Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe Spanish Armada
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Spanish Armada. On May 28th, 1588, a fleet of a hundred and fifty-one Spanish ships set out from Lisbon, bound for England. Its mission was to transport a huge…
Published on 15 years, 2 months ago
The Delphic Oracle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Delphic Oracle, the most important source of prophecies in the ancient world. In central Greece, on the flank of Mount Parnassus, lies the ruined city of Delph…
Published on 15 years, 2 months ago
Imaginary Numbers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss imaginary numbers. In the sixteenth century, a group of mathematicians in Bologna found a solution to a problem that had puzzled generations before them: a complet…
Published on 15 years, 2 months ago
Pliny's Natural History
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Pliny's Natural History.Some time in the first century AD, the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder published his Naturalis Historia, or Natural History, an enormous refe…
Published on 15 years, 5 months ago
Athelstan
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the reign of King Athelstan.Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, came to the throne of Wessex in 925. A few years later he unified the kingdoms of England,…
Published on 15 years, 5 months ago
Antarctica
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of Antarctica.The most southerly of the continents is the bleakest and coldest place on Earth. Almost entirely covered in ice, Antarctica spends much o…
Published on 15 years, 5 months ago
The Neanderthals
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Neanderthals.In 1856, quarry workers in Germany found bones in a cave which seemed to belong to a bear or other large mammal. They were later identified as bei…
Published on 15 years, 6 months ago
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke.Born in Dublin, Burke began his career in London as a journalist and made his na…
Published on 15 years, 6 months ago
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists
Melvyn Bragg discusses 'Lives of the Artists' - the great biographer Giorgio Vasari's study of Renaissance painters, sculptors and architects. In 1550 a little known Italian artist, Giorgio Vasari, p…
Published on 15 years, 6 months ago
The Cavendish Family in Science
From the 1600s to the 1800s, scientific research in Britain was not yet a professional, publicly-funded career.So the wealth, status and freedom enjoyed by British aristocrats gave them the opportuni…
Published on 15 years, 7 months ago