The Curious History of Your Home is the latest podcast from Noiser, the production company behind hit series like Real Narcos, Adolf Hitler: Rise and Downfall, Real Dictators, and Detectives Don’t Sleep. In it, domestic historian Ruth Goodman goes back in time to discover the weird and wonderful history of everyday household objects, like the fridge, baths, wallpaper, double-glazed windows, forks, coffee, and cats.
With 12 episodes already released, what’s especially wonderful about the series is Goodman’s in-depth knowledge of the topic and her global outlook on each of the objects being discussed.
In the episode about beds, for example, she takes listeners to pre-historic South Africa, where the first renmants of a bed were discovered, before winding her way through history and how homeless people in Victorian London sometimes opted to sleep in coffins instead of the filthy streets. Meanwhile, in the one about beer, she explains how ancient Mesopotamia invented the beverage, which brought about the concept of the straw, moves on to how the Romans turned their backs on beer, and guides us through the warehouses of Prohibition-era America where dangerous concoctions were brewed.
For any fans of Goodman, all this shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, she has been a fixture on the BBC for years as part of teams of experimental historians and archeologists who’ve lived and worked as people did in times gone by, including in Tudor, Victorian, Edwardian, and Wartime Britain.
Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the Noiser website, and whereverelse you get your podcasts, new episodes of The Curious History of Your Home come out every Tuesday.
