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In Our Time

First broadcast from 20071011 to 20100318.

112 episodes

Episode	Title	First Broadcast	Repeated	Description
01	In Our Time: The Royal Society And British Science	20100104		Melvyn Bragg travels to Oxford, where the young Christopher Wren and friends experimented. As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society. Melvyn travels to Wadham College, Oxford, where under the shadow of the English Civil War, the young Christopher Wren and friends experimented in the garden of their inspirational college warden, John Wilkins. Back in London, as Charles II is brought to the throne from exile, the new Society is formally founded one night in Gresham College. When London burns six years later, it is two of the key early Fellows of the Society who are charged with its rebuilding. And, as Melvyn finds out, in the secret observatory in The Monument to the fire, it is science which flavours their plans.
02	In Our Time: The Royal Society And British Science	20100105		How Newton tested the lines between government-funded research and public access. As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society. Programme two begins in the coffee house Isaac Newton and the fellows of the early 18th century frequented. At the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, we learn how Newton's feud with the Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed tested the lines between government-funded research and public access. In the age of exploration, senior fellows accompany naval expeditions, such as Cook's expedition to Tahiti and subsequent discovery of Australia. International relations are fostered between scientists such as Benjamin Franklin, whose house in London serves as live-in lab and de facto American embassy. By the end of the century the President, Sir Joseph Banks, successfully embeds the Royal Society in the imperial bureaucratic hub of the new Somerset House. But while senior fellows concentrated on foreign fields, a more radical, dissident science and manufacturing base wrought the Industrial Revolution right under their noses.
03	In Our Time: The Royal Society And British Science	20100106		The 19th century blooms scientifically with numerous alternative, specialist societies. As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society. The 19th century blooms scientifically with numerous alternative, specialist learned societies and associations, all threatening the Royal Society's pre-eminence. Attempts to reform the membership criteria - marking scientific leadership's painful transition from patronage to expertise - are troubled, and organisations such as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (now the BSA) excite and enliven scientific discourse outside of London. Science becomes a realistic career and a path of improvement, and by the time HG Wells writes science fiction at the end of the 19th century, there are sufficient numbers of interested, informed readers to suggest that Edwardian society contained the beginnings of a scientific society.
04	In Our Time: The Royal Society And British Science	20100113
04 LAST	In Our Time: The Royal Society And British Science	20100107		The more discreet role played by the Society in the 20th century. As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society. The horrors of the First World War were a shocking indictment of the power of science. Picking up the thread at this hiatus in scientific optimism, this programme, recorded in the current home of the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace in London, looks at the more subtle, discreet role the Society played in the 20th century, such as secretly arranging for refugee scientists to flee Germany, co-ordinating international scientific missions during the Cold War and quietly distributing government grant money to fund the brightest young researchers in the land. As ever more important scientific issues face the world and Britain today, the programme asks how well placed the Royal Society is to take an important lead in the future.
		20071011	Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas.
		20071018		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas. He is joined by Robert Irwin, Marina Warner and Geert Jan Van Gelder to talk about the beauty of the stories of the Arabian Nights. This ever changing patchwork of stories, including Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, originated in India and Persia and was championed by a 17th-century Frenchman.
		20071025		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas. He is joined by Amanda Vickery, Jeremy Black and John Mullan to explore how the idea of taste artfully redecorated the living rooms, literature and social politics of the 18th century.The concept of taste was championed by a burgeoning middle class looking to acquire the accoutrements of the aristocracy and by an aristocracy keen to distance themselves from their increasingly wealthy inferiors.
		20071101		Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the psychological, moral and legal aspects of guilt. Rituals for the alleviation of guilt abound in all societies, including Ancient Greek notions of catharsis and Catholic confession, but does that make guilt a universal experience or a culturally specific one?
		20071108	Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Persian Avicenna, arguably the greatest Islamic philosopher of all time.
		20071115	Rptoftoday9.00am, Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg and guests Simon Schaffer and Jenny Uglow look at Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier and the discovery of oxygen.
		20071122	Rptoftoday9.00am, Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg discusses Wordsworth's Prelude with Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton and Stephen Gill.
		20071129	Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg discusses the Fibonacci Sequence with Jackie Stedall, Ron Knott and Marcus Du Sautoy.
