⚡ In 1942, during the height of World War 2, Hitler ordered the deportation of more than a thousand islanders from Guernsey. In retaliation against the Allied Forces, innocent men, women and children were forced to leave their island homes - set on a path to Biberach internment camp.

💡 Jill Chubb was just 3 years old when she set sail, but her memories are vivid and clear. And in this special podcast series, her grandson, former BBC Guernsey presenter Ollie Guillou, charts her story - joined by three other deportees and two prominent historians.

With special thanks to:

Jill Chubb, Chair of the Guernsey Deportees Association

Ralph Godwin, Deportee

Janet de Santos, Deportee

Jill Oliver, Deportee

Alan Chubb, Secretary of the Guernsey Deportees Association

Dr Gilly Carr, University of Cambridge

Matthew Lucas, War Historian

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your host:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou

Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

Photo by Enrapture Captivating Media on Unsplash

David.Monniaux, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1987-1210-502 / Hoffmann, Heinrich / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-218-0504-36 / Dieck / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1971-042-08 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

FOTO:FORTEPAN / Konok Tamás id, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2018, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons

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Andrew Milligan sumo, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2018, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons

Bundesarchiv, Bild 101II-MW-5152-14A / Järisch / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons

Stadtbiberach, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Rigmor Dahl Delphin, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Christian Michelides, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

💬 A new study is rewriting our understanding of Neanderthals and human evolution. It seems ancient Homo sapiens didn't just coexist with them - but they shared ideas, cultures and inventions.

⚡ In this episode we challenge long held beliefs about human origins - exploring what the world was like before we were the last species of human left. A time when Neanderthals and Denisovans lived among us.

We highlight one particular finding in Tinshemet Cave in Israel, where shared burial practices, stone tools and signs of symbolic behaviour have been found. Did early humans interact way more than we first realised?

Don't miss an episode - subscribe now:

https://podfollow.com/what-we-did-before

🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:

➡ What our shared Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA tells us

➡ Surprising findings about how we interbred with Neanderthals

➡ How Neanderthals buried their dead

➡ The real reason the Neanderthals died out

➡ New hints that Neanderthals could speak

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your hosts:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Matt Pyle is a lead software developer and tech enthusiast with a keen interest in media, and a love for interesting conversation and learning.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou

Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

Image credits: Neanderthal-Museum, Mettmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Fährtenleser, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Fu et al. (2025), CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

💬 Did agriculture make life as a human worse? Many historians widely agree the answer is yes! Despite giving us an abundance of food and an ability to spread globally, there are many reasons it may have been a catastrophe for our species.

⚡ In this episode we explore 6 key arguements that outline exactly why agriculture may have created a world that has made inidividual lives more difficult. From creating vast social and economic inequalities, to increasing the spread of diseases - we examine some of the biggest arguments in favour of this idea.

We also highlight a multitude of very important caveats. The question is, were early human hunter-gatherers really better off than we are in the modern age? Or are we just romanticising the past?

Don't miss an episode - subscribe now:

https://podfollow.com/what-we-did-before

🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:

➡ How grain enabled the large-scale hoarding of wealth that led to vast inequality

➡ Why hunter-gatherers may have worked LESS than we do now

➡ How early human mental health (and sleep quality) was probably better

➡ How settled living has allowed diseases to spread more rapidly

➡ What the climate might have looked like without agriculture taking hold

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your hosts:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Matt Pyle is a lead software developer and tech enthusiast with a keen interest in media, and a love for interesting conversation and learning.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou

💬 Before borders, passports and immigration systems - early humans moved freely around the world. Throughout history our yearning to migrate and explore the planet shaped our very evolution as a species and built civilisation as we know it.

⚡So what was it really like for our early ancestors, first crossing continents into unknown landscapes? What made them take the risk of venturing beyond the horizon?

In this episode migration historian Markus Reisle explores a time before borders - which was much more recent than you might think - and how movement is what made our species so dominant.

Don't miss an episode - subscribe now:

https://podfollow.com/what-we-did-before

🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:

➡ How many borders we know today were only drawn in the last 100 years

➡ How migrants were really accepted into communities in ancient times

➡ What it might have been like for early humans, first stepping foot into alien landscapes

➡ How migration - and movement - is locked up in our very DNA

➡ Why migrants built great cathedrals and made the expansion of civilisations possible

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your host:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou

Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

💰 Money is one of those things that feels like it's always existed - like gravity, or disappointing weather on a bank holiday. But for most of human history, there were no coins, no notes, and no bank accounts. So how did people actually buy things? Or did they even buy things at all?

⚡ From giant stone discs that nobody moved, to cocoa beans you could eat (or counterfeit with dirt), to handwritten scraps of paper worth a year's wages - the history of money is really the history of trust. And humans have trusted some very strange things.

💰 In this episode, we trace the weird and wonderful journey from barter to Bitcoin, and ask whether our modern money is actually the strangest version yet.

