2005-01-06 The Assassination of Tsar Alexander II - did his killing cause the R

ussian Revolution?
2005-01-13 The Mind/Body Problem - does the mind rule the body or the body rule
the mind?
2005-02-17 The Cambrian Explosion - the big bang of evolutionary history
2005-02-24 Alchemy - seeking the perfection of all things
2005-03-03 Stoicism - the search for inner calm
2005-03-10 Modernist Utopias - the original 21st century
2005-03-17 Dark Energy - the unknown force breaking the universe apart
2005-03-24 Angels - how they got their wings
2005-03-31 John Ruskin - a different kind of Victorian
2005-04-07 Alfred and the Battle of Edington - without Alfred, no England?
2005-04-14 Archaeology and Imperialism - conquest of the past
2005-04-21 The Aeneid - the Roman history of the world
2005-04-28 Perception and the Senses - how do we see what we see?
2005-05-05 Abelard and Heloise - love, sex and theology in 12th century Paris
2005-05-19 Beauty - the philosophy of beauty
2005-05-26 The Terror - when Madame Guillotine ruled France
2005-06-02 Renaissance Maths - the birth of modern mathematics?
2005-06-09 The Scriblerus Club - the satirists-in-chief of the 18th century
2005-06-16 Paganism in the Renaissance - how the classical gods returned to the
Christian cities
2005-06-23 The KT Boundary - did the dinosaurs burn out or fade away?
2005-06-30 Merlin - the original Welsh wizard
2005-07-07 Christopher Marlowe - poet, spy, atheist, murder victim?
2005-07-14 Karl Marx - In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher
2005-09-29 Magnetism - an attractive history
2005-10-06 Field of the Cloth of Gold - a Renaissance entente cordiale
2005-10-13 The Rise of the Mammals - life in a cold climate
2005-10-20 Cynicism - bold and populist, the history of a shocking philosophy
2005-10-27 Samuel Johnson and His Circle - life with the professional man of le
tters
2005-11-03 Asteroids - celestial bodies from the beginning of time
2005-11-10 Greyfriars and Blackfriars - philosophy, evangelism and fund-raising
in the 13th century Church
2005-11-17 Pragmatism - a practical philosophy fit for 20th century America
2005-11-24 The Graviton - the quest for the theoretical gravity particle
2005-12-01 Thomas Hobbes and the political philosophy of 'Leviathan'
2005-12-08 Artificial Intelligence - the quest for a machine that can think
2005-12-15 The Peterloo Massacre - democratic protest and brutal repression
2005-12-22 Heaven - a journey through the afterlife
2005-12-29 Aeschylus' Oresteia - the birth of tragedy
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------06 January 2005: The Assassination of Tsar Alexander II - did his killing cause
the Russian Revolution?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On 1st March 1881, the Russian Tsar, Alexander II, was travelling through the sn
ow to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. An armed Cossack sat with the coach dr
iver, another six Cossacks followed on horseback and behind them came a group of
police officers in sledges. It was the day that the Tsar, known for his liberal
reforms, had signed a document granting the first ever constitution to the Russ
ian people.
But his journey was being watched by a group of radicals called 'Narodnaya Volya
' or 'The People's Will'. On a street corner near the Catherine Canal, they hurl

ed the first of their bombs to halt the Tsar's iron-clad coach. When Alexander i
gnored advice and ventured out onto the snow to comfort his dying Cossacks, he w
as killed by another bomber who took his own life in the blast.
Why did they kill the reforming Tsar? What was the political climate that inspir
ed such extreme acts? And could this have been the moment that the Russian state
started an inexorable march towards revolution?
Melvyn Bragg with
Orlando Figes, Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London
Dominic Lieven, Professor of Russian Government at the London School of Economic
s
Catriona Kelly, Professor of Russian at Oxford University
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------13 January 2005: The Mind/Body Problem - does the mind rule the body or the body
rule the mind?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------At the start of Ren Descartes' Sixth Meditation he writes: "there is a great diff
erence between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, an
d mind is entirely indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so fa
r as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish many parts within
myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete. Although
the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot
or an arm or any other part of the body is cut off nothing has thereby been take
n away from the mind".
This thinking is the basis of what's known as
tempt to address one of the central questions
em: is the mind part of the body, or the body
inct, then how do they interact? And which of

'Cartesian dualism', Descartes' at

in philosophy, the mind/body probl
part of the mind? If they are dist
the two is in charge?

