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The Self-Access Centre - English - Radio Recordings

In this section you can find a variety of radio recordings to help you with your listening comprehension, speaking and pronunciation skills. You can search by choosing a particular category from the drop-down menu below.

The audio recordings are available online and can be accessed only from a university computer by clicking the icon .

	Title	Author	Subcategory	Rating
This ten part history of mathematics reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mathematicians struggling to get their ideas heard. Marcus du Sautoy shows how these masters of abstraction find a role in the real world and proves that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science. 1	A Brief History of Mathematics - 01 Newton and Leibniz	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Today, how the mathematics that Leonard Euler invented two hundred years ago has transformed the internet. Euler's solution to an eighteeneth century conundrum paved the way for the search engines most of us use every day 2	A Brief History of Mathematics - 02 Leonard Euler	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Today, the mathematics of Joseph Fourier. It's thanks to his mathematical insight that you can hear Marcus on the radio and that Brian Eno can create sounds that have never been heard before. 3	A Brief History of Mathematics - 03 Joseph Fourier	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Today how the mathematics of the French revolutionary, Evariste Galois, has proved invaluable to particle physicists working today.The mathematics that Galois began, over two hundred years ago, now absolutely describes the fundamental particles that make up our universe. 4	A Brief History of Mathematics - 04 Evariste Galois	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
The 19th century mathematical celebrity. Professor Marcus du Sautoy describes how a study of asteroids led Gauss to describe the normal distribution. 5	A Brief History of Mathematics - 05 Carl Friedrich Gauss	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Today, the pioneering nineteenth century mathematicians who helped Albert Einstien with his maths: Jonas Bolyai, Nicolas Loachevski and Bernhard Riemann. Without the mathematics to describe curved space and multiple dimensions, the theory of relativity doesn't really work. 6	A Brief History of Mathematics - 06 The mathematicians who helped Einstein	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Today, Georg Cantor, the mathematician who showed us how to carry on counting when the numbers run out. An insight into the nature of infinity that Roger Penrose believes helps to explain why the human brain will always be cleverer than artificial intelligence. 7	A Brief History of Mathematics - 07 Georg Cantor	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Today Henri Poincare, the man who proved there are certain problems that mathematics will never be able to answer: a mathematical insight that gave rise to chaos theory. 8	A Brief History of Mathematics - 08 Henri Poincare	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Today, G.H.Hardy, the mathematician who insisted he had never done anything useful. And yet his work on the "diabolical malice" inherent in prime numbers inspired the millions of codes that now help to keep the internet safe. 9	A Brief History of Mathematics - 09 Hardy and Ramanujan	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Today, the mathematician that never was, Nicolas Bourbaki. A group of French mathematicians, working between the two world wars and writing under the pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki transformed their discipline and paved the way for several mathematical breakthroughs in the 21st century. 10	A Brief History of Mathematics - 10 Nicolas Bourbaki	Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
The universe will die. The sun and other stars like it will throw out heat until they have no more energy to burn. The big bang threw everything outwards at a massive rate. As it gets bigger, so the gaps between matter get bigger and are filled with "dark energy". Instead of gravity pulling everything back down to a "big crunch" the dark energy accelerates the expansion process, pushing everything further apart faster and faster. In the end everything will be a cold, sad, blackness as the stars all go out, or are too far apart for us to see anything - but "us" will be long gone. 11	A Brief History of the End of Everything - 04 The universe is expanding - we're all doomed	Brother Guy Consolmagno	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
A strange subatomic particle produced in an atom-smashing experiment here on earth could, theoretically, tumble to the centre of the planet and start eating the planet from the inside out - death by industrial accident. Or a random quantum fluctuation in distant space could switch off the machinery that makes matter big, and this would send a bubble of destruction moving at the speed of light and shutting down all creation in its path. All of the ideas explored in this series suggest that the future is not rosy - that the universe is going to end and that we will end along with it...or can we escape? 12	A Brief History of the End of Everything - 05 Oops, I've dropped an exotic particle	Brother Guy Consolmagno	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
A series exploring how our ideas about the end of the universe have been shaped by religion, belief, and the contemporary state of scientific thinking and observation. The series is presented by Vatican Astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno. He is a Jesuit astro-physicist who came to religion via science and his wonder at the universe. At the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, he compares cutting edge cosmology with Chinese, Ancient Greek, Buddhist, Medieval and Victorian ideas about the end of everything. 13	A Brief History of the End of Everything - 01 It's OK, the universe is eternal	Brother Guy Consolmagno	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
It will die. Like a ball thrown into the air, no matter how fast the acceleration to begin with, gravity always wins. The universe will reach a critical mass, then start to fall back in on itself. This is the big crunch theory. The power of gravity wins out over the accelerating power throwing everything outwards. Microseconds from the end, black holes begin to merge with each other, little different from the collapsing state of the surrounding universe. The implosion becomes increasingly powerful, crushing all matter and every physical thing out of existence. Space and time end - there is eternal nothingness beyond this point, unless... 14	A Brief History of the End of Everything - 02 The universe will crash - we're all doomed	Brother Guy Consolmagno	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Yes the universe will end, but at the crunch the process starts all over again, and could go on forever (cf. Hindu and Buddhist ideas of re-birth). Another possibility is "multiverses" - there are lots of different universes, all in different states of existence, some at moment of big bang, but will never become a universe as we know it, so grow to the size of a grape and shrink back, or expand outwards and never turn into frothy, lumpy matter - just a thin soup with no life in them. Our universe is perfect…not too fast to become a soup and not too slow so it falls back in on itself to destruct - just lumpy enough for galaxies to form and the whole thing hold together - a balancing act between gravity and acceleration, for the time being. 15	A Brief History of the End of Everything - 03 Lets go round again	Brother Guy Consolmagno	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
The edges of things - arbitrary lines drawn on a map; the borders between people; between species; between mental states. Thinking about the placers where one thing ends and become something else - a language, a people...or the gulf between life and death. We resent borders but we rely on them too. They keep things in, as well as keeping things out and over the centuries, poets have been magnetised by them. Poetry is after all, a journey from one state to another. 16	A Map of British Poetry - Programme 1: Borders	Radio 4	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Not many scientists are prepared to take tales of alien abduction seriously, but John Mack, a Harvard professor who was killed in a road accident in north London last year, did. Ten years on from a row which nearly lost him his job, hundreds of people who claim they were abducted still revere him. 17	Abduction, Alienation and Reason	Radio 4	Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Bren and Hilly have been lifelong friends, so when Hilly breaks her wrist Bren comes to help. They both anticipate the pleasure of long days together comfortably trashing the years they were apart, but their friendship is not that simple. 18	Afternoon Play - An Interlude of Men	Lesley Bruce	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Bradley is an angry young 14-year-old struggling with the arrival of his new step-mother so soon after the death of his mother. 19	Afternoon Play - Hard Road	Simon Vinnicombe	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Frances Byrnes's drama, set in Sheffield in 1982, is based on her own experience and that of her father and many of his friends as their lives are wrecked by redundancy. A job advertisement appears in the local paper. 20	Afternoon Play - Man of Steel	Frances Byrnes	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Odd couple Lal and Paul run their own dry-cleaning shop. The path to true love is littered with obstacles including age difference, guilt, cultural chasms and etymology. 21	Afternoon Play - My Man and Me	Bettina Gracias	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Dramatic reconstruction of a conversation between Trevor Friedman and Roman Halter, whose fathers were Jewish slave labourers in Poland and then Germany. Trevor knew almost nothing of his father's extraordinary story until 24 years after his death. With Harry Towb, Jonathan Tafler. Directed by Toby Swift. 22	Afternoon Play - The Conversation	Toby Swift	Literature	Like (0 likes)
The Man Who Built Tunnels: Natalia Power's haunting tale of unrequited love in which the 79-year-old Duke of Portland receives a visitation from a once famous opera singer. 23	Afternoon Play - The Man Who Built Tunnels	Natalia Powers	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Novelist Jane Feaver introduces a selection of previously unheard letters from the late Poet Laureate, written to family, friends, academics, children and fellow writers. Read by Richard Armitage. Producer Susan Roberts. 24	Afternoon Play - The Ted Hughes Letters	Ted Hughes	Literature	Like (0 likes)
The Medici are synonymous with the Renaissance, but why did these bankers act as patrons to artists like Michelangelo and Donatello - was it a love of art or something more sinister? 25	Amongst the Medici - Episode 1: Bankers to the Renaissance	Bettany Hughes	History	Like (0 likes)
Classicist Bettany Hughes continues her journey through the beauty and the blood-letting of Renaissance Florence. Could it be that the Renaissance as we know it wasn't a renaissance at all? Could Donatello's David really be a political statement for the Medici? And what has Liverpool got to do with it? Bettany finds that the Renaissance is more than it's cracked up to be. 26	Amongst the Medici - Episode 2: Renaissance, what Renaissance?	Bettany Hughes	History	Like (0 likes)
Historian Bettany Hughes concludes her journey through the beauty and the blood of renaissance Florence. This week she finds that, contrary to popular belief, it was smart women, gay men and false gods who made the corner stones of western civilisation 27	Amongst the Medici - Episode 3: Smart women, gay men and false gods	Bettany Hughes	History	Like (0 likes)
In the second series of An Earth Made for Life Gabrielle Walker continues her quest to understand why complex life is found on our planet, but not on any of our celestial neighbours. From the outback of Australia to the walls of the Grand Canyon Gabrielle unearths evidence of the dramatic changes that took place on our planet billions of years ago which may have triggered the rise of animals. 28	An Earth Made for Life - Programme 3: Sex, Death and War	Gabrielle Walker	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Simon Singh's journey begins with the number 4, which for over a century has fuelled one of the most elusive problems in mathematics: is it true that any map can be coloured with just 4 colours so that no two neighbouring countries have the same colour? This question has tested some of the most imaginative minds - including Lewis Carroll's - and the eventual solution has aided the design of some of the world's most complex air and road networks. 29	Another Five Numbers 1	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 2: The Number Seven Games of chance don't necessarily afford an equal chance of winning to all players. Certain gamblers savvy enough to do the maths have been exploiting the weaknesses of some games to their advantage for years. Lazy shuffling which doesn't completely randomise a deck of cards, for example, offers anyone with a head for probability theory the edge to trump their fellow gamblers. So how do you overcome this and create a level playing field? 30	Another Five Numbers 2	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 3: Prime Numbers Think of a number. Any number. Chances are you haven't plumped for 213,466,917 -1. To get this, you would need to keep multiplying 2 by itself 13,466,917 times, and then subtract 1 from the result. When written down it's 4,053,900 digits long and fills 2 telephone directories. So, as you can imagine, it's not the kind of number you're likely to stumble over often. Unless you're Bill Gates checking your bank statement at the end of the month. 31	Another Five Numbers 3	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 4: Kepler's Conjecture Sir Walter Raleigh was a poet, adventurer and all-round Elizabethan scallywag. In between searching for El Dorado and harrying the Spanish fleet, he is credited with introducing the humble potato to England. He was also the first Brit to seriously go over their Duty Free tobacco allowance on his return from the Americas. One of his more obscure contributions to posterity however, lies in mathematics. Raleigh wanted to know if there was a quick way of estimating the number of cannonballs in a pile. 32	Another Five Numbers 4	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 5: Game Theory Not long ago auctions seemed to be the preserve of either the mega-rich, bidding for Van Goghs at some plush auction house, or the shady car-dealer, paying cash-no-questions-asked for vehicles of dubious provenance. However, the advent of the Internet and David Dickinson has changed this. Auction web-sites allow the average punter to buy and sell pretty much anything, whilst an army of Bargain Hunt devotees can now happily tell their Delft from their Dresden. 33	Another Five Numbers 5	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Professor of Genetics Steve Jones challenges evolutionary psychology, the controversial new science of how our brains and minds developed. Girls like pink better because in Stone Age times they needed to be good at picking berries and women have better sex with rich men - or so some evolutionary psychologists would have us believe. Critics say this isn't science, but conjecture. Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain human behaviour from the hunter-gatherers or our nearest relatives, the chimpanzee, and has some seductively simple theories. One argument is that we have Stone Age brains in 21st-century skulls, from which we can account for everything from the violence that men show to their stepchildren to why racism exists. Is evolutionary psychology a truly useful addition to the canon of ideas to come out of Darwinian evolution or a just-so science that can be adjusted to suit the researchers' prejudices? Steve Jones examines the history of the new science, the methods used and asks if it can explain the human drive to language, religion and culture. 34	Aping Evolution - 1	Professor Steve Jones	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Professor of Genetics Steve Jones challenges the controversial science of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists say human behaviour, such as who we marry, when we have children and even the quality of our sex lives, can be explained by having a Stone Age brain in a 21st century body. Professor Jones examines the scientific evidence for such claims and asks if we should be worried if contentious theories escape the world of science and enter the arena of social policy. 35	Aping Evolution - 2	Professor Steve Jones	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
In 1996 US entrepreneur and explorer Gary Comer took his boat to the Northwest Passage in search of adventure. Inspired by the stories of early explorers like Roald Amundsen, who had tried to navigate the winding route through northern Canadian sea ice, Comer expected high adventure. Instead he found where there had once been ice, there was now easily navigated open water. 36	Arctic Meltdown	Richard Hollingham	Geography	Like (0 likes)
In October 1945, the magazine Wireless World published an article by a relatively unknown writer and rocket enthusiast. Its title was: "Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World Wide Radio Coverage?" Today, the author's name is known throughout the world. He is the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, and his prediction of satellite communications has come true in ways even he never imagined. Heather Couper travels to Sir Arthur's home in Sri Lanka to hear his own story. 37	Arhur C Clarke - The Science and the Fiction	Heather Cooper	Literature, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Life is all about the choices we make. But what happens when you’re trapped in the headlights of indecision? A light-hearted programme for ditherers who want to become decisive. 38	Art of Indecision 1	Ian Peacock	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Life is all about the choices we make. But what happens when you’re trapped in the headlights of indecision? A light-hearted programme for ditherers who want to become decisive. 39	Art of Indecision 2	Ian Peacock	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Penny Marshall tells the story of how the battle for birth has been waged between women, doctors and midwives over the last two centuries. This war has shaped the maternity services in the UK today. Penny talks to midwives, obstetricians, mothers and policy makers about the battles that have been fought to give women the maternity care they want. 40	Battle for Birth	Penny Marshall	History, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
Arcade Fire are that rare combination of things - a popular, critically-acclaimed Canadian band. As they release their third album and gear up to headline the Reading and Leeds Festival, Radio 1 heads to Montreal to spend time with frontman Win Butler and his troupe of multi-instrumentalists. 41	BBC Radio 1's Stories - The Story of Arcade Fire	Radio One	Music, Other	Like (0 likes)
Scientist and broadcaster Prof Trevor Cox explores a new wave of biomimicry - copying nature - which aims to recreate the processes and systems, from self-cleaning lotus leaves to the Namibian fog-basking beetle, which can harvest moisture from the dry desert air. Trevor meets the people attempting to emulate nature's genius. Their goal is not just to copy nature's structures, but to recreate the processes and systems that evolution has taken billions of years to perfect. 42	Biomimicry: Inspired by Nature	Prof Trevor Cox	Biology	Like (0 likes)
With drama and flair, novelist Keneally illuminates the birth of New South Wales in 1788, richly evoking the social conditions in London, miserable sea voyage and the desperate conditions of the new colony. His tale revolves around Arthur Phillips, the ambitious captain in the Royal Navy who would become the first governor of New South Wales 43	Book of the Week - A Commonwealth of Thieves	Thomas Keneally	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
This is the story of a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator ('a middle class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander) and a chaotic, knife-wielding beggar whom he gets to know during a campaign to release two charity workers from prison. 44	Book of the Week - A Life Backwards	Alexander Masters	Literature	Like (0 likes)