		20071206	Rptoftoday9.00am	Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss mutation, examining why there is no evolution without mutation and how and why mutation occurs in the body. With Steve Jones, Linda Partridge and Adrian Woolfson.
		20071213	Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg discusses the Persian Sassanid Empire, the great rival of Rome. When the two were not fighting, they developed diplomatic relations that shape the international realm to this day. With Hugh Kennedy and James Howard-Johnston.
		20071220		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the theory of the four humours. Developed by Greek physicians such as Galen and Hippocrates, this suggested that the human body was a blend of yellow and black bile, phlegm and blood. It shaped European and Arab medicine for 1,500 years, despite being completely wrong and increasingly at odds with observation. Melvyn is joined by David Wootton.
		20071227	Rptoftoday9.00am	Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Nicene Creed. In the 4th century the Christian church was wracked by theological dispute over the nature of god and the status of the trinity. It was called the Arian controversy and in 325 the various patriarchs gathered in Niceae to end it. What came out of that meeting was Christianity's first and longest serving statement of theological orthodoxy. Melvyn is joined by Martin Palmer, Carolyn Humfrees and Andrew Louth.
		20080103	Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French Algerian novelist Albert Camus. Before his his tragic death in a car crash in 1960, Camus had fought for the French resistance, loved and loathed Jean Paul Sartre, published a series of brilliant novels and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Melvyn is joined by Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker and Christina Howells to discuss Camus's ideas, his human compassion, the politics of Algerian independence and the beauty of his novels.
		20080110		Melvyn Bragg discusses the Charge of the Light Brigade with Mike Broers, Trudi Tate and Saul David.
		20080117	Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg and guests Juliette Wood and Carolyne Larrington discuss the history of ideas. They look at The Myth of the Fisher King.
		20080124	Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg discusses plate tectonics and how the idea that the continents moved around revolutionised our understanding of the earth. Guests include Joe Cann, Richard Corfield and Lynn Frostick.
		20080131	Rptoftoday9.00am	Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the coterie of brilliant thinkers gathered by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II at his court in Prague, having transferred the Habsburg capital there frrom Vienna in 1583. They included astronomer Johannes Kepler, magician John Dee and philosopher Giordano Bruno.
		20080207	Rptoftoday9.00am, Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg discusses the Social Contract with Susan James, Karen O'Brien and Melissa Lane. This political philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries argued that govenments had authority based on a contract with the people they governed. It was opposed to other ideas about governance such as the divine right of kings. Among its most important proponents were Hugo Grotius, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
		20080214	Rptoftoday9.00am, Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg and guests John Keane and Kathleen Burk discuss the Statue of Liberty, a token of friendship between France and America. The statue is part of a long standing intellectual and political relationship between two revolutionary powers, symbolising their shared sense of dynamism, democracy and the ideal of freedom.
		20080221	Rptoftoday9.00am, Rptdtoday9.30pm	Melvyn Bragg discusses the Multiverse with guests Fay Dowker, Martin Rees and Bernard Carr. Physicists and cosmologists are increasingly of the opinion that there are more universes than the one we know, in which the laws of physics themselves are different. Quite what they are, whether they really exist and how we could ever know are among the deepest questions in contemporary science.
		20080228	Rptoftoday9.00am	Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare's King Lear with guests Jonathan Bate, Catherine Belsey and Katherine Duncan-Jones. The tragedy's themes of rule and misrule, old age and family breakup assumed a topical poignancy at the end of Elizabeth I's reign.
		20080306		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace, the 19th-century mathematician who wrote the first computer programme.
		20080313		Melvyn Bragg, Nick Lowe and Mary Beard discuss the Greek Myths, discovering how the stories of Zeus, Narcissus, Persephone, Orpheus and others have come down through the ages.
		20080320		Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and ideas of the 19th-century Danish philospher Soren Kierkegaard, church reformer and alleged father of existentialism. Famous for being gloomy, Kierkegaard was actually a thinker of great elegance and wit. With Jonathan Ree, Clare Carlisle and John Lippitt.
		20080327		Melvyn Bragg discusses the Dissolution of the Monasteries with guests including Diarmaid MacCulloch, Diane Purkiss and George Bernard. Why did Henry VIII see fit to destroy monastic life in this country, what was lost from English religion when he did so and how did its consequences affect politics and society from the very top to the very bottom?
