Seth Paridon and Jon Parshall bring back maritime historian Sal Mercogliano for a nearly two-hour session on US Navy shipbuilding from the mid-1930s programmes through the Two Ocean Navy Act, plus the often-overlooked world of at-sea fleet repair in the Pacific. This is the unglamorous machinery of war done properly — the industrial backbone that made island-hopping possible and ultimately buried Japan's navy under a tonnage gap Tokyo could never close. If you care about how wars are actually won, this is your episode.

Holland and Murray continue their series on Japan's slide toward Pearl Harbor, focusing here on the military planning debates — what Japanese strategists thought was the best way to attack the United States, how Europe's war shifted American and Japanese policy, and the moment negotiations collapsed. With so much Japanese-focused content landing this week, this is the instalment that puts the strategic and operational calculus front and centre, and Holland keeps the narrative grounded in that military logic rather than letting it drift into pure diplomacy.

The Ancient Warfare Magazine team tackle the Marian reforms — what they actually were versus the textbook version, and whether the transformation from citizen militia to professional army was as sharp a break as commonly assumed. Good corrective scholarship on one of the most important organisational shifts in military history. At 45 minutes it's tightly focused and well-informed.

Ray Harris Jr. covers the opening blows of Midway — Fletcher's Yorktown versus Nagumo's First Air Fleet, with attention to the mistakes on both sides. Short at 25 minutes, which limits depth, but it's squarely on the battle.

Part 3 of the series examines how the Japanese cultural concept of honne and tatemae — the gap between private feelings and public presentation — may have contributed to the drift toward war, including the internal deadlines set for negotiations with the US. More cultural framing than Part 4 but still firmly anchored in the decision-making that led to conflict.

Lions Led By Donkeys covers the 1863 bombardment of Kagoshima — the short, sharp naval confrontation between the Royal Navy and the Satsuma domain that most people have never heard of. A niche but genuinely interesting colonial-era clash with the show's trademark irreverence.

Steve Tibble — a proper Crusades scholar — guides Dan Snow through the real history of the Assassins and Templars, separating the covert operations and beliefs from the mythology. Tibble's expertise elevates what could be a pop-culture exercise.

Part 2 of the series covers the Minamoto clan's rise and the violent set-piece encounters of 12th-century Japan, adding yet another angle on Japanese military culture to a week already stacked with it. Solid storytelling from Holland and Sandbrook, with enough tactical colour to keep it military rather than purely cultural.