Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.
Similar Podcasts
Crímenes. El musical
En la prensa de la España del XIX, los crímenes fueron un hit. Les gustaban tanto como hoy nos gusta el True Crime. A la vez fue asentándose la ciencia forense. En esta serie relatamos algunos de los crímenes más famosos de entonces, con mucha música y algunos coros. Y entrevistamos a una criminóloga y a científicos forenses de varias disciplinas: medicina, psicología, antropología, lingüística, biología...Suscríbete a nuestra newsletter y déjanos una propinilla aquí
Internet History Podcast
A History of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Real Dictators
Real Dictators is the award-winning podcast that explores the hidden lives of history's tyrants. Hosted by Paul McGann, with contributions from eyewitnesses and expert historians.
New episodes available a week early for Noiser+ subscribers. You'll also get ad-free listening, early access and exclusive content on shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started or head to noiser.com/subscriptions
For advertising enquiries, email info@adelicious.fm
Agincourt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Battle of Agincourt."Owre kynge went forth to Normandy, With grace and myyt of chivalry; The God for hym wrouyt marvelously, Wherefore Englonde may calle, and cry Deo gratias: Deo gratias redde pro victoria." The great victory was Agincourt as described in the Agincourt Carol, when the 'happy few' of the English army of King Henry V vanquished the French forces on St Crispin's Day 1415. It is a battle that has resounded through the centuries and has been used by so many to mean so much. But how important was the battle in the strategic struggles of the time? What were the pressures at home that drove Henry's march through France? And what is the cultural legacy of Agincourt? With Anne Curry, Professor of Medieval History at Southampton University; Michael Jones, medieval historian and writer; John Watts, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Corpus Christie College, Oxford.
The Odyssey
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Odyssey by Homer, often claimed as the great founding work of Western Literature. It's an epic that has entertained its audience for nearly three thousand years: It has shipwrecks, Cyclops, brave heroes and seductive sex goddesses. But it’s also got revenge, true love and existential angst. The story follows on from Homer's Iliad, and tells of the Greek hero Odysseus and his long attempt to get home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what has given the Odyssey such a fundamental position in the history of western ideas, what are the meanings behind the trials and tribulations that befall Odysseus and how the Odyssey was composed and by whom. With Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek at King's College, Cambridge; Edith Hall, Leverhulme Professor of Greek Cultural History at Durham University; Oliver Taplin, Classics Scholar and Translator at Oxford University.
Pi
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the most detailed number in nature. In the Bible's description of Solomon's temple it comes out as three, Archimedes calculated it to the equivalent of 14 decimal places and today's super computers have defined it with an extraordinary degree of accuracy to its first 1.4 trillion digits. It is the longest number in nature and we only need its first 32 figures to calculate the size of the known universe within the accuracy of one proton. We are talking about Pi, 3.14159 etc, the number which describes the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference. How has something so commonplace in nature been such a challenge for maths? And what does the oddly ubiquitous nature of Pi tell us about the hidden complexities of our world? With Robert Kaplan, co-founder of the Maths Circle at Harvard University, Eleanor Robson, Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University; and Ian Stewart, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick.
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the first President of the US, George Washington, and the people and ideas that caused the American Revolution. In 1774 a tobacco farmer from Virginia with nice manners and a quiet lifestyle was moved to put himself forward as the military leader of the most massive rebellion the British Empire had ever suffered. George Washington had been a stout upholder of the status quo, regularly lending money to his ne’r-do-well neighbour simply to keep him in the plantation to which he had become accustomed. He even wrote a book on how to behave properly in polite society.What drove mild mannered George Washington to revolution? Washington may have been a moral man, but by anyone’s account he was no scholar, so who provided the intellectual inspiration behind that grandest of Enlightenment documents, the American Constitution. With Carol Berkin, Professor of History at The City University of New York; Simon Middleton, Lecturer in American History at the University of East Anglia; and Colin Bonwick, Professor Emeritus in American History at Keele University.
