In Our Time

In Our Time

BBC
History
en

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

History fans can learn about pivotal wars and societal upheavals, such as the rise and fall of Napoleon, the Sack of Rome in 1527, and the political intrigue of the Russian Revolution. Those fascinated by the lives of kings and queens can journey to Versailles to meet Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV the Sun King, or to Ancient Egypt to meet Cleopatra and Nerfertiti. Or perhaps you’re looking to explore the history of religion, from Buddhism’s early teachings to the Protestant Reformation.

If you’re interested in the stories behind iconic works of art, music and literature, dive in to discussions on the artistic genius of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers. From Gothic architecture to the works of Shakespeare, each episode of In Our Time offers new insight into humanity’s cultural achievements.

Those looking to enrich their scientific knowledge can hear episodes on black holes, the Periodic Table, and classical theories of gravity, motion, evolution and relativity. Learn how the discovery of penicillin revolutionised medicine, and how the death of stars can lead to the formation of new planets.

Lovers of philosophy will find episodes on the big issues that define existence, from free will and ethics, to liberty and justice. In what ways did celebrated philosophers such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Karl Marx push forward radical new ideas? How has the concept of karma evolved from the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism to today? What was Plato’s concept of an ideal republic, and how did he explore this through the legend of the lost city of Atlantis?

In Our Time celebrates the pursuit of knowledge and the enduring power of ideas.

Episodes (51)

In Our Time

Vincent Van Gogh (Archive Episode)

September 04, 2025 55m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)...
In Our Time

Demosthenes' Philippics (Archive Episode)

August 28, 2025 56m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, that Demosthenes delivered these speeches against...
In Our Time

Demosthenes' Philippics (Archive Episode)

August 28, 2025 56m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, that Demosthenes delivered these speeches against...
In Our Time

Germinal (Archive Episode)

August 21, 2025 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emile Zola's greatest literary success, his thirteenth novel in a series exploring the extended Rougon-Macquart family. The relative here is Etienne Lantier, already...
In Our Time

Napoleon's Hundred Days (Archive Episode)

August 07, 2025 58m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Napoleon Bonaparte's temporary return to power in France in 1815, following his escape from exile on Elba . He arrived with fewer than a thousand men, yet three weeks...
In Our Time

Civility: talking with those who disagree with you

July 31, 2025 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that Civility, in one of its meanings, is among the most valuable social virtues: the skill to discuss topics that really matter to you, with someone who...
In Our Time

Dragons

July 24, 2025 46m
Melvyn Bragg and guests explore dragons, literally and symbolically potent creatures that have appeared in many different guises in countries and cultures around the world. Sometimes compared to...
In Our Time

Barbour's 'Brus'

July 17, 2025 49m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Barbour's epic poem The Brus, or Bruce, which he wrote c1375. The Brus is the earliest surviving poem in Older Scots and the only source of many of the stories of...
In Our Time

The Evolution of Lungs

July 10, 2025 48m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolution of lungs and of the first breaths, which can be traced back 400 million years to when animal life spread from rock pools and swamps onto land, as some...
In Our Time

The Vienna Secession

July 03, 2025 54m
In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of radical artists to break free from the cultural establishment of Vienna and found a movement that became known as the Vienna Secession. In the vibrant atmosphere...
In Our Time

Hypnosis

June 26, 2025 45m
Ever since Franz Anton Mesmer induced trance-like states in his Parisian subjects in the late eighteenth century, dressed in long purple robes, hypnosis has been associated with performance, power and...
In Our Time

Paul von Hindenburg

June 19, 2025 52m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and role of one of the most significant figures in early 20th Century German history. Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) had been famous since 1914 as the...
In Our Time

Copyright

June 12, 2025 1h 0m
In 1710, the British Parliament passed a piece of legislation entitled An Act for the Encouragement of Learning. It became known as the Statute of Anne, and it was the world’s first copyright law.
...
In Our Time

Lise Meitner

June 05, 2025 57m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the decisive role of one of the great 20th Century physicists in solving the question of nuclear fission. It is said that Meitner (1878-1968) made this breakthrough...
In Our Time

The Korean Empire

May 29, 2025 47m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Korea's brief but significant period as an empire as it moved from the 500-year-old dynastic Joseon monarchy towards modernity. It was in October 1897 that King Gojong...
In Our Time

Molière

May 22, 2025 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great figures in world literature. The French playwright Molière (1622-1673) began as an actor, aiming to be a tragedian, but he was stronger in comedy,...
In Our Time

Typology

May 15, 2025 50m
Melvyn Bragg and guests explore typology, a method of biblical interpretation that aims to meaningfully link people, places, and events in the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament,...
In Our Time

The Battle of Clontarf

May 08, 2025 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the best known events and figures in Irish history. In 1014 Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, defeated the Hiberno-Norse forces of Sigtrygg Silkbeard and allies...
In Our Time

The Gracchi

May 01, 2025 49m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus whose names are entwined with the end of Rome's Republic and the rise of the Roman Emperors. As tribunes, they brought popular...
In Our Time

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

April 24, 2025 59m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul...
In Our Time

Thomas Middleton

April 17, 2025 56m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most energetic, varied and innovative playwrights of his time. Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) worked across the London stages both alone and with others from...
In Our Time

Cyrus the Great

April 10, 2025 50m
Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the history and reputation of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great. Cyrus the Second of Persia as he was known then was born in the sixth century BCE in Persis which is...
In Our Time

