Help

What is a podcast?

A podcast is a video or audio file that you can download from the internet and play on your computer, mp3 player or mobile phone.

On this site, you can subscribe to our selection of podcasts and have them automatically delivered directly to your computer. By subscribing, you will receive each new talk free of charge. You can choose to stop receiving these files at any time should you wish to unsubscribe. If you’d rather not subscribe to the series, you can download individual episodes of a podcast series by simply selecting ‘download’ and saving the link.

How to use The National Archives’ podcasts

All available podcasts are listed on the website with a summary of their content. You can choose to listen to these individually or to subscribe to the series.

To enhance your listening experience, accompanying documents and transcripts will soon be available on a selection of podcasts. You will be able to access these via the links on each podcast summary.

Podcasts and software

To listen and subscribe to our podcasts you will need an internet connection and a piece of podcast software, such as iTunes, which is usually available to download free. The software then runs a check on the internet and picks up the latest version of whatever podcast series you are subscribed to.

You can view a list of popular podcast software that is available to download.

Subscribe to podcasts

Subscribing to The National Archives’ podcast series is a very simple process and won’t take long to set up.

All you need to do is copy the URL of the podcast (the URL is the website address that begins with http://www) and paste it into your podcast software. There will be an area in your podcast software which will say ‘subscribe to podcast’ or similar – paste the URL there.

Alternatively, some pieces of software provide one-click subscription. Just select ‘one-click subscription’ on your software to subscribe.

Once subscribed to the podcasts, the podcast software will check The National Archives’ website to look for the latest talks and then automatically download them to your computer.

Copyright

If you wish to re-use any part of a podcast, please note that copyright in the podcasts and transcripts in some cases belongs to the speakers, not to the Crown.