Renaissance Magic
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Renaissance obsession with Magic. In 1461 one of the powerful Medici family’s many agents carried a mysterious manuscript into his master’s house in Florence. It purported to be the work of an ancient Egyptian priest-king and magician called Hermes Trismegistus. When Cosimo de Medici saw the new discovery, he ordered his translations of Plato to be stopped so that work could begin on the new discovery at once. Hermes promised secret knowledge to his initiates and claimed to have spoken with the spirits and turned base metal into gold. His ideas propelled natural magic into the mainstream of Renaissance intellectual thought, as scholars and magi vied to understand the ancient secrets that would bring statues to life and call the angels down from heaven.But why did magic appeal so strongly to the Renaissance mind? And how did the scholarly Magus, who became a feature of the period, manage to escape prosecution and relate his work to science and the Church?With Peter Forshaw, Lecturer in Renaissance Philosophies at Birkbeck, University of London; Valery Rees, Renaissance historian and a translator of Ficino’s letters; Jonathan Sawday, Professor of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde.
Empiricism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Empiricism, England’s greatest contribution to philosophy. At the end of the seventeenth century the philosopher John Locke wrote in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:- How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.”It was a body of ideas that for Voltaire, and for Kant after him, defined the English attitude to thought; a straight talking pragmatic philosophy that was hand in glove with a practical people.How was the philosophy of empiricism developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? And what effect did this emphasis on experience have on culture and literature in Britain?With Judith Hawley, Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of London; Murray Pittock, Professor of Scottish and Romantic Literature at the University of Manchester; Jonathan Rée, philosopher and author of Philosophy and its Past.
Babylon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the truth about Babylon. Six thousand years ago, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the first cities were being built. The great empire to spring from the region was Babylon, which held sway for over a thousand years and in that time managed to garner an extraordinarily bad press: it’s associated with the Tower of Babel, with Nineveh where Jonah is sent to preach repentance and, perhaps most famously, with “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth” - the whore of Babylon, who in Revelation is taken to personify the city itself. It’s not just the Bible; Herodotus described the Babylonians as effeminate, lascivious and decadent as well.But what is the true story? Classics in this country has meant a study of Greece and Rome, but there is an increasingly vocal contingent that claims that Babylonian culture has been hugely undervalued, and that there is a great wealth of extraordinary literature waiting to be translated.With Eleanor Robson, Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University; Irving Finkel, Curator in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the British Museum; Andrew George, Professor of Babylonian at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
The Planets
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss our knowledge of the planets in both our and other solar systems. Tucked away in the outer Western Spiral arm of the Milky Way is a middle aged star, with nine, or possibly ten orbiting planets of hugely varying sizes. Roughly ninety-two million miles and third in line from that central star is our own planet Earth, in thrall to our Sun, just one of the several thousand million stars that make up the Galaxy.Ever since Galileo and Copernicus gave us a scientific model of our own solar system, we have assumed that somewhere amongst the myriad stars there must be other orbiting planets, but it took until 1995 to find one. ‘51 Pegasus A’ was discovered in the Pegasus constellation and was far bigger and far closer to its sun than any of our existing theories could have predicted. Since then 121 new planets have been found. And now it is thought there may be more planets in the skies than there are stars.What causes a planet to form? How do you track one down? And how likely is there to be another one out there with properties like the Earth’s?With Paul Murdin, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge; Hugh Jones, planet hunter and Reader in Astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University; Carolin Crawford, Royal Society Research Fellow at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.
Toleration
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and politics behind the idea of religious toleration. In 1763 Voltaire remarked that "of all religions, the Christian is undoubtedly that which should instil the greatest toleration, although so far the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men". Christian intolerance was brutally enforced across Western Europe in the Middle Ages and the Reformation, with inquisitions, executions, church courts and brandings with hot irons. But during the English Civil War a variety of Christian sects sprang up which challenged the imposition of state religion and opened the floodgates to religious diversity.What were the politics and philosophy behind the idea of toleration in England? Did the rise of toleration go hand in hand with the rise of the secular, or were tolerationists – in fact – deeply religious? And how does toleration differ from tolerance?With Justin Champion, Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London; David Wootton, Professor of Intellectual History at Queen Mary, University of London; Sarah Barber, Senior Lecturer in History at Lancaster University.
