In Our Time is a discussion programme hosted by Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom. It is usually broadcast on Thursday mornings at 9am with a shortened repeat at 9.30pm the same day.

About the series

In Our Time is described as a series investigating the "history of ideas". The series covers many different subjects from history, religion, philosophy, the arts or science, one of which is explored in each programme by the presenter Melvyn Bragg with the help of three experts on the subject. The series runs throughout the year except for a summer break of approximately six weeks between July and September. It is currently produced by James Cook.

The BBC website for the programme includes an archive of previous programmes, each available as streaming audio. The archive is divided into sections for the categories of science, religion, philosophy, history and culture, with another section for the programmes of the current series. Since 2005 the programme had been made available for download from the BBC website and iTunes as an mp3 file (podcast) for seven days after transmission. Requests that more or all or the archive be available for download often appear on the messageboard of the series website but the BBC internet producer has responded to point out that through the conditions of the current podcast trial only current editions of the programme (i.e. those broadcast within the last seven days) may be available for download.

In 2005 listeners were invited to vote in a poll for the greatest philosopher in history. The winner was the subject of the final programme before the summer break. The vote was won by Karl Marx with 27.9% of the votes. Other shortlisted figures were David Hume (12.7%), Ludwig Wittgenstein (6.8%), Friedrich Nietzsche (6.5%), Plato (5.6%), Immanuel Kant (5.6%), Thomas Aquinas (4.8%), Socrates (4.8%), Aristotle (4.5%) and Karl Popper (4.2%).

The format of the programme

The essential part of the programme lasts 42 minutes. Melvyn Bragg starts with a summary, in about 200 words, of the week's topic. He then introduces three specialists, usually either two men and a woman or two women and a man, who are with him in the studio. Bragg appears familiar with their work - he may have read their books, and during the programme he will often refer to material which they have submitted in advance.

One of the specialists is invited to begin the proceedings, and then Bragg advances the discussion by inviting another of the guests to answer a question. This continues along a preplanned route until the forty-two minute mark is in sight. Bragg then either winds the programme up himself or allows a remark from one of the specialists to be the concluding statement.

Sometimes, in concluding, he mentions regretfully that there was no time for a particular aspect of the subject. Clearly there had been a plan to include it, but dwelling for too long on an earlier aspect had led to its omission. The programme is usually live and unedited in the morning edition. This is demonstrated during the 26 April 2007 episode where one of the participants joins late but has been 'listening in the taxi on the way in'. To the listener at least, it is Bragg, as knowledgeable amateur, introducing and chairing a planned discussion about the topic. He usually succeeds in guiding it to a satisfactory conclusion. This simple structure and lack of editing allows every programme to develop in a unique way while the format remains the same.

List of programmes

2009-2008

Vitalism - next programme

Broadcast date	Title	Contributors
9 October 2008	Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems - the dirty secret of maths	Marcus du Sautoy, John Barrow, Philip Welch
2 October 2008	The Translation Movement - Aristotle in Arabic	Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Peter Pormann
25 September 2008	Miracles - will they never cease?	Martin Palmer, Janet Soskice, Justin Champion