Melvyn Bragg with

Anthony Grayling, Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London
Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers' Magazine
Sue James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London
------------------------------------------------------------------------------17 February 2005: The Cambrian Explosion - the big bang of evolutionary history
------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia in Canada, there is an outcrop of l
imestone shot through with a seam of fine dark shale. A sudden mudslide into sha
llow water some 550 million years ago means that a startling array of wonderful
organisms has been preserved within it. Wide eyed creatures with tentacles below
and spines on their backs, things like flattened rolls of carpet with a set of
teeth at one end, squids with big lobster-like arms. There are thousands of them
and they seem to testify to a time when evolution took a leap and life on this
planet suddenly went from being small, simple and fairly rare to being large, co
mplex, numerous and dizzyingly diverse. It happened in the Cambrian Period and i
t's known as the Cambrian Explosion.
But if this is the great crucible of life on Earth, what could have caused it? H
ow do the strange creatures relate to life as we see it now? And what does the C
ambrian Explosion tell us about the nature of evolution?
Melvyn Bragg with

Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at Cambridge Univer

sity.
Richard Corfield, Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Earth, Planetary, S
pace and Astronomical Research at the Open University.
Jane Francis, Professor of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Leeds.
---------------------------------------------------------------24 February 2005: Alchemy - seeking the perfection of all things
---------------------------------------------------------------At the end of the 16th century, the German alchemist Heinrich Khunrath wrote: "D
arkness will appear on the face of the Abyss; Night, Saturn and the Antimony of
the Sages will appear; blackness, and the raven's head of the alchemists, and al
l the colours of the world, will appear at the hour of conjunction; the rainbow
also, and the peacock's tail. Finally, after the matter has passed from ashen-co
loured to white and yellow, you will see the Philosopher's Stone".
The language, which sounds fantastical, is cryptic, encoded, symbolic and secret
ive. It is worth bearing in mind that Isaac Newton wrote more manuscripts on alc
hemy than on anything else and Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics,
described himself as an alchemist.
What was the essence of alchemy, its history and legacy? And how much more was i
t than a rapacious desire to turn base metals into gold?
Melvyn Bragg with
Peter Forshaw, Lecturer in Renaissance Philosophies at Birkbeck, University of L
ondon.
Lauren Kassell, Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at the Univers
ity of Cambridge.
Stephen Pumfrey, Senior Lecturer in the History of Science at the University of
Lancaster.
--------------------------------------------------03 March 2005: Stoicism - the search for inner calm
--------------------------------------------------The philosophy of Stoicism was founded by Zeno in the fourth century BC and flou
rished in Greece and then in Rome. Its ideals of inner solitude, forbearance in
adversity and the acceptance of fate won many brilliant adherents and made it th
e dominant philosophy across the whole of the Ancient World. The ex-slave Epicte
tus said "Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them". Sene
ca, the politician, declared that "Life without the courage for death is slavery
". The stoic thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor, provided a ra
llying point for empire builders into the modern age.
But what was stoicism? How did its ideas of inner retreat come to influence the
most powerful and public men of the classical era? And does it still have a lega
cy for us today?
Melvyn Bragg with
Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick
Jonathan Re, philosopher and historian
David Sedley, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Camb
ridge
-----------------------------------------------------------10 March 2005: Modernist Utopias - the original 21st century
------------------------------------------------------------

"I want to gather together about twenty souls," wrote D H Lawrence in 1915, "and
sail away from this world of war and squalor and find a little colony where the
re shall be no money but a sort of communism as necessaries of life go, and some
real decency". Utopias were in the air in the first decades of the twentieth ce
ntury and the literature of the period abounds with worlds of imagined escape, f
eminist utopias, technological nightmares and rich imaginings of the world as it
could or should become. Many of the societies that writers like H G Wells creat
ed were meant seriously, as signposts to a future that would seem horrific to us
now, where the weak are eradicated and the strong prosper and procreate.
What was it about that era that brought forward so many imagined futures? How di
d utopias become the dystopias of Brave New World and 1984, and why are writers
so much less likely to create a Utopia now?
Melvyn Bragg with
John Carey, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Oxford University
Steve Connor, Professor of Modern Literature at Birkbeck, University of London
Laura Marcus, Professor of English at the University of Sussex
-------------------------------------------------------------------------17 March 2005: Dark Energy - the unknown force breaking the universe apart
-------------------------------------------------------------------------Only 5% of our universe is composed of visible matter, stars, planets and people
; something called 'dark matter' makes up about 25% and an enormous 70% of the u
niverse is pervaded with the mysteriously named 'dark energy'. It is a recent di
scovery and may be only a conjecture, but it has been invoked to explain an abid
ing riddle of the cosmos: if the expansion of the universe is powered by the ene
rgy of the Big Bang, then why isn't the expansion slowing down over time as the
initial energy runs down and the attractive force of gravity asserts itself? Sci
entists had predicted a Big Crunch as the logical opposite of the Big Bang, but
far from retracting, the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating...it
's running away with itself.
How do we know that the universe is behaving like this and what's causing it? If
dark energy is the culprit, then what is this elusive, though omnipresent entit
y?
Melvyn Bragg with
Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at
Cambridge University.
Carolin Crawford, Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Institute of A
stronomy, University of Cambridge.
Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Maths at Oxford University.
-----------------------------------------------24 March 2005: Angels - how they got their wings
-----------------------------------------------George Bernard Shaw made the observation that "in heaven an angel is nobody in p
articular", but there is nothing commonplace about this description of angels fr
om the Bible's book of Ezekiel:
"they had the likeness of a man.
And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.
And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole
of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.... As fo
r the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of
a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side;
they four also had the face of an eagle." With angels like that, it is easy to
see why they have caused so much controversy over the centuries.