A gripping story of a child’s journey through hell and back. There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words. In this book, Beah, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope 45	Book of the Week - A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier	Ishamel Beah	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Published to coincide with the thirty-fifth anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, Room Full of Mirrors gives full voice to the music that continues to enthrall each successive generation of rock fans. Hendrix's colorful, tumultuous life is brilliantly detailed in Charles Cross's latest rock bio 46	Book of the Week - A Room Full of Mirrors	Charles R. Cross	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Nick Thorpe takes the reader on boat-hopping odyssey through Scotland's canals, lochs and coastal waters, from the industrial Clyde to the scattered islands of Viking Shetland. Whether rowing a coracle with a chapter of monks, scanning for the elusive Nessie, hitting the rocks with Captain Calamity or clinging to the rigging of a tall ship, Thorpe weaves a narrative that is by turns funny and poignant - a nautical pilgrimage for any who have ever been tempted to try a new path just to see where it might take them. Part travelogue, part memoir, Adrift in Caledonia is a unique portrait of a sea-fringed nation 47	Book of the Week - Adrift in Caledonia	Nick Thorpe	Geography, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Chapman, a criminal, sybarite and serial philanderer, found himself on Jersey when the Germans invaded and was transferred to a hellhole of a prison in Paris. The only way out of this benighted existence was to volunteer his services to the Abwehr as a secret agent. Eventually accepted, he was then parachuted into England, where he promptly landed flat on his face and then swiftly handed himself over to the police and volunteered to become a secret agent 48	Book of the Week - Agent Zigzag	Ben Macintyre	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Alistair Cooke, then a Washington correspondent for "The Guardian," recognised a great story to be told in investigating at first hand the effects of the Second World War on America and the daily lives of Americans as they adjusted to radically new circumstances. Within weeks of the Pearl Harbor attack, with a reporter's zeal, Cooke set off on a circuit of the entire country to see what the war had done to people. This unique travelogue celebrates an important American character and the indomitable spirit of a nation that was to inspire Cooke's reports and broadcasts for some sixty years 49	Book of the Week - American Journey	Alistair Cooke	Literature	Like (0 likes)
William Boyd's first collection of non-fiction is a substantial volume of writings from the last three decades that range widely over his particular interests and obsessions. Bamboo gathers together Boyd's writing on literature, art, the movie business, television, people he has met, places he has visited and autobiographical reflections on his African childhood, his years at boarding school and the profession of novelist. From Pablo Picasso to the allure of the British Caff, from Charles Dickens to Catherine Deneuve, from mini-cabs to Brideshead Revisited, this collection proves a fascinating and surprisingly revealing companion to the work of one of Britain's leading novelists. 50	Book of the Week - Bamboo	William Boyd	Literature	Like (0 likes)
It’s 1974 and young Rory is about to enter his second year at Cambridge, absolutely determined to have a meaningful relationship with a woman, or at least, lose his virginity 51	Book of the Week - Bearded Tit: A Lovestory with Feathers	Rory McGrath	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Beatrix Potter, the twentieth century's most beloved children's writer and illustrator, created books that will forever conjure nature for millions. Yet though she is a household name around the world, her personal life and her other significant achievements remain largely unknown. This remarkable new biography is a voyage of discovery into the story of an extraordinary woman. At a time when plunder was more popular than preservation, she brought nature back into the English imagination. "Beatrix Potter: A Life In Nature" reveals a strong, humorous and independent woman, whose art was timeless, and whose generosity left an indelible imprint on the countryside. 52	Book of the Week - Beatrix Potter - A Life in Nature	Linda Lear	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
David Profumo was just seven when his father, who had been Secretary of State for War, resigned from the Macmillan government. Despite the furore and humiliation that followed, his parents famously stayed together -- and now, forty years on, their son has written this long-awaited account of their family life before, during and after the sensational events of 1963. 53	Book of the Week - Bringing the House Down	David Profumo	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
This singular tale by Whitbread Prize-winning writer Diana Souhami ('Selkirk's Island') connects the famous mutiny on the Bounty in the Pacific Ocean in 1789 to the plight of the islanders of Pitcairn now. Its conceptual core is how a small chance thing, the taking of a coconut by Fletcher Christian from William Bligh's stores on the ship, had dramatic ramifications that continue today. 54	Book of the Week - Coconut Chaos	Diana Souhami	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Michael Palin has kept a diary since newly married in the late 1960s, when he was beginning to make a name for himself as a TV scriptwriter (for the Two Ronnies, David Frost etc). Monty Python was just around the corner. This first volume of his diaries reveals how Python emerged and triumphed, how he, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, the two Terrys - Jones and Gilliam - and Eric Idle, came together and changed the face of British comedy. 55	Book of the Week - Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years	Michael Palin	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
A dramatic, sparkling tale of sex, glamour, intrigue, romance and heartbreak, "England's Mistress" traces the rise and rise of the gorgeous Emma Hamilton. Born into poverty, she clawed her way up through London's underworlds of sex for sale to become England's first media superstar. 56	Book of the Week - England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton	Kate Williams	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
This evocation of a way of life now vanished demonstrates the power of the word to make the local universal and to bring the past timelessly to life. Woven into the fabric of family life, village characters, church and school, Rush writes of folklore and fishing and the eternal power of the sea, the cycle of the seasons, the worlds of the imagination and the unknown, the archetypal problems of fathers and sons and mother love, and the inescapability of childhood influences far on into adult life. 57	Book of the Week - Hellfire and Herring	Christopher Rush	Literature	Like (0 likes)
In 1945, a small-time Dutch art dealer was arrested for selling a forgery of a priceless national treasure - a painting by Vermeer - to Hitler's right-hand man. The charge was treason, the only possible sentence death. And yet Han van Meegeren languished in his dank prison cell, incapable of uttering the words that would set him free: 'I am a forger.' This riveting account of greed, hubris, excess, treason and fine art is the story of a failed artist and the greatest forger of all time, who executed a swindle which earned him the equivalent of fifty million dollars and the acclaim of the very critics who had mocked him. 58	Book of the Week - I Was Vermeer	Frank Wynne	Art & Design, History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Samuel Sewall sat in judgement at the Salem witch trials. Five years later he recanted the guilty verdicts. Through his story, Richard Francis brings the New World vividly to life. The Salem witch trials of 1692 have assumed mythical status. Immortalised by Arthur Miller's The Crucible, the witch-hunt is now part of our vocabulary. Yet the actual events are more remote than ever. Biographer and novelist Richard Francis brings the reality back into focus with the story of Samuel Sewall, New England Puritan, Salem trial judge, publisher, entrepreneur and writer. 59	Book of the Week - Judge Sewall's Apology	Richard Francis	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
The definitive biography of Leni Riefenstahl, the woman best known as "Hitler's filmmaker," one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities of the twentieth century. It is the story of huge talent and huger ambition, one that probes the sometimes blurred borders dividing art and beauty from truth and humanity 60	Book of the Week - Leni - The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl	Steven Bach	Art & Design, History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
"Lost Cosmonaut" documents Daniel Kalder's travels in the bizarre and mysterious worlds of Russia's ethnic republics. Obsessed with a quest he never fully understands, Kalder boldly goes where no man has gone before: in the deserts of Kalmykia, he stumbles upon a city dedicated to chess and a forgotten tribe of Mongols; in Mari El, home to Europe's last pagan nation, he meets the Chief Druid and participates in an ancient rite; while in the bleak industrial badlands of Udmurtia, Kalder looks for Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47, and accidentally becomes a TV star. Profane yet wise, utterly honest and yet full of lies, "Lost Cosmonaut" is an eye-opening, blackly comic tour of the most alien planet in our cosmos: Earth. 61	Book of the Week - Lost Cosmonaut	Daniel Kalder	Geography, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Mistresses and wives, mothers and daughters - Antonia Fraser brilliantly explores the relationships which existed between The Sun King and the women in his life. This includes not only Louis XIV's mistresses, principally Louise de La Valliere, Athenais de Montespan, and the puritanical Madame de Maintenon, but also the wider story of his relationships with women in general, including his mother Anne of Austria, his two sisters-in-law who were Duchesses d'Orleans in succession, Henriette-Anne and Liselotte, his wayward illegitimate daughters, and lastly Adelaide, the beloved child-wife of his grandson. 62	Book of the Week - Love and Louis XIV	Antonia Fraser	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Despite the number of claims in publishers blurbs, not many people actually achieve the status of legend in their own lifetime. Fewer still actually deserve that status. John Peel is the exception which proves that rule, a Great Briton whose contribution to British culture is undeniable, without whom popular culture would never have become popular. Beloved by millions - whether for his unstinting championing of musical talent on Radio 1 or for his wildly popular Radio 4 show "Home Truths" - this is the astonishing book he began to write before his untimely death in October 2004, completed by the woman who knew him best, his wife Sheila. 63	Book of the Week - Margrave of the Marshes	John Peel	Literature	Like (0 likes)
At the heart of the "Memoir" is a son's unembarrassed tribute to his mother. His memory of walks with her through the narrow lanes to the country schools where she taught and his happiness as she named for him the wild flowers on the bank remained conscious and unconscious presences for the rest of his life. A classic family story, told with exceptional restraint and tenderness, "Memoir" cannot fail to move all those who read it. 64	Book of the Week - Memoir	John McGahern	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Taking us from Fleet Street to Clive James on TV, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows via fatherhood, some killer bees, and a satire starring Anne Robinson as Mrs Thatcher, "North Face of Soho" is the larger-than-life story of a life lived to the full. 65	Book of the Week - North Face of Soho	Clive James	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Alternative politics, libertarian socialism, experimental living, feminist communes, street theatre, radical magazine, love affairs - gay and straight ...sex 'n' drugs 'n' rock 'n' roll. Paper Houses is the memoir of a young woman who comes down from Oxford to London in 1970, determined to break free from a conventional middle-class, close-knit family. 66	Book of the Week - Paper Houses	Michele Roberts	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Edna Healey has been married to Denis Healey for more than fifty years and has seen parliamentary life, both in power and opposition from the inside. 67	Book of the Week - Part of the Pattern: Memoirs of a Wife at Westminster	Edna Healey	History, Literature, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Emilie du Chatelet was one of the greatest thinkers of the 18th century, a woman whose work was of by history. Fiercely intellectual and passionate, Emilie's relationship with Voltaire was as radical as he vital use to Einstein and who, until now, has been largely ignoredr thinking. 68	Book of the Week - Passionate Minds	David Bodanis	History, Literature, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
In 480 BC, Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory - rapid, spectacular victory - had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. In the space of a single generation, they had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. As a result of those conquests, Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet. Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out. 69	Book of the Week - Persian Fire	Tom Holland	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
With characteristic modesty and a captivating eye for the absurd, Nigel Havers treats us to the highlights and lowlights of a life like no other; a life in which chilling reality (watching his father Michael - later the Attorney General - begin his prosecution of the Yorkshire Ripper) and beguiling fantasy (sleeping with 'Elizabeth Taylor') continuously and arrestingly collide. 70	Book of the Week - Playing with Fire	Nigel Havers	Literature	Like (0 likes)
The classic memoir by one of the great British journalists of the twentieth century, a man who earned universal respect not only for his courage in reporting from dangerous places, but for his candour and independence. "Point of Departure" features Cameron's eyewitness accounts of the atom bomb tests at Bikini atoll, the Chinese invasion of Tibet and the war in Korea; and vivid evocations of his encounters with Mao Tse-tung and Winston Churchill. 71	Book of the Week - Point of Departure	James Cameron	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Andrew Greig grew up on the East coast of Scotland, where playing golf is as natural as breathing. He sees the game as the great leveller, and has played on the Old course at St Andrews as well as on the miners' courses of Yorkshire. He writes about the different cultural manifestations of the game, the history, the geography, the different social meanings, as well as the subjective experience, the reflections between shots. An indispensable book for golfers and non golfers alike. 72	Book of the Week - Preferred Lies	Andrew Greig	Literature	Like (0 likes)
We spend our days catching buses and trains, tapping away at computers, shopping, queuing, lying on sofas...But we know almost nothing about these activities. Exploring the history of these subjects as they come up during a typical day, starting with breakfast and ending with bedtime, Joe Moran shows that they conceal all kinds of hidden histories and meanings. 73	Book of the Week - Queuing for Beginners	Joe Moran	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
In 1983, Arthur Miller was invited to Beijing to direct the first Chinese production of Death of a Salesman. This book is the diary he kept during of that unique and eccentric production. The diary portrays the challenges that faced Miller as a Liberal American playwright and director working in Communist China. Miller's major concern was how to overcome the linguistic and cultural difficulties of trying to communicate his artistic vision to a Chinese cast. The result is not merely an interesting account of a highly unusual production, but it also reveals the process any production may go through, and is an insight into the mind of a considerate director. 74	Book of the Week - Salesman in Beijing	Arthur Miller	History, Literature, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
A meticulously researched history of the Santa Claus myth, tracing the munificent, rosy-cheeked one's journey from medieval Constantinople, through renaissance Amsterdam to his twentieth century comeback in the advertising studios of New York City. 75	Book of the Week - Santa: A Life	Jeremy Seal	History, Literature, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
We've always dreamed of perfect places: Eden, heaven and Oz - places over the rainbow, beyond death and loss. Now, through computer technology, we can inhabit those worlds together. Each week, between 35 and 50 million people worldwide abandon reality for virtual worlds. Tim Guest takes us on a revelatory journey through the electronic looking-glass, as he investigates one of the most bizarre phenomena of the 21st century. 76	Book of the Week - Second Lives	Tim Guest	Literature	Like (0 likes)
In February 1972, Nixon amazed the world with a trip to China. He was the first US President to go there -- in fact officially the first American since the Communist takeover. It was like a visit to the far side of the moon, but also a brilliant stroke of policy. With China on side Nixon could get out of Vietnam; US technology could help Mao recover from his disastrous Cultural Revolution; most of all, both needed a buttress against Soviet Russia in aggressive mood. 77	Book of the Week - Seize the Hour - When Nixon Met Mao	Margaret MacMillan	History, Literature, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Beloved broadcaster and writer Miles Kington's account of an endearingly eccentric childhood has everything - a lovable narrator, a mother who is constantly on her deathbed, a gadget-obsessed father and a flamboyantly theatrical older brother. SOMEONE LIKE ME is a collection of enchanting musings on life from the fringes of a sometimes roundabout, often perplexing but always entertaining adult world in which the incidents and accidents of dog training, borrowed lawnmowers, badminton, figs and unlikely brushes with the Catholic Church combine in the most original and laugh-out-loud funny book you'll have read in decades. 78	Book of the Week - Someone Like Me: Tales from a Borrowed Childhood	Miles Kington	Literature	Like (0 likes)
In September 2005, Alex Kapranos began writing about what he ate while touring the world with the rock band Franz Ferdinand. The writing is as much about where he eats and the people he eats with as the unusual flavours he tastes on the road. Whether it's munching donuts with cops in Brooklyn, swallowing bull's balls with the band in Buenos Aires or queuing for a saveloy in South Shields, these are surprising and vivid snapshots of life on the road. Funny, poignant, sickening or sexual depending on the situation, the material, both new and previously published in the "Guardian", is fascinating and entertaining. 79	Book of the Week - Sound Bites	Alex Kapranos	Literature, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
To be a good doctor you have to be a compassionate chameleon, a shape shifter - a shaman. Even if your adaptation to your patients' world happens at an unconscious level you should always work within their system of ideas, never against it...' So writes Cecil Helman after 27 years as a family practitioner in the suburbs of North London interlaced with training and research as a medical anthropologist, comparing a wide variety of health systems. This unique combination of frontline health worker and detached academic informs the many stories that make up this fascinating book. 80	Book of the Week - Suburban Shaman	Cecil Helman	Literature, Medical Sciences, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
The founder of the first lonely hearts agency for country dwellers brings us the happiest, funniest, most poignant and sometimes downright eccentric tales of love in the countryside. Since founding the Farmers' and Country Bureau from her Peak District farmhouse over twenty years ago, Patricia has been helping love blossom the length and breadth of rural England. 81	Book of the Week - Tales from the Country Matchmaker	Patricia Warren	Literature	Like (0 likes)
In 1945, just as the war was ending, 'the teenager' arrived. This is the story of how we got to that moment - the century and a half of ferment, folly, and angst that created a separate Teen Age in Europe and America. 82	Book of the Week - Teenage: The Creation of Youth	Jon Savage	History, Literature, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
The candid, wryly funny and emotional autobiography of one of the UK’s most respected actresses. 83	Book of the Week - Telling Some Tales	Anna Massey	Literature	Like (0 likes)
