In Our Time

Rumi's Poetry

11 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th Century. His great poetic works are the Masnavi or...

Chromatography

04 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins, development and uses of chromatography. In its basic form, it is familiar to generations of schoolchildre...

Eleanor of Aquitaine

28 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, times and influence of Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1122-1204) who was one of the most powerful women in Twelfth C...

Thomas Paine's Common Sense

21 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine and his pamphlet "Common Sense" which was published in Philadelphia in January 1776 and promoted the argu...

Saturn

14 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet Saturn with its rings of ice and rock and over 60 moons. In 1610, Galileo used an early telescope to observ...

Tristan and Iseult

31 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tristan and Iseult, one of the most popular stories of the Middle Ages. From roots in Celtic myth, it passed into writ...

Michael Faraday

24 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eminent 19th-century scientist Michael Faraday. Born into a poor working-class family, he received little formal s...

Circadian Rhythms

17 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution and role of Circadian Rhythms, the so-called body clock that influences an organism's daily cycle of...

Chinese Legalism

10 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins and rise of Legalism in China, from the start of the Warring States Period (c475 - 221 BC) to the time of ...

Voyages of James Cook

03 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the scientific advances made in the three voyages of Captain James Cook, from 1768 to 1779. Cook's voyages astonished ...

The Salem Witch Trials

26 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the outbreak of witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692-3, centred on Salem, which led to the execution of twenty people...

Emma

19 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; a...

The Battle of Lepanto

12 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Battle of Lepanto, 1571, the last great sea battle between galleys, in which the Catholic fleet of the Holy League...

P v NP

05 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the problem of P versus NP, which has a bearing on online security. There is a $1,000,000 prize on offer from the Clay...

The Empire of Mali

29 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Empire of Mali which flourished from 1200 to 1600 and was famous in the wider world for the wealth of rulers such ...

Simone de Beauvoir

22 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential w...

Holbein at the Tudor Court

15 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) during his two extended stays in England, when he worked at ...

Alexander the Great

01 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander the Great is one of the most celebrated military commanders in history. Born into the Macedonian royal family in 356 BC, he gained control o...

Perpetual Motion

24 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of the idea of perpetual motion and its decline, in the 19th Century, with the Laws of Thermodynamics. For hu...

Frida Kahlo

09 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Born near Mexico City in 1907, Frida Kahlo is considered one of Mexico's greatest artists. She took up painting after a bus accident left her severely...

Frederick the Great

02 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Frederick the Great ruled Prussia from 1740 until his death in 1786. Born in 1712, he increased the power of the state, he made Prussia the leading mi...

Extremophiles

25 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

In 1977, scientists in the submersible "Alvin" were exploring the deep ocean bed off the Galapagos Islands. In the dark, they discovered hydrothermal ...

Jane Eyre

18 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Jane Eyre is one of the best-known in English fiction. Jane is the orphan who survives a miserable early life, first with her aunt at Gat...

Utilitarianism

11 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

A moral theory that emphasises ends over means, Utilitarianism holds that a good act is one that increases pleasure in the world and decreases pain. T...

Prester John

04 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

In the Middle Ages, Prester John was seen as the great hope for Crusaders struggling to hold on to, then regain, Jerusalem. He was thought to rule a l...

The Science of Glass

28 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

While glass items have been made for at least 5,000 years, scientists are yet to explain, conclusively, what happens when the substance it's made from...

Josephus

21 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

It is said that, in Britain from the 18th Century, copies of Josephus' works were as widespread and as well read as The Bible. Christians valued "The ...

The Lancashire Cotton Famine

14 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cotton Famine in Lancashire from 1861-65. The Famine followed the blockade of Confederate Southern ports during th...

Tagore

07 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. He has been called one of the outstanding thinkers of the 20th cen...

The Earth's Core

30 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Earth's Core. The inner core is an extremely dense, solid ball of iron and nickel, the size of the Moon, while...

Fanny Burney

23 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century novelist, playwright and diarist Fanny Burney, also known as Madame D'Arblay...

