In Our Time

BBC's podcast In Our Time releases on a weekly basis panel discussions on a wide variety of subjects exploring the history of ideas (or the history of thought as it was termed in previous seasons). Each and every issue is very much worthwhile listening to. Host Melvyn Bragg does an absolutely superb job of leading the discussion and the program makes sure he is always accompanied by three of the best academicians in the relevant fields.

Recent episodes paid attention to Kierkegaard, portraying the philosopher and giving an excellent overview over his thinking laying the foundation to existentialism. To the Dissolution of the Monasteries, bringing us close to the era when Henry VIII disconnected the Church of England from Rome and as a part of that process managed to dismantle hundreds of monasteries all over the land, thus removing an element of the culture which was so important until the end of the Middle Ages and needed to be replaced afterwards. Lastly to Newton's Laws of Motion; how Sir Isaac took an original approach in natural philosophy while he actually wanted to engage in theology and lay the basis for physics that still serves today.

In Our Time is regularly reviewed on this blog. It can be tracked with the label In Our Time. The podcast is one of the best that is around and fit to almost all audiences. Here is a list of past reviews:

General podcast review,
King Lear,
Ada Lovelace,
The Social Contract,
Plate Tectonics,
The Fisher King,
The Charge of the Light Brigade,
Albert Camus,
The Nicene Creed,
Four humor medicine,
The Sassanian Empire,
Mutations,
The Fibonacci Sequence,
The Prelude,
Oxygen,
Avicenna,
Guilt,
Taste,
Arabian Nights,
The Divine Right of Kings,
Antimatter,
Socrates,
Mass Extinction,
Common Sense,
Astrology,
Siegfried Sassoon,
William of Ockham,
Joan of Arc,
Gravitational Waves,
Victorian Pessimism.