2008-2007

Broadcast date	Title	Contributors
10 July 2008	Tacitus - The Decadence of Rome	Catharine Edwards, Ellen O’Gorman, Maria Wyke
3 July 2008	The Metaphysical Poets - sex and death in the 17th century	Tom Healy, Julie Sanders, Tom Cain
26 June 2008	The Arab Conquests - the 7th century new world order	Hugh Kennedy, Amira Bennison, Robert Hoyland
19 June 2008	The Music of the Spheres - a dose of heavenly harmonies	Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
12 June 2008	The Riddle of the Sands - how Britain learned to fear the Germans	Richard Evans, Rosemary Ashton, Tim Blanning
5 June 2008	Trofim Lysenko - Joseph Stalin's chief geneticist	Robert Service, Steve Jones, Catherine Merridale
29 May 2008	Probability - heads or tails?	Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Ian Stewart
22 May 2008	The Black Death - a plague on all our houses	Miri Rubin, Samuel Cohn, Paul Binski
15 May 2008	The Library at Nineveh -	Eleanor Robson, Karen Radner, Andrew George
8 May 2008	The Brain: A History - food for thought	Vivian Nutton, Jonathan Sawday, Marina Wallace
1 May 2008	The Enclosures - dividing the country	Rosemary Sweet, Murray Pittock, Mark Overton
April 24 2008	Materialism - are we living in a material world?	Anthony Grayling, Caroline Warman, Anthony O'Hear
April 17 2008	Yeats and Irish Politics - "a terrible beauty is born"	Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
April 10 2008	The Norman Yoke - 1067 and all that	Sarah Foot, Richard Gameson, Matthew Strickland
April 3 2008	Newton's Laws of Motion - they put a man on the Moon	Simon Schaffer, Raymond Flood, Rob Iliffe
March 27 2008	The Dissolution of the Monasteries - religion in ruins	Diarmaid MacCulloch, Diane Purkiss, George Bernard
March 20 2008	Soren Kierkegaard - fear and trembling in Copenhagen	Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
March 13 2008	The Greek Myths - soap opera of the gods	Nick Lowe, Richard Buxton, Mary Beard
March 6 2008	Ada Lovelace - prophet of the computer age	Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi
February 28 2008	King Lear - Shakespeare's finest fairy tale	Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey
February 21 2008	The Multiverse - the universe is not enough	Martin Rees, Fay Dowker, Bernard Carr
February 14 2008	The Statue of Liberty - From France with love...	Robert Gildea, Kathleen Burk, John Keane
February 7 2008	The Social Contract - Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the Origins of Society	Melissa Lane, Susan James, Karen O’Brien
January 31 2008	The Court of Rudolf II - the lost powerhouse of Renaissance ideas	Peter Forshaw, Howard Hotson, Adam Mosley,
January 24 2008	Plate Tectonics - the day the Earth moved	Richard Corfield, Joe Cann, Lynne Frostick
January 17, 2008	The Fisher King - the wound that does not heal	Carolyne Larrington, Stephen Knight, Juliette Wood
January 10, 2008	The Charge of the Light Brigade - "All in the valley of Death rode the six hundred"	Mike Broers, Trudi Tate, Saul David
January 3, 2008	Albert Camus - Rebel with a Cause	Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
December 27, 2007	The Nicene Creed - when Christ became God	Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Andrew Louth
December 20, 2007	The Four Humours - yellow bile, blood, choler and phlegm in the original theory of everything	David Wootton, Vivian Nutton, Noga Arikha
December 13, 2007	The Sassanian Empire - - in the shadow of Ancient Persia	Hugh Kennedy, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, James Howard-Johnston
December 6, 2007	Genetic Mutation - the error-strewn secrets of life	Steve Jones, Adrian Woolfson, Linda Partridge
November 29, 2007	The Fibonacci Sequence - - the numbers in nature	Marcus du Sautoy, Jackie Stedall, , Ron Knott
November 22, 2007	The Prelude - the greatest poem in the English language?	Rosemary Ashton, Stephen Gill, Emma Mason
November 15, 2007	The Discovery of Oxygen - feuds and revolutions at the birth of modern chemistry	Simon Schaffer, Jenny Uglow, Hasok Chang
November 8, 2007	Avicenna - wine, women and philosophy	Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
November 1, 2007	Guilt - what is it good for?	Stephen Mulhall, Miranda Fricker, Oliver Davies
October 25, 2007	Taste - the good, the bad and the ugly in 18th century	Amanda Vickery, John Mullan, Jeremy Black
October 18, 2007	The Arabian Nights - The art of story-telling	Robert Irwin, Marina Warner, Gerard van Gelder, Laudian
October 11, 2007	Divine Right of Kings - "there's such divinity doth hedge a king"	Justin Champion, Tom Healy, Clare Jackson
October 4, 2007	Antimatter - where has it all gone?	Val Gibson, Frank Close, Ruth Gregory
September 27, 2007	Socrates - the man and the myth	Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