Matteo Ricci and the Ming Dynasty

16 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit priest who in the 16th century led a Christian mission to China. An accomplishe...

Sappho

09 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Greek poet Sappho. Born in the late seventh century BC, Sappho spent much of her life on the island of Lesbos....

The California Gold Rush

02 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the California Gold Rush. In 1849 the recent discovery of gold at Coloma, near Sacramento in California, led to a ...

The Curies

26 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family. In 1903 Marie and Pierre Curie shared a Nobel Prize in Physics wi...

Al-Ghazali

19 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Ghazali, a major philosopher and theologian of the late 11th century. Born in Persia, he w...

Dark Matter

12 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance which is believed to make up most of the Universe. In 1932 the...

Beowulf

05 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem Beowulf, one of the masterpieces of Anglo-Saxon literature. Composed in the early Middle Ages by an ...

The Eunuch

26 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and significance of eunuchs, castrated men who were a common feature of many civilisations for at leas...

The Wealth of Nations

19 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Adam Smith's celebrated economic treatise The Wealth of Nations. Smith was one of Scotland's greatest thinkers, a ...

The Photon

12 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the photon, one of the most enigmatic objects in the Universe. Generations of scientists have struggled to underst...

Ashoka the Great

05 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Indian Emperor Ashoka. Active in the 3rd century BC, Ashoka conquered almost all of the landmass covered by mo...

Thucydides

29 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. In the fifth century BC Thucydides wrote The History of the Peloponnesian ...

Phenomenology

22 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss phenomenology, a style of philosophy developed by the German thinker Edmund Husserl in the first decades of the 20th c...

Bruegel's The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

15 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting of 1559, 'The Fight Between Carnival And Lent'. Created in Antwerp at a time of re...

Truth

18 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of truth. Pontius Pilate famously asked: what is truth? In the twentieth century, the nature of tru...

Behavioural Ecology

11 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Behavioural Ecology, the scientific study of animal behaviour.What factors influence where and what an animal chooses ...

Zen

04 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Zen. It's often thought of as a form of Buddhism that emphasises the practice of meditation over any particular set of...

Kafka's The Trial

27 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel of power and alienation 'The Trial', in which readers follow the protagonist Joseph K into a bizar...

Aesop

20 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop. According to some accounts, Aesop was a strikingly ugly slave who was dumb until granted the power of speech by...

Brunel

13 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today more ...

Hatshepsut

06 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, whose name means 'foremost of noble ladies'. She ruled Egypt from about 1479 - 1458 B...

Nuclear Fusion

30 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss nuclear fusion, the process that powers stars. In the 1920s physicists predicted that it might be possible to gene...

The Haitian Revolution

23 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Haitian Revolution. In 1791 an uprising began in the French colonial territory of St Domingue. Partly a conseq...

Rudyard Kipling

16 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling. Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling has been described as the poet of Empire, ce...

The Battle of Talas

09 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Talas, a significant encounter between Arab and Chinese forces which took place in central Asia in 7...

Julius Caesar

02 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life, work and reputation of Julius Caesar. Famously assassinated as he entered the Roman senate on the Ides o...

e

25 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Euler's number, also known as e. First discovered in the seventeenth century by the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bern...

The Sun

10 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Sun. The object that gives the Earth its light and heat is a massive ball of gas and plasma 93 million miles a...

Mrs Dalloway

03 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. First published in 1925, it charts a single day in the life of Clarissa Dallo...

Hildegard of Bingen

26 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most remarkable figures of the Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen. The abbess of a Benedictine convent, H...

The Philosophy of Solitude

19 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of solitude. The state of being alone can arise for many different reasons: imprisonment, exile or ...

Robert Boyle

12 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and a founder member of the Royal Society. Born in Irela...

The Bluestockings

05 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Bluestockings. Around the middle of the eighteenth century a small group of intellectual women began to meet r...

The Talmud

29 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and contents of the Talmud, one of the most important texts of Judaism. The Talmud was probably writte...