		20080403		Melvyn Bragg discusses Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion with Simon Schaffer and Robert Iliffe. The three laws describing the motion of all bodies in space constitute the foundation stone of classical mechanics.
	The Norman Yoke	20080410		Melvyn Bragg is joined by Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot and Matthew Strickland to discuss what happened in the days after the Battle of Hastings. With England under foreign occupation, visible signs of the new order manifested themselves in the form of castles and cathedrals. But was Norman rule as oppressive as English historians would have us believe?
	Wb Yeats And Irish Politics	20080417		Melvyn Bragg is joined by Roy Foster, Warwick Gould and Fran Brearton to discuss the life and works of the great Irish poet. Yeats lived through a turbulent time in Irish politics, encompassing the Easter rising and the division of the country. His poems relate to those troubled times, the idea of Irishness itself and the surprising nature of his own political beliefs.
		20080424		Melvyn Bragg discusses Materialism with Caroline Warman, Anthony O'Hear and Anthony Grayling. The philosophical argument that matter constitutes everything that exists has been espoused from the ancient Greek Democritus to Karl Marx and beyond.
		20080501	Rptoftoday9.00am, Rptdtoday9.30pm	The Enclosures of the 18th Century Melvyn Bragg and guests Murray Pittock and Rosemary Sweet discuss a revolution in land holding that dispossessed many and enriched few, but made the Industrial Revolution possible.
		20080508	Rptoftoday9.00am, Rptdtoday9.30pm	A History of the Brain Melvyn Bragg and guests Vivan Nutton, Marina Wallace and Jonathan Sawday examine how the brain has been understood over time.
	The Library At Nineveh	20080515		Melvyn Bragg is joined by Eleanor Robson, Andrew George and Karen Radner to discuss one of the greatest architectural finds ever recorded. Dating from the 7th century BC, the library at Nineveh was a treasure house of clay tablets recording the science, religion, politics and literature of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. It offered an unprecedented sense of ancient life in the Middle East and contained perhaps the oldest story in the world, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
	The Black Death	20080522		Melvyn Bragg is joined by Miri Rubin and Paul Binski to discuss how the 14th-century plague affected every aspect of medieval life including belief, art, work and politics. Having cut a swathe through the continent, the Black Death killed nearly 40 percent of the English population. For the survivors, things would never be the same.
	Probability	20080529		Melvyn Bragg is joined by Marcus Du Sautoy and Colva Roney Dougal. The idea of capturing the likelihood of events in a mathematical model is a modern development. It exploded into the 20th century when quantum mechanics declared that probability was not merely a tool of human analysis but was written into the very nature of existence. This claim provoked a dissenting Einstein to declare that 'God does not throw dice'.
	Lysenkoism	20080605		Melvyn Bragg is joined by Robert Service, Catherine Merridale and Steve Jones. Geneticist Trofim Lysenko promised Stalin that he would revolutionise Soviet agriculture in the 1940s. Politically brilliant but scientifically erroneous, Lysenko eliminated his enemies with an efficiency not seen in his agricultural reforms. Soviet agriculture collapsed and the USSR was forced to import vast quantities of grain from the USA. Had they not had to do so, the Cold War might still be going on.
		20080612		The Riddle of the Sands Melvyn Bragg is joined by Rosemary Ashton, Tim Blanning and Richard Evans to discuss Erskine Childers's 1903 adventure story, which presciently imagines a German invasion plan for Britain. But how had relations between Britain and Germany deteriorated to such an extent? The two nations had fought together at Waterloo and profoundly influenced each other's literature and philosophy. How could the ties of Anglo-Saxon kinship be buried in the mutual tragedy of the Somme?
	The Music Of The Spheres	20080619		Melvyn Bragg and guests Peter Forshaw and Angela Voss discuss the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound and transcendent beauty. The music of the spheres played through late antiquity and the medieval period into the Renaissance and its echoes could be heard in astrology and astronomy theology and music itself. Influenced by Pythagoras and Plato, it was discussed by Cicero, Boethius, Marcello Ficino and Johannes Kepler.
