List of In Our Time programmes

In Our Time is a radio discussion programme exploring a wide variety of historical, scientific, cultural, religious and philosophical topics, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom since 1998. It was hosted by Melvyn Bragg from its start until 3 July 2025, and by Misha Glenny from January 2026 onwards. All episodes are available to download as individual podcasts.

Programmes

1998–1999

Broadcast date Listen again Title Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast 15 October 1998 War in the 20th Century 22 October 1998 Politics in the 20th Century 29 October 1998 Science's Revelations 5 November 1998 Science in the 20th century 12 November 1998 The City in the 20th Century 19 November 1998 The Brain and Consciousness 26 November 1998 Work in the 20th Century 3 December 1998 History's relevance in the 20th century 10 December 1998 Cultural rights in the 20th Century 17 December 1998 The American Century 24 December 1998 Neuroscience in the 20th Century 31 December 1998 The British Empire's Legacy 7 January 1999 Feminism 14 January 1999 Genetic Engineering 21 January 1999 Modern Culture 28 January 1999 Ageing 4 February 1999 Psychoanalysis and its Legacy 11 February 1999 Language and the Mind 18 February 1999 Space in Religion and Science 25 February 1999 The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century 4 March 1999 Shakespeare and Literary Criticism 11 March 1999 History as Science 18 March 1999 Animal Experiments and Rights 25 March 1999 Architecture in the 20th Century 1 April 1999 Good and Evil 8 April 1999 Writing and Political Oppression 15 April 1999 Evolution 22 April 1999 Fundamentalism 29 April 1999 Artificial Intelligence 6 May 1999 Mathematics 13 May 1999 Multiculturalism 20 May 1999 The Universe's Origins 27 May 1999 Memory and Culture 3 June 1999 Just War 10 June 1999 The Monarchy 17 June 1999 The Great Disruption 24 June 1999 Capitalism 1 July 1999 Intelligence 8 July 1999 Africa 15 July 1999 Truth, Lies and fiction 22 July 1999 Pain

1999–2000 From 6 April 2000, with the discussion on "The Natural Order", the programme moved from 30 minutes to a 45-minute format.

Broadcast date Listen again Title Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast 23 September 1999 Genetic Determinism 30 September 1999 Maths and Storytelling 7 October 1999 Utopia 14 October 1999 The Nation State 21 October 1999 The Individual 28 October 1999 Atrocity in the 20th Century 4 November 1999 Education 11 November 1999 The Novel 18 November 1999 Progress 25 November 1999 Consciousness 2 December 1999 Tragedy 9 December 1999 Childhood 16 December 1999 Medical Ethics 23 December 1999 Prayer 30 December 1999 Time 6 January 2000 Climate change 13 January 2000 Information Technology 20 January 2000 Masculinity in Literature 27 January 2000 Economic Rights 3 February 2000 Republicanism 10 February 2000 Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment 17 February 2000 Reading 24 February 2000 Grand Unified Theory 2 March 2000 Metamorphosis 9 March 2000 The Age of Doubt 16 March 2000 Lenin 23 March 2000 Materialism and the Consumer 30 March 2000 History and Understanding the Past 6 April 2000 The Natural Order 13 April 2000 New Wars 20 April 2000 Englishness 27 April 2000 Human Origins 4 May 2000 Death 11 May 2000 Shakespeare's Work 18 May 2000 The Wars of the Roses 25 May 2000 Chemical elements 1 June 2000 The American Ideal 8 June 2000 The Renaissance 15 June 2000 Inspiration and Genius 22 June 2000 Biography 29 June 2000 Imagination and Consciousness