What part have angels played in western religion? How did they get their halos a
nd their wings? And what are they really? Gods or men?
Melvyn Bragg with
Martin Palmer, theologian
Valery Rees, Renaissance Scholar from the School of Economic Science
John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews
---------------------------------------------------------31 March 2005: John Ruskin - a different kind of Victorian
---------------------------------------------------------John Ruskin was the most brilliant art critic of his age, perhaps the most brill
iant that Britain has ever produced, but he was much more than that. A champion
of Turner and an enemy of Whistler, he placed the study of art and architecture
at the heart of a moral assault on Victorian life. In the stone work of a Gothic
cathedral, Ruskin saw all that was right about medieval society and all that wa
s wrong about his own capitalist age.
But why was Ruskin so critical of his own time? What deep currents of thought in
fused his ideas? And how much does our thinking, about society, the environment,
art and work owe to this unusual man?
Melvyn Bragg with
Dinah Birch, Professor of English at Liverpool University
Keith Hanley, Professor of English Literature and Director of the Ruskin Program
me at Lancaster University
Stefan Collini, Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at the
University of Cambridge
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------07 April 2005: Alfred and the Battle of Edington - without Alfred, no England?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------The Battle of Edington in 878 is taken by many to be the great founding Battle o
f England. It is the conflict in which Alfred, King of Wessex, came back from an
impossible position to defeat the Vikings and launch a grand project to establi
sh a new entity of Englishness, what he called the 'Anglecynn' in the South of t
he island of Britain.
How did Alfred manage to defeat the Vikings when he had been so thoroughly route
d? What motivated his project to fashion Englishness? And without Edington, woul
d there be no England?
Melvyn Bragg with
Richard Gameson, Reader in Medieval History at the University of Kent at Canterb
ury
Sarah Foot, Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Sheffield
John Hines, Professor in the School of History and Archaeology at Cardiff Univer
sity
----------------------------------------------------------------14 April 2005: Archaeology and Imperialism - conquest of the past
----------------------------------------------------------------In 1842 a young English adventurer called Austen Henry Layard set out to excavat
e what he hoped were the remains of the biblical city of Nineveh in Mesopotamia.
On arrival he discovered that the local French consul, Paul Emile Botta, was al
ready hard at work. Across the Middle East and in Egypt, archaeologists, antiqua

rians and adventurers were exploring cities older than the Bible and shipping sp
ectacular monuments down the Nile and the Tigris to burgeoning European museums.
What was it about the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia that so gripped
the 19th century imagination? How did nationalism and imperialism affect the sea
rch for the ancient past and how did archaeology evolve from its adventuresome,
even reckless, origins into the science of artefacts we know today?
Melvyn Bragg with
Tim Champion, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton
Richard Parkinson, Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan
at the British Museum
Eleanor Robson, Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge U
niversity
---------------------------------------------------------21 April 2005: The Aeneid - the Roman history of the world
---------------------------------------------------------Out of the tragedy and destruction of the Trojan wars came a man heading West, h
is father on his back and his small son holding his hand. This isn't Odysseus, i
t's Aeneas and in that vision Virgil gives an image of the very first Romans of
the Empire.
Virgil's Aeneid was the great epic poem that formed a founding narrative of Rome
. It made such an impact on its audience that it soon became a standard text in
all schools and wiped away the myths that preceded it. It was written in Augustu
s' reign at the start of the Imperial era and has been called an apologia for Ro
man domination; it has also been called the greatest work of literature ever wri
tten.
How much was Virgil's poem influenced by the extraordinary times in which it was
written? How does it transcend the political pressures of Imperial patronage an
d what are the qualities that make it such a universal work?
Melvyn Bragg with
Edith Hall, Leverhulme Professor of Greek Cultural History at Durham University
Philip Hardie, Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at the University of Oxford
Catharine Edwards, Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck C
ollege, University of London
--------------------------------------------------------------------28 April 2005: Perception and the Senses - how do we see what we see?
--------------------------------------------------------------------Barry Stein's laboratory at Wake Forest University in the United States found th
at the shape of a right angle drawn on the hand of a chimpanzee starts the visua
l part of the brain working, even when the shape has not been seen. It has also
been discovered that babies learn by touch before they can properly make sense o
f visual data, and that the senses of smell and taste chemically combine to give
us flavour.
Perception is a tangled web of processes and so much of what we see, hear and to
uch is determined by our own expectations that it raises the question of whether
we ever truly perceive what others do.
What governs our perception of the world? And are we correct to distinguish betw
een sight, sound, smell, touch and taste when they appear to influence each othe
r so very much?