Zero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the number between 1 and -1, which has strange and uniquely beguiling qualities. Shakespeare’s King Lear warned, “Nothing will come of nothing”. The poet and priest John Donne said from the pulpit, “The less anything is, the less we know it: how invisible, unintelligible a thing is nothing”, and the English monk and historian William of Malmesbury called them “dangerous Saracen magic”. They were all talking about zero, the number or symbol that had been part of the mathematics in the East for centuries but was finally taking hold in Europe.What was it about zero that so repulsed their intellects? How was zero invented? And what role does zero play in mathematics today?With Robert Kaplan, co-founder of the Maths Circle at Harvard University and author of The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero; Ian Stewart, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick; Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London.
Heroism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what defines a hero and what place they had in classical society. On the fields of Troy a fallen soldier pleaded with Achilles, the great hero of the Greeks, to spare his life. According to Homer, Achilles replied, “Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid.And born of a great father and the mother who bore me immortal?Yet even I have also my death and strong destiny, And there shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime,When some man in the fighting will take the life from me alsoEither with a spear cast or an arrow flown from the bow string”.With that, he killed him. Heroes have special attributes, but not necessarily humility or compassion. How did the Greeks define their heroes? What place did the hero have in classical society and what do modern ideas of heroism owe to the heroes of the golden age?With Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick and author of Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good; Anthony Grayling, Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London; Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge.
Tea
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss tea, the first truly global commodity. After air and water, tea is the most widely consumed substance on the planet and the British national drink. In this country it helped define class and gender, it funded wars and propped up the economy of the Empire. The trade started in the 1660s with an official import of just 2 ounces, by 1801 24 million pounds of tea were coming in every year and people of all classes were drinking an average two cups a day. It was the first mass commodity, and the merchant philanthropist Jonas Hanway decried its hold on the nation, “your servants' servants, down to the very beggars, will not be satisfied unless they consume the produce of the remote country of China”.What drove the extraordinary take up of tea in this country? What role did it play in the global economy of the Empire and at what point did it stop becoming an exotic foreign luxury and start to define the essence of Englishness?With Huw Bowen, Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester; James Walvin, Professor of History at the University of York; Amanda Vickery, Reader in History at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Hysteria
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a problematic notion which can be an emotional condition, a syndrome, an extreme or over-reaction, or the physical signs of trauma. The term ‘hysteria’ was first used in Greece in the 5th century BC by Hippocratic doctors. They were trying to explain an illness whose symptoms were breathing difficulties and a sense of suffocation, and whose sufferers were seen chiefly to be recently bereaved widows. The explanation was thought to be a wandering womb putting pressure on other organs. The use that Sigmund Freud put to the term was rather different, but although there is no wandering womb in his notion of hysteria, there is still a mysterious leap from the emotional to the physical, from the mind to the body. What is hysteria? How can emotional experiences cause physical illnesses? And has hysteria’s association with old stereotypes of femininity put it off the modern medical map? With Juliet Mitchell, Professor of Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge and author of Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria and the Effects of Sibling Relations on the Human Condition; Rachel Bowlby, Professor of English at the University of York who has written the introduction to the latest Penguin translation of Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer’s Studies in Hysteria; Brett Kahr, Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London.
The Later Romantics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry, the tragedy and the idealism of the Later Romantics. There must have been something extraordinary about the early 19th century, when six of the greatest poets in the English language were all writing. William Blake was there and Wordsworth and Coleridge had established themselves as the main players in British poetry, when the youthful trio of Byron, Shelley and Keats erupted – if not straight onto the public stage, then at least onto the literary scene. The great chronicler of the age was William Hazlitt, whose romantic maxim was: “Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar and into whom the spirit of the world has not yet entered…the world has no hand on them.” How fitting an epitaph is that for the three great poets who all died tragically young? What were the ideals that drove them and how did their unconventional lifestyles infect the poetry they left behind?With Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick; Robert Woof, Director of the Wordsworth Trust; Jennifer Wallace, Director of Studies in English at Peterhouse, Cambridge.
The Fall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of original sin and its influence in Christian Europe. Genesis tells the Bible’s story of creation, but it also carries within it a tale of the ‘fall of mankind’. After their primal transgression, Adam and Eve are banished from Eden and cursed by God:“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.”What effect has this passage had on western culture, and how did the concept of an ‘original sin’ influence gender and morality in Christian Europe?With Martin Palmer, theologian and Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture; Griselda Pollock, Professor of Art History at the University of Leeds; John Carey, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Oxford University.