2007-2006

Broadcast date	Title	Contributors
July 12, 2007	The Trial of Madame Bovary - "Madame Bovary, c'est moi!"	Andy Martin Mary Orr Robert Gildea
July 05, 2007	The Pilgrim Fathers - the original American dream	Kathleen Burk, Harry Bennett, Tim Lockley
June 28, 2007	Permian-Triassic Boundary - when 95% of life was killed off	Richard Corfield, Mike Benton, Jane Francis
June 21, 2007	Common Sense Philosophy - "there is no statement so absurd that no philosopher will make it"	A. C. Grayling, Melissa Lane, Alexander Broadie
June 14, 2007	Renaissance Astrology - "we are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them"	Peter Forshaw, Lauren Kassell, Jonathan Sawday
June 7, 2007	Siegfried Sassoon - the poet who survived	Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
May 31, 2007	Occam's Razor - cutting medieval philosophy down to size	Sir Anthony Kenny, Marilyn McCord Adams, Richard Alan Cross
May 24, 2007	The Siege of Orleans - did Joan of Arc really rescue France?	Anne Curry, Malcolm Vale, Matthew Bennett
May 17, 2007	Gravitational Waves - a new window on the universe	Jim Al-Khalili, Carolin Crawford, Sheila Rowan
May 10, 2007	Victorian Pessimism - fear and loathing in the late 19th century	Dinah Birch, Rosemary Ashton, Peter Mandler
May 3, 2007	Spinoza - believed that God and Nature were the same thing	Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
April 26, 2007	Greek and Roman Love Poetry - the pursuit of the Beloved from Sappho to Catullus	Nick Lowe, Edith Hall, Maria Wyke
April 19, 2007	Symmetry - the pattern at the heart of our physical world	Fay Dowker, Marcus du Sautoy, Ian Stewart
April 12, 2007	The Opium Wars - a conflict that was to affect British-Chinese relations for generations	Yangwen Zheng, Lars Laamann, Xun Zhou
April 5, 2007	St Hilda - the life and times of the Abbess of Whitby	John Blair, Rosemary Cramp, Sarah Foot
March 29, 2007	Anaesthetics - from ether frolics to pain free surgery	David Wilkinson, Stephanie Snow, Dr Anne Hardy
March 22, 2007	Bismarck - The Iron Chancellor	Richard J. Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman
March 15, 2007	Epistolary Literature - great novels of fictional letters	John Mullan, Karen O'Brien, Brean Hammond
March 8, 2007	Microbiology - the story of the invisible masters of the universe	John Dupré, Anne Glover, Andrew Mendelsohn
March 1, 2007	The History of Optics - from telescopes to microscopes, a new way of seeing the world	Simon Schaffer, Jim Bennett, Emily Winterburn
February 22, 2007	William Wilberforce - the man and his legacy	This broadcast was a documentary rather than a discussion
February 15, 2007	Heart of Darkness - one of the most influential novels of the 20th century	Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies
February 8, 2007	Karl Popper - his ideas challenged our approach to the philosophy of science	John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
February 1, 2007	Genghis Khan - founder of one of the world's largest ever land-based empires	Peter Jackson, Naomi Standen, George Lane
January 25, 2007	Archimedes - the Greek mathematician and his Eureka moments	Jackie Stedall, Serafina Cuomo, George Phillips
January 18, 2007	The Jesuits - the school masters of Europe	Nigel Aston, Simon Ditchfield, Dame Olwen Hufton
January 11, 2007	Mars - the search for life on the Red Planet	John Zarnecki, Colin Pillinger, Monica Grady
January 4, 2007	Borges - the life and work of Argentina's best loved short story writer	Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
December 28, 2006	The Siege of Constantinople - the end of a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire	Roger Crowley, Judith Herrin, Colin Imber
December 21, 2006	Hell - its representation through the ages	Martin Palmer, Margaret Kean, Neil MacGregor
December 14, 2006	Indian Maths - laying the foundations for modern numerals and zero as a number	George Gheverghese Joseph, Colva Roney-Dougal, Dennis Almeida
December 7, 2006	Anarchism - a question of authority?	John Keane, Ruth Kinna, Peter Marshall
November 30, 2006	The Speed of Light - a cosmic speed limit?	John D. Barrow, Iwan Morus, Jocelyn Bell Burnell
November 23, 2006	Altruism - how can evolutionary biology explain it?	Miranda Fricker, Richard Dawkins, John Dupré
November 16, 2006	The Peasants' Revolt - a lasting legacy for popular uprising?	Miri Rubin, Caroline Barron, Alastair Dunn
November 9, 2006	Alexander Pope - "short is my date, but deathless my renown"	John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
November 2, 2006	The Poincaré conjecture - how a 19th century mathematician changed how we think about the shape of the universe	June Barrow-Green, Ian Stewart, Marcus du Sautoy
October 26, 2006	The Encyclopédie - the great project of the Enlightenment	Judith Hawley, Caroline Warman, David Wootton
October 19, 2006	The Needham Question - did China lay the foundations of modern science?	Dr Chris Cullen, Tim Barrett, Frances Wood
October 12, 2006	The Diet of Worms - Luther's stand against the Church	Diarmaid MacCulloch, David Bagchi, Reverend Dr Charlotte Methuen
October 5, 2006	Averroes - the battle between faith and reason	Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Sir Anthony Kenny
September 28, 2006	Alexander von Humboldt - the remarkable career of the Prussian naturalist	Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

