The Cambrian Period
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cambrian period when there was an explosion of life on Earth. In the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia in Canada, there is an outcrop of limestone shot through ...
17 Feb 200542min
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the mind/body problem in philosophy. At the start of René Descartes' Sixth Meditation he writes: "there is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is...
13 Jan 200542min
Tsar Alexander II's assassination
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. On 1st March 1881, the Russian Tsar, Alexander II, was travelling through the snow to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. An arm...
6 Jan 200541min
The Roman Republic
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise and eventual downfall of the Roman Republic which survived for 500 years.Around 550 BC, Lucretia, the daughter of an aristocrat, was raped by the son of Tarqui...
30 Des 200442min
Faust
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myth of Faustus." Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!Her lips suck for...
23 Des 200428min
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Second Law of Thermodynamics which can be very simply stated like this: "Energy spontaneously tends to flow from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffuse...
16 Des 200427min
Machiavelli and the Italian City States
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. In The Prince, Machiavelli's great manual of power, he wrote, "since men love as they themselves determine but fear as th...
9 Des 200442min
Jung
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary mind of the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. In 1907 Sigmund Freud met a young man and fell into a conversation that is reputed to have lasted for 13 ho...
2 Des 200428min