More tales of life as a schools inspector in Yorkshire. Gervase Phinn's colourful cast of characters have now become firm favourites - the eccentric staff at County Hall as well as the children themselves who find ways of embarrassing the school inspectors with innocent ease. Gervase Phinn has an extraordinary talent to entertain, and the latest instalment to the "Dale" series is heart-warming, wry and will make you laugh out loud. 84	Book of the Week - The Heart of the Dales	Gervase Phinn	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Hunger is the loudest voice in my head. I'm hungry most of the time'. One January morning in 2003, William Leith woke up to the fattest day of his life. That same day he left London for New York to interview controversial diet guru Dr Robert Atkins. What started out as a routine assignment set Leith on an intensely personal and illuminating journey into the mysteries of hunger and addiction. "The Hungry Years" charts new territory for anyone who has ever had a craving or counted a calorie. This story of food, fat, and addiction will change the way you look at food for ever. 85	Book of the Week - The Hungry Years	William Leith	Biology, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Bill Bryson's first travel book opened with the immortal line, 'I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.' In his deeply funny new memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, and the curious world of 1950s America. It was a happy time, when almost everything was good for you, including DDT, cigarettes and nuclear fallout. This is a book about growing up in a specific time and place. But in Bryson's hands, it becomes everyone's story, one that will speak volumes - especially to anyone who has ever been young. 86	Book of the Week - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid	Bill Bryson	Literature, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
The tale of the agitation led by Samuel Plimsoll MP, "The Sailor's Friend", and by his wife Eliza, who worked together to defend sailors against nefarious practices including overloading and the use of unseaworthy "coffin-ships". 87	Book of the Week - The Plimsoll Sensation	Nicollette Jones	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Following on from the success of "The Speckled People", Hugo Hamilton's new memoir has at its heart the story of a summer he spent working at a local harbour in Ireland, at a time of tremendous fear and mistrust. 88	Book of the Week - The Sailor in the Wardrobe - A Memoir	Hugo Hamilton	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Thomas Hardy is one of the sacred figures in English writing, a great poet and a novelist with a world reputation. His life was also extraordinary: from the poverty of rural Dorset he went on to become the Grand Old Man of English life and letters, his last resting place in Westminster Abbey. This seminal biography covers Hardy's illegitimate birth, his rural upbringing, his escape to London in the 1860s, his marriages, his status as a bestselling novelist, and in later life, his supreme achievements as a poet. 89	Book of the Week - Thomas Hardy: The Time-torn Man	Claire Tomaline	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
An astute and poignant depiction of two uprooted lives which are drawn together, touching on key periods of 20th-century history, from the Raj and the Holocaust, to life in post-war Britain. This is a life-enhancing and moving love story of two ordinary yet exceptional people. 90	Book of the Week - Two Lives	Vikram Seth	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
"Untold Stories" is Alan Bennett's first collection of prose since "Writing Home" and takes in all his major writings over the last ten years. 91	Book of the Week - Untold Stories	Alan Bennett	Literature	Like (0 likes)
This is a travel book, an account of the year Tobias Jones spent living in communes and amongst unusual dreamers. It is his attempt to retreat from the 'real world' - which is making him emptier and angrier by the day - and seek out the alternatives to modern manners and morality. 92	Book of the Week - Utopian Dreams	Tobias Jones	Literature, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Londoner Brockes, a 29-year-old playwright who writes for the Guardian, expounds on her love of musicals. 93	Book of the Week - What Would Barbara Do?	Emma Brockes	Literature	Like (0 likes)
An inspirational memoir about taming wild horses and fulfilling impossible dreams. 94	Book of the Week - Wild Horse Diaries	Lizzie Spender	Literature	Like (0 likes)
From the walnut tree at his Suffolk home, Roger Deakin embarks upon a quest that takes him through Britain, across Europe, to Central Asia and Australia, in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with wood and with trees. Meeting woodlanders of all kinds, he lives in shacks and cabins, builds hazel benders, and hunts bush-plums with aboriginal women. At once autobiography, history, a traveller's tale and a work of natural history, "Wildwood" is a lyrical and fiercely intimate evocation of the spirit of trees: in nature, in our souls, in our culture, and in our lives. 95	Book of the Week - Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees	Roger Deakin	Geography, Literature	Like (0 likes)
The life of Willie Donaldson ended in June 2005 when he was found dead in the seedy rented flat in Chelsea where he had lived for 35 years. Willie Donaldson's extraordinary, perverse career of writing, drug-taking, brilliance and underachievement put him in the same holy bracket as Peter Cook, Jeffrey Bernard, Peter Sellers, Hunter Thompson and Alan Clark, although his talent for sabotaging his own achievements has meant that his legend has up until now remained a secret to the few. Friend and collaborator, Terence Blacker's intimate biography will finally turn him into the iconic anti-hero of British non-conformism that he truly was, telling Willie's strange story in all its glamour, hilarity and pain. 96	Book of the Week - You Cannot Live as I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This	Terence Blacker	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Early research in the 1990s suggested that babies born with a lower birth weight were at increased risk of developing diabetes in later life. This work has now moved on to show that the weight you put on after birth is more crucial. How effective is physical exercise on the rate of developing diabetes, and just how much exercise do you need to do in order to protect yourself? Richard Hannaford follows the population studies that have found the answers to these and other questions about the emergence of this condition. 97	Building a Healthier Britain - 01 Diabetes	Radio 4	Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
Adding fluoride to the water supply has always been a polarised debate. Some think it will prevent tooth decay while others say its safety has not been proven. Its not a new argument, 50 years of fluoridation studies are available but recently public health officials of both Scotland and England have revisited the issue. The difference is that Scotland has decided against increasing the amount of fluoride in the water, while in England the Strategic Health Authorities can, after consultation, request that Water Companies add fluoride to an agreed level. Richard Hannaford asks whether science can ever solve this controversy. 98	Building a Healthier Britain - 02 Fluoride	Radio 4	Chemistry, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
One person in a hundred suffers from schizophrenia and among some groups, especially migrants; the incidence appears to be even higher. Schizophrenia still carries a stigma and many sufferers refuse to accept that they have the condition.Schizophrenia may include a range of symptoms like delusions and hallucinations. But doctors are still at a loss to explain what actually causes the disease. 99	Building a Healthier Britain - 03 Schizophrenia	Radio 4	Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
We make, we create, we paint, we write, we think we discover and we invent. Humans are endlessly creative. From our ability to utter completely new sentences every time we speak to the artistic and scientific genius of Picasso, Shakespeare or Einstein. Do scientists or psychologists know very much about what creativity actually is, or which bit of our brain is in control when we do? Ian Peacock unravels the myth, science and psychology behind creativity. He also finds out why computers could be the artists and writers of the 22nd century. 100	Can Anyone Be a Creative Genius 1?	Ian Peacock	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Creativity unlocked. In the second programme Ian talks to the scientist who's invented a magnetic thinking cap which could make creative geniuses of us all and meets the man who after a stroke, can't stop his craving to paint, sculpt and write poetry. On his search for Xanadu he finds out why creativity is unleashed in some kinds of brain damage and how neuroscience is shedding light on the mystery of creativity, 101	Can Anyone Be a Creative Genius 2?	Ian Peacock	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
How can you be more creative? In the third programme Ian finds out what strategies and techniques he can borrow from business and beyond to maximise his own creativity. He talks an advertising agency to find out how they think up their best ideas, and finds out why businesses are using poets and artists to improve their productivity. 102	Can Anyone Be a Creative Genius 3?	Ian Peacock	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Lars Tharp explores the Chinese porcelain industry. He travels to Jingdezhen, west of Shanghai, the most important city in the maufacture of pocelain for 1,000 years and follows the trail linking Jingdezhen to Britain. 103	China on a Plate - 1	Lars Tharp	Economics & Finance, History	Like (0 likes)
Lars Tharp explores the Chinese porcelain industry. He travels to Jingdezhen, west of Shanghai, the most important city in the maufacture of pocelain for 1,000 years and follows the trail linking Jingdezhen to Britain. 104	China on a Plate - 2	Lars Tharp	Economics & Finance, History	Like (0 likes)
Programme 1: Water - a unique molecule. Our planet is dominated by water: it covers nearly three quarters of the Earth’s surface, is fundamental to plate tectonics, carves the landscape through erosion and is necessary for all life on Earth – and therefore all life as we know it. 105	Cosmic Ocean 1	Leo Enright	Biology, Geography	Like (0 likes)
Programme 2: Water elsewhere. NASA’s mission statement is to “follow the water”. The recent dramatic results from the small armada of probes on Mars suggest this approach is now paying off. It appears the planet was bathed in a watery past. But the surface is now dry and barren. Scientists are now using experiments on board both European and American probes to work out where all of the planet’s water has gone. 106	Cosmic Ocean 2	Leo Enright	Biology, Geography	Like (0 likes)
Writer and poet Ruth Padel investigates the qualities of her great great grandfather Charles Darwin and attempts to discover the man behind the science. 107	Darwin: My Ancestor 1	Ruth Padel	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Ruth Padel explores how Darwin established relationships as a husband and father. 108	Darwin: My Ancestor 2	Ruth Padel	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Ruth Padel explores the way in which Darwin learned to become a writer. 109	Darwin: My Ancestor 3	Ruth Padel	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Ruth explores the losses which Darwin experienced in his life and their effect on him. 110	Darwin: My Ancestor 4	Ruth Padel	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Edward Stourton tries to make sense of a decade in which history has been put on fast forward. There has been a revolution in the way we communicate, widespread alarm about the planet's very survival and a challenge to the world order. What does it mean for the way we live as we head into 2010? The impact of the internet - dreamt up by visionaries, embraced by commerce and full of (not always welcome) surprises. 111	Defining the Decade: A Googling We Go	Edward Stourton	History, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
1905 is the year that shook the world of science, and sent Newton, unchallenged for well over 200 years, tumbling from his throne. In Einstein's Shadow takes a look at the huge impact of Einstein's theories and talks to the scientists, who one hundred years later are still heavily influenced by his work. 112	Einstein's Shadow 1	Dr Brian Cox	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
General Relativity and Einstein's "biggest blunder". All cosmology today is essentially based on Einstein's theory of general relativity and so far, every prediction he made about the universe has turned out to be true. Even his so called "biggest blunder" may well solve the greatest riddle in cosmology today, the nature of dark energy - the mysterious force that makes up nearly 80% of the universe. 113	Einstein's Shadow 2	Dr Brian Cox	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Quantum Theory and why God does play dice It's not just cosmologists who claim to be working in his shadow. Particle Physicists trying to discover how the very first atoms formed at the beginning of the universe, through to quantum theorists and those working on a unified theory of everything all site Einstein as a major influence. And his theories remain unchallenged to this day. 114	Einstein's Shadow 3	Dr Brian Cox	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Adam Hart-Davis dons his hard hat and waders as he wanders through Belfast's sewer network to see how today's engineers are modernising the Victorian sewerage network with robots and ultra violet light. 115	Engineering Solutions: Belfast Sewers Project	Adam Hart-Davies	Engineering	Like (0 likes)
The evil supremo meets Dr Faustus. Martin Jenkin's fable adaptation of a man selling his soul to the Devil. Stars Mark Gatiss. 116	Faust - Episode 1	Martin Jenkin	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Faust wants sex. Mephistopheles wants his signature. Fable adaptation of a man selling his soul to the Devil. Stars Mark Gatiss. 117	Faust - Episode 2	Martin Jenkin	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Faust gets a girl, Mephistopheles closes in and Gretchen's ruination is charted. Adapted Devil-dealing fable with Mark Gatiss. 118	Faust - Episode 3	Martin Jenkin	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Gretchen is pregnant with Faust's child, but the worst is yet to come. Adapted Devil-dealing fable starring Mark Gatiss. 119	Faust - Episode 4	Martin Jenkin	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Faust becomes bored by years of wish fulfilment. Fable adaptation of a man selling his soul to the Devil. Stars Mark Gatiss. 120	Faust - Episode 5	Martin Jenkin	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Carolyn Quinn looks under the bonnet of leadership in this two-part series, from business to politics and sport. What traits do you need to become a great leader? Is leadership 'in the blood' or can you train people to develop the right skills? 121	Follow the Leader, Episode 1	Carolyn Quinn	Business & Management	Like (0 likes)
Carolyn Quinn examines the psychology of leadership. Once you've secured your position as leader, how do you deal with the demands at the top? The level of media attention across all sectors, from politics to football, means that today's leaders are under more scrutiny than ever before. In the last episode, Carolyn explores the challenges of modern leadership, from stepping up to the top job, to stepping down. 122	Follow the Leader, Episode 2	Carolyn Quinn	Business & Management	Like (0 likes)
Written in 1905, Freud's groundbreaking 'Three essays on the theory of sexuality' is one of the pillars on which modern psychoanalysis rests. In the first of these essays, 'Sexual Aberrations' Freud unravels the complex diversity of human desire. Lisa talks to author, Kathy Lette to find out why fetishism isn't too far from shopping and she meets writer and psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips to find out why Freud thought the sexual instinct is such an irresistible force. 123	Freudian Slips - 01 Sexual Aberrations	Sigmund Freud	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
The second of Freud's 'Three essays on the theory of sexuality' is his ground breaking and shocking exploration of the relationship between children and their parents. In 'Infantile Sexuality' Freud outlines why our experiences and frustrations in childhood form the basis for our adult neuroses. Lisa Appignanesi talks to psychoanalysts and writers to find out how Oedipus lives on today. 124	Freudian Slips - 02 Infantile Sexuality	Sigmund Freud	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
In The last of Freud's essays on sexuality he explains why the troubled adolescent has to relive childhood in a bid to leave home. Lisa talks to psychoanalysts working today to find out how the struggles of adolescence have changed over the course of hundred years. She also talks to writer, Sue Townsend to find out what inspired her to write about teenager Adrian Mole and what Freud might have made of him, now, aged 38 and 3/4. 125	Freudian Slips - 03 Transformations of Puberty	Sigmund Freud	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria' is Freud's first great case history. Dora was brought to Freud for analysis by her father because of hysterical symptoms and threatened suicide. Dora rejected Freud's interpretations and fled before her treatment was over. Why did she leave and what did Freud learn from his apparent failure? Lisa talks to psychoanalyst and writer, Susie Orbach to find out why 'Dora' would lead to the invention of one of psychoanalysis's most important tools. 126	Freudian Slips - 04 Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria	Sigmund Freud	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
The Joke Book. In 'Wit and its relation to the Unconscious' Freud explained why the joke, like the dream provides a unique window into the unconscious. Lisa talks to comic Arnold Brown and therapist turned comedian Inder Manocha, to find out what drives the urge to make others laugh. She also talks to psychoanalysts David Bell to find out why we laugh, why we give ourselves away by our jokes and asks if there is a place for humour on the therapist's couch. 127	Freudian Slips - 05 Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious	Sigmund Freud	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Venerated as one of the most important science fiction writers today, Brian Aldiss discusses his latest work with Mark Lawson. 128	Front Row Special - Brian Aldiss	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Mark Lawson interviews David Lodge who's new novel Author, Author journeys back to the 1880s to explore Henry James' middle years... 129	Front Row Special - David Lodge	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Harold Pinter has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Listen to a special profile and to a full length Interview with Pinter. 130	Front Row Special - Harold Pinter	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Author, Joanna Trollope talks to Francine about her latest novel Brother and Sister which looks at on the effect of adoption on several generations. 131	Front Row Special - Joanna Trollope	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
In a special edition of Front Row, Mark Lawson talks in a rare extended interview to writer John le Carré. As his latest book Absolute Friends is published, le Carré looks back at his childhood and his relationship with his father. He explains how his work for the British foreign service has influenced his writing and reflects on the current international political situation. 132	Front Row Special - John Le Carré	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Mark Lawson talks to Barnes in his London home about his writing career, why his Who's Who entry is so enigmatically brief, and why he shrugs off the label of Francophile despite an enduring attraction to all things French. 133	Front Row Special - Julian Barnes	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Mark Lawson talks to Minette Walters on winning the 2003 Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel. 134	Front Row Special - Minette Walters	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Dame Muriel Spark talks to Mark Lawson at her home in Tuscany about her disastrous teenage marriage, the boyfriend who tried to sell her back her own letters and her conversion to Catholicism. 135	Front Row Special - Muriel Sparkes	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Mark Lawson talks to comedian Ricky Gervais about the second series of the award winning BBC TWO comedy, The Office. 136	Front Row Special - Ricky Gervais	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Robert Hughes, art critic and author of a new book Goya, explains to Mark Lawson how the artist changed art forever. 137	Front Row Special - Robert Hughes	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
