
300 Folgen

In Our Time BBC
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- Geschichte
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4.4 • 71 Bewertungen
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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas
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Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, according to Machiavelli, was the last of the Five Good Emperors. Marcus Aurelius, 121 to 180 AD, has long been known as a model of the philosopher king, a Stoic who, while on military campaigns, compiled ideas on how best to live his life, and how best to rule. These ideas became known as his Meditations, and they have been treasured by many as an insight into the mind of a Roman emperor, and an example of how to avoid the corruption of power in turbulent times.
The image above shows part of a bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.
With
Simon Goldhill
Professor of Greek Literature and Culture and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge
Angie Hobbs
Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
And
Catharine Edwards
Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson -
Medieval Pilgrimage
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea and experience of Christian pilgrimage in Europe from the 12th to the 15th centuries, which figured so strongly in the imagination of the age. For those able and willing to travel, there were countless destinations from Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela to the smaller local shrines associated with miracles and relics of the saints. Meanwhile, for those unable or not allowed to travel there were journeys of the mind, inspired by guidebooks that would tell the faithful how many steps they could take around their homes to replicate the walk to the main destinations in Rome and the Holy Land, passing paintings of the places on their route.
The image above is of a badge of St Thomas of Canterbury, worn by pilgrims who had journeyed to his shrine.
With
Miri Rubin
Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London
Kathryn Rudy
Professor of Art History at the University of St Andrews
And
Anthony Bale
Professor of Medieval Studies and Dean of the School of Arts at Birkbeck, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson -
The Rosetta Stone
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most famous museum objects in the world, shown in the image above in replica, and dating from around 196 BC. It is a damaged, dark granite block on which you can faintly see three scripts engraved: Greek at the bottom, Demotic in the middle and Hieroglyphs at the top. Napoleon’s soldiers found it in a Mamluk fort at Rosetta on the Egyptian coast, and soon realised the Greek words could be used to unlock the hieroglyphs. It was another 20 years before Champollion deciphered them, becoming the first to understand the hieroglyphs since they fell out of use 1500 years before and so opening up the written culture of ancient Egypt to the modern age.
With
Penelope Wilson
Associate Professor of Egyptian Archaeology at Durham University
Campbell Price
Curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum
And
Richard Bruce Parkinson
Professor of Egyptology and Fellow of The Queen’s College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson -
Emilie du Châtelet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French mathematicians and natural philosophers of the 18th Century, celebrated across Europe. Emilie du Châtelet, 1706-49, created a translation of Newton’s Principia from Latin into French that helped spread the light of mathematics on the emerging science, and her own book Institutions de Physique, with its lessons on physics, was welcomed as profound. She had the privileges of wealth and aristocracy, yet had to fight to be taken seriously as an intellectual in a world of ideas that was almost exclusively male.
With
Patricia Fara
Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge
David Wootton
Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York
And
Judith Zinsser
Professor Emerita of History at Miami University of Ohio and biographer of Emilie du Châtelet.
Producer: Simon Tillotson -
Saint Cuthbert
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Northumbrian man who, for 500 years, was the pre-eminent English saint, to be matched only by Thomas Becket after his martyrdom in 1170. Now at Durham, Cuthbert was buried first on Lindisfarne in 687AD, where monks shared vivid stories of his sanctifying miracles, his healing, and his power over nature, and his final tomb became a major site of pilgrimage. In his lifetime he was both hermit and kingmaker, bishop and travelling priest, and the many accounts we have of him, including two by Bede, tell us much of the values of those who venerated him so soon after his death.
The image above is from a stained glass window in the south aisle of the nave in Durham Cathedral: 'St Cuthbert praying before his cell in the Farne Island'
With
Jane Hawkes
Professor of Medieval Art History at the University of York
Sarah Foot
The Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church Cathedral
And
John Hines
Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University
Producer: Simon Tillotson -
The Plague of Justinian
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the plague that broke out in Constantinople 541AD, in the reign of Emperor Justinian. According to the historian Procopius, writing in Byzantium at the time, this was a plague by which the whole human race came near to being destroyed, embracing the whole world, and blighting the lives of all mankind. The bacterium behind the Black Death has since been found on human remains from that time, and the symptoms described were the same, and evidence of this plague has since been traced around the Mediterranean and from Syria to Britain and Ireland. The question of how devastating it truly was, though, is yet to be resolved.
With
John Haldon
Professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies Emeritus at Princeton University
Rebecca Flemming
Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge
And
Greg Woolf
Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Kundenrezensionen
Excellent insight in all sorts of topics
If only all podcasts were of this quality! It is neither just a read out monologue nor a hard to follow interview dialogue but a great, sometimes even humorous conversation of easy to listen to, well chosen experts combining critical different point of views in a harmonic way. The amount of research the presenter does himself allows him to ask the kind of questions necessary to build bridges between the disciplines to actually understand the analytical depths of the discussed topic. On top of that the discussion is lead by true interest and very friendly and respectfully carried out.
Educational
A difficult brief to academically explain a substantial subject over a longish time, but always successful and well refereed by the presenter, even though science is clearly not his bag. Tea or coffe?
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