	The Arab Conquests	20080626		Melvyn Bragg and guests Hugh Kennedy and Amira Bennison discuss the spread of Islam from North Africa to Southern Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries.
	The Metaphysical Poets	20080703		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the metaphysical poets, a diffuse group of 17th-century writers that included John Donne and Andrew Marvell. With Tom Healy, Tom Cain and Julie Sanders.
	Tacitus And The Decadence Of Rome	20080710		Melvyn Bragg and guests Catherine Edwards, Ellen O'Gorman and Maria Wyke discuss the Roman historian Tacitus, banquets, orgies, Hollywood epics and the process of making history.
	Miracles	20080925		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of miracles from their Biblical origins, through the miracle tradition of the medieval church to reformation arguments over the miraculous and the questioning scientific bent of the 17th and 18th centuries. Miracles have been the subject of fierce theological debate, intense popular piety and serious medical study.
		20081002		The Translation Movement Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the movement of classical Greek ideas out of the Byzantine Empire and into the Islamic world from the 9th century onwards. The infusion of Greek thought introduced the Islamic world to new concepts and required the creation of new words, before being transferred through Arabic into the Latin of western Europe. With Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison and Peter Pormann.
		20081009		Godel's Incompleteness Theorems Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the mathematician Kurt Godel and his work at the very limits of maths. Godel proved that there were some problems in maths that were impossible to solve and that maths was therefore not capable of answering all questions, or even that it was internally consistent. It changed our understanding of the nature of mathematics, and its implications spilled out into the world of physics, philosophy and beyond. With Marcus Du Sautoy
		20081016		Vitalism Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th- and 19th-century quest to understand what distinguished life from non-life and to unlock the secrets of creation. Vitalism is the idea that life could not be explained by materialist principles, that bodies carried some vital principle that distinguished living things from dull matter. When the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani made dead frogs twitch by applying electricity, they thought they had found it. With Patricia Fara, Andrew Mendelsohn and Pietro Corsi.
		20081023		Dante's Inferno Melvyn Bragg and guests Margaret Kean, John Took, Claire Honess journey through the nine levels of Dante's version of Hell, complete with severed heads, bizarre punishments and devils in frozen lakes. But the inferno is much more than a trip into the macabre - it is a map of medieval spirituality, a treasure house of early renaissance learning, a portrait of 14th century Florence, an acute study of human psychology - and one of the greatest works ever written.
		20081030		Melvyn Bragg and guests, including Anthony McFarlane, John Fisher and Catherine Davies, discuss Simon Bolivar, hero of the South American Independent movement
		20081106		Melvyn Bragg and guests Angie Hobbs, Annabel Brett and Paul Cartledge discuss Aristotle's plan for a perfect society and ask whether anyone would want to live in it.
		20081113		Melvyn Bragg and guests David Papineau, Martin Conway and Gemma Calvert discuss recent developments in neuroscience and examine the relationship between the mind and the brain. New knowledge of how the brain works has challenged concepts of free will and consciousness and opened up new ways of understanding the mind, yet these new ideas also seem to conform to some old psychological ideas such as Freudian psychoanalysis.
		20081120		Melvyn Bragg and guests including Tim Blanning discuss the Baroque movement. A cultural movement across Europe that included the music of Bach and the Palace of Versailles, the Baroque was an art of effusion, drama, grandeur and powerful emotion. Strongly religious, it became the aesthetic of choice of absolute monarchs. It was denounced by thinkers of the Enlightenment, but arguably contributed to it.
	The Great Reform Act	20081127		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Great Reform Act of 1832. Melvyn Bragg and guests Dinah Birch, Catherine Hall and Michael Bentley discuss the Great Reform Act of 1832. A landmark in British political history, the Act allowed more people to vote and redrew the British political map, giving more power to burgeoning industrial cities such as Manchester and taking away 'rotten boroughs'. It paved the way for a period of political reform that would eventually bring universal suffrage and the democratic recognition of the working class.
	Heat	20081204		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of scientific ideas about heat. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of scientific ideas about heat from the element of fire to the theory of thermodynamics. With Simon Schaffer.
