In Our Time

The Iron Age

24 Mar 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the dawn of the European Iron Age.In around 3000 BC European metalworkers started to make tools and weapons out of...

The Medieval University

17 Mar 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval universities.In the 11th and 12th centuries a new type of institution started to appear in the major ...

Free Will

10 Mar 2011

Contributed by Lukas

In the 500th edition of the programme, Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophical idea of free will.Free will - the extent to which we are ...

The Age of the Universe

03 Mar 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the age of the Universe.Since the 18th century, when scientists first realised that the Universe had existed for m...

The Taiping Rebellion

24 Feb 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Taiping Rebellion.In 1850 a Chinese Christian convert, Hong Xiuquan, proclaimed himself leader of a new dynast...

Maimonides

15 Feb 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of Maimonides.Widely regarded as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period, Ma...

The Nervous System

10 Feb 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the nervous system.Most animals have a nervous system, a network of nerve tissues which allows parts of the body t...

The Battle of Bannockburn

02 Feb 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Bannockburn.On June 23rd 1314, Scottish forces under their king Robert the Bruce confronted a larger...

Aristotle's Poetics

27 Jan 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics. The Poetics is, as far as we know, the first ever work of literary theory. Written in the 4th...

The Mexican Revolution

20 Jan 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Mexican Revolution.In 1908 the President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, gave an interview to an American journalist...

Random and Pseudorandom

13 Jan 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss randomness and pseudorandomness.Randomness is the mathematics of the unpredictable. Dice and roulette wheels produ...

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

06 Jan 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.In 1812 the 24-year-old Lord Byron published the first part of a long narr...

Consequences of the Industrial Revolution

30 Dec 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the far-reaching consequences of the Industrial Revolution. After more than a century of rapid technological chang...

The Industrial Revolution

22 Dec 2010

Contributed by Lukas

In the first of two programmes, Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Industrial Revolution.Between the middle of the eighteenth century and the ear...

Daoism

15 Dec 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daoism. An ancient Chinese tradition of philosophy and religious belief, Daoism first appeared more than two thous...

Thomas Edison

09 Dec 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the innovations and influence of Thomas Edison, one of the architects of the modern age.Edison is popularly rememb...

Cleopatra

02 Dec 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Cleopatra. The last pharaoh to rule Egypt, Cleopatra was a woman of intelligence and charisma, later celebrated as...

History of Metaphor

25 Nov 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of metaphor. In Shakespeare's As You Like It, the melancholy Jaques declares: "All the world's a stage...

Foxe's Book of Martyrs

18 Nov 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss John Foxe and his book Actes and Monuments, better known today as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Born in 1517, John Foxe ...

The Volga Vikings

11 Nov 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Volga Vikings. Between the 8th and the 10th centuries AD, fierce Scandinavian warriors raided and then settled...

Women and Enlightenment Science

04 Nov 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the role played by women in Enlightenment science. During the eighteenth century the opportunities for women to ga...

The Unicorn

28 Oct 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the unicorn. In the 5th century BC a Greek historian, Ctesias, described a strange one-horned beast which he belie...

Logic

21 Oct 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of logic. Logic, the study of reasoning and argument, first became a serious area of study in the 4th ...

Sturm und Drang

14 Oct 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang.In the 1770s a small group of German writers started to produce pla...

The Spanish Armada

07 Oct 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Spanish Armada. On May 28th, 1588, a fleet of a hundred and fifty-one Spanish ships set out from Lisbon, bound...

The Delphic Oracle

30 Sep 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Delphic Oracle, the most important source of prophecies in the ancient world. In central Greece, on the flank ...

Imaginary Numbers

23 Sep 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss imaginary numbers. In the sixteenth century, a group of mathematicians in Bologna found a solution to a problem th...

Pliny's Natural History

08 Jul 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Pliny's Natural History.Some time in the first century AD, the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder published his Natural...

Athelstan

01 Jul 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the reign of King Athelstan.Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, came to the throne of Wessex in 925. A fe...

Antarctica

24 Jun 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of Antarctica.The most southerly of the continents is the bleakest and coldest place on Earth. Almost ...

The Neanderthals

17 Jun 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Neanderthals.In 1856, quarry workers in Germany found bones in a cave which seemed to belong to a bear or othe...

Edmund Burke

03 Jun 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke.Born in Dublin, Burke began his...

Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists

27 May 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg discusses 'Lives of the Artists' - the great biographer Giorgio Vasari's study of Renaissance painters, sculptors and architects. In 1550...