Melvyn Bragg with

Richard Gregory, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psycho
logy at Bristol University.
David Moore, Director of the Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Resea
rch at the University of Nottingham.
Gemma Calvert, Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Bath.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------05 May 2005: Abelard and Heloise - love, sex and theology in 12th century Paris
------------------------------------------------------------------------------The story of Abelard and Heloise is a tale of literature and philosophy, theolog
y and scandal, and above all love in the high Middle Ages. They were two of the
greatest minds of their time and Abelard, a famous priest and teacher, wrote of
how their affair began in his biography, Historia Calamitatum, "Her studies all
owed us to withdraw in private, as love desired, and then with our books open be
fore us, more words of love than of reading passed between us, and more kissing
than teaching. My hands strayed oftener to her bosom than to the pages; love dr
ew our eyes to look on each other more than reading kept them on our texts".
Years later, when she was an Abbess at the head of her own convent, Heloise wrot
e to Abelard: "Even during the celebration of Mass, when our prayers should be p
urer, lewd visions of those pleasures take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that
my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on prayers".
Melvyn Bragg with
Anthony Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birbeck College, University of Lond
on
Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Historian and Fellow of St Peter s College, Oxford
Michael Clanchy, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the Institute of Hist
orical Research
---------------------------------------------19 May 2005: Beauty - the philosophy of beauty
---------------------------------------------"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
That was John Keats' emphatic finale to his Ode on a Grecian Urn. It seems to ex
press Plato's theory of aesthetics, his idea that an apprehension of beauty is a
n apprehension of perfection and that all things in our shadowy realm are botche
d representations of perfect 'forms' that exist elsewhere. Beauty is goodness an
d, for Plato, the ultimate of all the forms is 'The Good'.
But does beauty really have a moral quality? And is it inherent in things, or in
the mind of the observer? How much influence have Plato's ideas had on the hist
ory of aesthetics and what has been said to counter or develop them?
Melvyn Bragg with
Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick
Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London
Julian Baggini, Editor of The Philosophers' Magazine
------------------------------------------------------------26 May 2005: The Terror - when Madame Guillotine ruled France
------------------------------------------------------------On Monday September 10th 1792 The Times of London carried a story covering event
s in revolutionary France:

"The streets of Paris, strewed with the carcases of the mangled victims, are bec
ome so familiar to the sight, that they are passed by and trod on without any pa
rticular notice. The mob think no more of killing a fellow-creature, who is not
even an object of suspicion, than wanton boys would of killing a cat or a dog".
These were the infamous September Massacres when Parisian mobs killed thousands
of suspected royalists and set the scene for the events to come, when Madame La
Guillotine took centre stage and The Terror ruled in France.
But how did the French Revolution descend into such extremes of violence? Who or
what drove The Terror? And was it really an aberration of the revolutionary cau
se or the moment when it truly expressed itself?
Melvyn Bragg with
Mike Broers, Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Oxford
Rebecca Spang, Lecturer in Modern History at University College London
Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridg
e
-----------------------------------------------------------------02 June 2005: Renaissance Maths - the birth of modern mathematics?
-----------------------------------------------------------------As with so many areas of European thought, mathematics in the Renaissance was a
question of recovering and, if you were very lucky, improving upon Greek ideas.
The geometry of Euclid, Appollonius and Ptolemy ruled the day. Yet within two hu
ndred years, European mathematics went from being an art that would unmask the e
ternal shapes of geometry to a science that could track the manifold movements a
nd changes of the real world. The Arabic tradition of Algebra was assimilated an
d both Newton and Leibniz developed the calculus - the maths by which we can sti
ll put men on the moon.
But how did this profound change come about? What were the ideas that drove it a
nd is this the period in which mathematics became truly modern?
Melvyn Bragg with
Robert Kaplan, co-founder of the Maths Circle at Harvard University.
Jim Bennett, Director of the Museum of Science and Fellow of Linacre College at
the University of Oxford.
Jackie Stedall, Research Fellow in the History of Mathematics at The Queen's Col
lege, Oxford.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------09 June 2005: The Scriblerus Club - the satirists-in-chief of the 18th century
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------The 18th century Scriblerus Club included some of the most extraordinary and viv
id satirists ever to have written in the English language. We are given giants a
nd midgets, implausible unions with Siamese twins, diving competitions into the
open sewer of Fleet-ditch, and Olympic-style pissing competitions: "Who best can
send on high/The salient spout, far streaming to the sky". But these exotic ima
ges were part of an attempt by Pope, Swift and their cadres to show a world in t
errible decline:
"Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! Thy dread empire, Chaos! Is restored:
Light dies before thy uncreating word".
So wrote Alexander Pope in his great mock epic verse, The Dunciad.