	The Great Fire Of London	20081211		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Great Fire of London and the rebuilding of the city. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Great Fire of London and the subsequent rebuilding of the city, both physically and intellectually. It was a rich period of culture in London, with Samuel Pepys, Christopher Wren, the foundation of the Royal Society, the building of St Paul's and the Restoration court of King Charles II. With Lisa Jardine, Jonathan Sawday and Vanessa Harding.
	The Physics Of Time	20081218		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the physics of time. With Ian Stewart and Jim Al-Khalil. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the physics of time: how the idea has developed and what we think it is now. With Ian Stewart and Jim Al-Khalil.
	The Consolations Of Philosophy	20090101		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Consolations of Philosophy by the philosopher Boethius Melvyn Bragg and guests Anthony Grayling, Melissa Lane and Roger Scruton discuss The Consolations of Philosophy by the Roman philosopher Boethius. Awaiting execution for treason, Boethius wrote down this series of thoughts to accomodate himself to his impending death. The book was widely distributed in Medieval Europe, influenced Dante and Geoffrey Chaucer and was translated by Elizabeth I. Melvyn and his guests discuss what consolation Boethius found, the theme of consolation in philosphy from Plato to Camus and their own sense of the succour that philosophical ideas can bring.
	Thoreau And The American Idyll	20090115		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau. Melvyn Bragg and guests Stephen Fender, Kathy Burk and Tim Morris discuss the philosopher, naturalist and critic of modernity Henry David Thoreau, and how he represents a mode of American life. Lively discussion with Melvyn Bragg and guests.
	A History Of History	20090122		Melvyn Bragg discuss how the writing of history has changed over the years. "Melvyn Bragg and guests Paul Cartledge, Miri Rubin and John Burrow discuss how the writing of history has changed over the years and what it reveals about successive eras, from classical Epic and Medieval Romance to the deeds of great Victorian men and the vast, impersonal, forces of Marxism.
	Swift's A Modest Proposal	20090129		Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Judith Hawley and Ian McBride discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which suggested that famine in Ireland would be avoided if people ate their babies. It reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
	The Brothers Grimm	20090205		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Melvyn Bragg and guests Marina Warner, Juliette Wood and Tony Phelan discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, including Cinderella, Rapunzel and Hansel and Gretal. What they can tell us about the German imagination and 19th-century romantic nationalism?
	The Destruction Of Carthage	20090212		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the Romans were obsessed with Carthage. Melvyn Bragg and guests including Mary Beard and Ellen O'Gorman discuss why the Romans were obsessed with Carthage and why it haunted the Roman imagination. When the Romans finally conquered their great enemy they razed it to the ground, sold off its library and tried to take an entire civilisation out of history.
	The Observatory At Jaipur	20090219		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the observatory at Jaipur. Melvyn Bragg and guests including Chandrika Kaul and David Arnold discuss the observatory at Jaipur.
	The Wasteland And Modernity	20090226		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss TS Eliot's seminal poem The Wasteland. Melvyn Bragg and guests, including Steve Connor and Lawrence Rainey, discuss TS Eliot's seminal poem The Wasteland and its ambivalence to the modern world of technology, democracy and capitalism that was being forged around it.
	The Measurement Problem In Physics	20090305		Melvyn Bragg and guests including Roger Penrose discuss the measurement problem in physics
	The Library Of Alexandria	20090312		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Library of Alexandria. Melvyn Bragg and guests Simon Goldhill, Serafina Cuomo and Matthew Nichols discuss the Library of Alexandria, one of the greatest libraries in history. The way knowledge was arranged on its shelves still influences our understanding of the world today.
	The Boxer Rebellion	20090319		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion in the summer of 1900. Melvyn Bragg and guests including Rana Mitter and Frances Wood discuss the Boxer Rebellion, the moment when the 'Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists' purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.
	The School Of Athens	20090326		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Raphael's depiction of Plato and Aristotle. Melvyn Bragg and guests including Angie Hobbs and Jill Kraye discuss the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael's depiction of Plato and Aristotle and what it tells us about both the subjects and the painter.
	Baconian Science	20090402		Melvyn Bragg and guests including Patricia Fara and Stephen Pumfrey discuss Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan lawyer, politician and father of the Baconian scientific method. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Francis Bacon, father of the Baconian scientific method.
