And Out | 1
Afua and Peter dive into the historical psyche of Iran, exploring how a civilization with deep imperial memories navigates a modern reality of global interference and internal revolution. They unpick the "dual structure" of Iranian politics, where a sense of cultural superiority clashes with a narrative of Western betrayal that spans from the 19th century to the 1979 revolution. They are joined by
Ernest Hemingway | One True Sentence | 2
Afua and Peter track Ernest Hemingway’s spiral from the peak of his Nobel success into a dark cycle of alcoholism and untreated head trauma. They explore how the 20th century’s "Alpha" icon eventually collapsed under the weight of his own performance, leading to a tragic end that mirrored his father’s suicide.Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.legacy.s
Ernest Hemingway | The Lost Generation | 1
Afua and Peter track Ernest Hemingway’s path from a suburban Chicago childhood spent hunting and boxing to the bloody front lines of Italy. They show how a brutal war injury and his newsroom grind birthed the "iceberg theory," revealing a man who hunted Nazis and survived plane crashes but often treated his own life like his best piece of fiction.Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&am
Gertrude Stein | Oozing Cubism | 2
In this second installment, Peter and Afua examine Stein's boldest move: ghostwriting her partner’s "autobiography" to claim the global stardom she felt she deserved. They confront the darkest corners of her history, including her bitter public feuds and her controversial survival as a Jewish woman during the Nazi occupation of France.Stay connected with LegacyFollow us for clips, behind-the-scene
Gertrude Stein | It Takes A Lot Of Time To Be A Genius | 1
Peter and Afua discuss the life of Gertrude Stein, an influential figure in the Parisian art and literature scene. They explore her relationships with artists like Picasso and her complex personality.Stay connected with LegacyFollow us for clips, behind-the-scenes stories, and new episode drops: Instagram: @originallegacypodcastTikTok: @legacy_productionsExplore more from Peter and Afua — ess
This is Samurai | The Samurai Take Control | 2
How did a warrior class born to serve end up ruling Japan for seven centuries? When the Mongols twice tried to invade — and were twice destroyed by typhoons — what did that do to the samurai myth? And, when the Meiji government banned the wearing of swords in public in 1876, was that the end of the samurai — or just the beginning of something stranger?Peter and Afua trace the samurai from their se