2006-2005

Broadcast date	Title	Contributors
July 13, 2006	Greek Comedy - sing as you revel and rout	Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Nick Lowe
July 6, 2006	Pastoral Literature - the romantic idealisation of the countryside	Helen Cooper, Laurence Lerner, Julie Sanders
June 29, 2006	Galaxies - extra-galactic nebulae, black holes, stars and dark matter	John Gribbin, Carolin Crawford, Robert Kennicutt
June 22, 2006	The Spanish Inquisition - one of the most barbaric episodes in European history	John Edwards, Alexander Murray, Michael Alpert
June 15, 2006	Carbon - the basis of life	Harry Kroto, Monica Grady, Ken Teo
June 8, 2006	Uncle Tom's Cabin - the novel that started the American Civil War	Dr Celeste-Marie Bernier, Dr Sarah Meer, Dr Clive Webb
June 1, 2006	The Heart - its anatomical and cultural history	David Wootton, Fay Bound Alberti, Jonathan Sawday
May 25, 2006	Mathematics and Music - the science behind sound and composition	Marcus du Sautoy, Robin Wilson, Ruth Tatlow
May 18, 2006	John Stuart Mill - one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th Century	A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
May 11, 2006	Faeries - supernatural creatures that are neither gods nor humans	Dr Juliette Wood, Diane Purkiss, Nicola Bown
May 4, 2006	Astronomy and Empire - the link between colonial expansion and scientific discovery	Simon Schaffer, Kristen Lippincott, Allan Chapman
April 27, 2006	The Great Exhibition - a wonder of the Victorian world	Jeremy Black, Hermione Hobhouse, Clive Emsley
April 20, 2006	The Search for Immunisation - and the battle against smallpox	Nadja Durbach, Dr Chris Dye, Sanjoy Bhattacharya
April 13, 2006	The Oxford Movement - Anglicans and Catholics in the 19th century	Sheridan Gilley, Frances Knight, Simon Skinner
April 6, 2006	Goethe - formation of a German cultural icon	T. C. W. Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
March 30, 2006	The Carolingian Renaissance - the revival of early medieval Western Europe	Matthew Innes, Julia Smith, Mary Garrison
March 23, 2006	The Royal Society - the first club for experimental science	Stephen Pumfrey, Lisa Jardine, Michael Hunter
March 16, 2006	Don Quixote - Spanish romance and the first novel	Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall
March 9, 2006	Negative numbers - how they spread across civilizations	Ian Stewart, Colva Roney-Dougal, Raymond Flood
March 2, 2006	Friendship - thinking philosophically about our close companions	Angie Hobbs, Mark Vernon, John Mullan
February 23, 2006	Catherine the Great - the Enlightened Despot of Eighteenth Century Russia	Janet Hartley, Simon Dixon, Tony Lentin
February 16, 2006	Human Evolution - from early hominids to Homo sapiens	Steve Jones, Fred Spoor, Margaret Clegg
February 9, 2006	Geoffrey Chaucer - the first Great English Poet	Dr Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield
February 2, 2006	The Abbasid Caliphs - when Baghdad ruled the Muslim world.	Hugh N. Kennedy, Robert Graham Irwin, Amira Bennison
January 26, 2006	Seventeenth Century Print Culture - piety, populism and political protest	Kevin Sharpe, Ann Hughes, Joad Raymond
January 19, 2006	Relativism - the battle against transcendent knowledge	Barry Smith, Jonathan Rée, Kathleen Lennon
January 12, 2006	Prime Numbers - the building blocks of mathematics	Marcus du Sautoy, Robin Wilson, Jackie Stedall
January 5, 2006	The Oath - guaranteeing law, government and the army in the Classical world	Alan Sommerstein, Paul Cartledge, Mary Beard
December 29, 2005	Aeschylus' Oresteia - the birth of tragedy	Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill, Thomas Healy
December 22, 2005	Heaven - a journey through the afterlife	Valery Rees, Martin Palmer, John Carey
December 15, 2005	The Peterloo Massacre - democratic protest and brutal repression	Jeremy Black, Sarah Richardson, Clive Emsley
December 8, 2005	Artificial Intelligence - the quest for a machine that can think	Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
December 1, 2005	'Thomas Hobbes and the political philosophy of Leviathan	Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
November 24, 2005	The Graviton - the quest for the theoretical gravity particle	Roger Cashmore, Jim Al-Khalili, Sheila Rowan
November 17, 2005	Pragmatism - a practical philosophy fit for 20th century America	A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Miranda Fricker
November 10, 2005	Greyfriars and Blackfriars - philosophy, evangelism and fund-raising in the 13th century Church	Henrietta Leyser, Alexander Murray, Sir Anthony Kenny
November 3, 2005	Asteroids - celestial bodies from the beginning of time	Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, John Zarnecki
October 27, 2005	Samuel Johnson and His Circle - life with the professional man of letters	John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
October 20, 2005	Cynicism - bold and populist, the history of a shocking philosophy	Angie Hobbs, Miriam Griffin, John Moles
October 13, 2005	The Rise of the Mammals - life in a cold climate	Richard Corfield, Steve Jones, Jane Francis
October 6, 2005	Field of the Cloth of Gold - a Renaissance entente cordiale	Steven Gunn, John Guy, Penny Roberts
September 29, 2005	Magnetism - an attractive history	Stephen Pumfrey, John Heilbron, Lisa Jardine