John Wilson speaks with crime novelist and activist Walter Mosley, famously Bill Clinton's favourite author, of The Devil In A Blue Dress. 138	Front Row Special - Walter Mosley	Mark Lawson	Literature	Like (0 likes)
Is a new personalised drug for skin cancer set to revolutionise cancer medicine?In the first of a new series of Frontiers, Geoff Watts finds out about a new cancer drug that has had dramatic results in a previously almost untreatable type of skin cancer. 139	Frontiers - Cancer treatment	Geoff Watts	Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
Programme 1: 1 – the most popular number! Literally, the most popular number, as it appears more often than any other number. More specifically, the first digit of all numbers is a 1 about 30% of the time, whereas it is 9 just 4% of time. This was accidentally discovered by the engineer Frank Benford. It works for all numbers – mountain heights, river lengths, populations, etc. 140	Further Five Numbers 1	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 2: 2 - At the double. We all remember the story of the Persian who invented chess and who asked to be paid with 1 grain of rice on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third and so on, doubling all the way to the 64th square. He bankrupted the state! 141	Further Five Numbers 2	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 3: 6 degrees of separation Six is often treated as 2x3, but has many characteristics of its own. Six is also the "pivot" of its divisors (1+2+3=6=1x2x3) and also the centre of the first five even numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Six seems to have a pivoting action both mathematically and socially. How is it that everyone in the world can be linked through just six social ties? As Simon discovers, the concept of “six degrees of separation” emerged from a huge postal experiment conducted by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1967. Milgram asked volunteers to send a package by mail to one of a hundred people chosen at random. But they could only send mail to people they knew on first name terms. 142	Further Five Numbers 3	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 4: 6.67 x 10^-11 – the number that defines the universe. Newton’s equation of gravity included a number G, which indicates the strength of gravitation. It took 100 years before the shy Englishman Henry Cavendish (he left notes for his maids because he was too shy to talk to women) measured G to be 6.67 x 10^-11 Nm²/Kg². It allowed him to weigh the Earth itself. 143	Further Five Numbers 4	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 5: 1729 – the first taxicab number Curious properties sometimes lurk within seemingly undistinguished numbers. 1729 sparked one of maths most famous anecdotes: a young Indian, Srinivasa Ramanujan, lay dying of TB in a London hospital. G.H. Hardy, the leading mathematician in England, visited him there. "I came over in cab number 1729," Hardy told Ramanujan. "That seems a rather dull number to me." 144	Further Five Numbers 5	Simon Singh	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Spinoza was one of the founding fathers of the Idealist school of philosophy, and was described by Bertrand Russell as, "the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers". 145	Great Lives - Baruch Spinoza	Sir Harry Kroto	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
James Cook is one of Britain's foremost explorers. His three voyages to the Pacific added greatly to the fields of navigation, anthropology and biology. His aim was to go, "farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for a man to go". 146	Great Lives - Captain James Cook	Greg Dyke	Geography, History	Like (0 likes)
Eighteenth-century satirist and painter William Hogarth is nominated by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop. The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon joins the discussion. 147	Great Lives - William Hogarth	Ian Hislop	Art & Design, History	Like (0 likes)
Making A Human Alien reveals how human beings could be made super-human in the name of space exploration. Scientists are already working on new ways to keep humans alive for long periods, far from the Earth. Sue Nelson explores how in order to travel in space we will need to become human aliens. 148	Human Alien	Sue Nelson	Biology	Like (0 likes)
As we prepare to return astronauts to the Moon and then ultimately to the next frontier, Mars, Frank Close explores the physical and psychological limitations to human space travel. 149	Humans in Space 1	Frank Close	Physics	Like (0 likes)
Frank Close considers if it's better to send robots to do the dirty work in future space missions to the Moon and beyond; or are astronauts still needed? 150	Humans in Space 2	Frank Close	Physics	Like (0 likes)
151	In Business	Peter Day	Business & Management	Like (0 likes)
What does it take to get an electric car off the ground? Lots of effort and endless patience, explains California-based inventor Lon Bell. He talks to Peter Day about his vision of transforming city life with the introduction of a new breed of electric vehicle. The all-electric, battery-powered electric car that Lon Bell designed is called the G-Wiz, and is now available in the UK. 152	In Business - DC Rider	Peter Day	Business & Management	Like (0 likes)
The cult of quality is now taken for granted in business. It was inspired by a single American guru, the late W Edwards Deming, whose ideas shocked the world when they were first picked up in Japan in the 1950s. But there's more to Deming than merely the pursuit of quality. And many of his other ideas still have the power to transform the way people work... and the way companies operate. That's what his disciples say, anyway. 153	In Business - Do It Like Deming	Peter Day	Business & Management	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and ideas of the 19th century American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. His guests this week are Kathleen Burk, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London; Tim Morris, Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Dundee; and Stephen Fender, Honorary Professor in English at University College London. 154	In Our Time - Thoreau and the American Idyll	Melvyn Bragg	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests Roy Foster, Jeri Johnson and Katherine Mullin discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland. Many novelists choose their own young life as the subject for their first book. But very few have subjected themselves to the intense self-scrutiny of the great Irish novelist James Joyce. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916, Joyce follows his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, from babyhood to young adulthood. He takes us from Stephen wetting the bed, through a teenage visit to a prostitute, and on through religious terrors to the prospect of freedom. When it was published, the book met with shock at its graphic honesty. Joyce shows Stephen wrestling with the pressures of his family, his Church and his nation. Yet this was far from being a straightforward youthful tirade. Joyce's novel is also daringly experimental, taking us deep into Stephen's psyche. And since its publication almost a century ago, it has had a huge influence on novelists across the world. With: Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History and Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford Jeri Johnson, Senior Fellow in English at Exeter College, Oxford Katherine Mullin, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Leeds. 155	In Our Time - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	Melvyn Bragg	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of animals in humankind's search for knowledge. 156	In Our Time - Animal Rights	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
The role which architecture has played in our public life throughout history, whether in homage to an individual or as a monument to an institution or ideology, has always been a potent symbol of wealth, status and power. From castles to cathedrals, from the pyramids to Canary Wharf, architecture has always served to glorify in some way the animating ideal of the time. Why is architecture such a powerful form of expression? Have architects concerned themselves mainly with the masses, or restricted their designs to the demands and aspirations of the elite? What can a country’s buildings tell us about its ideas of its own past and present identity? 157	In Our Time - Architecture and power	Melvyn Bragg	Built Environment & Architecture, History	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss artificial intelligence. Can we create a machine that creates? 158	In Our Time - Artificial Intelligence	Melvyn Bragg	History, Computer Science	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the widespread and chilling atrocities of the 20th century. 159	In Our Time - Atrocity in the 20th Century	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Six thousand years ago, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the first cities were being built. The great empire to spring from the region was Babylon, which held sway for over a thousand years and in that time managed to garner an extraordinarily bad press: it’s associated with the Tower of Babel, with Nineveh where Jonah is sent to preach repentance and, perhaps most famously, with “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth” - the whore of Babylon, who in Revelation is taken to personify the city itself. It’s not just the Bible; Herodotus described the Babylonians as effeminate, lascivious and decadent as well. But what is the true story? Classics in this country has meant a study of Greece and Rome, but there is an increasingly vocal contingent that claims that Babylonian culture has been hugely undervalued, and that there is a great wealth of extraordinary literature waiting to be translated. 160	In Our Time - Babylon	Melvyn Bragg	History, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Otto von Bismarck was one of Europe's leading statesmen in the 19th Century and credited with the unification of Germany. He had a voracious ambition for his home state Prussia and made it supreme among other states in the German Confederation. After vanquishing Austria and France, he led the new industrialising Germany, managing to remain in power for a further two decades. He founded one of Europe's first welfare states. But he was also known for his ruthless tactics, ignoring democratic institutions if they blocked his will and never afraid to dabble in dirty politics, leaking opportunely to the press and bribing journalists. Bismarck said: “The art of statesmanship is to steer a course on the stream of time.” So was the unification of Germany a carefully planned campaign or a series of unpredictable events that Bismarck made the most of? How did his encouragement of nationalism bear fruit in Nazi Germany? And what is his legacy today in contemporary Germany? 161	In Our Time - Bismarck: The Iron Chancellor	Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark & Katharine Lerman	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Black Holes. They are the dead collapsed ghosts of massive stars and they have an irresistible pull: their dark swirling, whirling, ever-hungry mass has fascinated thinkers as diverse as Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen Hawking and countless science fiction writers. 162	In Our Time - Black Holes	Melvyn Bragg	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
In Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery hangs perhaps the most well-known picture of Russia's most well-known ruler. Dimitri Levitsky's 1780 'Portrait of Catherine the Great in the Justice Temple' depicts Catherine in the temple burning poppies at an altar, symbolising her sacrifice of self-interest for Russia. Law books and the scales of justice are at her feet, highlighting her respectful promotion of the rule of law. But menacingly, in the background an eagle crouches, suggesting the means to use brutal power where necessary. This was one of many images that Catherine commissioned that demonstrated her skill at manipulation and reinvention. For an obscure, small town, German princess her ambition was large - the transformation of a semi-barbaric country into a model of the ideals of the French 18th century Enlightenment. How far was Catherine able to lead her country into full participation in the political and cultural life of Europe? Was she able to liberate the serfs? And should she be remembered as Russia's most civilised ruler or a megalomaniacal despot? 163	In Our Time - Catherine the Great	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss childhood. The 20th Century was proclaimed the Century of the Child. It has been much else but in the western world the position, the possibilities, the meaning and the story of childhood have been changed, for many, monumentally 164	In Our Time - Childhood	Melvyn Bragg	History, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
400 BC to 200 AD is known as the Axial Age, when great civilisations in Asia and the Mediterranean forged the ideas that dominated the next two thousand years. In China the equivalent to the Golden Age in Greece was the Warring States Period. It was a time of political turmoil, economic change and intellectual ferment that laid the foundations for the first Chinese Empire. Astronomy was systematised, the principles of Yin and Yang were invented, Confucianism grew and Taoism emerged, as a hundred schools of thought are reputed to have vied for the patronage of rival kings. Why was a period of war such a fertile age for culture and thought, what kinds of ideas were developed and how do they still inform the thinking of nearly a fifth of the world’s population? 165	In Our Time - China: The Warring States Period	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
With Sir John Houghton, Co-Chair of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change - the United Nations’ global warming science committee; George Monbiot, environmentalist, journalist and Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, Bristol University. 166	In Our Time - Climate Change	Melvyn Bragg	History, Environmental Studies	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn tells the story of Darwin's early life in Shropshire and discusses the significance of the three years he spent at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science. Featuring contributions from Darwin biographer Jim Moore, geneticist at University College London Steve Jones, fellow of Christ's College Cambridge David Norman and assistant librarian at Christ's College Cambridge Colin Higgins. 167	In Our Time - Darwin the Genius of Evolution - Part 1	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Darwin's expedition aboard the Beagle in December 1831 and how his work during the voyage influenced and provided evidence for his theories. Features his time spent at UCL. 168	In Our Time - Darwin the Genius of Evolution - Part 2	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
How Darwin was eventually persuaded to publish On the Origin of Species in November 1859 and the book's impact on fellow scientists and the general public. 169	In Our Time - Darwin the Genius of Evolution - Part 3	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn visits Darwin's home at Down House in Kent. Despite ill health and the demands of his family, Darwin continued researching and publishing until his death in April 1882. 170	In Our Time - Darwin the Genius of Evolution - Part 4	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Is democracy the truest conduit of capitalism, or do the forces that make us rich run counter to the democratic institutions that safeguard our rights?With Professor Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science; Will Hutton, former Editor of The Observer, Director of The Industrial Society and author of The State We’re In. 171	In Our Time - Economic Rights	Melvyn Bragg	Economics & Finance, History	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and the modern purpose of education. With Mary Warnock, philosopher and educationalist; Ted Wragg, Professor of Education, University of Exeter. 172	In Our Time - Education	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of evil. With Jones Erwin, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Limerick; Stephen Mulhall, Tutor in Philosophy at New College, Oxford University; Margaret Atkins, Lecturer in Theology at Trinity and All Saints College, University of Leeds. 173	In Our Time - Evil	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
With Janet Radcliffe Richards, Reader in Bioethics, University College, London; Nicholas Humphrey, Professor of Psychology, New School for Social Research, New York; Professor Steven Rose, Professor of Physic, Open University. 174	In Our Time - Evolutionary Psychology	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
In the spring of 1520 six thousand Englishmen and women packed their bags and followed their King across the sea to France. They weren't part of an invasion force but were attendants to King Henry VIII and travelling to take part in the greatest and most conspicuous display of wealth and culture that Europe had ever seen. They were met by Francis I of France and six thousand French noblemen and servants on English soil in Northern France and erected their temporary palaces, elaborate tents, jousting pavilions and golden fountains spewing forth red, white and claret wine in the Val D'Or. For just over two weeks they created a temporary town the size of Norwich, England's second city, on the 'Camp du Drap D'Or', or Field of the Cloth of Gold. What drove the French and the English to create such an extraordinary event? What did the two sides do when they got there, and what - if anything - was achieved? 175	In Our Time - Field of the Cloth of Gold	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the implications of the developments in genetic engineering. With Grahame Bulfield, geneticist, honorary professor, Edinburgh University and Director of the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh; Bryan Appleyard, features writer for The Sunday Times and author of Brave New Worlds: Genetics and the Human Experience. 176	In Our Time - Genetic Engineering	Melvyn Bragg	Biology	Like (0 likes)
In 1774 a tobacco farmer from Virginia with nice manners and a quiet lifestyle was moved to put himself forward as the military leader of the most massive rebellion the British Empire had ever suffered. George Washington had been a stout upholder of the status quo, regularly lending money to his ne’r-do-well neighbour simply to keep him in the plantation to which he had become accustomed. He even wrote a book on how to behave properly in polite society. What drove him to revolution? Washington may have been a moral man, but by anyone’s account he was no scholar; the American constitution is one of the great Enlightenment documents, who provided its intellectual inspiration? 177	In Our Time - George Washington and the American Revolution	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
In 1900, in Paris, the International Congress of Mathematicians gathered in a mood of hope and fear. The edifice of maths was grand and ornate but its foundations, called axioms, were shaking with inconsistency and lurking paradox. And so, at that conference, a young man called David Hilbert set out a plan to rebuild them – to make them consistent, all encompassing and without any hint of a paradox. 178	In Our Time - Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems	Melvyn Bragg	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
With Leszek Kolakowski, author and Professor of Philosophy, Oxford University; Galen Strawson, author and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Jesus College, Oxford. 179	In Our Time - Good and Evil	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg examines 20th century physics’ quest for the ultimate theory of everything. 180	In Our Time - Grand Unified Theory	Melvyn Bragg	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the question of consciousness, our sense of self, and how we are able to imagine things when they are not there, which are problems that have troubled the great minds of philosophy for thousands of years. 181	In Our Time - Imagination and Consciousness	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
With Charles Leadbeater, Demos Research Associate and author of Living On Thin Air: The New Economy; Ian Angell, Professor of Information Systems, London School of Economics and author of The New Barbarian Manifesto: How to Survive the Information Age. 182	In Our Time - Information Technology	Melvyn Bragg	Computer Science	Like (0 likes)
