Magnetism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of magnetism. Pliny the Elder, in his Historia Naturalis, tells a story of a legendary Greek shepherd called Magnes who, while guiding his flock on Mount Id...
29 Sep 200541min
Marx
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Karl Marx. "Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains", "Religion is the opium of the people", and "From each according to his abilities, to ...
14 Jul 200542min
Marlowe
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Christopher Marlowe. In the prologue to The Jew of Malta Christopher Marlowe has Machiavel say:"I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignora...
7 Jul 200542min
Merlin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the legendary wizard Merlin. He was sired by an incubus and born of a virgin; he was a prophet, a shape-shifter, a king-maker and a mad man of the woods. Before Gandalf...
30 Jun 200528min
The KT Boundary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the KT Boundary. Across the entire planet, where it hasn't been eroded or destroyed in land movements, there is a thin grey line. In Italy it is 1 cm thick, in America ...
23 Jun 200542min
Paganism in the Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss paganism in the Renaissance. For hundreds of years in the Middle Ages, the only way to read Ovid was through the prism of a Christian moralising text. Ovid's sensual ta...
16 Jun 200541min
The Scriblerus Club
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Scriblerus Club. The 18th century Club included some of the most extraordinary and vivid satirists ever to have written in the English language. We are given giants...
9 Jun 200542min
Renaissance Maths
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Renaissance Mathematics. As with so many areas of European thought, mathematics in the Renaissance was a question of recovering and, if you were very lucky, improving u...
2 Jun 200542min
