How Can I Know Anything at All?

Historian Justin Champion on Francis Bacon's anxieties about the fallibility of technological innovators. The 17th century polymath Francis Bacon blew a fanfare for the new scientific age: where man w...

28 Jan 201512min

Is technology making us less human? Writer, Tom Chatfield is an enthusiastic downloader of the latest apps, an early adopter of anything small and shiny that promises to smooth his path through life. ...

27 Jan 201512min

A new history of ideas presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices.Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking how has tech...

26 Jan 201512min

Giles Fraser thinks being human isn't a matter of biology or some unique attribute like language. It's not to do with what we are but about how we treat each other. Taking the work of the philosopher ...

23 Jan 201512min

Barry Smith argues that language is our most important uniquely human attribute. It doesn't just help us communicate, it helps us to think. He makes the case for the distinctiveness of human language ...

22 Jan 201512min

Catharine Edwards wants to introduce you to the Roman Philosopher Seneca. But he's dying. Towards the end of his life Seneca became interested in the idea that only human beings had foreknowledge of t...

21 Jan 201512min

Simon Schaffer is interested in the human species in general and one member of it in particular. Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist and zoologist who set out the basic structure of how we name and u...

20 Jan 201513min

A new history of ideas presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices. Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking What make...

19 Jan 201512min