With Dr Ken Richardson, educational psychologist, former Senior Lecturer, Open University and author of The Making of Intelligence; Professor Michael Ruse Philosopher of Biology, University of Guelph, Ontario and author of Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? 183	In Our Time - Intelligence	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of our ideas about the formation of language. 184	In Our Time - Language and the Mind	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
With Mark Buchanan, physicist and author of Ubiquity; Professor Frank Close, theoretical physicist and author of Lucifer’s Legacy: The Meaning of Asymmetry; Nancy Cartwright, Professor of Philosophy, LSE. 185	In Our Time - Laws of Nature	Melvyn Bragg	Physics	Like (0 likes)
In The Prince, Machiavelli's great manual of power, he wrote, "since men love as they themselves determine but fear as their ruler determines, a wise prince must rely upon what he and not others can control". He also advised, "One must be a fox in order to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten off wolves. Those who simply act like lions are stupid. So it follows that a prudent ruler cannot, and must not, honour his word when it places him at a disadvantage". What times was Machiavelli living through to take such a brutal perspective on power? How did he gain the experience to provide this advice to rulers? And was he really the amoral, or even evil figure that so many have liked to paint him? 186	In Our Time - Machiavelli and the Italian City States	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
What does materialism really mean, how has it developed over time and can we still have free will if we are living in a materialist world? Contributers include; Anthony Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London;Caroline Warman, Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and Anthony O’Hear, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham 187	In Our Time - Materialism	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
With Ian Stewart, Professor of Mathematics and Gresham Professor of Geometry, University of Warwick; Brian Butterworth, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London. 188	In Our Time - Mathematics	Melvyn Bragg	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
With John Allen Paulos, Presidential Scholar of Mathematics, Temple University, Philadelphia and author of Once Upon a Number - The hidden mathematical logic of stories; Marina Warner, novelist, historian, critic, former Reith Lecturer and Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College, London. 189	In Our Time - Maths and Storytelling	Melvyn Bragg	Literature, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
With Professor Malcolm Bowie, Marshall Foch Professor of French Literature at Oxford University and Director of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre; Dr Nancy Wood, Chair of Media Studies, University of Sussex and author of Vectors of Memory. 190	In Our Time - Memory and Culture	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Neuroscience used to work – by examining the dead or investigating the damaged – but now things have changed. Imaging machines and other technologies enable us to see the active brain in everyday life, to observe the activation of its cells and the mass firing of its neuron batteries. But what picture of the brain has emerged, how has our understanding of it changed and what are the implications for understanding that most mysterious and significant of all phenomena – the human mind? 191	In Our Time - Neuroscience	Melvyn Bragg	Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
With Professor Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, Professor of Pharmacology, Oxford University and Professor of Physics at Gresham College; Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, Director of the Brain Perception Laboratory, University of California in San Diego and Professor at the Salk Institute. 192	In Our Time - Neuroscience in the 20th century	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, History, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
These are the three laws of motion with which Newton founded the discipline of classical mechanics and conjoined a series of concepts - inertia, acceleration, force, momentum and mass - by which we still describe the movement of things today. Newton’s laws have been refined over the years – most famously by Einstein - but they were still good enough, 282 years after they were published, to put Neil Armstrong on the Moon. 193	In Our Time - Newton's Laws Of Motion	Melvyn Bragg	History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
With Jim Al-Khalili, Senior Lecturer in Physics at the University of Surrey; Christine Sutton, Particle Physicist and Lecturer in Physics at St Catherine’s College Oxford; John Gribbin, Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex. 194	In Our Time - Nuclear Physics	Melvyn Bragg	Physics	Like (0 likes)
With Margaret Deacon, visiting Research Fellow at Southampton Oceanography Centre and author of Scientists and the Sea, Tony Rice, Biological Oceanographer and author of Deep Ocean, Simon Schaffer, Reader in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Darwin College. 195	In Our Time - Oceanography	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, Geography	Like (0 likes)
With Patrick Wall, Professor of Physiology at St Thomas’ Hospital, London and author of Pain: The Science of Suffering; Semir Zeki, Professor of Neurobiology at University College, London. 196	In Our Time - Pain	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
With Gore Vidal, American writer, commentator and author of The Smithsonian Institution; Alan Clarke, historian, politician and author of The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State, 1922-97. 197	In Our Time - Politics in the 20th Century	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
With Professor Russell Stannard, physicist, religious writer and author of The God Experiment; Andrew Samuels, Jungian analyst and Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex. 198	In Our Time - Prayer	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg explores the mathematical concept of probability with his three guests: Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford; Colva Roney-Dougal, Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the University of St Andrews; and Ian Stewart, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick 199	In Our Time - Probability	Melvyn Bragg	Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss progress. As man has grown in years and knowledge, has he also progressed in terms of happiness and a true understanding of the human condition? 200	In Our Time - Progress	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
With Dr Juliet Mitchell, psychoanalyst, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, Department of Political and Social Sciences; Adam Phillips, psychoanalyst and author of The Beast in the Nursery. 201	In Our Time - Psychoanalysis and its Legacy	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
With Dr John Gribbin, Visiting Fellow in Astronomy, University of Sussex; Lee Smolin, Professor of Physics, Centre for Gravitational Physics and Geometry, Pennsylvania State University and Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London; Dr Janna Levin, Advanced Fellow, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University. 202	In Our Time - Quantum Gravity	Melvyn Bragg	Physics	Like (0 likes)
About 2000 years ago, Tacitus noted that “the climate is wretched”, Herodian said, “the atmosphere in the country is always gloomy”, Dio said “they live in tents unclothed and unshod, and share their women” and the historian Strabo said on no account should the Romans make it part of the Empire because it will never pay its way. But invade they did, and Britain became part of the Roman Empire for almost four hundred years But what brought Romans to Britain and what made them stay? Did they prove the commentators wrong and make Britain amount to something in the Empire? Did the Romans come and go without much trace, or do those four centuries still colour our national life and character today? 203	In Our Time - Roman Britain	Melvyn Bragg	Classical World	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the areas of conflict and agreement between science and religion. 204	In Our Time - Science and Religion	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how perceptions of science and the power of science have changed in the 20th century. 205	In Our Time - Science in the 20th Century	Melvyn Bragg	General Science, History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
With Richard Dawkins evolutionary biologist, reader in Zoology and Fellow of New College, Oxford, Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University and author of Unweaving The Rainbow: Science, Delusion and The Appetite For Wonder; Ian McEwan, novelist, and author of the Booker prize winning novel Amsterdam. 206	In Our Time - Science's Revelations	Melvyn Bragg	General Science	Like (0 likes)
"Away ungodly Vulgars, far away, Fly ye profane, that dare not view the day, Nor speak to men but shadows, nor would hear Of any news, but what seditious were, Hateful and harmful and ever to the best, Whispering their scandals ... " In 1614 the poet and playwright George Chapman poured scorn on the popular appetite for printed news. However, his initial scorn did not stop him from turning his pen to satisfy the public's new found appetite for scandal. From the advent of the printing press the number of books printed each year steadily increased, and so did literacy rates. With a growing and socially diverse readership appearing over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, printed texts reflected controversy in every area of politics, society and religion. In the advent of the Civil War, print was used as the ideological battleground by the competing forces of Crown and Parliament. What sorts of printed texts were being produced? How widespread was literacy and who were the new consumers of print? Did print affect social change? And what role did print play in the momentous English Civil War? 207	In Our Time - Seventeenth Century Print Culture	Melvyn Bragg	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Slavery and empire are two themes that run right through this country’s history. Britain’s imperial project dominated at least the last three centuries of our national life. Its advocates claim it was a civilising mission by which Britain spread enlightenment and improvement across the globe. Opponents have long seen it as a brutal business, with Britons cast as cruel oppressors out to exploit a conquered world. Is our imperial history so clear cut? What if Britons were themselves captives, either as prisoners of an imperial enterprise that sucked them in, generation after generation or, in some startling cases, as slaves to foreign peoples? Is slavery an inevitable part of empire: does it come with the territory? And how did Britain finally shake it off? 208	In Our Time - Slavery and empire	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of thought about space, and examines whether cyberspace has introduced a new concept of space in our world or if its roots are in Einsteinian physics. 209	In Our Time - Space in Religion and Science	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
After air and water, tea is the most widely consumed substance on the planet and the British national drink. In this country it helped define class and gender, it funded wars and propped up the economy of the Empire. The trade started in the 1660s with an official import of just 2 ounces, by 1801 24 million pounds of tea were coming in every year and people of all classes were drinking an average two cups a day. It was the first mass commodity, and the merchant philanthropist Jonas Hanway decried its hold on the nation, “your servants' servants, down to the very beggars, will not be satisfied unless they consume the produce of the remote country of China”. What drove the extraordinary take up of tea in this country? What role did it play in the global economy of the Empire and at what point did it stop becoming an exotic foreign luxury and start to define the essence of Englishness? 210	In Our Time - Tea: an empire in a teacup	Melvyn Bragg	Economics & Finance, History	Like (0 likes)
The Abbasid Caliphs were the dynastic rulers of the Islamic world between the middle of the eighth and the tenth centuries. They headed a Muslim empire that extended from Tunisia through Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and Persia to Uzbekistan and the frontiers of India. But unlike previous conquerors, the Abbasid Caliphs presided over a multicultural empire where conversion was a relatively peaceful business. As Vikings raided the shores of Britain, the Abbasids were developing sophisticated systems of government, administration and court etiquette. Their era saw the flowering of Arabic philosophy, mathematics and Persian literature. The Abbasids were responsible for patronising the translation of Classical Greek texts and transmitting them back to a Europe emerging from the Dark Ages. So who were the Abbasid Caliphs and how did they come to power? What was their cultural significance? What factors can account for their decline and fall? And why do they represent a Golden Age of Islamic civilisation? 211	In Our Time - The Abbasid Caliphs	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg examines the spread of religious doubt over the last three centuries. With A N Wilson, novelist, biographer, journalist and author of God’s Funeral; Victoria Glendinning, author, journalist and biographer of Anthony Trollope and Jonathan Swift. 212	In Our Time - The Age Of Doubt	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
The Greeks gave us the word aristocracy; it takes its root from ‘aristo’, meaning best and ‘kratos’, meaning rule or power. And for more than five hundred years Britain was ruled by a class that was defined, at the time, as the best. They founded their ascendancy on the twin pillars of land and heredity and in terms of privilege, preferment, power, style and wealth, they dominated British society. As the Earl of Chesterfield confidently informed the House of Lords in the mid-18th century, “We, my lords, may thank heaven that we have something better than our brains to depend upon.” What made the British Aristocracy the most successful power elite in the world? And what brought about its decline? 213	In Our Time - The Aristocracy	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
With Emma Barker, Lecturer in Art History, The Open University; Thomas Healy, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Birkbeck University of London; Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge. 214	In Our Time - The Artist	Melvyn Bragg	Delete, Art & Design, History	Like (0 likes)
On 1st March 1881, the Russian Tsar, Alexander II, was travelling through the snow to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. An armed Cossack sat with the coach driver, another six Cossacks followed on horseback and behind them came a group of police officers in sledges. It was the day that the Tsar, known for his liberal reforms, had signed a document granting the first ever constitution to the Russian people. But his journey was being watched by a group of radicals called 'Narodnaya Volya' or 'The People's Will'. On a street corner near the Catherine Canal, they hurled the first of their bombs to halt the Tsar's iron-clad coach. When Alexander ignored advice and ventured out onto the snow to comfort his dying Cossacks, he was killed by another bomber who took his own life in the blast. Why did they kill the reforming Tsar? What was the political climate that inspired such extreme acts? And could this have been the moment that the Russian state started an inexorable march towards revolution? 215	In Our Time - The Assassination of Tsar Alexander II	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
According to legend, the origins of the Aztec empire lie on a mythical island called Aztlan - "place of the white herons" - in the north of Mexico. From there this nomadic group of Mesoamericans are said to have undertaken a pilgrimage south to the fertile valleys of Central America. In the space of just 200 years, they formed what has been called the largest, and arguably the most ruthless, pre-Hispanic empire in North America which, at its zenith, was to rule over approximately 500 small states, comprising by the 16th century some 6 million people. Was it military might and intimidation alone that helped the Aztecs extend their power? What part did their complex belief system play in their imperial reach? Their use of human sacrifice has been well documented, but how widespread actually was it? How easily were the Spanish conquistadors able to Christianise this empire? And what legacy did the Aztecs leave behind that lives on in our world today? 216	In Our Time - The Aztecs	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Baroque - a term used to describe a vast array of painting, music, architecture and sculpture from the 17th and 18th centuries. His guests this week are Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge; Nigel Aston, Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester; and Helen Hills, Professor of Art History at the University of York 217	In Our Time - The Baroque	Melvyn Bragg	Art & Design, History	Like (0 likes)
Despite dissections of brains both human and animal throughout the following centuries, in 1669 the Danish anatomist, Nicolaus Steno, still lamented that, “the brain, the masterpiece of creation, is almost unknown to us.” Why was the brain seen as a mystery for so long and how have our perceptions of how it works and what it symbolises changed over the centuries? 218	In Our Time - The Brain : A History	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, History, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
With Steven Rose, Professor of Biology and Director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group, Open University, Dan Robinson, Distinguished Research Professor, Georgetown University and visiting lecturer in Philosophy and Senior Member of Linacre College, Oxford University. 219	In Our Time - The Brain and Consciousness	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, Humanities, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg is joined by Juliette Wood, Mariner Warner and Tony Phelan to discuss the weird and wonderful worlds of the Brothers Grimm 220	In Our Time - The Brothers Grimm	Melvyn Bragg	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Around 400 BC a great swathe of Western Europe from Ireland to Southern Russia was dominated by one civilisation. Perched on the North Western fringe of this vast Iron Age culture were the British who shared many of the religious, artistic and social customs of their European neighbours. These customs were Celtic and this civilisation was the Celts. The Greek historians who studied and recorded the Celts' way of life deemed them to be one of the four great Barbarian peoples of the world. The Romans wrote vivid accounts of Celtic rituals including the practice of human sacrifice - presided over by Druids - and the tradition of decapitating their enemies and turning their heads into drinking vessels . But what were the Celts in Britain really like? Was their apparent lust for violence tempered by a love of poetry and beautiful art? How far should we trust the classical historians in their writings on the Celts? And what can we learn from the archaeological remains that have been discovered in this country? 221	In Our Time - The Celts	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
The Consolation of Philosophy was read widely and a sense of consolation is woven into many philosophical ideas, but what for Boethius were the consolations of philosophy, what are they more generally and should philosophy lead us to consolation or lead us from it? 222	In Our Time - The Consolation Of Philosophy	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Edward Gibbon wrote of the decline of the Roman Empire, "While that great body was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol." But how far is the growth of Christianity implicated in the destruction of the great culture of Rome? How critical were the bawdy incursions of the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths and the Vandals to the fall of the Roman Empire? Should we even be talking in terms of blame and decline at all? St Augustine wrote about the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, Edward Gibbon famously tackled it in the eighteenth and it is a question that preoccupies us today. 223	In Our Time - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire	Melvyn Bragg	Classical World	Like (0 likes)