Don't miss an episode - subscribe now: https://podfollow.com/what-we-did-before

🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:

➡ Why barter was far more annoying than your school textbook made it sound

➡ The Pacific island where a stone at the bottom of the ocean still counted as money

➡ How the Aztecs used chocolate as currency - and how people counterfeited it

➡ Ancient Chinese coins shaped like tiny knives

➡ The handwritten IOUs that launched the Bank of England - and the hundreds executed for forging them

➡ How burning old wooden money accidentally destroyed the Palace of Westminster

➡ Why the ridges on your coins exist because of medieval scammersAbout the podcast:What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.About your hosts:Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.Matt Pyle is a lead software developer and tech enthusiast with a keen interest in media, and a love for interesting conversation and learning.Connect with Ollie:Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

Image credits:

Knife Money image by PENG Yanan, 2006: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yan_State_Coins.jpg

50 Euro Bill Watermark image by Amin, 2018: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:50_Euro_bill_watermark.jpg

Cowry Money image by Bin im Garten, 2011: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cowry_money#/media/File:Cowry_money_Monetaria_annulus_1.JPG

💬 Before the likes of Monopoly and Chess, our ancient ancestors played many, unique board games. It’s a pastime that has endured for 9,000 years - maybe longer!

⚡ And the rules to one mysterious ancient game have just been cracked - using artificial intelligence. Walter Crist is an expert in the archaeology and history of board games, and recently used AI to uncover the rules of a 2,000 year-old game from the late Roman Empire.

In this episode he tells us all about this incredible discovery, while exploring the full history of our ancient obsession with board games. What games have we played through the ages - and why is it such a human thing to do?

Don't miss an episode - subscribe now:

https://podfollow.com/what-we-did-before

🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:

➡ How a 6,000 year-old gaming set was found buried in a tomb in Egypt

➡ The cultural and religious importance of games through history

➡ The earliest gaming pieces people used - and why dice are so ancient

➡ What games like Senet or Hounds and Jackals are like to play in the modern age

➡ Exactly how Walter used AI to crack the mystery of this ancient Roman game

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your host:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou

Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

Image Attributions:

Senet & 20 Twenty Squares board - Rogers Fund, 1916, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Senet game board - Enoch Leung, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

💬 Our Stone Age ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years without organisations. Just small tribes of 20-40 people. But now organisations run every part of our world, from the clothes we wear to the water we drink.

⚡ So have we lost something by allowing faceless organisations to take over? Peter Garrett, author of A New Kind of Dialogue, argues organisations have created a fragmented experience of life, shifting what it means to be human.

In this episode we examine daily life as a Stone Age person, organised through families, tribes, kinship and trust. And we compare it with the modern day - the “age of organisations” - where artificial entities make all the decisions, and life has grown more complex than ever.

Don't miss an episode - subscribe now:

https://podfollow.com/what-we-did-before

🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:

➡ How Peter’s first-hand experience growing up in the African bush has shaped his views

➡ How daily life might have looked for a Stone Age person

➡ Why organisations have even reshaped our relationship with time itself

➡ Peter’s theory of “fragmentation” - and what systems are robbing from us

➡ Why organisations cause more problems than they solve

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your host:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou

Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

💬 The humble landline telephone might seem obsolete in a post-smartphone world, but if we think smartphones reshaped the world - imagine a time without any instant communication with the world around you.

This was the reality for most of human history - telephones were only invented in 1876, after all - so how did the world become so reliant on this ability in just a few generations? And what was life like before then?

⚡ There were many ways that we broke traditional barriers to communication in history - some surprisingly genius, like the long-distance, non-electric towers that allowed messages to travel hundreds of kilometers over France in minutes, and even carrier pigeons!

So in this episode we take a look at the birth of this society-defining technology, and step backwards through humanity's communications timeline, from the iterative improvement and adoption of telephones, all the way back to pre-historic long distance communication methods like shell horns - and how some of these methods could’ve caused more trouble than they were worth!

💬 Part 2 of a 2-part phone special - check out our previous episode on What We Did Before Smartphones for part 1!

Don't miss an episode - subscribe now:

https://podfollow.com/what-we-did-before

🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:

➡ The birth of the telephone - and how modern language itself was shaped by it

➡ Fascinating technological breakthroughs that allowed all of this to even be possible

➡ How there were non-electronic methods for 15 minute messages between cities

➡ How military and warfare drove innovation in pre-telephone communication

➡ How espionage and sabotage in these unsecure methods had fatal impacts on history

➡ The way ancient humans communicated complex messages using simple tools

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your hosts:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Matt Pyle is a lead software developer and tech enthusiast with a keen interest in media, and a love for interesting conversation and learning.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou

Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

Image attribution (Aztec death whistle): Jennysnest, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sound attribution: Aztec Death Whistle by Guy_Personface -- https://freesound.org/s/832472/ -- License: Creative Commons 0