Dr Valerie Wright of Glasgow University takes us into the world of the High Flats just over fifty years ago and what people thought of their new cities in the sky - it wasn't all doom and gloom, but then again there's getting a big 1960s pram up all those stairs when the lift wasn't working. Toddlers getting on your nerves? Needing a lie down after that - what would an 18th century doctor prescribe? Dr James Kennaway of Roehampton University introduces Susan to John Brown, one of the most...

The female is more deadly than the male. History enthusiast Susan Morrison interviews Dr Nadine Akkerman of Leiden University about her new book 'Invisible Agents. Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain' where we'll be finding out the fieldcraft used by women spies and hearing the story of one of the Scottish spies Ann Murray, Lady Halkett who pulled a Flora Macdonald-style rescue long before Flora was even thought of. Then there's the problem of naughty women and where you put...

Was it a dog’s life in 17th century Scotland? Susan Morrison talks to historian of animal-human relationships, Laura Moffat of the University of Strathclyde about her pet subject. Find out what you were supposed to do if you were bitten by a mad dog back in the day (clue - it involves the worst smoothie in the world), and why James VI shouldn’t have let his wife Anne of Denmark out with his dogs. If dogs had it bad in the 17th century, people had it worse in the 1540s, during the harrowing...

Rev Dr Nikki Macdonald on flyting and scolding before the Kirk Sessions - the Scottish church courts - including the amazing range of insults people used. Top up your vocabulary with 'lukenbrowit witch' (having a mono brow!) mensworn dog (perjured) and having the grandgore (syphillis). Early modern Scots could give modern day rappers a run for their money with their disses and burns. Jeni Park (Hub Project Manager at Unlocking Our Sound Heritage Project, National Library of Scotland) on...

Burning questions of the day - racism, heresy and witchcraft. Pioneering pan-Africanist Dr James Africanus Beale Horton came to Edinburgh from Sierra Leone for his qualifications only to find the famous university town was a hot bed of a new kind of racism - Dr Henry Dee and Dr James Kennaway take us into that world. Moving back in time: you’ve heard of Henry VIII but how much do you know about the dramatic life and times of his rival James V of Scotland when both heretics and traitors...

Long before Outlander, there was Annie S Swan, Scotland’s bestselling author of romantic novels, taking us deep into the personal lives of her characters as they fought to save stately homes or marry the right man. She wrote at least 200 full novels over her life, but Dr Amy Burge of Birmingham University feels Annie, a stalwart of The People’s Friend hasn’t had her due with her strong female characters and page-turning books. Annie probably would have blanched about writing about the real...

1968 - the summer of love, youth unrest in Paris, London, Chicago, Falkirk… wait, Falkirk? Well, it was hardly major rioting but the letters page of the local paper was ablaze about underage sex and drugs - something had to be done! Dr Charlie Lynch of Glasgow University tells us about Falkirk’s moral panic as the permissive society reached the Forth Valley. But we’ve a stranger darker story to tell from the 1880s - when a ruthless manipulative conman and abuser turned up in Dundee. Brother...

The predacious great diving beetle of Fife - a beastie the world is not yet ready for (or at least Susan Morrison isn’t ready for it) - we’ll be exploring its role in pointing to the Kingdom’s history of general sogginess and water bodies with entomologist Dr Jack Maclachlan of the University of Maine who’s in pursuit of Fife’s lost lochs. Then to Sierra Leone to find out what a Scottish qualified doctor made of the idea of ‘human leopards’ with Dr Christine Whyte of Glasgow University....

From the 17th century to the 1970s, sex and the single girl has always caused anxieties. Trouble brewed in the 1970s when unmarried women started to ask for the pill. Oral historian, Kristin Hay of Strathclyde University has been interviewing folk to find out what it was like. She’s on [email protected] if you want to join her project on contraception use in Scotland. But it was always the case that the guardians of morality worried about what all the single ladies were up to -...

It took more than chutzpah to open a contraceptive clinic in 1920s Aberdeen. Family planning pioneer, Fenella Paton had money, connections and courage. Dr Alison McCall shows us why the clinic was needed and how it made a difference. Dr Christine Whyte of Glasgow University takes us far out to sea where terrified children were rescued from enslavers, but what happened to them next? Humanitarian intervention can be a tricky subject. Statue smashing - a favourite intervention of the 16th...

