The Habitability of Planets

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about where life may begin in the universe and how.

• 52 mins

Plutarch's Parallel Lives

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential Greek biographer and his main work

• 56 mins

Vase-mania

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eighteenth century mania for classical vases.

• 56 mins

Slime Moulds

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable world of slime mould.

• 51 mins

The Battle of Valmy

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the day in 1792 when the French Revolution risked defeat.

• 47 mins

Socrates in Prison

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiring last days of the great Athenian philosopher.

• 50 mins

Pope Joan

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the legend of Pope Joan.

• 46 mins

Sir John Soane

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential English architect John Soane.

• 53 mins

Catherine of Aragon

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the woman so important that two Tudor royals married her.

• 52 mins

Oliver Goldsmith

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss this influential and prolific 18th-century Irish writer.

• 54 mins

Kali

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss this Hindu goddess in her many remarkable forms

• 57 mins

Pollination

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the interplay between plants and pollinators.

• 50 mins

Cyrus the Great

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great.

• 50 mins

Thomas Middleton

The prolific and versatile Jacobean playwright tasked with 'improving' some of Shakespeare

• 56 mins

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Insights into the relationship between the body and the mind, habits, language and thought

• 59 mins

The Gracchi

Why two brothers became linked to the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the emperors.

• 49 mins

The Battle of Clontarf

Brian Boru's celebrated defeat of Hiberno-Norse forces and allies outside Dublin in 1014.

• 51 mins

Typology

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss biblical typology.

• 50 mins

Molière

The great French playwright and comic actor who flourished at the court of Louis XIV.

• 51 mins

The Korean Empire

How Korea embraced modernisation at the end of the 19th Century in a bid for independence.

• 47 mins

Lise Meitner

The Austrian-Jewish physicist who, in 1938, solved the question of nuclear fission.

• 57 mins

Copyright

The evolution of copyright.

• 60 mins

Paul von Hindenburg

How the cult of personality around this German WWI figurehead helped usher in Hitler.

• 52 mins

Hypnosis

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore hypnosis.

• 45 mins

The Vienna Secession

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the Vienna Secession.

• 54 mins

The Evolution of Lungs

From the mechanics of the first breaths on Earth to the reason we hiccup.

• 48 mins