	Brave New World	20090409		Melvyn Bragg and guests David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick and Michele Barrett discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel, Brave New World. The future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance that was envisaged by Huxley strikes a sinister chord today.
	Suffragism	20090416		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss suffragism, the movement for women's voting rights. Melvyn Bragg and guests Krista Cowman, June Purvis and Julia Bush discuss suffragism, a name for the various movements to get the vote for women in the 19th and early-20th century. On the 4th June 1913 the Epsom Derby was underway. King George V was there watching his horse Anmer, ridden by Herbert Jones. Also watching was a young woman called Emily Davison. As the horses thundered towards the finish line, Emily Davison stepped through the barrier and threw herself in front of the King's horse and died of her injuries four days later. Davison was a suffragette, a campaigner for the woman's right to vote and her death is perhaps the most powerful image of that entire movement. Emmeline Pankhurst and her Suffragettes are famous for their militant campaign of suicide, violence and direct action, but Suffragism was a broader movement involving letter writing, reasoned argument, journalism and parliamentary petition - all played out across biology, medicine, law, psychology, politics and the military amidst the rising tide of democratic ideas.
	The Building Of St Petersburg	20090423		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the building of St Petersburg. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the building of St Petersburg, Peter the Great's showcase city for a modern, European Russia.
	The Vacuum Of Space	20090430		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vacuum of Space. Melvyn Bragg and guests including Frank Close and Jocelyn Bell Burnell discuss the Vacuum of Space.
	The Magna Carta	20090507		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Magna Carta. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Magna Carta, the charter issued by King John in 1215 that is often seen as the basis of English liberties.
	The Siege Of Vienna	20090514		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. Melvyn Bragg and guests Alastair Wheatcroft, Claire Norton and Jeremy Black discuss the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, a titanic struggle that shaped East-West perceptions and helped to define the boundaries of modern Europe.
	The Whale - A History	20090521		Melvyn Bragg and guests Steve Jones, Bill Amos and Eleanor Weston discuss the evolutionary history of the whale.
	St Paul	20090528		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and influence of St Paul. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and influence of the Christian Apostle, St Paul.
	The Trial Of Charles I	20090604		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the English Civil War culminated in courtroom drama.
	The Augustan Age	20090611		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the Emperor Augustus influenced Ovid and Virgil. Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards and Duncan Kennedy discuss how the Emperor Augustus influenced the literature of Ovid and Virgil.
	Elizabethan Revenge	20090618		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the Elizabethan stage was awash with revenge tragedies Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders and Janet Clare discuss why the Elizabethan stage was awash with revenge tragedies.
	Sunni And Shia Islam	20090625		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the roots of the division between Sunni and Shia in Islam. Melvyn Bragg and guests, including Amira Bennison and Hugh Kennedy, discuss the historical roots of the division between Sunni and Shia in Islam.
	Logical Positivism	20090702		Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
	Ediacara Biota	20090709		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ediacara Biota. Melvyn Bragg and guests Martin Brasier, Richard Corfield and Rachel Wood discuss the Ediacara Biota. These mysterious life forms died out 542 million years ago; their discovery has proved Darwin right in a way he never imagined.
	St Thomas Aquinas	20090917		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
	The Invention Of Calculus	20090924		The dispute between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented calculus. Melvyn Bragg and guests Patricia Fara, Simon Schaffer and Jackie Stedall discuss the dispute between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented calculus.
	Akhenaton	20091001		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Akhenaton, the ruler who brought change to ancient Egypt. Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss Akhenaton, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt.
	The Dreyfus Affair	20091008		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dreyfus Affair of 1890s France. Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Gildea, Ruth Harris and Robert Tombs discuss the Dreyfus Affair, the 1890s scandal which divided opinion in France for a generation.
	The Death Of Elizabeth I	20091015		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I. Melvyn Bragg and guests John Guy, Clare Jackson and Helen Hackett discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its impact on how Britain was ruled.
	The Geological Formation Of Britain	20091022		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the geological formation of Britain. Melvyn Bragg and guests Richard Corfield, Jane Francis and Sanjeev Gupta discuss the geological formation of Britain.
