Letters from the front line

The science of health and wellbeing is a hot topic of modern life, and it was no different for the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome. From what you should eat, to how you should exercise, and w...

17 Jun 202537min

Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century Dominican theologian whose groundbreaking ideas set medieval Europe aflame – and continue to resonate today. As 2025 marks the 800th anniversary of Aquinas's birth, E...

16 Jun 202542min

Bogus sex parties, fake corpses, exploding tin cans and belligerent pigs. If you thought that James Bond's fictional escapades were outrageous, then the real-life experiences of his creator, Ian Flemi...

15 Jun 202539min

What does it mean to be a father? When did people first start talking about men as 'father figures'? And how has the concept of fatherhood changed over the millennia? In conversation with David Musgro...

14 Jun 202538min

During the Cold War, the CIA book programme was a covert campaign to smuggle books into the Eastern Bloc using everything from balloon drops to baked bean tins. But why was literature such a significa...

12 Jun 202534min

From Michelangelo's David and Machiavelli's The Prince to the plays of Shakespeare, the Renaissance produced some of history's most astounding works of culture, art and innovation. But can focusing on...

10 Jun 202547min

He’s best known for his Eureka moment, but Archimedes was far more than a naked man in a bathtub. Speaking to Kev Lochun, Professor Michael Scott takes us through the wild imagination of this Ancient ...

9 Jun 202532min

Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis killed nearly 300,000 people with learning disabilities or psychiatric illnesses. Some 400,000 more were forcibly sterilised. Historian Dagmar Herzog speaks to Ellie C...

8 Jun 202538min