Who were the Scriblerans? And what in eighteenth century society had driven them
to such disdain and despair?
Melvyn Bragg with
John Mullan, Senior Lecturer in English at University College London
Judith Hawley, Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of Londo
n
Marcus Walsh, Kenneth Allott Professor of English Literature at the University o
f Liverpool
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16 June 2005: Paganism in the Renaissance - how the classical gods returned to t
he Christian cities
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For hundreds of years in the Middle Ages, the only way to read Ovid was through
the prism of a Christian moralising text. Ovid's sensual tales of metamorphosis
and pagan gods were presented as veiled allegories, and the famous story of Zeus
descending to Danae in a shower of gold was explained as the soul receiving div
ine illumination. But in 1478 Botticelli finished Primavera, the first major pro
ject on a mythological theme for a thousand years, and by 1554 Titian completed
a very different version of Danae - commissioned by a Cardinal, no less - where
she expectantly awaits her union with Zeus in what is a nakedly sexual pose.
What happened to bring the myths and eroticism of antiquity back into the cultur
e of Europe? And how was it possible for a Church that was prosecuting for heres
y to exalt in pagan imagery, even in the Vatican itself?
Melvyn Bragg with
Tom Healy, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Birkbeck College, University of L
ondon
Charles Hope, Director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of
the Classical Tradition at the University of London
Evelyn Welch, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of Lond
on
-----------------------------------------------------------------------23 June 2005: The KT Boundary - did the dinosaurs burn out or fade away?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Across the entire planet, where it hasn't been eroded or destroyed in land movem
ents, there is a thin grey line. In Italy it is 1 cm thick, in America it stretc
hes to three centimetres, but it is all the same thin grey line laid into the ro
ck some 65 million years ago and it bears witness to a cataclysmic event experie
nced only once in Earth's history. It is called the KT Boundary and geologists b
elieve it is the clue to the death of the dinosaurs and the ultimate reason why
mammals and humans inherited the Earth.
But exactly what did happen 65 million years ago? How was this extraordinary lin
e created across the Earth and does it really hold the key to the death of the d
inosaurs?
Melvyn Bragg with
Simon Kelley, Head of Department in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Open
University.
Jane Francis, Professor of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Leeds.
Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology in the Department of Earth Sc
iences at the University of Bristol.

-----------------------------------------------30 June 2005: Merlin - the original Welsh wizard

-----------------------------------------------He was sired by an incubus and born of a virgin; he was a prophet, a shape-shift
er, a king-maker and a mad man of the woods. In a literary career spanning 1500
years, Merlin, or originally Myrddin, put the sword in the stone, built Stonehen
ge, knew the truth behind the Holy Grail and discovered the Elixir of Life. "Bew
are Merlin for he knows all things by the devil's craft" say the poisoners in Ma
lory's Morte D'Arthur; but he is also on the side of the good and is almost Chri
st-like in some of the versions of his tale, and his prophesies were pored over
by the medieval Church.
Who was Merlinus Ambrosius, as he is sometimes known? Where does his legend spri
ng from and how has it been appropriated and adapted over time?
Melvyn Bragg with
Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Welsh at Cardiff Universi
ty
Stephen Knight, Distinguished Research Professor in English Literature at Cardif
f University
Peter Forshaw, Lecturer in Renaissance Philosophies at Birkbeck, University of L
ondon
---------------------------------------------------------------------07 July 2005: Christopher Marlowe - poet, spy, atheist, murder victim?
---------------------------------------------------------------------In the prologue to The Jew of Malta Christopher Marlowe has Machiavel say:
"I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
Birds of the air will tell of murders past!
I am ashamed to hear such fooleries.
Many will talk of title to a crown.
What right had Caesar to the empire?
Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure
When, like the Draco's, they were writ in blood."
By the age of 29 Marlowe was a brilliant scholar, a popular playwright, an inter
national spy, a forger, a homosexual and was accused of atheism. His hugely ambi
tious characters, like Tamburlaine and Faustus, are often taken to be versions o
f Marlowe himself, a subversive who also counted religion as a 'childish toy'. B
y the age of 30 Marlowe was dead.
Was Marlowe assassinated by the Elizabethan state? How subversive was his litera
ry work? And had he lived as long as his contemporary Shakespeare, how would he
have compared?
Melvyn Bragg with
Katherine Duncan-Jones, Senior Research Fellow in the English Faculty of Oxford
University
Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick
Emma Smith, Lecturer in English at Oxford University
-----------------------------------------------------------14 July 2005: Karl Marx - In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher
-----------------------------------------------------------"Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains", "Religio

n is the opium of the people", and "From each according to his abilities, to eac
h according to his needs". That should be enough for most of you to work out who
m Radio 4 listeners have voted as their favourite philosopher: the winner of the
In Our Time Greatest Philosopher Vote, chosen from 20 philosophers nominated by
listeners and carried through on an electoral tidal wave of 28% of our 'first-p
ast-the-post' vote is the communist theoretician, Karl Marx.
So, when you strip away the Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet era and later Marxist t
heory, who was Karl Marx? Where does he stand in the history of philosophy? He w
rote in his Theses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world i
n various ways, the point, however, is to change it" - which begs the question,
is he really a philosopher at all?
Melvyn Bragg with
Anthony Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of Lon
don
Francis Wheen, journalist and author of a biography of Karl Marx
Gareth Stedman Jones, Professor of Political Science at Cambridge University
---------------------------------------------------29 September 2005: Magnetism - an attractive history
---------------------------------------------------Pliny the Elder, in his Historia Naturalis, tells a story of a legendary Greek s
hepherd called Magnes who, while guiding his flock on Mount Ida, suddenly found
it hard to move his feet. The nails of his sandals held fast to the rock beneath
them, and the iron tip of his crook was strangely attracted to the boulders all
around. Magnes had stumbled across the lodestone, or 'Magnetite', and discovere
d the phenomenon of magnetism. Plato was baffled by this strange force, as were
Aristotle and Galen, and despite being used in navigation, supposedly suspended
over the body of Mohammed and deployed in the pursuit of medical cures - apart f
rom some 13th century scholastic studies - it was not until the late 16th centur
y that any serious scientific attempt was made to explain the mystifying powers
of the magnet.
Who pioneered the study of magnetism? What theories did they construct from its
curious abilities and how was the power of the magnet brought out of the realm o
f magic and into the service of science?
Melvyn Bragg with
Stephen Pumfrey, Senior Lecturer in the History of Science at the University of
Lancaster.
John Heilbron, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California, Be
rkeley.
Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of Lond
on.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------06 October 2005: Field of the Cloth of Gold - a Renaissance entente cordiale
---------------------------------------------------------------------------In the spring of 1520 six thousand Englishmen and women packed their bags and fo
llowed their King across the sea to France. They weren't part of an invasion for
ce but were attendants to King Henry VIII and travelling to take part in the gre
atest and most conspicuous display of wealth and culture that Europe had ever se
en. They were met by Francis I of France and six thousand French noblemen and se
rvants on English soil in Northern France and erected their temporary palaces, e
laborate tents, jousting pavilions and golden fountains spewing forth red, white
and claret wine in the Val D'Or. For just over two weeks they created a tempora
ry town the size of Norwich, England's second city, on the 'Camp du Drap D'Or',

