
Rosa Luxemburg: life of the week
HistoryExtra podcast
03/18/25
•49m
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While the Suffragettes were fighting to win the vote, over in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg was focused on overthrowing the entire system. A committed Marxist revolutionary and a fervent advocate of internationalism, Luxemburg believed that true freedom lay beyond ‘bourgeois democracy’. Her sharp intellect and uncompromising stance made her a formidable force in the politics of early-20th century Europe. Mark Jones speaks to Danny Bird about Luxemburg’s extraordinary biography – from her rebellious youth and opposition to the First World War to her brutal execution in 1919.
The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.
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Women's hidden role in religious reformation
March 17, 2025
•43m
The histories of religious reformations across the globe have largely focused on men. But women were also integral to these major transformations. Speaking with Emily Briffett, historian Merry Wiesner-Hanks explains how early modern women strove to shape the world around them – as wives, mothers, missionaries, mystics and migrants.
(Ad) Merry Wiesner-Hanks is the author of Women and the Reformations: A Global History (Yale University Press, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Women-Reformations-History-Merry-Wiesner-Hanks/dp/0300268238/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty.
The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.
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Women killers of the early modern era
March 19, 2025
•34m
From true crime pamphlets to reports from the scaffold, early modern Britain was gripped by tales of women who killed. But were these cases as common as they seemed, or was something else at play? Speaking to Lauren Good, historian Blessin Adams explores the obsession with female murderers in this period, and what this tells us about historical attitudes to gender, justice and power.
(Ad) Blessin Adams is the author of Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain (Harper Collins, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones: https://go.skimresources.com?id=71026X1535947&xcust=historyextra-social-histboty&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fthou-savage-woman%2Fblessin-adams%2F9780008500177.
The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.
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