Nicholas Day

A dynamic new story about how babies make their way in the world-and how grown-ups have tried to make sense of these tiny inscrutable beings. As a new parent, Nicholas Day had some basic but confounding questions: Why does my son find the straitjacket of his swaddling blanket comforting and not terrifying? How can he never meet a developmental norm and still be OK? And when will he stop sucking my finger? So he went digging for answers. They were...

Sylvia Samantha White is very good at finding--she just doesn't know exactly what all her "junk" is good for, not yet at least. But when completely ridiculous disaster strikes, she springs into action and uses her junk to create solutions to the town's troubles. A charming ode to collecting, creating, and following your bliss--even when you're not entirely sure where it will lead you.

Forest and mountain, sea and ice – the wilds of this world are a rich setting for myths and legends. As this episode shows, the stories told about the wilderness – and the monsters feared lurking within it – can tell us a lot about a people. The city-loving Ancient Greeks saw it as a realm of the divine – and a dangerous place for mortals. The Norse were master sailors, yet imagined the seas filled with terrifying monsters. The Celts of...

War has been a constant in human history. All civilisations have grappled with the questions it raises. It is no surprise then that myths of war are among the most enduring. In this episode, we show how the Romans explained their violent ways through the bloody tale of their founders Romulus and Remus. We explore the role of the mysterious Valkyries in Norse myth and what that can tell us about the Vikings. We show that war can make myths out of...

John Christie brought death to everyone around him. He managed to pin his terrible crimes on another man who would be sentenced to death. He eluded capture for years.

As Europe recovered from the damage of WWII, soldiers made their way home from the front line. But one man, brought back all the savagery and brutality of the fighting.

Jimmy Alcott was a troubled young man. He had joined the army after leaving school, but his time in Germany ended in disgrace when he was court-martialled for the violent murder of a civilian. Spared execution by the mercy of the King, he returned to England and built a new life for himself. He had not left his violent ways behind however. In 1952, he travelled from his home in London to the village of Ash Vale in Surrey. There he staked out the railway...

Born in 1832 the story of the Black Widow is a tale of classic Victorian murder. Cotton travelled around the north east of England marrying lonely men getting them to take out life insurance and then murdering them. Arsenic was her preferred means of killing. Once dead she would cash in their life insurance. It was not only her husbands who were the victims, she is also thought to have murdered 11 of her children/step children too. Thanks to the endeavour...

In 1849, a man suddenly disappeared in Bermondsey. The discovery that he had been brutally murdered enraptured the press and the public. Even Charles Dickens was totally engrossed in the story of the sinister Marie Manning.

Amelia Dyer was perhaps the most prolific killer in British history. She earned a living through murder. And her victims were babies. There was a grim trade which flourished in the Victorian age. In a time when unmarried mothers were shamed and shunned, giving up children to a 'baby-farmer' was often the only option. Dyer promised mothers that for a fee she would adopt the babies and raise them as her own. In fact, she neglected and murdered them....