Nestled on a bend of the River Rhine, in the South West corner of Germany, is the City of Worms. It’s one of the oldest cities in central Europe; it still has its early city walls, its 11th century Romanesque cathedral and a 500-year-old printing industry, but in its centre is a statue of the monk, heretic and founder of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther. In 1521 Luther came to Worms to explain his attacks on the Catholic Church to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and the gathered dignitaries of the German lands. What happened at that meeting, called the Diet of Worms, tore countries apart, set nation against nation, felled kings and plunged dynasties into suicidal bouts of infighting. But why did Martin Luther risk execution to go to the Diet, what was at stake for the big players of medieval Europe and how did events at the Diet of Worms irrevocably change the history of Europe? 224	In Our Time - The Diet of Worms	Diarmaid MacCulloch, David Bagchi & Charlotte Methuen	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
At its peak, its influence stretched from western India to eastern China via the farthest reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. It had a fleet of 130 twelve hundred tonne ships and commanded an army of 200,000 troops that came to dominate the Indian subcontinent. It funded governments, toppled princes and generated spectacular amounts of money from trading textiles and spices. But this wasn’t an empire, it wasn’t even a state, it was a company. The East India Company, founded in 1600, lasted for 258 years before the British state gained full control of its activities. In that time it had redrawn the map of India, built an empire and reinvented the fashions and the foodstuffs of Britain. But how did the East India Company become so powerful? How did it change both India and Britain and how was the idea of a company running a country ever accepted by the British Crown? 225	In Our Time - The East India Company	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
Temujin was cast out by his tribe when he was just a child and left to struggle for survival on the harsh Steppes of what is now Mongolia. From these humble beginnings he went on to become Genghis Khan, leader of the greatest continuous land-based empire the world has ever seen. His conquered territories stretched from the Caspian Sea to the borders of Manchuria, from the Siberian forest to what is now Afghanistan. He was a charismatic commander and a shrewd military tactician. He was swift to promote those who served him well, ignoring race or creed, but vengeful to those who crossed him, killing every inhabitant of a resistant town, even the cats and dogs. Generally regarded as barbarians by their enemies, the Mongol armies were in fact disciplined and effective. So how did Genghis create such an impressive fighting force? How did he draw together such diverse peoples to create a wealthy and successful Empire? And what was his legacy for the territories he conquered? 226	In Our Time - The Empire of Genghis Khan	Peter Jackson, Naomi Standen & George Lane	History	Like (0 likes)
This week we explore the mammoth undertaking that was the Encyclopédie – one of its editors, D’Alembert, described its mission as giving an overview of knowledge, as if gazing down on a vast labyrinth of all the branches of human knowledge, observing where they separate or unite and even catching sight of the secret routes between them. It was a project that attracted some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment - Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot - striving to bring together all that was known of the world in one comprehensive encyclopedia. No subject was too great or too small, so while Voltaire wrote of “fantasie” and “elegance”, Diderot rolled up his sleeves and got to grips with trades and crafts, even jam-making. The resulting Encyclopédie was a bestseller - running to 28 volumes over more than 20 years, amidst censorship, bans, betrayals and reprieves. It even got them excited on this side of the Channel, with subscribers including Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson and Charles Burney. So what drove these men to such lengths that they were prepared to risk ridicule, prison, even exile? How did the Encyclopédie embody the values of the Enlightenment? And what was its legacy – did it really fuel the French Revolution? 227	In Our Time - The Encyclopédie	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
By the time the exhibition closed, one quarter of the entire British population had visited Crystal Palace, the first pre-fabricated building of its kind, to marvel at an extraordinary array of exhibits amongst which were: the biggest diamond in the world, a carriage drawn by kites, furniture made of coal, and a set of artificial teeth fitted with a swivel devise which allowed the user to yawn without displacing them. Its impact was huge in terms of the development of British manufacturing, the burgeoning of a global consumer market, the development of museums and the international standing of Britain culturally and technologically. How did the Exhibition crystallise a particular moment in early Victorian Britain? In what way did it capitalise on the dawn of mass travel and greater levels of international co-operation? How did fears of revolutionary Europe define the policing and organisation of the event? And how far, if at all, did the Great Exhibition go in blurring class distinctions? 228	In Our Time - The Great Exhibition	Jeremy Black, Hermione Hobhouse & Clive Emsley	History	Like (0 likes)
The Great Fire of London was a conflagration of unimaginable proportions – up to a third of the city was destroyed – but the burning of London, the interpretation of the fire and the arguments and ideas about what should be rebuilt give an insight into a city and a period that housed the Royal Society and the restored Stuart monarchy, a place of religious anxiety and fear of foreign invasion in a country still haunted by the Civil War. 229	In Our Time - The Great Fire Of London	Melvyn Bragg	Built Environment & Architecture, History	Like (0 likes)
Mevlyn Bragg discusses the Great Reform Act of 1832, a landmark on the road to British democracy. Melvyn is joined by Dinah Birch, Professor of English at Liverpool University; Michael Bentley, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews; and Catherine Hall, Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London. 230	In Our Time - The Great Reform Act	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
With Richard Wollheim, Professor of Philosophy, University of California in Berkeley; Jonathan Dollimore, Professor of English, York University. 231	In Our Time - The Individual	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Today we’re discussing the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order of priests who became known as “the school masters of Europe”. Founded in the 16th century by the soldier Ignatius Loyola, they became a major force throughout the world, from China to South America. “Give us a boy and we will return you a man, a citizen of his country and a child of God”, they declared. By the 17th century there were more than 500 schools established across Europe. Their ideas about a standardised curriculum and teaching became the basis for many education systems today. They were also among the greatest patrons of art in early modern Europe, using murals and theatre to get their message across. However, their alleged influence over monarchs, their wealth and their adaptability to local customs abroad provoked suspicion, prompting their eventual suppression in the late 18th century. They were re-established in 1814 and now have more than twenty thousand members. So why was education so important to the Jesuit movement? How much influence did they really have in the courts of Europe and in the colonies? And were they really at the heart of conspiracies to murder kings? 232	In Our Time - The Jesuits	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg is joined by Simon Goldhill, Matthew Nichols and Serafina Cuomo to discuss the ancient Library of Alexandria - one of the most ambitious knowledge projects of its time 233	In Our Time - The Library at Alexandria	Melvyn Bragg	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
At its height, the Mughal Empire stretched from Bengal in the East to Gujarat in the West, and from Lahore in the North to Madras in the South. It covered the whole of present day northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and became famous for the Taj Mahal, the Koh-i-Noor and the Peacock Throne. In 1631 a Dutch naturalist Johannes de Laet published his account of the vast Empire, “the nobles live in indescribable luxury and extravagance, caring only to indulge themselves whilst they can, in every kind of pleasure. Their greatest magnificence is in their women’s quarters, for they marry three or four wives or sometimes more”. But were they really the opulent despots of European imagination? If so, how did they maintain such a vast territory? And to what extent was the success of the British Raj a legacy of their rule? 234	In Our Time - The Mughal Empire	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg considers the celestial harmonies of the planets, a Pythagorean concept which fascinated astrologists, artists and mathematicians for centuries. He is joined by Peter Forshaw, Postdoctoral Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London 235	In Our Time - The Music of the Spheres	Melvyn Bragg	Art & Design, History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Why did Modern Science develop in Europe when China seemed so much better placed to achieve it? This is called the Needham Question, after Joseph Needham, the 20th century British Sinologist who did more, perhaps, than anyone else to try and explain it. Why did China’s early technological brilliance not lead to the development of modern science and how did momentous inventions like gunpowder and printing enter Chinese society with barely a ripple and yet revolutionise the warring states of Europe? 236	In Our Time - The Needham Question	Melvyn Bragg	General Science, History, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
The Opium Wars between Britain and China in the 19th century forced China to open its doors to trade with the western world. The Chinese had banned opium in its various forms several times, citing concern for public morals, but the prohibition was ignored. The East India Company held a monopoly on the production of opium in British India. Private British traders continued to smuggle large quantities of opium into China. In this way, the opium trade became a way of balancing a trade deficit brought about by Britain's own addiction to tea. The Chinese protested against the flouting of the ban but the British continued to trade, leading to a crackdown by Lin Tse-Hsu, a man appointed to be China's Opium Drugs Czar. He confiscated opium from the British traders and destroyed it. The British military response was severe, leading to the Nanking Treaty which opened up several of China's ports to foreign trade and gave Britain Hong Kong. The peace didn't last long and a Second Opium War followed. The Chinese fared little better in this conflict, which ended with another humiliating treaty. So what were the main causes of the Opium Wars? What were the consequences for the Qing dynasty? And how did the punitive treaties affect future relations with Britain? 237	In Our Time - The Opium Wars	Yangwen Zheng, Lars Laamann & Xun Zhou	Economics & Finance, History	Like (0 likes)
"When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?" – the opening words of a rousing sermon, said to be by John Ball, which fires a broadside at the deeply hierarchical nature of fourteenth century England. Ball, along with Wat Tyler, was one of the principal leaders of the Peasants’ Revolt – his sermon ends: "I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty". The subsequent events of June 1381 represent a pivotal and thrilling moment in England’s history, characterised by murder and mayhem, beheadings and betrayal, a boy-King and his absent uncle, and a general riot of destruction and death. By most interpretations, the course of this sensational story threatened to undermine the very fabric of government as an awareness of deep injustice was awakened in the general populace. But who were the rebels and how close did they really come to upending the status quo? And just how exaggerated are claims that the Peasants’ Revolt laid the foundations of the long-standing English tradition of radical egalitarianism? 238	In Our Time - The Peasants' Revolt: A Lasting Legacy for Popular Revolt?	Miri Rubin, Caroline Barron & Alastair Dunn	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of love. With Professor Roger Scruton, author of many books including Sexual Desire; Angie Hobbes, lecturer in philosophy at Warwick University; Thomas Docherty, Professor of English at the University of Kent. 239	In Our Time - The Philosophy of Love	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Time is integral to our experience of things but we find it very difficult to think about. It may not even exist and yet seems written into the existence of absolutely everything. 240	In Our Time - The Physics Of Time	Melvyn Bragg	Physics	Like (0 likes)
Every year on the fourth Thursday in November, Americans go home to their families and sit down to a meal. It’s called Thanksgiving and it echoes a meal that took place nearly 400 years ago, when a group of English religious exiles sat down, after a brutal winter, to celebrate their first harvest in the New World. They celebrated it in company with the American Indians who had helped them to survive. These settlers are called the Pilgrim Fathers and although they were not the first and certainly not the largest of the early settlements, they have retained a hold on the American imagination far out of proportion to their historical significance 241	In Our Time - The Pilgrim Fathers: The Original American Dream	Kathleen Burk, Harry Bennett & Tim Lockley	History	Like (0 likes)
The French mathematician Henri Poincaré declared: “The scientist does not study mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. And it is because simplicity, because grandeur, is beautiful that we preferably seek simple facts, sublime facts, and that we delight now to follow the majestic course of the stars.” Poincaré’s ground-breaking work in the 19th and early 20th century has indeed led us to the stars and the consideration of the shape of the universe itself. 242	In Our Time - The Poincare Conjecture	June Barrow-Green, Ian Stewart & Marcus du Sautoy	History, Mathematics	Like (0 likes)
Around 550BC, Lucretia, the daughter of an aristocrat, was raped by the son of Tarquin, the king of Rome. Lucretia told her family what had happened to her and then, in front of them, killed herself from shame. The Roman historian Livy describes what was believed to have happened next: "Brutus, while the others were absorbed in grief; drew out the knife from Lucretia's wound, and holding it up, dripping with gore, exclaimed, "By this blood, most chaste until a prince wronged it, I swear, and I take you, gods, to witness, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his wicked wife and all his children, with sword, with fire, aye with whatsoever violence I may; and that I will suffer neither them nor any other to be king in Rome!". The King was duly expelled from the city and the Roman Republic was founded and lasted for 500 years. But in what form did this republic evolve, what were its values and ideals and what ultimately caused the end of the world’s first true experiment in constitutional government? 243	In Our Time - The Roman Republic	Melvyn Bragg	Classical World, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Charles VI, a madman and the King of France, was dead and his kingdom hung in the balance. The French aristocracy were at war with each other, English soldiers occupied Paris and Charles’ crown was up for grabs, contested by his own son, the Dauphin, and the seven-year-old King of England, Henry VI. But as the English army pressed down through France, the only thing that seemed to stand between the English King and the French Crown was the city of Orleans. Looking back on the events that followed, the Duke of Bedford wrote to King Henry VI and declared “all things prospered for you till the time of the siege of Orleans, taken in hand God knoweth by what advice”. But what happened at the siege of Orleans, did Joan of Arc really rescue the city and how significant was the battle in changing the course of the 100 Years' War and the subsequent histories of England and France? 244	In Our Time - The Siege of Orleans: Did Joan of Arc Really Rescue France?	Anne Curry, Malcolm Vale & Matthew Bennett	History	Like (0 likes)
The Spanish Civil War was a defining war of the twentieth century. It was a brutal conflict that polarised Spain, pitting the Left against the Right, the anti-clericals against the Church, the unions against the landed classes and the Republicans against the Monarchists. It was a bloody war which saw, in the space of just three years, the murder and execution of 350,000 people. It was also a conflict which soon became internationalised, becoming a battleground for the forces of Fascism and Communism as Europe itself geared up for war. But what were the roots of the Spanish Civil War? To what extent did Franco prosecute the war as a religious crusade? How did Franco institutionalise his victory after the war? And has Spain fully come to terms with its past? 245	In Our Time - The Spanish Civil War	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
The Spanish Inquisition set up in 1478 surpassed all Inquisitorial activity that had preceded it in terms of its reach and length. For 350 years under Papal Decree, Jews, then Muslims and Protestants were put through the Inquisitional Court and condemned to torture, imprisonment, exile and death. How did the early origins of the Inquisition in Medieval Europe spread to Spain? What were the motivations behind the systematic persecution of Jews, Muslims and Protestants? And what finally brought about an end to the Spanish Inquisition 350 years after it had first been decreed? 246	In Our Time - The Spanish Inquisition	John Edwards, Alexander Murray & Michael Alpert	History	Like (0 likes)
On Monday September 10th 1792 The Times of London carried a story covering events in revolutionary France: "The streets of Paris, strewed with the carcases of the mangled victims, are become so familiar to the sight, that they are passed by and trod on without any particular notice. The mob think no more of killing a fellow-creature, who is not even an object of suspicion, than wanton boys would of killing a cat or a dog". These were the infamous September Massacres when Parisian mobs killed thousands of suspected royalists and set the scene for the events to come, when Madame La Guillotine took centre stage and The Terror ruled in France. But how did the French Revolution descend into such extremes of violence? Who or what drove The Terror? And was it really an aberration of the revolutionary cause or the moment when it truly expressed itself? 247	In Our Time - The Terror: when Madame Guillotine ruled France	Melvyn Bragg	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
One night in Baghdad, the 9th century Caliph Al-Mamun was visited by a dream. The philosopher Aristotle appeared to him, saying that the reason of the Greeks and the revelation of Islam were not opposed. On waking, the Caliph demanded that all of Aristotle’s works be translated into Arabic. And they were. 248	In Our Time - The Translation Movement	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. With Dr Neil Johnson, theoretical physicist at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University and Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer 1999 on the subject of Time; Lee Smolin, cosmologist and Professor of Physics, Pennsylvania State University. 249	In Our Time - Time	Melvyn Bragg	Physics, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
In 1928, as America heads towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin reveals his master plan - nature is to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour. Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden. 250	In Our Time - Trofim Lysenko	Melvyn Bragg	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of Utopia. With Dr Anthony Grayling, human rights campaigner, lecturer in philosophy at Birkbeck College, London and Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford; John Carey, distinguished critic, journalist, broadcaster, Merton Professor of English, Oxford University and editor of, The Faber Book of Utopias. 251	In Our Time - Utopia	Melvyn Bragg	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
