Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.
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Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor and Ian Stewart discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.The Ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras is probably best known for the theorem concerning right-angled triangles that bears his name. However, it is not certain that he actually developed this idea; indeed, some scholars have questioned not only his true intellectual achievements, but whether he ever existed. We do know that a group of people who said they were followers of his - the Pythagoreans - emerged around the fifth century BC. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss what we do and don't know about this legendary figure and his followers, and explore the ideas associated with them. Some Pythagoreans, such as Philolaus and Archytas, were major mathematical figures in their own right. The central Pythagorean idea was that number had the capacity to explain the truths of the world. This was as much a mystical belief as a mathematical one, encompassing numerological notions about the 'character' of specific numbers. Moreover, the Pythagoreans lived in accordance with a bizarre code which dictated everything from what they could eat to how they should wash. Nonetheless, Pythagorean ideas, centred on their theory of number, have had a profound impact on Western science and philosophy, from Plato through astronomers like Copernicus to the present day.Serafina Cuomo is Reader in Roman History at Birkbeck College, University of London; John O'Connor is Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Saint Andrews; Ian Stewart is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick.
The Silk Road
Melvyn Bragg and guests Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen and Frances Wood discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.In 1900, a Taoist monk came upon a cave near the Chinese town of Dunhuang. Inside, he found thousands of ancient manuscripts. They revealed a vast amount of evidence about the so-called Silk Road: the great trade routes which had stretched from Central Asia, through desert oases, to China, throughout the first millennium.Besides silk, the Silk Road helped the dispersion of writing and paper-making, coinage and gunpowder, and it was along these trade routes that Buddhism reached China from India. The history of these transcontinental links reveals a dazzlingly complex meeting and mingling of civilisations, which lasted for well over a thousand years.With:Tim Barrett is Professor of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies; Naomi Standen is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Newcastle University; Frances Wood is Head of the Chinese Section at the British Library.
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests Roy Foster, Jeri Johnson and Katherine Mullin discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.Many novelists choose their own young life as the subject for their first book. But very few have subjected themselves to the intense self-scrutiny of the great Irish novelist James Joyce. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916, Joyce follows his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, from babyhood to young adulthood. He takes us from Stephen wetting the bed, through a teenage visit to a prostitute, and on through religious terrors to the prospect of freedom. When it was published, the book met with shock at its graphic honesty. Joyce shows Stephen wrestling with the pressures of his family, his Church and his nation. Yet this was far from being a straightforward youthful tirade. Joyce's novel is also daringly experimental, taking us deep into Stephen's psyche. And since its publication almost a century ago, it has had a huge influence on novelists across the world.With: Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History and Fellow of Hertford College, OxfordJeri Johnson, Senior Fellow in English at Exeter College, OxfordKatherine Mullin, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Leeds.
Sparta
Melvyn Bragg and guests Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall and Angie Hobbs discuss Sparta, the militaristic Ancient Greek city-state, and the political ideas it spawned.The isolated Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta was a ferocious opposite to the cosmopolitan port of Athens. Spartans were hostile to outsiders and rhetoric, to philosophy and change. Two and a half thousand years on, Sparta remains famous for its brutally rigorous culture of military discipline, as inculcated in its young men through communal living, and terrifying, licensed violence towards the Helots, the city-state's subjugated majority. Sparta and its cruelty was used as an argument against slavery by British Abolitionists in the early 1800s, before inspiring the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.Yet Sparta also produced poets of great skill: Tyrteaus wrote marching songs for the young men; Alcman wrote choral lyrics for the young women. Moreover, the city-state's rulers pioneered a radically egalitarian political system, and its ideals were invoked by Plato. Its inhabitants also prided themselves on their wit: we don't only derive the word 'spartan' from their culture, but the word 'laconic'. Paul Cartledge is AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture and a Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge; Edith Hall is Professor of Classics and Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London; Angie Hobbs is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Senior Fellow in the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Warwick.
Radiation
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jim Al-Khalili, Frank Close and Frank James discuss the history of the discovery of radiation.Today the word 'radiation' conjures up images of destruction. But in physics, it simply describes the emission, transmission and absorption of energy, and the discovery of how radiation works has allowed us to identify new chemical elements, treat cancer and work out what the stars are made of.Over the course of the 19th century, physicists from Thomas Young, through Michael Faraday to Henri Becquerel made discovery after discovery, gradually piecing together a radically new picture of reality. They explored the light beyond the visible spectrum, connected electricity and magnetism, and eventually showed that heat, light, radio and mysterious new phenomena like 'X-rays' were all forms of 'electromagnetic wave'. In the early 20th century, with the discovery of radioactivity, scientists like Max Planck and Ernest Rutherford completed the picture of the 'electromagnetic spectrum'. This was a cumulative achievement that transformed our vision of the physical world, and what we could do in it.Jim Al-Khalili is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey; Frank Close is Professor of Physics at Exeter College, University of Oxford; Frank James is Professor of the History of Science at the Royal Institution.