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

22 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1859 the poet Edward FitzGerald published a long poem based on the verses of the ...

Photosynthesis

15 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss photosynthesis, the process by which green plants and many other organisms use sunlight to synthesise organic mole...

The Sino-Japanese War

08 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. After several years of rising tension, and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria,...

The Tale of Sinuhe

01 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tale of Sinuhe, one of the most celebrated works of ancient Egyptian literature. Written around four thousand ...

Tristram Shandy

24 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy. Sterne's comic masterpiece is an extravagantly inventive work which was h...

The Domesday Book

17 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Domesday Book, a vast survey of the land and property of much of England and Wales completed in 1086. Twenty y...

Strabo's Geographica

10 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Strabo's Geographica. Written almost exactly two thousand years ago by a Greek scholar living in Rome, the Geograp...

States of Matter

03 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of matter and the states in which it can exist. Most people are familiar with the idea that a substanc...

Weber's The Protestant Ethic

27 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Published in 1905, Weber's essay proposed that...

Bishop Berkeley

20 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of George Berkeley, an Anglican bishop who was one of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth c...

The Trinity

13 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Trinity. The idea that God is a single entity, but one known in three distinct forms - Father, Son and Holy Sp...

Spartacus

06 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Spartacus, the gladiator who led a major slave rebellion against the Roman Republic in the 1st century...

The Eye

27 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the eye. Humans have been attempting to understand the workings and significance of the organ for at least 2500 ye...

Social Darwinism

20 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism. After the publication of Charles Darwin's masterpiece On the Origin of Species in 1859, some thi...

Chivalry

13 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss chivalry, the moral code observed by knights of the Middle Ages. Chivalry originated in the military practices of ...

The Phoenicians

06 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a people from the Levant who were accomplished sailors ...

Catastrophism

30 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that natural disasters have had a significant influence in moulding the Earth's geological...

Sources of Early Chinese History

23 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the sources for early Chinese history. The first attempts to make a record of historical events in China date from...

The Battle of Tours

16 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Tours. In 732 a large Arab army invaded Gaul from northern Spain, and travelled as far north as Poit...

Plato's Symposium

02 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Plato's Symposium, one of the Greek philosopher's most celebrated works. Written in the 4th century BC, it is a di...

The Medici

26 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Medici family, who dominated Florence's political and cultural life for three centuries. The House of Medici c...

Complexity

19 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss complexity and how it can help us understand the world around us. When living beings come together and act in a gr...

Pliny the Younger

12 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Pliny the Younger, famous for his letters. A prominent lawyer in Rome in the first century AD...

Hindu Ideas of Creation

05 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Hindu ideas about Creation. According to most Western religious traditions, a deity was the original creator of th...

The Microscope

28 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the development of the microscope, an instrument which has revolutionised our knowledge of the world and the organ...

Pocahontas

21 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Pocahontas, the Native American woman who to English eyes became a symbol of the New World. During the...

The Tempest

14 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Written in around 1610, it is thought to be one of the playwright's final works an...

Ordinary Language Philosophy

07 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, a school of thought which emerged in Oxford in the years following World War II. Wit...

The Berlin Conference

31 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Berlin Conference of 1884. In the 1880s, as colonial powers attempted to increase their spheres of influence i...

The Corn Laws

24 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Corn Laws. In 1815 the British Government passed legislation which artificially inflated the price of corn. Th...

The Book of Common Prayer

17 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Book of Common Prayer. In 1549, at the height of the English Reformation, a new prayer book was published cont...

Galen

10 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman physician and medical theorist Galen. The most celebrated doctor in the ancient world, Galen was Greek b...

Exoplanets

03 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss exoplanets. Astronomers have speculated about the existence of planets beyond our solar system for centuries. Alth...

The Mamluks

26 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt and Syria from about 1250 to 1517. Originally slave soldiers who managed to depose th...

Pascal

19 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests begin a new series of the programme with a discussion of the French polymath Blaise Pascal. Born in 1623, Pascal was a bri...