2000

Climate Change 6 Jan

Melvyn Bragg discusses climate change.
360 Social problems and social services
Information Technology 13 Jan

Melvyn Bragg discusses the social and economic consequences of the information revolution.
300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
Masculinity in Literature 20 Jan

Melvyn Bragg investigates masculinity in literature.
800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
Economic Rights 27 Jan

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss economic rights.
330 Economics

Republicanism 3 Feb

Melvyn Bragg examines how English republicanism has developed from Cromwell to the present day.
940 History of Europe
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment 10 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great poet and dramatist, famous for Faust, for The Sorrows of Young Werther, for Storm und Drang and for being a colossus in German literature.
830 German and related literatures
Reading 17 Feb

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the politics and practice of reading.
020 Library and information sciences
Grand Unified Theory 24 Feb

Melvyn Bragg examines 20th century physics’ quest for the ultimate theory of everything.
530 Physics

Metamorphosis 2 Mar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet Ovid and explore the theme of metamorphosis from the transformation of Narcissus to the bug of Kafka’s story, and beyond.
870 Latin and Italic literatures
The Age of Doubt 9 Mar

Melvyn Bragg examines the spread of religious doubt over the last three centuries.
200 Religion
Lenin 16 Mar

For some time, in some intellectual quarters in the West, Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov - also known as Lenin - was regarded as an understandable revolutionary, perhaps a necessary revolutionary given the actions of the Tsars, certainly a sympathetic revolutionary compared with his successor - Stalin.
940 History of Europe
Materialism and the Consumer 23 Mar

Melvyn Bragg examines materialism and the consumer.
330 Economics
History and Understanding the Past 30 Mar

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what can be learnt from history.
900 History

The Natural Order 6 Apr

Melvyn Bragg examines the science of taxonomy.
570 Biology
New Wars 13 Apr

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of modern warfare.
350 Public administration and military science
Englishness 20 Apr

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the characteristics of the English identity.
300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
Human Origins 27 Apr

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolution of the human species.
560 Fossils and prehistoric life

Death 4 May

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Death, what the 16th century philosopher Frances Bacon called, ‘the least of all evils’.
120 Epistemology
Shakespeare’s Work 11 May

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of William Shakespeare.
820 English and Old English literatures
The Wars of the Roses 18 May

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Wars of the Roses which have been the scene for many a historical skirmish over the ages: The period in the fifteenth century when the House of Lancaster and the House of York were continually at odds is described by Shakespeare, in the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III as a time of enormous moral, military and political turmoil - the quintessential civil war; but twentieth century historians like K.
940 History of Europe
Chemical Elements 25 May

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the chemical elements.
540 Chemistry

The American Ideal 1 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American Ideal.
320 Political science
The Renaissance 8 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Renaissance, which was first given its role as the birth place of modern man by the nineteenth century historian Jacob Burckhardt.
940 History of Europe
Inspiration and Genius 15 Jun

Melvyn Bragg explores genius and inspiration.
150 Psychology
Biography 22 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss biography which sells more books now than ever before; last year people in this country spent 115 million pounds on 12 and a half million copies of biographies.
920 Biography and genealogy
Imagination and Consciousness 29 Jun

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the question of consciousness, our sense of self, and how we are able to imagine things when they are not there, which are problems that have troubled the great minds of philosophy for thousands of years.
120 Epistemology

London 28 Sep

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of London.
940 History of Europe

Hitler in History 5 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how history has struggled to explain the enormity of the crimes committed in Germany under Adolf Hitler: we have had theories of ‘totalitarianism’, and of ‘distorted modernity’, debates between ‘intentionalists’ and their opponents the ‘structuralists’.
940 History of Europe
The Romantics 12 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideals, exponents and legacy of Romanticism.
820 English and Old English literatures
Laws of Nature 19 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Laws of Nature.
500 Science
The Tudor State 26 Oct

Melvyn Bragg and guests discusses the Tudor State.
940 History of Europe

Evolutionary Psychology 2 Nov

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Evolutionary Psychology.
150 Psychology
Psychoanalysis and Literature 9 Nov

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss role of Freudian analysis in understanding the great works of literature.
800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
Nihilism 16 Nov

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Nihilism.
190 Modern Western Philosophy