Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchPaganism in the Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss paganism in the Renaissance. For hundreds of years in the Middle Ages, the only way to read Ovid was through the prism of a Christian moralising text. Ovid's sensual t…
Published on 20 years, 6 months ago
The Scriblerus Club
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Scriblerus Club. The 18th century Club included some of the most extraordinary and vivid satirists ever to have written in the English language. We are given giant…
Published on 20 years, 6 months ago
Renaissance Maths
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Renaissance Mathematics. As with so many areas of European thought, mathematics in the Renaissance was a question of recovering and, if you were very lucky, improving …
Published on 20 years, 6 months ago
The French Revolution's reign of terror
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of terror during the French Revolution. On Monday September 10th 1792 The Times of London carried a story covering events in revolutionary France: "The stree…
Published on 20 years, 6 months ago
Beauty
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss beauty and its qualities."Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."That was John Keats' emphatic finale to his Ode on a …
Published on 20 years, 7 months ago
Abelard and Heloise
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of Abelard and Heloise, a tale of literature and philosophy, theology and scandal, and above all love in the high Middle Ages. They were two of the greatest …
Published on 20 years, 7 months ago
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it. Barry Stein's laboratory at Wake Forest University in the United States found that the sh…
Published on 20 years, 7 months ago
The Aeneid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'The Aeneid'. Out of the tragedy and destruction of the Trojan wars came a man heading West, his father on his back and his small son holding his hand. This isn't Odys…
Published on 20 years, 8 months ago
Archaeology and Imperialism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the link between archaeology and imperialism. In 1842 a young English adventurer called Austen Henry Layard set out to excavate what he hoped were the remains of the b…
Published on 20 years, 8 months ago
Alfred and the Battle of Edington
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss King Alfred and the defeat of the Vikings at Battle of Edington. At the end of the 9th century the Vikings controlled almost all of what we now call England. Mercia ha…
Published on 20 years, 8 months ago