The Cavendish Family in Science

20 May 2010

Contributed by Lukas

From the 1600s to the 1800s, scientific research in Britain was not yet a professional, publicly-funded career.So the wealth, status and freedom enjoy...

William James's 'The Varieties of Religious Experience'

13 May 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' by William James. The American novelist Henry James famously made London his h...

The Cool Universe

06 May 2010

Contributed by Lukas

The Cool Universe is the name astronomers give to the matter between the stars.These great clouds of dust and gas are not hot enough to be detected by...

The Great Wall of China

29 Apr 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Great Wall of China.The Great Wall is not a single Wall. It is not visible from space, contrary to popular belief,...

Roman Satire

22 Apr 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman Satire. Much of Roman culture was a development of their rich inheritance from the Greeks. But satire was a form...

The Zulu Nation's Rise and Fall

15 Apr 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise and fall of the Zulu Nation.At the beginning of the 19th century, the Zulus were a small pastoral community o...

William Hazlitt

08 Apr 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of William Hazlitt. Hazlitt is best known for his essays, which ranged in subject matter from Shake...

The City - a history, part 2

01 Apr 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg presents the second of a two part discussion about the history of the city. George Stephenson invented rail transport in the north-east o...

The City - a history, part 1

25 Mar 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg presents the first of a two-part discussion about the history of the city. With Peter Hall, Julia Merritt and Greg Woolf.The story of cit...

Munch and The Scream

18 Mar 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests David Jackson, Dorothy Rowe and Alastair Wright discuss the work of the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, focusing on his most fa...

Boudica

11 Mar 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and mythologisation of Boudica.On the eve of battle with the Roman Empire, an East Anglian leader roused her ...

The Infant Brain

04 Mar 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Usha Goswami, Annette Karmiloff-Smith and Denis Mareschal discuss what new research reveals about the infant brain.For obvious...

Calvinism

25 Feb 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Susan Hardman Moore and Diarmaid MacCulloch discuss the ideas of the religious reformer John Calvin - the the...

The Indian Mutiny

18 Feb 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila and Chandrika Kaul discuss the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion which followed.On 10th May ...

Mathematics' Unintended Consequences

11 Feb 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests John Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal and Marcus du Sautoy explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from the...

Ibn Khaldun

04 Feb 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn K...

Silas Marner

28 Jan 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's novel Silas Marner.Published in 1861, Silas Marne...

The Glencoe Massacre

21 Jan 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Karin Bowie, Murray Pittock and Daniel Szechi discuss the Glencoe Massacre of 1692, why it happened, and its lasting repercuss...

The Frankfurt School

14 Jan 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Raymond Geuss, Esther Leslie and Jonathan Rée discuss the Frankfurt School.This group of influential left-wing German think...

The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 4

07 Jan 2010

Contributed by Lukas

As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal So...

The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 3

06 Jan 2010

Contributed by Lukas

As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal So...

The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 2

05 Jan 2010

Contributed by Lukas

As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal So...

The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 1

04 Jan 2010

Contributed by Lukas

As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal So...

Mary Wollstonecraft

31 Dec 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary ...

The Samurai

24 Dec 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Gregory Irvine, Nicola Liscutin and Angus Lockyer discuss the history of the Samurai and the role of their myth in Japanese na...

Pythagoras

10 Dec 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor and Ian Stewart discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his fo...

The Silk Road

03 Dec 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen and Frances Wood discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand yea...

Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

26 Nov 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Roy Foster, Jeri Johnson and Katherine Mullin discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 19...

Sparta

19 Nov 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall and Angie Hobbs discuss Sparta, the militaristic Ancient Greek city-state, and the political ideas ...

Radiation

12 Nov 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Jim Al-Khalili, Frank Close and Frank James discuss the history of the discovery of radiation.Today the word 'radiation' conju...

The Siege of Munster

05 Nov 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Diarmaid MacCulloch, Lucy Wooding and Charlotte Methuen discuss the Siege of Munster in 1534-35.In the early 16th century, the...

Schopenhauer

29 Oct 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests AC Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile and Christopher Janaway discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.As a ra...

The Geological Formation of Britain

22 Oct 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Richard Corfield, Jane Francis and Sanjeev Gupta discuss the geological formation of Britain.Around 600 million years ago the ...

The Death of Elizabeth I

15 Oct 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests John Guy, Clare Jackson and Helen Hackett discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarc...

The Dreyfus Affair

08 Oct 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Gildea, Ruth Harris and Robert Tombs discuss the Dreyfus Affair, the 1890s scandal which divided opinion in France for ...