A reaction against Romanticism, the realist novel presented life as it was in urbanized, industrial Britain. Attacked as ordinary, mundane, overly democratic and lacking the imaginative demands of poetry, its defendants argued that the ordinariness of life contained a complexity and depth previously unseen and unconsidered. At its best the realist novel was like life itself - complex in appearance, rich in character, diverse in outlook, teeming with ideas and operating on several levels. It was a forum for the confusions of the Victorian age over Christianity and Darwinism, economics, morality and psychology, yet it was also a domestic novel concerned with the individuality of human relationships. From the provincialism of George Eliot’s Middlemarch to Hardy’s bleak and brutal Wessex, Victorian Realism touched all the great Victorian authors, but can it truly be the touchstone of an age which produced the fantasy of Alice in Wonderland, the escapism of The Waterbabies and the abundant grotesquerie of Dickensian London? 252	In Our Time - Victorian Realism	Melvyn Bragg	History, Literature	Like (0 likes)
Frankenstein may seem an outlandish tale, but Mary Shelley wrote it when science was alive with ideas about what differentiated the living from the dead. This was Vitalism, a belief that living things possessed some spark of life, some vital principle that lifted them above dull matter. Electricity was a very real candidate. 253	In Our Time - Vitalism	Melvyn Bragg	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
With Michael Ignatieff, writer, broadcaster and biographer of Isaiah Berlin; Sir Michael Howard, formerly Regius Professor of History, Oxford University and joint editor of the new Oxford History of the Twentieth 254	In Our Time - War in the 20th Century	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society.Episode one travels to Oxford, where the young Christopher Wren and friends experimented. 255	In Our Time -The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 1	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
How Newton tested the lines between government-funded research and public access. 256	In Our Time -The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 2	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
The 19th century blooms scientifically with numerous alternative, specialist societies. 257	In Our Time -The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 3	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
The more discreet role played by the Society in the 20th century. 258	In Our Time -The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 4	Melvyn Bragg	History	Like (0 likes)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The School of Athens – the fresco painted by the Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael, for Pope Julius II’s private library in the Vatican. The fresco depicts some of the most famous philosophers of ancient times, including Aristotle and Plato, engaged in discussion amidst the splendour of a classical Renaissance chamber. It is considered to be one of the greatest images in Western art not only because of Raphael’s skill as a painter, but also his ability to have created an enduring image that continues to inspire philosophical debate today. Raphael captured something essential about the philosophies of these two men, but he also revealed much about his own time. That such a pagan pair could be found beside a Pope in private tells of the complexity of intellectual life at the time when classical learning was reborn in what we now call the Renaissance. With Angie Hobbs, Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Warwick; Valery Rees, Renaissance scholar and senior member of the Language Department at the School of Economic Science; Jill Kraye, Professor of the History of Renaissance Philosophy and Librarian at the Warburg Institute at the University of London 259	In Our Time -The School of Athens	Melvyn Bragg	Art & Design, History	Like (0 likes)
What is being done to stop more data being lost in the future, now that we've all gone digital: from an Internet Archive, to the preservation of government emails, and from concrete bunkers for nitrate films to a unique newspaper repository. For example, the US national archives have to make sure they keep all federal government emails. The Clinton White House alone produced 32 million emails, while those of his administration as a whole run into billions. President Clinton himself only ever wrote one email while in office. Who to? Richard Hollingham can reveal all.... 260	Losing the Past 1	Richard Hollingham	History, Computer Science	Like (0 likes)
A timely investigation into the loss of cultural, public and historical records, both analogue and digital, as a result of deterioration or advances in technology. Richard Hollingham investigates specific examples of what is now unplayable or unreadable. For example, he can reveal for the first time, that the UK population census data from 1951 are lost, as are significant parts of the 1961 and 1971 census data. And he hears from the long-term percussionist of The Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, why the Grateful Dead, unlike other leading touring bands, still have all their master tapes intact. He also finds out about successful efforts on both sides of the Atlantic for preserving and recuperating sound and music. 261	Losing the Past 2	Richard Hollingham	History, Computer Science	Like (0 likes)
Why does the music of Mozart create as much excitement in the laboratory as it does in the concert hall? This programme investigates the myths and reality of Mozart's mind and his music. 262	Mozart Effect	Ian Peacock	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
The final part of the series exploring how climate change is affecting the natural world. 263	Planet Earth Under Threat	Gabrielle Walker	Geography, Environmental Studies	Like (0 likes)
Business editor Robert Peston examines the crisis in the international banking system. For the last six decades, central bankers from the most developed countries have managed the global economy, manipulating international finances with the aid of a powerful set of economic levers handed to them after the Second World War. Last year the levers became disconnected from the machinery and the central banking system has suffered a severe loss of power 264	Power Failure at the Central Bank	Robert Peston	Economics & Finance, History	Like (0 likes)
Wendy Robbins presents a series revisiting the childhood neighbourhoods of influential Britons. Biologist and author Professor Steve Jones takes Wendy back to his childhood in west Wales in the 1950s to uncover the passions that led to his life of scientific discovery. Biologist and author Professor Steve Jones takes Wendy back to his childhood in west Wales in the 1950s to uncover the passions that led to his life of scientific discovery. 265	Professor Steve Jones : The House I Grew Up In	Wendy Robbins	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
James Dean is the eternal youthful rebel - the movie idol blessed with the looks, style, talent and attitude that captivated a generation. To mark the 50th anniversary of his death at the wheel of his Porsche on September 30 1955, Johnny Depp presents this profile of one of Hollywood's most popular icons. 266	Rebel Without A Cause – The James Dean Story	Johnny Depp	Art & Design, History	Like (0 likes)
Len Fisher wonders how the body would work if we had a go at remaking ourselves. Len confronts his reflection, and dreams about what he could do to make his skin more appealing. 267	Redesigning the Human Body - The Skin We're in	Len Fisher	Biology, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
A hundred years on from Albert Einstein's 'miracle year' of 1905, Radio 4 talks to writers and artists who have wrestled with the scientific legacy of modern physics in their work. Michael Frayn's acclaimed stage play, Copenhagen, opened at the National Theatre in 1998. The story of a meeting between two theoretical physicists during the early years of Second World War, it's been hailed as the most successful use of science on the stage. 268	Relatively Einstein - 01 Uncertain History	Radio 4	Art & Design, History, Literature, Physics	Like (0 likes)
With the help of fellow author and mathematician Ian Stewart, Pratchett explains his love of science, his fascination with Einstein and the science behind the fantasy world he's created and sold to more than 20 countries worldwide. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" said Arthur C Clarke decades ago and it holds true today. Just try and explain how your mobile phone or dvd player works. With the help of fellow author and mathematician Ian Stewart, Pratchett explains his love of science, his fascination with Einstein and the science behind the fantasy world he's created and sold to more than 20 countries worldwide. 269	Relatively Einstein - 03 Fantasy Physics	Radio 4	Art & Design, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Comedian Mark Steel has delved into the great man's life and found a great deal to laugh about, if only in theory. "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." (AE). One doesn't normally associate humour with physics but Einstein has proved the exception, at least for two artists. The first is New Yorker Sid Harris who's been churning out science cartoons for reputable journals since the late sixties.Comedian Mark Steel has delved into the great man's life and found a great deal to laugh about, if only in theory. 270	Relatively Einstein - 04 Theoretically Funny	Radio 4	Art & Design, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Two physicists turned novelists - Gregory Benford and Andrew Crumey share their thoughts on the nature of time and Einstein's theories of Special and General relativity through their [respective] books Timescape and Mobius Dick. Whilst both writers can be placed in the genre of science fiction, their stories are firmly rooted in the latest research and theoretical musings of Einstein's latter-day followers. 271	Relatively Einstein - 05 Time Travels	Radio 4	General Science, Literature, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Artist Cornelia Parker explores her ground-breaking (literally) work Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View which involved getting the army to blow up a garden shed in order to re-create the first moments after the creation of space and time. Artist Cornelia Parker explores her ground-breaking (literally) work Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View which involved getting the army to blow up a garden shed in order to re-create the first moments after the creation of space and time. As Cornelia Parker discusses her inspiration for this piece and its aims, cosmologists discuss how the Einstein's ideas shaped our notion of how the universe and everything in it got started. 272	Relatively Einstein -0 2 Dark Matters	Radio 4	Art & Design, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Programme 1 - Life Before Birth The Rules of Life shape animals' lives even before birth. A mother's nutrition and stress levels affect her offspring's later life. 273	Rules of Life 1	Aubrey Manning	Biology	Like (0 likes)
Programme 2 - Early Days If at first you don't succeed, you don't succeed. Only 50% of grey seal pups survive in their first year. 274	Rules of Life 2	Aubrey Manning	Biology	Like (0 likes)
Programme 3 - Going Independent Leaving the safety of home can be a testing time, with many new skills to acquire. Young bull elephants spend years learning from older males before they can breed. 275	Rules of Life 3	Aubrey Manning	Biology	Like (0 likes)
Programme 4 - Pairing Up Attracting and choosing a mate can be a tricky and dangerous business. Red deer stags have to battle it out for access to females. 276	Rules of Life 4	Aubrey Manning	Biology	Like (0 likes)
Programme 5 - Happy Families Parenting is often a challenge. Meerkats work together to feed and look after the next generation. 277	Rules of Life 5	Aubrey Manning	Biology	Like (0 likes)
Programme 6 - Food Is Not For Free For many animals there's a balance between getting enough food whilst not being eaten yourself. Spiny lobsters screech like a violin to scare off predators. 278	Rules of Life 6	Aubrey Manning	Biology	Like (0 likes)
The hypothesis proposes that the physical characteristics that distinguish us from our nearest cousin apes - standing and moving bipedally, being naked and sweaty, our swimming and diving abilities, fat babies, big brains and language - all of these and others are best explained as adaptations to a prolonged period of our evolutionary history being spent in and around the seashore and lake margins, not on the hot dry savannah or in the forest with the other apes. The programmes explore the varieties of response to the theory, from when it was first proposed to the present day. 279	Scars of Evolution 1	David Attenborough	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
The second programme looks at the evidence that has accumulated in the last 5 - 10 years which seems to be driving the anthropological herd inexorably down to the water's edge. It includes reports on brain evolution, highlighting the essential fatty acids and nutrients that can only be sourced in the marine food chain; the global coastal migrations of early hominids, including major water crossings 1 million years ago; diving response and voluntary breath-control as semi-aquatic pre-adaptation for speech and some new and intriguing research findings that seem to indicate that water-births may be a very ancient human adaptation indeed. 280	Scars of Evolution 2	David Attenborough	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb investigates claims that the US government is manipulating scientific research. 281	Science Blacklist	Justin Webb	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
In this five-part series, Jonathan Miller returns to his roots in medicine and tells the story of how we came to understand reproduction & heredity. Disposing with the idea of an external, perhaps even supernatural, vitalising force, he describes how we have arrived at the picture of ourselves and all organisms as Self-Made Things. Darwinism in the second half of the 19th century gave us a theoretical framework that captured in one stroke the seemingly limitless variety that zoologists, botanists and paleontologists were finding in every dimension in nature. 282	Self Made Things 1	Jonathan Miller	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
This week Jonathan Miller looks at the birth of ideas about reproduction and heredity. Starting with the ideas of Aristotle and the early Greeks, he argues that because knowledge of underlying structures such as cells and genes are comparatively recent, it was necessary for thinkers addressing the problem, right through the renaissance, to resort to immaterial agents acting upon the raw substances of fertilization. 283	Self Made Things 2	Jonathan Miller	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
This week, Jonathan Miller describes eighteenth and nineteenth century efforts to identify the cell as the underlying structure of living things. 284	Self Made Things 3	Jonathan Miller	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
This week, Jonathan Miller describes the research that eventually led us to identify the gene as the key agent of inheritance. 285	Self Made Things 4	Jonathan Miller	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
In the final programme in the series, Jonathan Miller brings the story of reproduction and generation up to the present. He hears first from Nobel prize-winner Sir Aaron Klug who describes the work done by Crick and Watson in 1953 to identify the chemical structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, better know as DNA, which they represented as a double helix. 286	Self Made Things 5	Jonathan Miller	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Nanotechnology has become a big buzzword – so much so that the stockbrokers Merrill Lynch has created an index to track investment in the newly burgeoning industry. But others are concerned. Prince Charles, taking a lead from the environmental group ETC, has expressed concerns where this ‘atomtech’ may lead. The environmentalists see it as a step beyond genetic engineering. 287	Small Worlds - 01 Engineering at the Atomic Scale	Philip Ball	Engineering, Physics	Like (0 likes)
The environmentalist ETC group has warned that nanotechnology (or ‘atomtech’ as they describe it) poses “horrendous social and environmental risks”. It was that group's report, The Big Down, which prompted the Prince of Wales to ask the Royal Society to look into the impacts of nanotechnology. 288	Small Worlds - 02 Why Worry?	Philip Ball	Engineering, Physics	Like (0 likes)
To most of us, viruses are the cause of illnesses like flu and measles. But to Angela Belcher of MIT, they’re the ideal building blocks for creating new materials at close to the atomic scale, in the new science of nanotechnology. 289	Small Worlds - 03 Nanobiotechnology – when atomic engineering meets the life sciences.	Philip Ball	Biology, Engineering	Like (0 likes)
In The Balance of the Sexes Andrew Luck-Baker discovers how our biology, environment and maybe even personality can all play a part in deciding the sex of our children. 290	The Balance of the Sexes	Andrew Luck-Baker	Humanities, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
First of two programmes which go behind the elegant facades of legal London to meet the barristers, clerks and staff of Outer Temple Chambers, one of London's leading law chambers, as they prepare for the biggest upheaval in their history: the full implementation of the 2007 Legal Services Act. Due to be fully implemented in 2012, the Act will produce greater competition in who can provide legal services. Many of the cosy arrangements of the past will be swept away, and barristers will need to show that they can provide the service and value for money that the public wants. 291	The Chambers - 1	Radio 4	Politics & Public Policy, Law	Like (0 likes)
Second of two programmes which go behind the elegant facades of legal London to meet the barristers, clerks and staff of Outer Temple Chambers, one of London's leading law chambers. The new management structure is firmly in place and commercial director Christine is leading the work to get Chambers in shape for the implementation of the new Legal Services Act. Meanwhile, Chambers's big winter PR social event at the Royal Courts of Justice is nearly scuppered by a taxi strike coinciding with a foot of snow. Barrister Cara is back at work after maternity leave, but when her nanny is called back to Poland she finds herself struggling to juggle work and home. New recruits are joining Chambers: Ali represents part of the business's ambitious plans for Middle East expansion, while Michael's tax expertise is put to good use at a tribunal in Manchester. On QC Richard's farm, spring arrives as his new role as head of strategic development begins to take shape, while by July, the nerves of Chambers's pupils (trainee barristers) are shredded as decision day approaches for whether they are going to be kept on or unceremoniously 'let go'. But at least it's summer and there is the annual party to look forward to. 292	The Chambers - 2	Radio 4	Politics & Public Policy, Law	Like (0 likes)
Episode 1 - Ted Ellis. Biographical portraits of five 20th-century animal lovers and the creatures and landscapes they championed 293	The Essay - Naturalists: Animals and Human Nature - 1	David Matless	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Episode 2 - Reindeer Herders in the Cairngorms. Biographical portraits of five 20th-century animal lovers and the creatures and landscapes they championed 294	The Essay - Naturalists: Animals and Human Nature - 2	Hayden Lorimer	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Episode 3 - James Wentworth Day - The Prejudiced Naturalist. Biographical portraits of five 20th-century animal lovers and the creatures and landscapes they championed 295	The Essay - Naturalists: Animals and Human Nature - 3	David Matless	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Episode 4 - Ludwig Koch and Bird Song. Biographical portraits of five 20th-century animal lovers and the creatures and landscapes they championed 296	The Essay - Naturalists: Animals and Human Nature - 4	Hayden Lorimer	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
Episode 5 - Marietta Pallis - Swimming in the Eagle. Biographical portraits of five 20th-century animal lovers and the creatures and landscapes they championed 297	The Essay - Naturalists: Animals and Human Nature - 5	David Matless	Biology, History	Like (0 likes)
There's an ass in mythology that stood equidistant between two bunches of carrots. One on its left, the other on its right side. The ass, unable to choose between left and right, starved to death. Luckily for us, life made a decision and didn't perish like Buridan's ass. The molecules that make living things are all handed. What's more they all have the same handedness - but why? Frank Close finds out how a French chemist found the clue to this conundrum at the bottom of a glass of wine a hundred and fifty years ago. 298	The Lopsided Universe - Life Through the Looking Glass	Frank Close	Chemistry, History, Physics	Like (0 likes)
