Braggoscope

Megalosaurus: the first dinosaur to ever be scientifically named

2026-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

The first dinosaur to ever be scientifically named, almost 20 years before we even had the word ‘dinosaur’. In 1824, the geologist and priest William Buckland (1784-1856) stood before the Geological Society of London and announced something that would kickstart two centuries of dinosaur science. He’d been studying large, fossilised bones which didn’t resemble those of any living animal - and, as he told his rapt audience at that meeting, he had a new name for this mysterious and unusual creature: Megalosaurus. Misha Glenny and his guests discuss why the 19th century was such profound period of theological and scientific change, and how our understanding of mid Jurassic dinosaurs has changed since. This In Our Time episode examines the story of a dinosaur that led to palaeontology as we know it today. The discussion explores the influential roles of William and Mary Buckland, how we learn about animals from over 160 million years ago, and why you’d never have seen a Megalosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex together.

Casablanca

2026-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Recorded at the Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield, Misha Glenny and guests discuss Casablanca, one of the greatest films from Hollywood’s Golden Era. The film stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and features the unforgettable song As Time Goes By. Casablanca opened in November 1942 when Europe had been at war for three years and the USA for one. It was among Hollywood’s first major films to explain to US audiences why the war was worth fighting, and alongside this became a huge box office hit. It was created by a cast and crew full of emigres and refugees from lands under Nazi control. They produced a movie that has authenticity as well as astonishing emotional power that continues to this day.

Particle Accelerators

2026-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the machines that are described as the world’s largest experiments: Particle Accelerators. A famous example of a Particle Accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider, a device which stretches for nearly 30km, deep beneath the ground in a tunnel between France and Switzerland. This enormous scale enables the particles within to be propelled to incredible speeds, reaching almost the speed of light before they smash together. The resulting debris offers insights into the fundamental building blocks of our universe, such as the Higgs Boson Particle. These Colliders are international scientific projects costing billions of pounds, but thousands of other particle accelerators exist around the world. The process has remarkable applications in medicine, archaeology and technology.

Thomas More’s Utopia

2026-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

In 1516, the publication of one small book would coin a new word and give rise to centuries of literature, theory, and thought. In his most influential work, the lawyer and Tudor politician Thomas More (1748-1535) described a seemingly perfect - but entirely fictional - island called Utopia. In 1535, less than two decades after writing the book, More was executed for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as supreme head of the church of England. Misha Glenny and his guests discuss why More’s exploration of service and the ideal state has been read as a blueprint for society, a scathing satire, and as a timeless warning. This In Our Time episode examines the 16th-century origin and legacy of one of most influential works of political philosophy. The discussion explores Utopia’s roots in Renaissance Humanism, what the book has to say about tyranny and governance, and why utopias can so often seem dystopian.

Seashells

2026-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Misha Glenny and guests discuss a familiar feature of our beaches: seashells, from their astonishing shapes and patterns that teach us about Earth’s oceans, to the ways that humans have treasured shells throughout history. Seashells appear in the mythologies of countless cultures across the world - think of Botticelli’s Venus emerging from a giant scallop shell, Vishnu’s sacred horn panchajanya, or the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl’s talisman cut from a conch shell. The urge to collect shells seems to be as old as our species. We’ve used them as decoration, currency, and musical instruments. But shells aren’t just beautiful objects washed up on our beaches. Many belong to one of the most diverse groups of the animal kingdom, Mollusca, and the remarkable morphology of forms and structures they grow in offer insight into the past, present, and future of the marine world.

Vigée Le Brun

2026-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the French portrait painter Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755 - 1842). From her teens she delighted her high society subjects in and around Paris, notably Marie Antoinette who she painted around 30 times, and she invariably found ways to show her sitters at their best. Some critics were affronted that she, a young woman, dared paint at all and, when they saw how good her portraits were, some spread a rumour that surely this could not really be her work and she must have had a secret male lover finishing her portraits in a studio. The French Revolution forced Vigee Le Brun out of France and so she set off from one European court to another to find more success from Naples to Vienna to St Petersburg and to London, eventually settling back in France. Today her works are on show in major galleries around the world.

The Delian League

2026-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persian Wars. After the defeat of a second Persian invasion in 478 BCE, a league of cities across Greece came together and formed a new alliance led by Athens. That alliance is now known as the Delian League, after the island of Delos where it was established. In the following decades, Athens used the Delian League to grow its own wealth and formidable naval power. Cities which tried to leave the alliance found themselves violently put down and their lands confiscated by the Athenians. What had begun as a cooperative alliance sworn to resist the Persian Empire gradually started to seem like it may have created another imperial power: the Athenian Empire.

Machado de Assis

2026-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the towering figures of Brazilian and world literature, Machado de Assis (1839 - 1908). He was the descendant of slaves and built his career while slavery was still in place in Brazil (abolished 1888) and many of his characters were from the slave-owning class who were also the readers of his books. At the time, those readers were delighted to see themselves represented and it was only later in the 20th Century that critics realized just how much Machado was satirising them. While he brings 19th Century Brazil vividly to life, Machado’s works transcend time and place and, according to Salman Rushdie, they seem to have been written yesterday not 100 years ago.

The Evolution of Trees

2026-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the earliest evidence we have of the existence of trees and how even plants we might have on windowsills or as vegetables in gardens can and do, in the right conditions, evolve into trees. Since their emergence around 400 million years ago after low lying plants started to develop stronger stems and grow taller and more upright, trees have transformed our planet, so creating ecosystems, altering the atmosphere and setting the stage for the world as we know it today.

The Welsh Marches

2026-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

At the Hay Festival, Misha Glenny and guests discuss the impact of the Norman invasion on the people and land of Wales and across the modern border with England in what became known as The Welsh Marches, march being a term for a militarized borderland. Hay was one of the first Marcher lordships. Even before 1066, William the Conqueror knew that he would have to subdue the Welsh if he were to control the English and he allowed more and more Norman warlords to establish virtually their own private kingdoms in these Marches. Later some of the Lords were to use these bases to invade Ireland rather than conquer the rest of Wales. Marcher Lords built numerous castles such as the one at Hay and many new towns would then grow up alongside these where there was one law for the English and another for the Welsh and, though the Acts of Union under the Tudors brought an end to much of the Marcher Lords’ powers, the distinct identity of these Welsh Marches continued.