The Siege of Munster
Melvyn Bragg and guests Diarmaid MacCulloch, Lucy Wooding and Charlotte Methuen discuss the Siege of Munster in 1534-35.In the early 16th century, the Protestant Reformation revolutionised Christian belief. But one radical group of believers stood out. The Anabaptists rejected infant baptism and formal clergy, and believed that all goods should be held in common. They were also convinced that the Second Coming was imminent.In 1534, in the north-western German city of Munster, a group of Anabaptists attempted to establish the 'New Jerusalem', ready for the Last Days before the coming Apocalypse. But the city was besieged by its ousted Prince-Bishop, and under the reign of its self-appointed King, a 25-year-old Dutchman called Jan van Leyden, it descended into tyranny. Books were burned, dissenters were executed and women were forced to marry. As starvation spread, King Jan lived in luxury with his 16 wives. The horrors of Munster have resonated through the European memory ever since. Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford; Charlotte Methuen is University Research Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford and Lecturer in Church History and Liturgy at Ripon College Cuddesdon; Lucy Wooding is Lecturer in Early Modern History at King's College, London.
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests AC Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile and Christopher Janaway discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.As a radical young thinker in Germany in the early 19th century, Schopenhauer railed against the dominant ideas of the day. He dismissed the pre-eminent German philosopher Georg Hegel as a pompous charlatan, and turned instead to the Enlightenment thinking of Immanuel Kant for inspiration. Schopenhauer's central idea was that everything in the world was driven by the Will - broadly, the ceaseless desire to live. But this, he argued, left us swinging pointlessly between suffering and boredom. The only escape from the tyranny of the Will was to be found in art, and particularly in music. Schopenhauer was influenced by Eastern philosophy, and in turn his own work had an impact well beyond the philosophical tradition in the West, helping to shape the work of artists and writers from Richard Wagner to Marcel Proust, and Albert Camus to Sigmund Freud.AC Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London; Beatrice Han-Pile is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex; Christopher Janaway is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton.
The Geological Formation of Britain
Melvyn Bragg and guests Richard Corfield, Jane Francis and Sanjeev Gupta discuss the geological formation of Britain.Around 600 million years ago the island that we now call Britain was in two parts, far to the south of the Equator. Scotland and north-western Ireland were part of a continent (Laurentia) that also included what is now North America. To the south-east, near the Antarctic Circle, meanwhile, you would have found southern Ireland, England and Wales. They formed a mini-continent (Avalonia) with what is now Newfoundland.Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, as they inched their way north, the two parts came together - first as part of a vast unitary continent (Pangaea), later as a promontory on the edge of Europe, and eventually, as sea levels rose, as an island. The story of how Britain came to be where it is now, in its current shape - from the separation of North America and Europe to the carving out of the English Channel - is still being uncovered today.Richard Corfield is Visiting Senior Resarch Fellow at Oxford University; Jane Francis is Professor of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Leeds; Sanjeev Gupta is a Royal Society-Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow at Imperial College London.
The Death of Elizabeth I
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Guy, Clare Jackson and Helen Hackett discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.By the spring of 1603, Elizabeth had been Queen for 44 years, and it was clear that she would leave no heir. Many feared that her death would spark insurrection, led perhaps by Puritans, perhaps by Catholics, possibly with the support of Spain. As it became clear that she was dying, Elizabeth's chief minister, Sir Robert Cecil, put into action his covert strategy to secure the succession of King James the Sixth of Scotland.What follows is a story of plots, plague and high politics, as a foreign monarch brought a thoroughly Continental approach to Kingship to the English throne. James's accession was widely welcomed, but his relationship with Cecil was initially tense, and his long procession south from Edinburgh attracted both celebration and criticism. His treatise on Kingship, published on his succession, became a bestseller in London - at least until an outbreak of plague, which also drove him from the capital not long after he arrived. His coronation was hurried through to circumvent plots against him, but his triumphal entry into London had to be delayed until a year after Elizabeth's death. And, as the high expectations which first greeted James were increasingly frustrated, the English started to invoke the ghost of their dead Queen to criticise their new ruler.John Guy is a Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge; Clare Jackson is Lecturer and Director of Studies in History at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge; Helen Hackett is Reader in English at University College, London.