Dr Lizanne Henderson and Laura Moffat on Bessie Dunlop - a fairy healer claimed she met with a dead man in 16th century Ayrshire - why was she accused as a witch? Dr Kevin Sienna on 18th century VD treatment and the beginnings of medical confidentiality (archive interview). Do not try this at home. Dr Valerie Wright on Crathie Court and accommodation for single working women in Glasgow

Dr Michelle Brock on repentance in the face of the plague in Ayr. When the Bubonic Plague bore down on the town in the 17th century, the inhabitants looked not so much to the doctors, but to the minister for a plan to stop it. He had one - every occupational group in the town should get together, work out what their sins were that had angered God, and publicly confess to turn God's wrath away. Amazingly, they were spared - but we wouldn't recommend this nowadays! Dr Katie Barclay and Dr...

Dr Allan Kennedy on Gilderoy the Highland bandit and the truth behind Highland outlaws, not the handsome bare-chested warriors of the covers of romance novels but actually more like Begbie from 'Trainspotting' in a kilt. Ally Heather on Andy Coogan his grandad who was a POW in Japan working in a forced labour camp thirty miles from Nagasaki when the second atom bomb dropped and his experiences when he began his return home through the devastated city. Marenka Thompson Odlum is a PhD...

In winter when the nights were fair drawing in and the wind and rain howling outside, there was nothing Scots of yesteryear liked better than to gather round the fire with their pals and tell tales of devils and warlocks and ghosts and ghouls. We don't have a crackling fire for our spooky supernatural special, but we do have Susan Morrison's front room and a posse of historians on the couch to tell us tales of poltergeists, witches, devils and hellfire. Dr Martha McGill has stories about...

Susan Morrison and Louise Welsh swap tales of Scotland's darker history in a spooky special, finding out who gets buried in a bog and getting up close and personal with an accused witch from the early 1700s - Lilias Adie. Susan heads to Dundee University to reconstruct Lilias’ face while Louise Welsh goes to visit what remains of a person who became a bog body, to look at the reality behind one of Scotland’s most famous Gothic novels The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner...

cott Carballo of Stirling University on the pirates of the late 16th century Irish Sea. You might think Port Royal and the Carribean when you think pirates, but maybe you should think Kirkcudbright and Ailsa Craig. Macdonald pirates were roaming the north channel of the Irish Sea using 'Lord of the Rings' style beacon chains to alert them to a fight, meanwhile the south west of Scotland contained towns which doubled as pirate markets. Dr Amy Hayes on Queen Mary of Guelders and married...

Dr Yvonne McFadden and Susan’s mum Peggy Morrison on the history of the kitchen and especially the post war Glasgow kitchen - as Peggy had in the 1950s. Cat Irving, Human Remains Conservator Surgeons’ Hall Museums on being a human remains conservator and the story of Charles Anderson a 19th century sailor with a badly broken leg who resisted amputation by putting a plug in it and draining it every day for years, even though the bone had ballooned. Dr Rebecca Mason - 17th century Glasgow...

Dr Nichola Small of Plaidsong on the songwriter Carolina, Lady Nairne and her career, including Nicky singing Lady Nairne's songs. We hear the story behind the famous song 'Land O The Leal'. Ciaran Jones of Edinburgh University and Dr Louise Yeoman on John Corse, the man who accused his wife as a witch and the insights his confession gives into their marriage. Ashley Dee of the Open University on coercive control and abuse in Victorian marital cases - looking at what 'refined cruelty' was...

Alistair Heather, Scots writer and presenter of BBC documentary The Rebel Tongue on Charlie Leslie, the Jacobite Minstrel who travelled the North East selling and singing Jacobite ballads; Dr Nikki Macdonald - false tongue you lied - the unique way to make up for your slander in 17th century Scotland and how an accusation of slander could stop you being tried as a witch. Dr Hannah Telling on the use of 'Queen’s evidence' in a tragic rape case in Cupar in Fife 1853 - the victim was found...

If you like a cracking story and know that history is as much about the present as the past, then this is the podcast for you. Comedian Susan Morrison and producer/historian Louise Yeoman zip through the centuries exploring the lives of ordinary and extraordinary people. With the help of a team of ‘history detectives’, they tune into cutting edge research and look at familiar things again. There are glorious fascinating human stories - sometimes sad, sometimes funny, sometimes...