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Podcast

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

Updated: weekly
Episodes available: indefinitely

Episodes to download

  •

    Fritz Lang

    Thu 30 Dec 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a giant of cinema in Weimar Germany and Hollywood.

  • The Hittites

    Thu 23 Dec 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great powers of the Late Bronze Age.

  • A Christmas Carol

    Thu 16 Dec 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' celebrated story of Scrooge's redemption.

  • The May Fourth Movement

    Thu 9 Dec 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and protests in 1919 that shaped modern China.

  • The Battle of Trafalgar

    Thu 2 Dec 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nelson's famous victory and death on 21 October 1805.

  • Plato's Gorgias

    Thu 25 Nov 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's exploration of the nature of power and freedom.

  • The Decadent Movement

    Thu 18 Nov 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Beardsley, Wilde and art for art's sake in the 1890s.

  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Thu 11 Nov 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the siblings at the forefront of 18th-century astronomy

  • The Song of Roland

    Thu 4 Nov 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a masterpiece of French epic poetry from the 12th century.

  • Corals

    Thu 28 Oct 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the simple animals which form the now-threatened reefs.

  • Iris Murdoch

    Thu 21 Oct 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of the celebrated author of The Bell.

  • The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

    Thu 14 Oct 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Europe's largest republic, before its partition in 1772.

  • The Manhattan Project

    Thu 7 Oct 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the race to build an atom bomb before anyone else in WW2

  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Thu 30 Sep 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's novel of a woman's fight for independence.

  • Herodotus

    Thu 23 Sep 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of history.

  • The Evolution of Crocodiles

    Thu 16 Sep 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the land animals of the Triassic that dominated dinosaurs.

  • Shakespeare's Sonnets

    Thu 24 Jun 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the greatest and most challenging poems in English

  • Edward Gibbon

    Thu 17 Jun 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

  • Booth's Life and Labour Survey

    Thu 10 Jun 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's landmark survey of London's poor and rich.

  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Thu 3 Jun 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's insight into how we relate to the world around us.

  • The Interregnum

    Thu 27 May 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the upheavals of 1649-60 in the British Isles

  • Journey to the West

    Thu 20 May 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great novel from the Ming Era, with its heroic Monkey.

  • Longitude

    Thu 13 May 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of longitude and the race to calculate it at sea.

  • The Second Barons' War

    Thu 6 May 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simon de Montfort's fatal struggle with Henry III's forces

  • Ovid

    Thu 29 Apr 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential poets of Rome's Augustan Age.

  • The Franco-American Alliance 1778

    Thu 22 Apr 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French fight against Britain in America and its impact

  • Arianism

    Thu 15 Apr 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an orthodox form of Christianity that became a heresy.

  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Thu 8 Apr 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician behind metrication.

  • The Russo-Japanese War

    Thu 1 Apr 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1904-5 clash of Japanese and Russian empires.

  • David Ricardo

    Thu 25 Mar 2021

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument on free trade after the Napoleonic wars

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