2000–2001

Broadcast date Listen again Title Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast 28 September 2000 London 5 October 2000 Hitler in History 12 October 2000 The Romantics 19 October 2000 Laws of Nature 26 October 2000 The Tudor State 2 November 2000 Evolutionary Psychology 9 November 2000 Psychoanalysis and Literature 16 November 2000 Nihilism 4 January 2001 Gothic 11 January 2001 Mathematics and Platonism 18 January 2001 The Enlightenment in Britain 25 January 2001 Science and Religion 1 February 2001 Imperial Science 8 February 2001 Humanism 15 February 2001 The Restoration 22 February 2001 Quantum Gravity 1 March 2001 Money 15 March 2001 Shakespeare's Life 22 March 2001 Fossils 29 March 2001 The Philosophy of Love 5 April 2001 The Roman Empire's Collapse in the 5th century 12 April 2001 Black Holes 19 April 2001 The Glorious Revolution 26 April 2001 Literary Modernism 3 May 2001 Evil 14 June 2001 The French Revolution's Legacy 21 June 2001 The Sonnet 28 June 2001 Existentialism 5 July 2001 The Earth's Origins 12 July 2001 Dickens 19 July 2001 Byzantium

2001–2002

Broadcast date Listen again Title Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast 18 October 2001 Democracy 25 October 2001 Napoleon and Wellington 1 November 2001 Confucius 8 November 2001 The British Empire 15 November 2001 Surrealism 22 November 2001 Oceanography 29 November 2001 Third Crusade 6 December 2001 Oscar Wilde 13 December 2001 Genetics 20 December 2001 Rome and European Civilization 27 December 2001 Food 3 January 2002 Sensibility 10 January 2002 Nuclear Physics 17 January 2002 Catharism 24 January 2002 Happiness 31 January 2002 Yeats and Mysticism 7 February 2002 The Universe's Shape 14 February 2002 Anatomy 21 February 2002 The Celts 28 February 2002 Virtue 7 March 2002 Milton 14 March 2002 The Buddha 21 March 2002 Marriage 28 March 2002 The Artist 4 April 2002 Extra Terrestrials 11 April 2002 Bohemia 25 April 2002 Tolstoy 2 May 2002 The Physics of Reality 9 May 2002 The Examined Life 16 May 2002 Chaos Theory 23 May 2002 Drugs 30 May 2002 The Grand Tour 6 June 2002 The Soul 13 June 2002 The American West 20 June 2002 Wagner 27 June 2002 Cultural Imperialism 4 July 2002 Freedom 11 July 2002 Psychoanalysis and democracy 18 July 2002 Heritage

2002–2003

Broadcast date Listen again Title Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast 17 October 2002 Slavery and Empire 24 October 2002 The Scientist 31 October 2002 Architecture and Power 7 November 2002 Human Nature 14 November 2002 Victorian Realism 21 November 2002 Muslim Spain 28 November 2002 Imagination 5 December 2002 The Enlightenment in Scotland 12 December 2002 Man and Disease 19 December 2002 The Calendar 6 February 2003 The Epic 13 February 2003 Chance and Design 20 February 2003 The Lindisfarne Gospels 27 February 2003 The Aztecs 6 March 2003 Meteorology 13 March 2003 Redemption 20 March 2003 Originality 27 March 2003 The Life of Stars 3 April 2003 The Spanish Civil War 17 April 2003 Proust 24 April 2003 Youth 1 May 2003 Roman Britain 8 May 2003 The Jacobite Rebellion 15 May 2003 The Holy Grail 22 May 2003 Blood 29 May 2003 Memory 5 June 2003 The Lunar Society 12 June 2003 The Art of War 19 June 2003 The Aristocracy 26 June 2003 The East India Company 3 July 2003 Vulcanology 10 July 2003 Nature 17 July 2003 The Apocalypse