2005-2004

Broadcast date	Title	Contributors
July 14, 2005	Karl Marx - In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher	A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
July 7, 2005	Christopher Marlowe - poet, spy, atheist, murder victim?	Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma Smith
June 30, 2005	Merlin - the original Welsh wizard	Dr Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw
June 23, 2005	The KT Boundary - did the dinosaurs burn out or fade away?	Simon Kelley, Jane Francis, Mike Benton
June 16, 2005	Paganism in the Renaissance - how the classical gods returned to the Christian cities	Thomas Healy, Charles Hope, Evelyn Welch
June 9, 2005	The Scriblerus Club - the satirists-in-chief of the 18th century	John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Marcus Walsh
June 2, 2005	Renaissance Maths - the birth of modern mathematics?	Robert Kaplan, Jim Bennett, Jackie Stedall
May 26, 2005	The Terror - when Madame Guillotine ruled France	Mike Broers, Rebecca Spang, T. C. W. Blanning
May 19, 2005	Beauty - the philosophy of beauty	Angie Hobbs, Susan James, Julian Baggini
May 5, 2005	Abelard and Heloise - love, sex and theology in 12th century Paris	A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy
April 28, 2005	Perception and the Senses - how do we see what we see?	Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
April 21, 2005	The Aeneid - the Roman history of the world	Edith Hall, Philip Hardie, Catharine Edwards
April 14, 2005	Archaeology and Imperialism - conquest of the past	Tim Champion, Richard Parkinson, Eleanor Robson
April 7, 2005	Alfred and the Battle of Edington - without Alfred, no England?	Dr Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, John Hines
March 31, 2005	John Ruskin - a different kind of Victorian	Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
March 24, 2005	Angels - how they got their wings	Martin Palmer, Valery Rees, John Haldane
March 17, 2005	Dark Energy - the unknown force breaking the universe apart	Sir Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Sir Roger Penrose
March 10, 2005	Modernist Utopias - the original 21st century	John Carey, Steve Connor, Laura Marcus
March 3, 2005	Stoicism - the search for inner calm	Angie Hobbs, Jonathan Rée, David Sedley
February 24, 2005	Alchemy - seeking the perfection of all things	Peter Forshaw, Lauren Kassell, Stephen Pumfrey
February 17, 2005	The Cambrian Explosion - the big bang of evolutionary history	Simon Conway Morris, Richard Corfield, Jane Francis
January 13, 2005	The Mind/Body Problem - does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind?	A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
January 6, 2005	The Assassination of Tsar Alexander II - did his killing cause the Russian Revolution?	Orlando Figes, Dominic Lieven, Catriona Kelly
December 30, 2004	The Roman Republic - what were Rome's republican ideals?	Greg Woolf, Catherine Steel, Tom Holland
December 23, 2004	Faust - the original pact with the Devil	Dr Juliette Wood, Osman Durrani, Rosemary Ashton
December 16, 2004	The Second Law of Thermodynamics - the most important thing you will ever know	John Gribbin, Peter Atkins, Monica Grady
December 9, 2004	Machiavelli and the Italian City States - high politics and low cunning in the Italian Renaissance	Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine
December 2, 2004	Carl Gustav Jung - Discovering the Self	Brett Kahr, Ronald Hayman, Andrew Samuels
November 25, 2004	The Venerable Bede - the father of English history	Dr Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Dr Michelle Brown
November 18, 2004	Higgs Boson - the search for the God particle	Jim Al-Khalili, David Wark, Roger Cashmore
November 11, 2004	Zoroastrianism - was the religion of the Persian Empire the first monotheism?	Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Farrokh Vajifdar, Alan Williams
November 4, 2004	Electrickery - the origins of electricity	Simon Schaffer, Patricia Fara, Iwan Morus
October 28, 2004	Rhetoric - from the original sophists to latter-day demagogues	Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan
October 21, 2004	Witchcraft - Reformation Europe turned upon itself	Alison Rowlands, Lyndal Roper, Malcolm Gaskill
October 14, 2004	The Han Synthesis - creating the Chinese cosmos	Dr Chris Cullen, Carol Michaelson, Roel Sterckx
October 7, 2004	Jean-Paul Sartre - a man condemned to be free	Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
September 30, 2004	Politeness - the great 18th century craze	Amanda Vickery, David Wootton, John Mullan
September 23, 2004	The Origins of Life - how it all began	Richard Dawkins, Richard Corfield, Linda Partridge
September 16, 2004	Agincourt - the real facts behind the battle.	Anne Curry, Michael Jones, John Watts
September 9, 2004	The Odyssey - Homer's epic tale of Odysseus' return home	Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin
September 2, 2004	Pi - the number that doesn't add up	Robert Kaplan, Eleanor Robson, Ian Stewart