or Field of the Cloth of Gold.

What drove the French and the English to create such an extraordinary event? Wha
t did the two sides do when they got there, and what - if anything - was achieve
d?
Melvyn Bragg with
Steven Gunn, Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford University
John Guy, Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge
Penny Roberts, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Warwick
----------------------------------------------------------------13 October 2005: The Rise of the Mammals - life in a cold climate
----------------------------------------------------------------The Cenozoic Era of Earth's history began 65 million years ago and runs to this
day. It began with the extraordinary 'KT event', a supposed asteroid impact that
destroyed the dinosaurs, and incorporates the break up of Pangaea, the enormous
landmass that eventually formed the continents we know today. It is known as th
e 'Age of the Mammals', and it is the period in which warm-blooded, lactating, o
ften furry animals diversified rapidly and spread across the globe on land and i
n the sea.
According to evolutionary theory, what conditions created the opportunity for ma
mmals to thrive? What environmental factors lead to the characteristics they sha
re - and the features they don't? And how did they become the most intelligent c
lass of animals on the planet?
Melvyn Bragg with
Richard Corfield, Senior Lecturer in Earth Sciences at the Open University.
Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London.
Jane Francis, Professor of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Leeds.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------20 October 2005: Cynicism - bold and populist, the history of a shocking philoso
phy
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Eating live octopus with fresh lupins, performing intimate acts in public places
and shouting at passers by from inside a barrel is behaviour not normally assoc
iated with philosophy. But the Cynics were different. They were determined to ex
pose the meaninglessness of civilised life by action as well as by word. They sl
ept rough, ate simply and gave their lectures in the market place. Perhaps surpr
isingly, their ideas and attitudes were immensely popular in the ancient world.
But how coherent was cynicism as a philosophy? What was its influence on literat
ure and politics and is there any truth to the contention that Jesus himself was
influenced by the Cynics?
Melvyn Bragg with
Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick
Miriam Griffin, Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford
John Moles, Professor of Latin at the University of Newcastle
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------27 October 2005: Samuel Johnson and His Circle - life with the professional man

of letters
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"There is no arguing with Johnson, for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks yo
u down with the butt of it." The poet Oliver Goldsmith was not alone in falling
victim to the bludgeoning wit of Samuel Johnson. The greatest luminaries of eigh
teenth century England, including the painter Joshua Reynolds, the philosopher E
dmund Burke and the politician Charles James Fox, all deferred to him ... happil
y or otherwise.
Samuel Johnson was credited with defining English literature with his Lives of t
he Poets and his edition of Shakespeare, and of defining English language with h
is Dictionary. Yet despite those lofty acclamations he failed to get a degree, c
laimed he had never finished a book, was an inveterate hack who told his friend
James Boswell, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money".
How did an Oxford drop-out become England 's most famous and well connected man
of letters? How did generations of readers come to see him as the father of Engl
ish Literature? And why is he so little read today?
Melvyn Bragg with
John Mullan, Professor of English at University College London
Jim McLaverty, Professor of English at Keele University
Judith Hawley, Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of Londo
n
------------------------------------------------------------------------03 November 2005: Asteroids - celestial bodies from the beginning of time
------------------------------------------------------------------------Asteroids used to be regarded as the 'vermin of the solar system', irritating ru
bble that got in the way of astronomers trying to study more interesting phenome
na. It was difficult or even impossible for an observer of asteroids to book tim
e using the world's best telescopes, because they were regarded as unspectacular
objects that could tell us little about the origins of the universe.
However, that has all changed. It is now thought that asteroids are the unused b
uilding blocks of planets, 'pristine material' that has remained chemically unch
anged since the creation of the solar system; a snapshot of matter at the beginn
ing of time. At the moment the Japanese probe Hayabusa is 180 million miles away
, pinned to the back of the asteroid Itokawa, attempting to gain our first sampl
es of the chemical composition of an asteroid.
Why did asteroids fail to form planets? How do they differ from their celestial
cousins, the comets? And are either of them likely to create another impact on p
lanet Earth?
Melvyn Bragg with
Monica Grady, Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at the Open University.
Carolin Crawford, Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
John Zarnecki, Professor of Space Science at the Open University.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------10 November 2005: Greyfriars and Blackfriars - philosophy, evangelism and fund-r
aising in the 13th century Church
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Just as it is better to light up others than to shine alone, it is better to sh

