The Prelude

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Wordsworth’s poem, The Prelude.

• 45 mins

The Fibonacci Sequence

Melvyn Bragg discusses the mathematical and cultural mysteries of the Fibonacci Sequence.

• 45 mins

Genetic Mutation

Melvyn Bragg discusses mutation in genetics and evolution.

• 45 mins

The Sassanid Empire

Melvyn Bragg discusses the Sassanian Empire in Persia from the 3rd to the 7th century AD.

• 45 mins

The Four Humours

Melvyn Bragg discusses the four humours in medical history.

• 45 mins

The Nicene Creed

Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nicene Creed which established the Divinity of Christ.

• 45 mins

Camus

The life ad work of the Algerian-French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus.

• 45 mins

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Charge of the Light Brigade.

• 45 mins

The Fisher King

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the enigmatic myth of the Fisher King.

• 45 mins

Plate Tectonics

Melvyn Bragg examines plate tectonics, a theory that transformed our idea of the earth.

• 45 mins

Rudolph II

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rudolph II and his Renaissance Court in Prague.

• 45 mins

The Social Contract

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract; a key idea in political philosophy.

• 45 mins

The Statue of Liberty

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Statue of Liberty. .

• 45 mins

The Multiverse

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the Multiverse.

• 45 mins

Lear

Melvyn Bragg and guests examine Shakespeare’s bloodthirsty tragedy, King Lear.

• 45 mins

Ada Lovelace

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ada Lovelace - the Victorian ‘enchantress of numbers’.

• 45 mins

The Greek Myths

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek myths from Achilles to Zeus.

• 45 mins

Kierkegaard

Melvyn Bragg examines the rich and radical ideas of the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.

• 45 mins

The Dissolution of the Monasteries

Melvyn Bragg examines Henry VIII's policy of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

• 45 mins

The Laws of Motion

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion.

• 45 mins

The Norman Yoke

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ‘the Norman Yoke'.

• 45 mins

Yeats and Irish Politics

Melvyn Bragg examines the effect of Irish politics on the work of the poet W.B. Yeats.

• 45 mins

Materialism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Materialism in Philosophy.

• 45 mins

The Enclosures of the 18th Century

Melvyn Bragg examines the enclosure movement that fenced in the British countryside.

• 45 mins

The Brain

The history of cultural, medical, artistic and philosophical ideas about the human brain.

• 45 mins

The Library at Nineveh

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a treasure house of Assyrian ideas.

• 45 mins

The Black Death

Melvyn Bragg and guests examine the Black Death and its effect on medieval society.

• 45 mins

Probability

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the strange mathematics of probability.

• 45 mins

Lysenkoism

Melvyn Bragg examines the destructive career of the Soviet geneticist Trofim Lysenko.

• 45 mins

The Riddle of the Sands

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the prescient thriller about Anglo-German relations.

• 45 mins