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