2024

Condorcet 11 Jan

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-94), known as the Last of the Philosophes, the intellectuals in the French Enlightenment who sought to apply their learning to solving the problems of their world.
190 Modern Western Philosophy
Nefertiti 18 Jan

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who inspired one of the best known artefacts from ancient Egypt.
930 History of the Ancient World
Panpsychism 25 Jan

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that some kind of consciousness is present not just in our human brains but throughout the universe, right down to cells or even electrons.
120 Epistemology

The Hanseatic League 1 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hanseatic League or Hansa which dominated North European trade in the medieval period.
380 Commerce, communications and transportation
Hormones 8 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the chemical signals coursing through our bodies throughout our lives, produced in separate areas and spreading via the bloodstream.
570 Biology
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 15 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lewis Carroll’s book which first appeared in print in 1865 with illustrations by John Tenniel.
800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
The Sack of Rome 1527 22 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the infamous assault of an army of the Holy Roman Emperor on the city of Rome in 1527.
940 History of Europe
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle 29 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German physicist who, at the age of 23 and while still a student, effectively created quantum mechanics for which he later won the Nobel Prize.
530 Physics

The Mokrani Revolt 7 Mar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revolt that broke out in 1871 in Algeria against French rule, spreading over hundreds of miles and countless towns and villages before being brutally suppressed.
960 History of Africa
The Waltz 14 Mar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the dance which, from when it reached Britain in the early nineteenth century, revolutionised the relationship between music, literature and people here for the next hundred years.
780 Music
Julian the Apostate 21 Mar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire.
930 History of the Ancient World
The Kalevala 28 Mar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Finnish epic poem that first appeared in print in 1835 in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire and until recently part of Sweden.
890 Other literatures

Nikola Tesla 7 Apr

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and his role in the development of electrical systems towards the end of the nineteenth century.
620 Engineering
Lysistrata 14 Apr

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes’ comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta, led by Lysistrata, secure peace in the long-running war between them by staging a sex strike.
880 Classical and modern Greek literatures
Napoleon’s Hundred Days 21 Apr

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Napoleon Bonaparte’s temporary return to power in France in 1815, following his escape from exile on Elba.
940 History of Europe
Bertolt Brecht 28 Apr

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century.
830 German and related literatures

Mercury 5 May

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet which is closest to our Sun.
520 Astronomy
Sir Thomas Wyatt 12 May

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ‘the greatest poet of his age’, Thomas Wyatt (1503 -1542), who brought the poetry of the Italian Renaissance into the English Tudor world, especially the sonnet, so preparing the way for Shakespeare and Donne.
820 English and Old English literatures
Philippa Foot 19 May

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, Philippa Foot (1920 - 2010).
170 Ethics
Empress Dowager Cixi 26 May

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman who, for almost fifty years, was the most powerful figure in the Chinese court.
950 History of Asia

Marsilius of Padua 2 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the canonical figures from the history of political thought.
320 Political science
The Orkneyinga Saga 9 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, as told in the 13th Century by an unknown Icelander.
940 History of Europe
Fielding’s Tom Jones 16 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss “The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling” (1749) by Henry Fielding (1707-1754), one of the most influential of the early English novels and a favourite of Dickens.
820 English and Old English literatures
Karma 23 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the doctrine of Karma as developed initially among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists in India from the first millennium BCE.
290 Other religions
Monet in England 30 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) in London, initially in 1870 and then from 1899.
750 Painting

Bacteriophages 7 Jul

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most abundant lifeform on Earth: the viruses that ‘eat’ bacteria.
570 Biology

Benjamin Disraeli 22 Sep

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the major figures in Victorian British politics.
940 History of Europe
Wormholes 29 Sep

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the tantalising idea that there are shortcuts between distant galaxies, somewhere out there in the universe.
530 Physics

The Haymarket Affair 6 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the notorious attack of 4th of May 1886 at a workers rally in Chicago when somebody threw a bomb that killed a policeman, Mathias J.
330 Economics
Robert Graves 13 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of ‘I, Claudius’ who was also one of the finest poets of the twentieth century.
820 English and Old English literatures
Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom 20 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which Hayek (1899-1992) warned that the way Britain was running its wartime economy would not work in peacetime and could lead to tyranny.
330 Economics
Little Women 27 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, credited with starting the new genre of young adult fiction.
810 American literature in English

The Venetian Empire 3 Nov

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable rise of Venice in the eastern Mediterranean.
940 History of Europe
George Herbert 7 Nov

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet George Herbert (1593-1633) who, according to the French philosopher Simone Weil, wrote ‘the most beautiful poem in the world’.
820 English and Old English literatures
The Antikythera Mechanism 17 Nov

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 2000-year-old device which transformed our understanding of astronomy in ancient Greece.
520 Astronomy