The Mokrani Revolt

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the shift that has gone on through the 20th century from our being an industrial society to what is often called ‘the information society’. Francis Fukuyama’s book, The Great Disruption talks of the third great shift in the whole history of humankind. Along with all the technological and economic changes, in the past thirty years we have seen massive social changes. What has been the cause of this shift and how will we recover the social cohesion that preceded it? With Francis Fukuyama, Hirst Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University, Washington DC and author of The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order; Amos Oz, author and Professor of Hebrew Literature, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva.

17 Juni 199928min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British monarchy. In the last two hundred and fifty years, we’ve beheaded one king, exiled another, hired a distant German-speaking dynasty to fill the monarch’s role, and then mocked and ignored them, suffered a mad man and then a lavish sensualist, threatened a young queen, and then, over a century ago, invented a pageantry which brought majesty to a monarchy which is now tilting at the twenty first century against many and mighty odds. How has the monarchy survived since the execution of Charles the First two hundred and fifty years ago and what relevance does it have in a devolved Britain?With Professor David Cannadine, Director of the Institute of Historical Research, London and former Lecturer in History and Fellow, Christ’s College, Cambridge; Bea Campbell, sociologist, journalist and author of Diana, Princess of Wales.

10 Juni 199928min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of a just war. There were theories about a justified or noble war before the birth of Christ, but it was his reported teachings and a powerful influence, particularly on the Emperor Constantine, which set the standard which had to be kept or bluntly modified. “I say unto you, love your own image,” Matthew writes, “bless them that curse you, be good to them that hate you and persecute you”. In the fifth century, the mighty St Augustus prised the Christian church away from Christ’s reported teachings and the idea of a Just War took root to be formalised and given power by St Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and by other Christian commentators even up to this day. But after a century, our century, of almost unimaginably violent conflict, does the term a Just War have any meaning at all? The historian AJP Taylor wrote that "the medieval pursuit of the just war is a pursuit as elusive as the Holy Grail. For it is almost universally true that in war each side thinks itself in the right, and there is no arbiter except victory to decide between them". So is the Christian idea of the Just War simply a way of justifying aggression or is it a moral position to take?With Professor John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Westminster and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy; Dr Niall Ferguson, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Jesus College, Oxford and author of The Pity of War.

3 Juni 199928min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss memory. At the start of the twentieth century Freud put memory at the centre of our psychology, and as the century has worn on what a nation remembers and what it should try to forget has become one of the binding political questions that modern societies face. As every second passes, humanity has a moment more to remember, and perhaps this fact alone goes a long way to explaining the ever changing role of memory, both in the mind of individuals and at the heart of the body politic. Memory, what to remember and when to forget, has personal and national implications. Whether we look to Chile, South Africa, Germany or Northern Ireland, these are all societies where the issue of memory is at the centre of the dilemmas and challenges they face. And in the mind of the individual too - as ever more forms of information crowd for space in our minds, and the image from someone else’s photograph can be more enduring than our own first hand experience of an event, can memory itself forever remain unchanged in its role within our psychology? Have our ways of remembering changed? Not in the sense neuro-biologists would explore the subject, but in its cultural and collective, as well as its individual, sense. “Memory is decidedly in fashion” writes Dr Nancy Wood, “whether attention is focused on the so-called return of repressed memories of the abused individual, or on the black holes in a nation’s recollection of its past. The topic of memory has become a compelling preoccupation”. With Professor Malcolm Bowie, Marshall Foch Professor of French Literature at Oxford University and Director of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre; Dr Nancy Wood, Chair of Media Studies, University of Sussex and author of Vectors of Memory.

27 Maj 199928min

Melvyn Bragg examines the history of what we know about the origins of the universe. Some four hundred years ago in Rome, one Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for his belief in other inhabited worlds - it’s a possibility which has fascinated scientists, writers, artists and the general public for centuries - and any consideration of the origins of life and matter on other planets, and indeed this one, inevitably raises huge questions. Do other worlds exist? How did our planet come into existence? How can we know anything at all about the origins of life and matter so many billions of years ago, and how has our thinking on these - amongst the deepest of questions - changed over the 20th century? Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our own planet came into being? And does the knowledge we have about these things change our perception of ourselves and our position in the universe?With Professor Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Royal Society Research Professor in Astronomy and Physics, Cambridge University; Professor Paul Davies, theoretical physicist and Visiting Professor at Imperial College, London.

20 Maj 199928min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss multiculturalism. The divisions between people provoked and exploited because of differences in religion, culture, nationality and race seem to beset the planet the more information technology promises globalisation. A recent estimate put the figure of people living in a country other than the one of their birth at 80 million. Does this mean that, amongst these eighty million people, their country of origin, their sense of self, and their cultural history are no longer as significant as they were? And how are those eighty million people and their descendants accommodated in the country to which they have moved - do their lives exemplify the success of multicultural policies or are they subject to racism? Is it possible to define how attitudes to race and identity have changed this century, given its vast shifts of population, cultures and peoples?With Stuart Hall, former Professor of Sociology, Open University and currently on a Commission set up by the Runnymede Trust looking at the future of multi-ethnic Britain; Dr Avtar Brah, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Birkbeck College, London University.

13 Maj 199928min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century, the nature of mathematical ability, and what mathematics can show us about how life began, and how it might continue. Galileo wrote “this grand book the universe… is written in the language of mathematics”. It was said before Galileo and has been said since and in the last decades of the 20th century it is being said again, most emphatically. How important is maths in relation to other sciences at the end of the twentieth century - will it ever be made redundant, or is it increasingly crucial to our understanding of the world and ourselves? What insight can it give us into the origins of life, and the functioning of our brains, and what does it mean to say that maths has become more ‘visual’?With Ian Stewart, Professor of Mathematics and Gresham Professor of Geometry, University of Warwick; Brian Butterworth, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London.

6 Maj 199928min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss artificial intelligence. Can we create a machine that creates? Some argue so. And is consciousness, as we are, with headaches and tiffs and moods and small pleasures and sore feet - often all at the same time - capable of taking place in a machine? Artificial intelligence machines have been growing much more intelligent since Alan Turing’s pioneering days at Bletchley in World War Two. Its claims are now very grand indeed. It is 31 years since Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke gave us HAL - the archetypal thinking computer of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. But are we any nearer to achieving the thinking, feeling computer? Or is it just a dream - and should it remain as one?With Igor Aleksander, Professor, Imperial College London and inventor of Magnus - a neural computer which he says is an artificially conscious machine; John Searle, Professor of Philosophy, University of California and one of only two people in the world to invent an argument, the Chinese Room Argument, which destroys the plausibility of the idea of conscious machines.

29 Apr 199928min