Episode summary: Today’s episode is about a revolution that took centuries to happen if it ever really happened at all: The Scientific Revolution. David talks to historian of science Simon Schaffer about what changed in human understanding – and what didn’t – in the age of Galileo and Newton. Was th...

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Episode summary: A billionaire family’s mission to amass ancient biblical treasures leads to them getting caught up in an international web of looted artefacts, forgeries and criminal networks.Art sleuth Ben Lewis uncovers how the Green family - owners of America’s Hobby Lobby craft stores - spent m...

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Episode summary: Alexis Soyer with Lindsay Middleton

Episode summary: And what UFOs might tell us about supernatural reality

I dunno. I listened hard, expecting some kind of enlightenment at least to the importance of the question, but what I heard seemed awfully undergrad angst ... and with the comfort of late-night cocoa.

Episode summary: Today’s episode in our history of revolutionary ideas is about a medieval movement that used the ancient past to rethink and reimagine the present and the future. David talks to historian Eric Nelson about humanism and its enormous impact on the history of ideas. How did humanism em...

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Episode summary: Google claim their latest quantum computer chip is able to process something in five minutes it would take a normal computer 10 septillion years to figure out.As this is a massive amount longer than the entire history of the known universe, that seems to suggest the chip is extremel...

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Episode summary: S8 Ep1: The Sweet Spot of Savoury

Episode summary: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slime mould, a basic organism that grows on logs, cowpats and compost heaps. Scientists have found difficult to categorise slime mould: in 1868, the biologist Thomas Huxley asked: ‘Is this a plant, or is it an animal? Is it both or is it neither?’ and...

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Episode summary: What went wrong in Kingston, Tennessee, and what does it reveal about the messy legacy of public utilities turned corporate giants?

Episode summary: Send us a textWhat if transaction costs could shape entire political and economic systems? Join us for an insightful discussion with Shruti Rajagopalan, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, as she takes us through her fascinating journey from the University of Delhi to G...

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