2004-2003

Broadcast date	Title	Contributors
June 24, 2004	George Washington and the American Revolution - the most significant event in history	Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
June 17, 2004	Renaissance Magic - the great passion of the age	Peter Forshaw, Valery Rees, Jonathan Sawday
June 10, 2004	Empiricism - the English philosophy?	Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée
June 3, 2004	Babylon - the great forgotten civilisation	Eleanor Robson, Irving Finkel, Andrew R. George
May 27, 2004	Planets - the astronomy of the 21st century	Paul Murdin, Hugh R. A. Jones, Carolin Crawford
May 20, 2004	Toleration - from medieval intolerance to religious freedom	Justin Champion, David Wootton, Sarah Barber
May 13, 2004	Zero - everything about nothing	Robert Kaplan, Ian Stewart, Lisa Jardine
May 6, 2004	Heroism - do we live in an heroic age?	Angie Hobbs, A. C. Grayling, Paul Cartledge
April 29, 2004	Tea - an empire in a teacup	Huw Bowen, James Walvin, Amanda Vickery
April 22, 2004	Hysteria - the normal state of human beings?	Juliet Mitchell, Rachel Bowlby, Brett Kahr
April 15, 2004	The Later Romantics - the world of Byron, Keats and Shelley	Jonathan Bate, Robert Woof, Jennifer Wallace
April 8, 2004	The Fall - how Adam and Eve affect us all	Martin Palmer, Griselda Pollock, John Carey
April 1, 2004	China: The Warring States Period - the fiery beginnings of Chinese civilisation	Dr Chris Cullen, Dr Vivienne Lo, Carol Michaelson
March 25, 2004	Theories of Everything - still the holy grail of physics?	Brian Greene, John D. Barrow, Dr Val Gibson
March 18, 2004	'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire	Charlotte Roueché, David Womersley, Richard Alston
March 11, 2004	The Norse Gods - the great myths of pagan Europe	Dr Carolyne Larrington, Heather O'Donoghue, John Hines
March 4, 2004	Dreams - is there a science of dreams?	Professor V. S. Ramachandran, Mark Solms, Martin Conway
February 26, 2004	The Mughal Empire - the glory of India	Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Susan Stronge, Chandrika Kaul
February 19, 2004	Rutherford - the father of nuclear physics	Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
February 12, 2004	The Sublime - defining the state of awe	Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla
February 5, 2004	The Battle of Thermopylae - battle that defined East and West	Tom Holland, Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall
January 29, 2004	Cryptography - secret history of ciphers and codes	Simon Singh, Professor Fred Piper, Lisa Jardine
December 26, 2003	Lamarck and Natural Selection - the Lamarckian Heresy	Sandy Knapp, Steve Jones, Simon Conway Morris
December 18, 2003	The Alphabet - its creation and development	Eleanor Robson, Alan Millard, Rosalind Thomas
December 11, 2003	The Devil - a brief biography	Martin Palmer, Alison Rowlands, David Wootton
December 4, 2003	Wittgenstein - a philosophy of linguistics	Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
November 27, 2003	St Bartholomew's Day Massacre - slaughter in Paris.	Diarmaid MacCulloch, Mark Greengrass, Penny Roberts
November 20, 2003	Ageing the Earth - a journey in geological time.	Richard Corfield, Hazel Rymer, Henry Gee
November 13, 2003	Duty - concepts of obligation.	Angie Hobbs, Annabel Brett, A. C. Grayling
November 6, 2003	Sensation - the best sellers of the 19th century.	John Mullan, Lyn Pykett, Dinah Birch
October 30, 2003	Robin Hood - the greatest of English myths.	Stephen Knight, Thomas Hahn, Dr Juliette Wood
October 23, 2003	Infinity - a brief history.	Ian Stewart, Robert Kaplan, Sarah Rees
October 16, 2003	The Schism - between East and West in Christianity.	Henrietta Leyser, Norman Housley, Jonathan Shepard
October 9, 2003	Bohemianism - a life of art, freedom and poverty	Hermione Lee, Virginia Nicholson, Graham Robb
October 2, 2003	James Clerk Maxwell - great 19th century physicist	Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