The Dreyfus Affair
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.In 1894, a high-flying Jewish staff officer in the French Army, one Alfred Dreyfus, was convicted of spying for the Prussians. He was publicly humiliated: before a large Paris crowd, he was stripped of his badges of rank and his sword was ceremonially broken. Some of those watching shouted 'Down with Judas!' Then he was dispatched to Devil's Island. But when it emerged that Dreyfus was innocent, a scandal erupted which engulfed the Army, the Church and French society as a whole, exposing deep political rifts, and the nation's endemic anti-Semitism. It pitted Catholics against Republicans, provoked fighting in the streets, and led to the prosecution of the novelist Emile Zola, after his famous J'Accuse polemic against those protecting the real spy and so prolonging Dreyfus's suffering. The Affair became so divisive that it posed a serious threat to the French Republic itself. Finally, in 1905, it prompted the separation of Church and State. The scandal and the anti-Semitism at the heart of it cast a very long shadow. In 1945, when the ultra-nationalist one-time 'anti-Dreyfusard' Charles Maurras was convicted of collaborating with the Nazis, he reacted by declaring that his punishment was Dreyfus's revenge. Robert Gildea is Professor of Modern History at Oxford University; Ruth Harris is Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford University; Robert Tombs is Professor of French History at Cambridge University.
Akhenaten
Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt. During his reign, Akhenaten embarked on a profoundly radical project: he set out to transform his people's deepest religious beliefs, moving from a polytheistic tradition to the elevation of a single solar god, Aten. The changes in art and architecture that followed have led some to call him 'history's first individual'. Despite his successors' attempts to obliterate him from the historical record, Akhenaten - and his wife Nefertiti - have been an endless source of fascination and speculation.Richard Parkinson is an Egyptologist at the British Museum; Elizabeth Frood is a Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Oxford; Kate Spence is a Lecturer in the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt at the University of Cambridge.
Calculus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the epic feud between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented an astonishingly powerful new mathematical tool - calculus. Both claimed to have conceived it independently, but the argument soon descended into a bitter battle over priority, plagiarism and philosophy. Set against the backdrop of the Hanoverian succession to the English throne and the formation of the Royal Society, the fight pitted England against Europe, geometric notation against algebra. It was fundamental to the grounding of a mathematical system which is one of the keys to the modern world, allowing us to do everything from predicting the pressure building behind a dam to tracking the position of a space shuttle.Melvyn is joined by Simon Schaffer, Professor of History of Science at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Darwin College; Patricia Fara, Senior Tutor at Clare College, University of Cambridge; and Jackie Stedall, Departmental Lecturer in History of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, works and enduring influence of the medieval philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas with Martin Palmer, John Haldane and Annabel Brett. St Thomas Aquinas' ideas remain at the heart of the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church today and inform philosophical debates on human rights, natural law and what constitutes a 'just war'.Martin Palmer is Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture; John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews; Annabel Brett is Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Ediacara Biota
Melvyn Bragg and guests Martin Brasier, Richard Corfield and Rachel Wood discuss the Ediacara Biota, the Precambrian life forms which vanished 542 million years ago, and whose discovery proved Darwin right in a way he never imagined. Darwin was convinced that there must have been life before the Cambrian era, but he didn't think it was possible for fossils like the Ediacara to have been preserved. These sea-bed organisms were first unearthed in the 19th century, but were only recognised as Precambrian in the mid-20th century. This was an astonishing discovery. Ever since, scientists have been working to determine its significance. Were the Ediacara the earliest forms of animal life? Or were they a Darwinian dead end? Either way, it is argued, they reveal some of the secrets of the workings of evolution. Richard Corfield is Senior Lecturer in Earth Sciences at the Open University; Martin Brasier is Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford; Rachel Wood is Lecturer in Carbonate Geoscience at the University of Edinburgh.
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg discusses Logical Positivism, the eye-wateringly radical early 20th century philosophical movement. The Logical Positivists argued that much previous philosophy was built on very shaky foundations, and they wanted to go right back to the drawing board. They insisted that philosophy - and science - had to be much more rigorous before it started making grand claims about the world. The movement began with the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophically-trained scientists and scientifically-trained philosophers, who met on Thursdays, in 'Red Vienna', in the years after the First World War. They were trying to remould philosophy in a world turned upside down not just by war, but by major advances in science. Their hero was not Descartes or Hegel but Albert Einstein. The group's new doctrine rejected great swathes of earlier philosophy, from meditations on the existence of God to declarations on the nature of History, as utterly meaningless. When the Nazis took power, they fled to England and America, where their ideas put down new roots, and went on to have a profound impact.Melvyn is joined by Barry Smith, Professor of Philosophy at the University of London; Nancy Cartwright, Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics; and Thomas Uebel, Professor of Philosophy at Manchester University.