	Schopenhauer	20091029		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Melvyn Bragg and guests AC Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile and Christopher Janaway discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, which set the tone for much 20th-century thought.
	The Siege Of Münster	20091105		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Siege of Münster in 1534. Melvyn Bragg and guests Diarmaid MacCulloch, Lucy Wooding and Charlotte Methuen discuss the Siege of Münster in 1534, when radical Anabaptists tried to create the 'New Jerusalem' in a small German town, with horrific consequences.
	The Discovery Of Radiation	20091112		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the discovery of radiation.
	The History Of Sparta	20091119		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Sparta. Melvyn Bragg and guests Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall and Angie Hobbs discuss the history of Sparta and what its culture came to represent.
	A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man	20091126		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Melvyn Bragg and guests Roy Foster, Jeri Johnson and Declan Kiberd discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
	The Silk Road	20091203		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Silk Road. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Silk Road, the trade route which, for thousands of years, did much to connect European and Asian cultures.
	Pythagoras	20091210		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas attributed to the Greek mathematician Pythagoras Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas attributed to the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras and the influence of his followers, the Pythagoreans.
	The Samurai	20091224		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise, fall and legacy of the Samurai.
	Mary Wollstonecraft	20091231		Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 into a middle-class family whose status steadily sank as her inept, brutal, drunken father frittered away the family fortune. She did what she could to protect her mother from his aggression; meanwhile, her brother was slated to inherit much of the remaining fortune, while she was to receive nothing. From this unpromising but radicalising start, Wollstonecraft's career took a dizzying trajectory through a bleak period as a governess to becoming a writer, launching a polemical broadside against the political star of the day, witnessing the bloodshed of the French Revolution up close, rescuing her lover's stolen ship in Scandanavia, then marrying one of the leading philosophers of the day, William Godwin, and with him having a daughter who - though she never lived to see her grow up - would go on to write Frankenstein. But most importantly, in 1792, she published her great work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which marks her out as one of the great thinkers of the British Enlightenment, with a much stronger, more lasting influence than Godwin. The Vindication was an attempt to apply the Enlightenment logic of rights and reason to the lives of women. Yet it was not a manifesto for the extension of the vote or the reform of divorce law, but a work of political philosophy. And surprisingly, as recent scholarship has highlighted, it was infused with Rational Dissenting Christianity, which Wollstonecraft had absorbed during her time as a struggling teacher and writer in north London. John Mullan is Professor of English at University College, London; Karen O'Brien is Professor of English at the University of Warwick; Barbara Taylor is Professor of Modern History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of East London. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft.
	The Frankfurt School	20100114		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the early Frankfurt School and their impact. Melvyn Bragg and guests Raymond Geuss, Esther Leslie and Jonathan Ree discuss the ideas of the early Frankfurt School and their impact.
		20100121		Melvyn Bragg explores the Glencoe Massacre of 1692. Melvyn Bragg explores the Glencoe Massacre of 1692, and its impact on Scottish history. With Karin Bowie, Murray Pittock and Daniel Szechi.
	Silas Marner	20100128		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's novel Silas Marner. Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's novel Silas Marner.
	Ibn Khaldun	20100204		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun. Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun.
		20100211		Melvyn Bragg and guests explore unintended consequences in mathematics.
	The Indian Mutiny	20100218		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion which followed Melvyn Bragg and guests Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila and Chandrika Kaul discuss the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion which followed.
	Calvinism	20100225		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and influence of Calvinism. Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Susan Hardman-Moore and Diarmaid MacCulloch discuss the history and influence of Calvinism.
	The Infant Brain	20100304		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what recent research is revealing about the infant brain. class="blq-clearfix"> Melvyn Bragg and guests Usha Goswami and Denis Mareschal discuss what recent research is revealing about the infant brain.
	Boudica	20100311		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and mythologisation of Boudica. Melvyn Bragg and guests Miranda Aldhouse-Green, Juliette Wood and Richard Hingley discuss the life and mythologisation of Boudica.
	The Scream And Edvard Munch	20100318		Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Scream and its creator, Edvard Munch. Melvyn Bragg and guests David Jackson, Dorothy Rowe and Alastair Wright discuss The Scream and its creator, Edvard Munch.
	Akhenaten
	The Siege Of M�nster