2003-2002

Broadcast date	Title	Contributors
July 17, 2003	The Apocalypse - was it a revelation?	Martin Palmer, Marina Benjamin, Justin Champion
July 10, 2003	Nature - from Homer to Darwin	Jonathan Bate, Roger Scruton, Karen Edwards
July 3, 2003	Vulcanology - significance of volcanoes.	Hilary Downes, Steve Self, Bill McGuire
June 26, 2003	The East India Co - a corporate route to Empire.	Huw Bowen, Linda Colley, Maria Misra
June 19, 2003	The Aristocracy - how the ruling class survives	David Cannadine, Rosemary Sweet, Felipe Fernández-Armesto
June 12, 2003	The Art of War - maintaining the objective?	Sir Michael Howard, Angie Hobbs, Jeremy Black
June 5, 2003	The Lunar Society - scientific ferment 200 years ago.	Simon Schaffer, Jenny Uglow, Peter Jones
May 29, 2003	Memory - and the brain	Martin Conway, Mike Kopelman, Kim Graham
May 22, 2003	Blood - its religious, medical and moral significance	Miri Rubin, Dr Anne Hardy, Jonathan Sawday
May 15, 2003	The Holy Grail - just a medieval myth?	Dr Carolyne Larrington, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dr Juliette Wood
May 8, 2003	The Jacobite Rebellion - could it have succeeded?	Murray Pittock, Stana Nenadic, Allan Macinnes
May 1, 2003	Roman Britain - the effects of 400 years of occupation	Greg Woolf, Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards
April 24, 2003	Youth - from Adonis to James Dean	Tim Whitmarsh, Thomas Healy, Deborah Thom
April 17, 2003	Proust - his life and work	Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Dr Robert Fraser
April 3, 2003	The Spanish Civil War - causes and legacy	Paul Preston, Helen Graham, Dr Mary Vincent
March 27, 2003	Supernovas - the life cycle of stars	Paul Murdin, Janna Levin, Phil Charles
March 20, 2003	Originality - is it just a romantic notion?	John Deathridge, Jonathan Rée, Professor Catherine Belsey
March 13, 2003	Redemption - the concept of salvation	Richard Harries, Janet Soskice, Stephen Mulhall
March 6, 2003	Meteorology - why does it still fascinate us?	Vladimir Jankovic, Richard Hamblyn, Liba Taub
February 27, 2003	The Aztecs - looking behind the myths	Alan Knight, Adrian Locke, Elizabeth Graham
February 20, 2003	The Lindisfarne Gospels - unifying Christianity in Britain	Dr Michelle Brown, Dr Richard Gameson, Professor Clare Lees
February 13, 2003	Chance and Design in Evolution - Design in Nature	Simon Conway Morris, Sandy Knapp, John Hedley Brooke
February 6, 2003	The Epic - from Homer to Joyce	John Carey, Karen Edwards, Oliver Taplin
December 19, 2002	The Calendar - a history of the Calendar	Robert Poole, Kristen Lippincott, Peter Watson
December 12, 2002	Disease - the fight against diseases and plagues	Dr Anne Hardy, David Bradley, Dr Chris Dye
December 5, 2002	The Scottish Enlightenment - how enlightened?	Professor Tom Devine, Karen O'Brien, Alexander Broadie
November 28, 2002	Imagination - just what is it?	Dr Susan Stuart, Steven Mithen, Semir Zeki
November 21, 2002	Cordoba and Muslim Spain - a culture of tolerance?	Tim Winter, Martin Palmer, Mehri Niknam
November 14, 2002	Victorian Realism - how real?	Philip Maurice Davis, A.N. Wilson, Dinah Birch
November 7, 2002	Human Nature - innate or nurtured?	Steven Pinker, Janet Radcliffe Richards, John N. Gray
October 31, 2002	Architecture and Power - imagery of imperialism	Adrian Tinniswood, Gavin Stamp, Gillian Darley
October 24, 2002	The Scientist in History - missionary or monster?	John Gribbin, Patricia Fara, Hugh Pennington
October 17, 2002	Slavery and Empire - were Britons also captives?	Linda Colley, Catherine Hall, Felipe Fernández-Armesto