We live in an asymmetrical world, full of asymmetrical beings. In the course of this three part series, writer and physicist, Frank Close, discovers that we owe our very existence to the destruction of the symmetry of the universe at the instant of creation. Programme 1 - Lucifer's Legacy. 299	The Lopsided Universe - Lucifer's Legacy	Frank Close	Physics	Like (0 likes)
When the universe was born there was an equal amount of matter and antimatter. When matter and antimatter meet, as Trekkies will tell you, they annihilate to produce nothing. So why are we here? This profound question is at the heart of modern physics. What broke the symmetry of the early universe? And how has that led directly to us and our ability to ponder that very question? 300	The Lopsided Universe - One in a Billion	Frank Close	Physics	Like (0 likes)
James Watson discovered this week that being a distinguished Nobel prize winning scientist is no protection when you stray in to controversial territory. His claim that race and intelligence are linked provoked outraged condemnation. Lectures and speaking engagements were cancelled and the professor had to fly home to America, as he put it, to save his job. The science in this area is hotly disputed, but are there any ideas or theories that should be off limits? Should scientists be mindful of the social context in which their work is carried out, or is the quest for the acquisition of knowledge and academic freedom of speech beyond such concerns? Melanie Phillips, Ian Hargreaves, Claire Fox and Prof. Jules Pretty cross-examine the experts. 301	The Moral Maze: Should scientists be mindful of the social context in which their work is carried out?	Melanie Philips, Ian Hargreaves, Claire Fox, Professor Jules Pretty	Other	Like (0 likes)
The nature of trust and its role in society, and is there real evidence of a crisis of trust? 302	The Reith Lectures 2002 - 1 - Spreading Suspicion	Onora O'Neill	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
The search for justice in conditions where the basis for trust is threatened by violence and intimidation. 303	The Reith Lectures 2002 - 2 - Trust and Terror	Onora O'Neill	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Have the instruments for control, regulation, monitoring and enforcement worked? 304	The Reith Lectures 2002 - 3 - Called to Account	Onora O'Neill	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Transparency may not improve trust, and may even add to the ways in which the public can be deceived. 305	The Reith Lectures 2002 - 4 - Trust and Transparency	Onora O'Neill	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
How can we decide when to trust those who inform us about the wider world, and in particular media reporters? 306	The Reith Lectures 2002 - 5 - Licence to Deceive	Onora O'Neill	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Scientists need no longer be afraid to ask the big questions about what it means to be human with empirical evidence now answering ancient philosophical questions about meaning and existence 307	The Reith Lectures 2003 - 1 - Phantoms in the Brain	Vilayanur S. Ramachandran	Biology, Humanities, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
How does the activity of the 100 billion little wisps of protoplasm - the neurons in your brain - give rise to all the richness of our conscious experience, including the "redness" of red, the painfulness of pain or the exquisite flavour of Marmite or Vindaloo? 308	The Reith Lectures 2003 - 2 - Synapses and the Self	Vilayanur S. Ramachandran	Biology, Humanities, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
Professor Ramachandran draws on neurological case studies and work from ethology (animal behavior) to present a new framework for understanding how the brain creates and responds to art. He will use examples mainly from Indian art and Cubism to illustrate these ideas. 309	The Reith Lectures 2003 - 3 - The Artful Brain	Vilayanur S. Ramachandran	Biology, Humanities, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
Professor Ramachandran demonstrates experimentally that the phenomenon of synesthaesia is a genuine sensory effect. For example, some subjects literally "see" red every time they see the number 5 or green when they see 2. 310	The Reith Lectures 2003 - 4 - Purple Numbers and Sharp Cheese	Vilayanur S. Ramachandran	Biology, Humanities, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
Professor Ramachandran argues that neuroscience, perhaps more than any other discipline, is capable of transforming man's understanding of himself and his place in the cosmos. 311	The Reith Lectures 2003 - 5 - Neuroscience: The New Philosophy	Vilayanur S. Ramachandran	Biology, Humanities, Medical Sciences	Like (0 likes)
In his first lecture Wole Soyinka considers from his viewpoint as a poet and drawing on his personal experience as a political activist the changes since the Cold War in the nature of fear and its impact on individuals and society 312	The Reith Lectures 2004 - 1 - The Changing Mask of Fear	Wole Soyinka	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
This lecture examines how difficult it can be to tell friend from foe in a climate of fear. Organisations that are set up to overthrow dictatorships can themselves turn into tyrannical regimes. Liberation movements may be forced to seek help from dangerous quarters. And these days it is not just countries that control and direct the lives of their citizens. When the rule of law breaks down, shadowy forces set themselves up as "quasi-states" - and these, more than anything else, have produced today's climate of fear 313	The Reith Lectures 2004 - 2 - Power and Freedom	Wole Soyinka	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Between God and Nation, and Sieg Heil, a complex set of social impulses and goals are reduced to mere sound, but a potent tool that moves to vibrate a collective chord and displace reason. A willed hypnosis substitutes for individual volition and, the ecstasy of losing oneself in a sound-cloned crowd drives the most ordinary being to jettison all moral code and undertake hitherto unthinkable acts. Its religious versions prove even more deadly. Is the language of Political Correctness aiding and abetting its proliferation? 314	The Reith Lectures 2004 - 3 - Rhetoric that Binds and Blinds	Wole Soyinka	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Even in defeat, negotiating terms of surrender, a defeated nation pleads - 'Leave us something of our dignity'. Denied this little consideration, a doomed struggle is promptly resumed. So what exactly is this 'dignity' that even nations enshrine in their constitutions and Bills of Human Rights? A basic core of volition? A sense of freedom? Obviously human dignity involves both, and encompasses more. No matter the mask that is worn to hide the reality of fear, dignity remains incompatible with the entry of fear into the human psyche 315	The Reith Lectures 2004 - 4 - A Quest for Dignity	Wole Soyinka	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
When Osama bin Laden declares that the world is divided between believers and non-believers, it is easy to identify the menace of the fanatic mind but, in what other company can we place George Bush when we hear him declare that 'you are either with us or you are on the side of the terrorists'? We fail at our peril to recognize a twin strain of the same fanatic spore that threatens to consume the world in its messianic fires. What could be the role of the 'invisible' religions and world views in tempering the forces that seek to dichotomise the world? 316	The Reith Lectures 2004 - 5 - I Am Right; You Are Dead	Wole Soyinka	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
When I returned to this Engineering Department from the USA in 1984 my wife and I bought an historic and wonderful house some ten miles south of Cambridge. It was built around 1520, a date that could be substantiated to within a decade by the form of the oak beams that comprised its floors and ceilings. These had been shaped by iron blades that only lasted about ten years. Being someone of the present rather than the past I had not previously been much preoccupied with history but living in the splendid oak structure - like a fine sailing vessel that had gone aground - inspired me to wonder what had preoccupied the technologists and scientists of that age... 317	The Reith Lectures 2005 - 01 Collaboration	Lord Broers	Business & Management, Economics & Finance, Engineering, Anthropology	Like (0 likes)
Since time immemorial people have been entranced by structures of great size. From the Colossus of Rhodes and the Great Pyramid, themselves no mean technical achievements, to the mighty Cunard 'Queens' built here in Glasgow, and whichever is transiently the tallest building in the world, beholders have gaped at the gigantic. One simple attraction has been that of comparative scale, so many times the size of a man or a horse or of Nelson's column, as popular illustrations used to show. It was easy for the bystander immediately to apprehend the vast size of these objects... 318	The Reith Lectures 2005 - 03 Nanotechnology and Nanoscience	Lord Broers	Engineering, Physics	Like (0 likes)
Almost exactly 93 years ago tonight, on 15 April 1912, over two thousand terrified and bewildered people found themselves with little warning drifting or drowning in the ice-cold North Atlantic. Only 712 of them survived that night. They were, of course, the passengers, officers, and crew of the White Star steamship Titanic, and they were in a sense victims of 'failures' of technology… 319	The Reith Lectures 2005 - 04 Risk and Responsibility	Lord Broers	Engineering, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Four thousand years ago, just 5 miles north of present day Thetford, our Neolithic ancestors began what may have been the largest early industrial process in these islands. This is the site that the Anglo-Saxons called 'Grimes Graves' and it contains nearly four hundred mine-shafts, built to extract high-quality flints, which could be chipped to produce sharp cutting edges. Using nothing but tools of bone and wood and presumably the flints themselves, these ancient people excavated to a depth of up to twelve metres, to reach the buried flints. It has been calculated that the miners needed to remove 1000 tonnes of waste to produce eight tonnes of flint. The site covers nearly 40 hectares and the whole project is astonishing... 320	The Reith Lectures 2005 - 05 Technology will Determine the Future of the Human Race	Lord Broers	Engineering, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
When Ralph Waldo Emerson reputedly and memorably said that the world would beat a path to the door of a person who made a better mousetrap, he was perhaps being unduly optimistic, but at least he realised that the mousetrap had to be made and that it would not be sufficient merely to have an idea, or even a patent, for a better mouse trap. Ideas have to be proven to be useful, and the world told about them, before any paths are beaten. Profound changes have taken place in the development of ideas and their translation in to the market place and in my third Reith lecture I argue that this innovation revolution demands a new approach to research and product development... 321	The Reith Lectures 2005 -02 Innovation and Management	Lord Broers	Business & Management, Economics & Finance, Engineering	Like (0 likes)
St John said, "In the beginning was the word", while Goethe claimed that, "In the beginning was the deed". But in these lectures Daniel Barenboim's contention is that: In the beginning was sound 322	The Reith Lectures 2006 - 1 - In the Beginning was Sound	Daniel Barenboim	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
In Chicago Daniel Barenboim will be trying to rescue "the neglected sense" - the ear - and launch a campaign against muzak 323	The Reith Lectures 2006 - 2 - The Neglected Sense	Daniel Barenboim	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
In Berlin Daniel Barenboim argues that we have lost the ability to make value judgements about public standards - all because of political correctness and bad education 324	The Reith Lectures 2006 - 3 - The Magic of Music	Daniel Barenboim	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
In the first of his lectures from Jerusalem Daniel Barenboim will talk about how music is the great equaliser as he discovered in his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra which brings together young Arab and Israeli musicians 325	The Reith Lectures 2006 - 4 - Meeting in Music	Daniel Barenboim	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Music has shown Barenboim that there is a fundamental difference between power and strength which could map a new journey for our politics 326	The Reith Lectures 2006 - 5 - The Power of Music	Daniel Barenboim	Humanities	Like (0 likes)
The 21st century will be marked by severe natural resource limits, the rise of new economic powers and the threats of failed states. These are tectonic changes with the potential to unleash global-scale upheavals. Global cooperation of an unprecedented depth and scale will be needed but we are not yet prepared for such cooperation 327	The Reith Lectures 2007 - 1 - Bursting at the Seams	Prof. Jeffrey Sachs	Economics & Finance, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
The biggest challenges that we face - climate change, alleviation of hunger, water stress, energy - are translated in the shadow of ignorance into "us versus them" problems, with only the weakest links to underlying scientific principles and technological options 328	The Reith Lectures 2007 - 2 - Survival in the Anthropocene	Prof. Jeffrey Sachs	Politics & Public Policy, Environmental Studies	Like (0 likes)
Power and America have seemed synonymous for the last fifty years. No longer. Power in the 21st Century is shifting to the East: to India and above all to China. Facing up to the end of centuries of North Atlantic dominance - first Europe then the U.S. - will pose huge challenges 329	The Reith Lectures 2007 - 3 - The Great Convergence	Prof. Jeffrey Sachs	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
This lecture considers the challenges of extreme poverty and the extreme worry of the rest of the world which fears for its own prosperity. It spells out the limits of the free market to solve these problems and proposes a plan of action which presents choices to those listening 330	The Reith Lectures 2007 - 4 - Economic Solidarity for a Crowded Planet	Prof. Jeffrey Sachs	Economics & Finance, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
The key political novelty of our age is mass political awareness and mobilization. Mass mobilization has brought the Age of Empire to an end, and accounts for the failures in Iraq. No society any longer tolerates being ruled by another. Social mobilization can be a dramatic force for positive change 331	The Reith Lectures 2007 - 5 - Global Politics in a Complex Age	Prof. Jeffrey Sachs	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Chinese Vistas: Jonathan Spence delivers a series of lectures about China. Spence reflects on China's most enduring thinker, Confucius 332	The Reith Lectures 2008 - 1 - Confucian Ways	Johnathon Spence	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Spence examines China's relations with the United Kingdom through three centuries. 333	The Reith Lectures 2008 - 2 - English Lessons	Johnathon Spence	History, Politics & Public Policy, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
Spence explores the relationship between China and the US over two centuries. 334	The Reith Lectures 2008 - 3 - American Dreams	Johnathon Spence	History, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Spence discusses how Chinese ideas of sport and athleticism have slowly evolved. 335	The Reith Lectures 2008 - 4 - The Body Beautiful	Johnathon Spence	History, Humanities	Like (0 likes)
A New Citizenship: Professor Michael Sandel delivers four lectures about the prospects of a new politics of the common good.In the first lecture he considers the expansion and moral limits of markets. 336	The Reith Lectures 2009 - 1 - Markets and Morals	Prof. Michael Sandel	Economics & Finance, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Michael Sandel asks what role, if any, there is for moral argument in politics. 337	The Reith Lectures 2009 - 2 - Morality in Politics	Prof. Michael Sandel	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Professor Sandel makes the case for a moral and civic renewal in democratic politics. 338	The Reith Lectures 2009 - 4 - A New Politics of the Common Good	Prof. Michael Sandel	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Scientific Horizons: Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, Master of Trinity College and Astronomer Royal, delivers four lectures exploring the challenges facing science in the 21st century.In the first lecture he asks who we should trust to explain the risks we face. 339	The Reith Lectures 2010 - 1 - The Scientific Citizen	Martin Rees	Other, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Does science have the answers to help us save our planet? 340	The Reith Lectures 2010 - 2 - Surviving the Century	Martin Rees	Other	Like (0 likes)
Professor Martin Rees explains where the limits of our scientific knowledge lie. 341	The Reith Lectures 2010 - 3 - What We'll NeverKnow	Martin Rees	Other	Like (0 likes)
Prof Rees calls for the UK to stay at the forefront of scientific research and discovery. 342	The Reith Lectures 2010 - 4 - The Runaway World	Martin Rees	Other, Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and former Director-General of MI5 Baroness Manningham-Buller deliver the 2011 BBC Reith Lectures. Aung San Suu Kyi explores what freedom means in the first of the 2011 Reith Lectures. 343	The Reith Lectures 2011 - 1 - Liberty	Ang San Suu Kyi	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
The pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, examines what drives people to dissent in the second of the 2011 Reith Lecture series. 'Securing Freedom'. 344	The Reith Lectures 2011 - 2- Dissent	Ang San Suu Kyi	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
The former Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller gives the first of her BBC Reith Lectures 2011 called " Terror." 345	The Reith Lectures 2011 - 3 - Terror	Eliza Manningham-Buller	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
The former Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller gives the second of her BBC Reith Lectures 2011. In this lecture called " Security" she argues that the security and intelligence services in a democracy have a good record of protecting and preserving freedom. 346	The Reith Lectures 2011 - 4 - Security	BBC	Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
In this third and final Reith lecture the former Director General of the security service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller, discusses policy priorities since 9.11. She reflects on the Arab Spring, and argues that the West's support of authoritarian regimes did, to some extent, fuel the growth of Al-Qaeda. The lecture also considers when we should talk to "terrorists". 347	The Reith Lectures 2011 - 5 - Freedom		Politics & Public Policy	Like (0 likes)
Professor Amanda Vickery presents dramatised extracts from gripping Old Bailey court cases from the 18th century and discusses with fellow historians what they reveal about the period. In episode 1, Amanda Vickery listens to the voices of 18th-century highwaymen. 348	Voices from the Old Bailey. Episode 1: Highwaymen	Amanda Vickery	History, Law	Like (0 likes)
Professor Amanda Vickery presents dramatised extracts from gripping Old Bailey court cases from the 18th century and discusses with fellow historians what they reveal about the period. In episode 2, Amanda Vickery listens to the voices of criminal women in the Old Bailey. 349	Voices from the Old Bailey. Episode 2: Wicked Women	Amanda Vickery	History, Law	Like (0 likes)
Professor Amanda Vickery presents dramatised extracts from gripping Old Bailey court cases from the 18th century and discusses with fellow historians what they reveal about the period. In episode 3, Amanda Vickery listens to the voices of young children who found themselves in court. 350	Voices from the Old Bailey. Episode 3: Children	Amanda Vickery	History, Law	Like (0 likes)
Professor Amanda Vickery presents dramatised extracts from gripping Old Bailey court cases from the 18th century and discusses with fellow historians what they reveal about the period. In episode 4, Amanda Vickery listens to the voices of conmen and street fighters in the 18th century. 351	Voices from the Old Bailey. Episode 4: Conmen and a Brawl in the Streets	Amanda Vickery	History, Law	Like (0 likes)

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