are the fruits of one's contemplation with others than to contemplate in solitud
e". Thus St Thomas Aquinas described his vocation, not only as a teacher, but al
so as a Dominican friar and philosopher at the University of Paris.
In the thirteenth century, the religious orders of the Dominicans and the Franci
scans were a great force for change in Catholic Europe. They thrived in the emer
ging towns and cities of the High Middle Ages, leading crusades and changing the
way the Church dealt with heretics. They were the evangelists who transformed t
he Church's preaching of the Christian message to the people.
On top of all this, these two orders were also responsible for reconciling Class
ical and Christian philosophy; their studies of Aristotle paved the way for the
Renaissance. They also managed to change the curriculum at the universities of P
aris and Oxford. But the Blackfriars and the Greyfriars did not come from the gr
eat monasteries of the time; they started out as itinerant preachers surviving u
pon the charity of the faithful.
So how did these two orders come to dominate the spiritual and academic life of
the thirteenth century, and how did they manage to accumulate such huge wealth w
hile professing allegiance to lives of poverty?
Melvyn Bragg with
Henrietta Leyser, Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford
Alexander Murray, Emeritus Fellow of University College, Oxford
Anthony Kenny, philosopher and former Master of Balliol College, Oxford
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------17 November 2005: Pragmatism - a practical philosophy fit for 20th century Ameri
ca
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------"A pragmatist ... turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal sol
utions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pr
etended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towar
ds facts, towards action and towards power". A quote from William James' 1907 tr
eatise Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking.
William James, along with John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce, was the founder
of an American philosophical movement which flowered during the last thirty yea
rs of the nineteenth century and the first twenty years of the twentieth century
. It purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action. Nothi
ng is true or false - it either works or it doesn't. It was a philosophy which w
as deeply embedded in the reality of life, concerned firstly with the individual
's direct experience of the world he inhabited. In essence, practical applicatio
n was all.
But how did Pragmatism harness the huge scientific leap forward that had come wi
th Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution? And how did this dynamic new philosophy
challenge the doubts expressed by the Sceptics about the nature and extent of kn
owledge? Did Pragmatism influence the economic and political ascendancy of Ameri
ca in the early 20th century? And did it also pave the way for the contemporary
preoccupation with post-modernism?
Melvyn Bragg with
A C Grayling, Professor of Applied Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of
London
Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers' Magazine
Miranda Fricker, Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of Londo

n
------------------------------------------------------------------------------24 November 2005: The Graviton - the quest for the theoretical gravity particle
------------------------------------------------------------------------------Albert Einstein said "I know why there are so many people who love chopping wood
. In this activity one immediately sees the results". Einstein spent the last th
irty years of his life trying to find a theory that would unify electromagnetism
with gravity, but success eluded him.
The search is still on for a unifying theory of gravitational force and hopes ar
e pinned on the location of the graviton - a hypothetical elementary particle th
at transmits the force of gravity. But the graviton is proving hard to find. Ind
eed, the next big research project which involves the largest earth-based labora
tory in the world - a circular ring which goes underground for about twenty-seve
n miles and spans Switzerland, France and Germany - still won't allow us to dete
ct gravitons per se, but might be able to prove their existence in other ways.
The idea of the graviton particle first emerged in the middle of the twentieth c
entury, when the notion that particles as mediators of force was taken seriously
. Physicists believed that it could be applicable to gravity and by the late 20t
h century the hunt was truly on for the ultimate theory, a theory of quantum gra
vity.
So why is the search for the graviton the major goal of theoretical physics? How
will the measurement of gravitation waves help prove its existence? And how mig
ht the graviton unite the seemingly incompatible theories of general relativity
and quantum mechanics?
Melvyn Bragg with
Roger Cashmore, Former Research Director at CERN and Principal of Brasenose Coll
ege, Oxford.
Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey.
Sheila Rowan, Reader in Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at th
e University of Glasgow.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------01 December 2005: Thomas Hobbes and the political philosophy of 'Leviathan'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------"During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they a
re in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man agai
nst every man". Thomas Hobbes, the great seventeenth century philosopher, was pr
incipally interested in political philosophy.
For Hobbes, the difference between order and disorder was stark. In the state of
nature, ungoverned man lived life in "continual fear, and danger of violent dea
th". The only way out of this "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" existe
nce, he said, was to relinquish all your freedom and submit yourself to one all
powerful absolute sovereign. Hobbes's proposal, contained in his controversial,
and now classic text, Leviathan, was written just as England was readjusting to
life after the Civil War and the rule of Oliver Cromwell.
But how did the son of a poor clergyman end up as the most radical thinker of hi
s day? Why did so many of Hobbes' ideas run counter to the prevailing fondness f
or constitutionalism with a limited monarchy? And why is he regarded by so many
political philosophers as an important theorist when so few find his ideas convi
ncing?