2002

Broadcast date	Title	Contributors
July 18, 2002	'''History of Heritage	David Cannadine, Miri Rubin, Peter Mandler
July 11, 2002	Psychoanalysis - do people crave dictatorship?	Adam Phillips, Sally Alexander, Malcolm Bowie
July 4, 2002	Freedom - a principle worth fighting and dying for?	John Keane, Bernard Williams, Annabel Brett
June 27, 2002	Cultural Imperialism - should we try to prevent it?	Linda Colley, Phillip Dodd, Mary Beard
June 20, 2002	Richard Wagner - his influence on the German spirit.	John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner
June 13, 2002	The American West - was it an "experiment of liberty"?	Frank Mclynn, Jenni Calder, Christopher Frayling
June 6, 2002	The Soul - the key to our individuality as humans?	Richard Sorabji, Ruth Padel, Martin Palmer
May 30, 2002	The Grand Tour - what drove this desire for travel?	Chloe Chard, Jeremy Black, Edward Chaney
May 23, 2002	History of Drugs - their role in medicine and the arts	Richard Davenport-Hines, Sadie Plant, Mike Jay
May 16, 2002	Chaos Theory - ws the universe chaotic or orderly?	Susan Greenfield, David Papineau, Neil Johnson
May 9, 2002	The Examined Life - is an unexamined life worth living?	Dr A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Julian Baggini
May 2, 2002	Schrodinger's Cat - Quantum Mechanics	Roger Penrose, Fay Dowker, Tony Sudbery
April 25, 2002	Tolstoy - the influence of the Russian Novel	A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
April 11, 2002	Bohemia - what did it mean to be Bohemian?	Norman Davies, Karin Friedrich, Robert Pynsent
April 4, 2002	ET - new life within our solar system	Simon Goodwin, Heather Couper, Ian Stewart
March 28, 2002	The Artist - a special kind of human being?	Emma Barker, Thomas Healy, T. C. W. Blanning
March 21, 2002	Marriage - its various forms and the role of the State	Janet Soskice, Frederik Pedersen, Christina Hardyment
March 14, 2002	Buddhism - why has it captured the spirit of our age?	Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deagallee
March 7, 2002	John Milton - poet or politician?	John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
February 28, 2002	Virtue - is it derived from reason?	Galen Strawson, Miranda Fricker, Roger Crisp
February 21, 2002	The Celts - what were the Celts in Britain really like?	Barry Cunliffe, Alistair Moffat, Miranda Aldhouse Green
February 14, 2002	Anatomy - 2000 years of anatomical study	Harold Ellis, Ruth Richardson, Andrew Cunningham

Contributors

External links

• In Our Time at the BBC website