2003–2004

Broadcast date Listen again Title Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast 2 October 2003 Maxwell 9 October 2003 Bohemianism 16 October 2003 The Schism 23 October 2003 Infinity 30 October 2003 Robin Hood 6 November 2003 Sensation 13 November 2003 Duty 20 November 2003 Ageing the Earth 27 November 2003 St Bartholomew's Day Massacre 4 December 2003 Wittgenstein 11 December 2003 The Devil 18 December 2003 The Alphabet 26 December 2003 Lamarck and Natural Selection 29 January 2004 Cryptography 5 February 2004 Thermopylae 12 February 2004 The Sublime 19 February 2004 Rutherford 26 February 2004 The Mughal Empire 4 March 2004 Dreams 11 March 2004 The Norse Gods 25 March 2004 Theories of Everything 1 April 2004 China's Warring States period 8 April 2004 The Fall 15 April 2004 The Later Romantics 22 April 2004 Hysteria 29 April 2004 Tea 6 May 2004 Heroism 13 May 2004 Zero 20 May 2004 Toleration 27 May 2004 The Planets 3 June 2004 Babylon 10 June 2004 Empiricism 17 June 2004 Renaissance Magic 24 June 2004 Washington and the American Revolution

2004–2005 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 result of the vote was: Karl Marx (with 27.9% of the votes) 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%) Karl Popper (4.2%)

Broadcast date Listen again Title Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast 2 September 2004 Pi 9 September 2004 The Odyssey 16 September 2004 Agincourt 23 September 2004 The Origins of Life 30 September 2004 Politeness 7 October 2004 Sartre 14 October 2004 The Han Synthesis 21 October 2004 Witchcraft 28 October 2004 Rhetoric 4 November 2004 Electrickery 11 November 2004 Zoroastrianism 18 November 2004 Higgs Boson 25 November 2004 The Venerable Bede 2 December 2004 Jung 9 December 2004 Machiavelli and the Italian City States 16 December 2004 The Second Law of Thermodynamics 23 December 2004 Faust 30 December 2004 The Roman Republic 6 January 2005 Tsar Alexander II's assassination 13 January 2005 The Mind/Body Problem 17 February 2005 The Cambrian Period 24 February 2005 Alchemy 3 March 2005 Stoicism 10 March 2005 Modernist Utopias 17 March 2005 Dark Energy 24 March 2005 Angels 31 March 2005 John Ruskin 7 April 2005 Alfred and the Battle of Edington 14 April 2005 Archaeology and Imperialism 21 April 2005 The Aeneid 28 April 2005 Perception and the Senses 5 May 2005 Abelard and Heloise 19 May 2005 Beauty 26 May 2005 The French Revolution's Reign of Terror 2 June 2005 Renaissance Maths 9 June 2005 The Scriblerus Club 16 June 2005 Paganism in the Renaissance 23 June 2005 The KT Boundary 30 June 2005 Merlin 7 July 2005 Marlowe 14 July 2005 Marx

2005–2006

Broadcast date Listen again Title Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast 29 September 2005 Magnetism 6 October 2005 The Field of the Cloth of Gold 13 October 2005 Mammals 20 October 2005 Cynicism 27 October 2005 Johnson 3 November 2005 Asteroids 10 November 2005 Greyfriars and Blackfriars 17 November 2005 Pragmatism 24 November 2005 The Graviton 1 December 2005 Hobbes 8 December 2005 Artificial Intelligence 15 December 2005 The Peterloo Massacre 22 December 2005 Heaven 29 December 2005 The Oresteia 5 January 2006 The Oath 12 January 2006 Prime Numbers 19 January 2006 Relativism 26 January 2006 Seventeenth Century Print Culture 2 February 2006 The Abbasid Caliphs 9 February 2006 Chaucer 16 February 2006 Human Evolution 23 February 2006 Catherine the Great 2 March 2006 Friendship 9 March 2006 Negative numbers 16 March 2006 Don Quixote 23 March 2006 The Royal Society 30 March 2006 The Carolingian Renaissance 6 April 2006 Goethe 13 April 2006 The Oxford Movement 20 April 2006 Immunisation 27 April 2006 The Great Exhibition of 1851 4 May 2006 Astronomy and Empire 11 May 2006 Fairies 18 May 2006 Mill 25 May 2006 Mathematics and Music 1 June 2006 The Heart 8 June 2006 Uncle Tom's Cabin 15 June 2006 Carbon 22 June 2006 The Spanish Inquisition 29 June 2006 Galaxies 6 July 2006 Pastoral Literature 13 July 2006 Comedy in Ancient Greek Theatre

2006–2007