Melvyn Bragg with

Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge
David Wootton, Professor of History at the University of York
Annabel Brett, Senior Lecturer in Political Thought and Intellectual History at
Cambridge University
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------08 December 2005: Artificial Intelligence - the quest for a machine that can thi
nk
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Can machines think?" It was the question posed by the mathematician and Bletchl
ey Park code breaker Alan Turing and it is a question still being asked today. W
hat is the difference between men and machines and what does it mean to be human
? And if we can answer that question, is it possible to build a computer that ca
n imitate the human mind?
There are those who have always had robust answers to the questions that those w
ho seek to create artificial intelligence have posed. In 1949 the eminent neuros
urgeon, Professor Geoffrey Jefferson argued that the mechanical mind could never
rival a human intelligence because it could never be conscious of what it did:
"Not until a machine can write a sonnet or compose a concerto because of thought
s and emotions felt", he declared "and not by the chance fall of symbols, could
we agree that machine equals brain - that is, not only write it but know that it
had written it." Yet the quest rolled on for machines that were bigger and bett
er at processing symbols and calculating infinite permutations.
Who were the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and what drove them to im
itate the operations of the human mind? Is intelligence the defining characteris
tic of humanity? And how has the quest for artificial intelligence been driven b
y warfare and conflict in the twentieth century?
Melvyn Bragg with
Jon Agar, Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of
Cambridge.
Alison Adam, Professor of Information Systems at Salford University.
Igor Aleksander, Professor of Neural Systems Engineering at Imperial College, Un
iversity of London.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------15 December 2005: The Peterloo Massacre - democratic protest and brutal repressi
on
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 1819 Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote:
'I met Murder on the way
He had a mask like Castlereagh
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.'

As Foreign Secretary, Robert Stewart Castlereagh had successfully co-ordinated E

uropean opposition to Napoleon, but at home he had repressed the Reform movement
, and popular opinion held him responsible for the Peterloo Massacre of peaceful
demonstrators in 1819. Shelley's epic poem, The Mask of Anarchy, reflected the
widespread public outrage and condemnation of the government's role in the massa
cre.
Why did a peaceful and orderly meeting of men, women and children in St Peter's
Field, Manchester turn into a blood bath? How were the stirrings of radicalism i
n the wake of the Napoleonic Wars dealt with by the British establishment? And w
hat role did the Peterloo Massacre play in bringing about the Great Reform Act o
f 1832?
Melvyn Bragg with
Jeremy Black, Professor of History at the University of Exeter
Sarah Richardson, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Warwick
Clive Emsley, Professor of History at the Open University
---------------------------------------------------------22 December 2005: Heaven - a journey through the afterlife
---------------------------------------------------------The great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote 'that in the end language can
only be related to what is experienced here, and given that the hereafter is no
t here, we can only infer'. Aquinas encapsulated a great human conundrum that ha
s preoccupied writers and thinkers since ancient times: what might heaven be lik
e. And although human language is constrained by experience, this has not stoppe
d an outpouring of artistic, theological and literary representations of heaven.
In the early Middle Ages men ascended up a ladder to heaven. In his Divine Comed
y, Dante divided heaven into ten layers encompassing the planets and the stars.
And the 17th century writer John Bunyan saw the journey of the soul to heaven as
a spiritual struggle in his autobiography, The Pilgrim's Progress.
But what exactly is heaven and where is it? How does the Protestant conception o
f the afterlife differ from the Catholic conception? How does one achieve salvat
ion and what do the saved do when they get there? And, if heaven is so interesti
ng, why has western culture been so spellbound by hell?
Melvyn Bragg with
Valery Rees, senior member of the Language Department at the School of Economic
Science
Martin Palmer, Theologian
John Carey, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Oxford University
------------------------------------------------------------29 December 2005: Aeschylus' Oresteia - the birth of tragedy
------------------------------------------------------------The composer Richard Wagner recalled the visceral sensations of reading Aeschylu
s' great trilogy for the first time. "I could see the Oresteia with my mind's ey
e ... Nothing could equal the sublime emotion with which the Agamemnon inspired
me; and to the last word of the Eumenides, I remained in an atmosphere so far re
moved from the present day that I have never since been really able to reconcile
myself with modern literature."
Aeschylus' audience were all familiar with the tale of one man's return home fro
m the Trojan War. Homer's Odyssey recounted Odysseus' perilous journey home, the
forceful ejection of the suitors from his household and his reunion with wife P
enelope and son Telemachus. Aeschylus had a very different tale of homecoming to

tell in his Oresteia. Agamemnon arrives home from Troy to a murderous welcome f
rom a vengeful wife and a cycle of atrocities unfolds in his household.
Why did Aeschylus make the family the subject of his bloody revenge tragedy? How
did his trilogy make a contribution to the development of Athenian legal instit
utions? And why has the Oresteia had such a powerful hold over the modern imagin
ation?
Melvyn Bragg with
Edith Hall, Professor of Greek Cultural History at Durham University
Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge
Tom Healy, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Birkbeck College, University of L
ondon