Comedy in Ancient Greek Theatre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss comedy in Ancient Greek theatre including Aristophanes and Menander. In The Birds, written by Aristophanes, two Athenians seek a Utopian refuge from the madness of city...
13 Jul 200641min
Pastoral Literature
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss pastoral literature.Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields.And w...
6 Jul 200642min
Galaxies
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the galaxies. Spread out across the voids of space like spun sugar, but harbouring in their centres super-massive black holes. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years a...
29 Jun 200642min
The Spanish Inquisition
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish Inquisition, the defenders of medieval orthodoxy. The word ‘Inquisition’ has its roots in the Latin word 'inquisito' which means inquiry. The Romans used th...
22 Jun 200642min
Carbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Carbon. It forms the basis of all organic life and has the amazing ability to bond with itself and a wide range of other elements, forming nearly 10 million known compo...
15 Jun 200642min
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the anti slavery novel, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'. When Abraham Lincoln met the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe after the start of the American Civil War, he reportedly said to ...
8 Jun 200642min
The Heart
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the heart. Aristotle considered the heart to be the seat of thought, reason and emotion. The Roman physician Galen located the seat of the passions in the liver, the s...
1 Jun 200642min
Mathematics and Music
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the mathematical structures that lie within the heart of music. The seventeenth century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz wrote: 'Music is the pleasure the human mind exper...
25 Mai 200642min
