Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe Siege of Orléans
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Siege of Orléans, when Joan of Arc came to the rescue of France and routed the English army with the help of God. The perfidious English then burnt her as a hereti…
Published on 18 years, 6 months ago
Gravitational Waves
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss mysterious phenomena called Gravitational Waves in contemporary physics. The rather un-poetically named star SN 2006gy is roughly 150 times the size of our sun. Last w…
Published on 18 years, 7 months ago
Victorian Pessimism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Victorian Pessimism. On 1 September 1851 the poet Matthew Arnold was on his honeymoon. Catching a ferry from Dover to Calais, he sat down and worked on a poem that wou…
Published on 18 years, 7 months ago
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Dutch Jewish Philosopher Spinoza. For the radical thinkers of the Enlightenment, he was the first man to have lived and died as a true atheist. For others, including Samuel…
Published on 18 years, 7 months ago
Greek and Roman Love Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Greek and Roman love poetry, from the Greek poet Sappho and her erotic descriptions of romance on Lesbos, to the love-hate poems of the Roman writer Catullus. The sour…
Published on 18 years, 7 months ago
Symmetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss symmetry. Found in Nature - from snowflakes to butterflies - and in art in the music of Bach and the poems of Pushkin, symmetry is both aesthetically pleasing and an e…
Published on 18 years, 8 months ago
The Opium Wars
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Opium Wars, a series of conflicts in the 19th Century which had a profound effect on British Chinese relations for generations. Thomas De Quincey describes the pleasures of…
Published on 18 years, 8 months ago
St Hilda
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 7th century saint, Hilda, or Hild as she would have been known then, wielded great religious and political influence in a volatile era. The monasteries she led in …
Published on 18 years, 8 months ago
Anaesthetics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of anaesthetics, from laughing gas in the 1790s to the discovery of “blessed chloroform”. Remembering his unsuccessful stint at Edinburgh Medical school Ch…
Published on 18 years, 8 months ago
Bismarck
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck. One of Europe's leading statesmen in the 19th Century he is credited with unifying Germany under the military might of…
Published on 18 years, 9 months ago