Pollination

April 03, 2025 50m
Since plants have to mate and produce offspring while rooted to the spot, they have to be pollinated – by wind, water, or animals – most commonly insects. They use a surprising array of tricks to...
In Our Time

Kali

March 27, 2025 57m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hindu goddess Kali, often depicted as dark blue, fierce, defiant, revelling in her power, and holding in her four or more arms a curved sword and a severed head...
In Our Time

Oliver Goldsmith

March 20, 2025 54m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the renowned and versatile Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728 - 1774). There is a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner written by Dr Johnson,...
In Our Time

Catherine of Aragon

March 13, 2025 52m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), the youngest child of the newly dominant Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. When she was 3, her parents contracted her to marry...
In Our Time

Sir John Soane

March 06, 2025 53m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the architect Sir John Soane (1753 -1837), the son of a bricklayer. He rose up the ranks of his profession as an architect to see many of his designs realised to great...
In Our Time

Pope Joan

February 27, 2025 46m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a story that circulated widely in the middle ages about a highly learned woman who lived in the ninth century, dressed as a man, travelled to Rome, and was elected...
In Our Time

Socrates in Prison

February 20, 2025 50m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's Crito and Phaedo, his accounts of the last days of Socrates in prison in 399 BC as he waited to be executed by drinking hemlock. Both works show Socrates...
In Our Time

The Battle of Valmy

February 13, 2025 47m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most consequential battles of recent centuries. On 20th September 1792 at Valmy, 120 miles to the east of Paris, the army of the French Revolution faced...
In Our Time

Slime Moulds

January 30, 2025 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slime mould, a basic organism that grows on logs, cowpats and compost heaps. Scientists have found difficult to categorise slime mould: in 1868, the biologist Thomas...
In Our Time

Vase-mania

January 23, 2025 56m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss eighteenth century 'vase-mania'. In the second half of the century, inspired by archaeological discoveries, the Grand Tour and the founding of the British Museum, parts...
In Our Time

Plutarch's Parallel Lives

January 16, 2025 56m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world....
In Our Time

The Habitability of Planets

January 09, 2025 52m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the great unanswered questions in science: how and where did life on Earth begin, what did it need to thrive and could it be found elsewhere? Charles Darwin...
In Our Time

Nizami Ganjavi

January 02, 2025 52m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest romantic poets in Persian literature. Nizami Ganjavi (c1141–1209) is was born in the city of Ganja in what is now Azerbaijan and his popularity...
In Our Time

The Hanoverian Succession

December 26, 2024 50m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the intense political activity at the turn of the 18th Century, when many politicians in London went to great lengths to find a Protestant successor to the throne of...
In Our Time

Italo Calvino

December 19, 2024 48m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Italian author of Invisible Cities, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Cosmicomics and other celebrated novels, fables and short stories of the 20th Century....
In Our Time

The Antikythera Mechanism

December 12, 2024 50m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 2000-year-old device which transformed our understanding of astronomy in ancient Greece. In 1900 a group of sponge divers found the wreck of a ship off the coast...
In Our Time

George Herbert

December 05, 2024 52m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet George Herbert (1593-1633) who, according to the French philosopher Simone Weil, wrote ‘the most beautiful poem in the world’. Herbert gave his poems on his...
In Our Time

The Venetian Empire

November 28, 2024 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable rise of Venice in the eastern Mediterranean. Unlike other Italian cities of the early medieval period, Venice had not been settled during the Roman...
In Our Time

Little Women

November 21, 2024 48m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel, credited with starting the new genre of young adult fiction. When Alcott (1832-88) wrote Little Women, she only did so as her publisher...
In Our Time

Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

November 14, 2024 53m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which Hayek (1899-1992) warned that the way Britain was running its wartime economy would...
In Our Time

Robert Graves

November 07, 2024 54m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of 'I, Claudius' who was also one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. Robert Graves (1895 -1985) placed his poetry far above his prose. He once...
In Our Time

The Haymarket Affair

October 31, 2024 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the notorious attack of 4th of May 1886 at a workers rally in Chicago when somebody threw a bomb that killed a policeman, Mathias J. Degan. The chaotic shooting that...
In Our Time

Wormholes

October 24, 2024 1h 0m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the tantalising idea that there are shortcuts between distant galaxies, somewhere out there in the universe. The idea emerged in the context of Einstein's theories and...
In Our Time

Benjamin Disraeli

October 17, 2024 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the major figures in Victorian British politics. Disraeli (1804 -1881) served both as Prime Minister twice and, for long periods, as leader of the opposition....
In Our Time

Bacteriophages

August 01, 2024 50m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most abundant lifeform on Earth: the viruses that 'eat' bacteria. Early in the 20th century, scientists noticed that something in their Petri dishes was making...
In Our Time

Monet in England

July 25, 2024 50m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) in London, initially in 1870 and then from 1899. He spent his first visit in poverty, escaping from...
In Our Time

Karma

July 18, 2024 50m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the doctrine of Karma as developed initially among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists in India from the first millennium BCE. Common to each is an idea, broadly, that you...
In Our Time

Fielding's Tom Jones

July 11, 2024 54m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling" (1749) by Henry Fielding (1707-1754), one of the most influential of the early English novels and a favourite of Dickens....
In Our Time

The Orkneyinga Saga

July 04, 2024 51m
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, as told in the 13th Century by an unknown Icelander. This was the story of arguably the most important, strategically, of all the...

About this Podcast

Copyright
(C) BBC 2025
Language
en
Categories
History