Akhenaten

01 Oct 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change t...

Calculus

24 Sep 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg discusses the epic feud between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented an astonishingly powerful new mathematical tool ...

St Thomas Aquinas

17 Sep 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, works and enduring influence of the medieval philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas with Martin Palmer, John Ha...

Ediacara Biota

09 Jul 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Martin Brasier, Richard Corfield and Rachel Wood discuss the Ediacara Biota, the Precambrian life forms which vanished 542 mil...

Logical Positivism

02 Jul 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg discusses Logical Positivism, the eye-wateringly radical early 20th century philosophical movement. The Logical Positivists argued that ...

Sunni and Shia Islam

25 Jun 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Amira Bennison, Robert Gleave and Hugh Kennedy discuss the split between the Sunni and the Shia. This schism came to dominate ...

Elizabethan Revenge

18 Jun 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders and Janet Clare discuss Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy. From Thomas Kyd's The Spanish T...

The Augustan Age

11 Jun 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards and Duncan Kennedy discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augu...

The Trial of Charles I

04 Jun 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Diane Purkiss and David Wootton discuss the trial of Charles I, recounting the high drama in Westminster Hall...

St Paul

28 May 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Helen Bond, John Haldane and John Barclay discuss the influence of St Paul on the early Christian church and on Christian theo...

The Whale - A History

21 May 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Steve Jones, Bill Amos and Eleanor Weston discuss the evolutionary history of the whale. The ancestor of all whales alive toda...

The Siege of Vienna

14 May 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Andrew Wheatcroft, Claire Norton and Jeremy Black discuss the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, when the Ottoman Empire tried t...

The Magna Carta

07 May 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Nicholas Vincent, David Carpenter and Michael Clanchy discuss the Magna Carta, the oft-proclaimed foundation of English libert...

The Vacuum of Space

30 Apr 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Frank Close, Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Ruth Gregory discuss the Vacuum of Space. The idea that there is a nothingness at the he...

The Building of St Petersburg

23 Apr 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the building of St Petersburg, Peter the Great's showcase city for a modern, European Russia. It is a city of ideas. ...

Suffragism

16 Apr 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Krista Cowman, June Purvis and Julia Bush discuss suffragism, a name for the various movements to get the vote for women in th...

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

09 Apr 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick and Michele Barrett discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel, Brave New World. In Act V Scene ...

Baconian Science

02 Apr 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Patricia Fara, Stephen Pumfrey and Rhodri Lewis join Melvyn Bragg to discuss the Jacobean lawyer, political fixer and alleged founder of modern scienc...

The School of Athens

26 Mar 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The School of Athens – the fresco painted by the Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael, for Pope Julius II’s privat...

The Boxer Rebellion

19 Mar 2009

Contributed by Lukas

In the hot summer of 1900, Peking, the capital of China, was under heavy siege. But the surrounding forces were not foreign, they were Chinese. This w...

The Library of Alexandria

12 Mar 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Library at Alexandria. Founded by King Ptolemy in the 3rd century BC the library was the first attempt to collect ...

The Measurement Problem in Physics

05 Mar 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the deepest problems in contemporary physics. It’s called the measurement problem and it emerged from the flu...

The Waste Land and Modernity

26 Feb 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests, including Steve Connor and Lawrence Rainey, discuss TS Eliot's seminal poem The Waste Land and its ambivalence to the modern ...

The Observatory at Jaipur

19 Feb 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Observatory in Jaipur with its vast and beautiful instruments built to make astronomical measurements of the stars...

Carthage's Destruction

12 Feb 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Destruction of Carthage. The North African city of Carthage was rich and powerful, but in the second century BC it...

The Brothers Grimm

05 Feb 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg discusses the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm with Juliette Wood, Marina Warner and Tony Phelan. The German siblings who in 1812 publis...

Swift's A Modest Proposal

29 Jan 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most brilliant and shocking satires ever written in English – Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Masqu...

History of History

22 Jan 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the writing of history has changed over time, from ancient epics to medieval hagiographies and modern deconstructi...

Thoreau and the American Idyll

15 Jan 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. Anti-slavery activist and passionate environme...

Darwin: Life After Origins

08 Jan 2009

Contributed by Lukas

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009 and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Me...

Darwin: On the Origin of Species

07 Jan 2009

Contributed by Lukas

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Melvyn Bra...

Darwin: The Voyage of the Beagle

06 Jan 2009

Contributed by Lukas

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Melvyn Bra...