Collectors: Denis Diderot
Naomi Alderman looks at the remarkable way Denis Diderot connected ideas and people. In 18th-century Paris, he edited one of the very first encyclopaedias: twenty-eight volumes with tens of thousands ...
20 Jan 202514min
Collectors: Sei Shōnagon
Naomi Alderman wonders at lady-in-waiting, writer and all-round entertainer Sei Shōnagon, who wrote The Pillow Book over a thousand years ago in the Japanese imperial court.The Empress and her entoura...
20 Jan 202514min
Teachers: Diogenes
Naomi Alderman investigates the eccentric brilliance of Diogenes. He was a ‘cynic’ philosopher, which originally meant ‘dog-like’, and wanted to teach us that humans could learn from dogs and the simp...
13 Jan 202514min
Teachers: Peter Ramus
Naomi Alderman meets Peter Ramus – a teacher determined to simplify and systematise the teaching of difficult things. He spoke his mind and thrived on stirring up trouble.Ramus was behind one of the m...
13 Jan 202514min
Teachers: Mary Somerville
Mary Somerville was a brilliant polymath who found time to correct the work of Isaac Newton whilst looking after her infant children. Naomi Alderman investigates her extraordinary work ethic and expan...
13 Jan 202514min
Teachers: Maimonides
Naomi Alderman explores one of the greatest minds of the medieval world and in the history of Jewish thought. His work, The Guide for the Perplexed, is among the most influential works of medieval phi...
13 Jan 202514min
Teachers: Michael Faraday
The modern world is inconceivable without this son of a blacksmith and his meticulous, relentless brain. Naomi Alderman meets the mind behind huge scientific advances – who made breakthroughs in the u...
13 Jan 202514min
Disruptors: Malcolm X
While in prison, Malcolm X read furiously after lights-out and changed his entire life trajectory. Naomi Alderman looks at his extraordinary capacity for learning. Prominent as a black nationalist, sk...
6 Jan 202515min
