Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.
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The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and teachings of The Buddha. Two and a half thousand years ago a young man meditated on life and death and found enlightenment. In that moment he saw his past lives spread out before him and he realised that all life, indeed the very fabric of existence, was made of suffering. That man was Siddhartha Gautama but we know him as The Buddha. He taught us that we have not one but many lives and are constantly reborn in different forms according to the laws of Karma: an immortality that binds us to a cosmic treadmill of death, decay, rebirth and suffering from which the only escape is Nirvana. Buddhism was quickly established as a major religion in South East Asia but now two millenia later it is one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world. Why has it captured the spirit of our times? Is it because there is no compulsion to believe in God? And what is it that Western converts hope to get from Buddhism - truth and enlightenment or simply a spiritual satisfaction that Western religion cannot provide? With Peter Harvey, Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Sunderland; Kate Crosby, Lecturer in Buddhist Studies, SOAS; Mahinda Deagallee, Lecturer in the Study of Religions, Bath Spa University College and a Buddhist Monk from the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka.
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the poet John Milton. If it wasn't for the poet Andrew Marvell we wouldn't have his later works; Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Milton spent the English Civil Wars as a prominent politician and right hand man to Oliver Cromwell. When the Monarchy was restored in 1660 it was only Marvell's intervention that saved Milton from execution. By then, Marvell argued, Milton was old and blind and posed no threat to Charles II. But as a young man Milton had been an activist and pamphleteer extraordinaire. Allegedly inspired by a meeting with Galileo he wrote in passionate defence of Liberty. He detested the Church's insistence on empty ritual. And most dramatically for his time he demanded that the state serve its people rather than the people serve the state. How then should we remember Milton - as poet or politician - as an idealist or an apologist for a revolutionary yet intolerant regime? And was he a man at one with the people or an elitist who preached to the masses but lived his own life only in the most rarefied of circles? With John Carey, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Oxford University; Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary College, University of London and Honorary Fellow of King's College Cambridge; Blair Worden, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Sussex.
Virtue
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of virtue. When Socrates asked the question ‘How should man live?’ Plato and Aristotle answered that man should live a life of virtue. Plato claimed there were four great virtues - Temperance, Justice, Prudence and Courage and the Christian Church added three more - Faith, Hope and Love. But where does the motivation for virtue come from? Do we need rules to tell us how to behave or can we rely on our feelings of compassion and empathy towards other human beings? Shakespeare’s Iago says “Virtue! A fig! ‘tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners. ” So is virtue a character trait possessed by some but not others? Is it derived from reason? Or does it flow from the innate sympathies of the human heart? For the last two thousand years philosophers have grappled with these ideas, but now in the twenty first century a modern reappraisal of virtue is taking the argument back to basics with Aristotle. With Galen Strawson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading; Miranda Fricker, Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; Roger Crisp, Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford.
The Celts
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Celts. Around 400 BC a great swathe of Western Europe from Ireland to Southern Russia was dominated by one civilisation. Perched on the North Western fringe of this vast Iron Age culture were the British who shared many of the religious, artistic and social customs of their European neighbours. These customs were Celtic and this civilisation was the Celts.The Greek historians who studied and recorded the Celts' way of life deemed them to be one of the four great Barbarian peoples of the world. The Romans wrote vivid accounts of Celtic rituals including the practice of human sacrifice - presided over by Druids - and the tradition of decapitating their enemies and turning their heads into drinking vessels.But what were the Celts in Britain really like? Was their apparent lust for violence tempered by a love of poetry and beautiful art? How far should we trust the classical historians in their writings on the Celts? And what can we learn from the archaeological remains that have been discovered in this country? With Barry Cunliffe, Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford University; Alistair Moffat, Historian and author of The Sea Kingdoms - The Story of Celtic Britain and Ireland; Miranda Aldhouse Green, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Wales.
Anatomy
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind's quest to understand the human body. The Greeks thought we were built like pigs, and when Renaissance man first cut his sacred flesh it was an act of heresey. We trace the noble ambitions of medical science to the murky underworld of Victorian grave robbing, we trace 2000 years of anatomical study. From the great showman Vesalius, enthralling the Renaissance Artists in the operating theatres of Italy to the sad and gruesome pursuits of Burke and Hare, Anatomy is mankind's often frustrated attempt to understand the body of man. What role has science, religion and art played in the quest to understand the male and the female body?With Harold Ellis, Clinical Anatomist, School of Biomedical Sciences, King's College, London; Ruth Richardson, Historian, and author of Death, Dissection and the Destitute, Phoenix Press; Andrew Cunningham, Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the History of Medicine, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University.
The Universe's Shape
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the shape of the universe. In the Beginning, runs one account, was the Big Bang. All matter in existence today originated around 13 billion years ago in a phenomenally hot, extraordinarily condensed primordial atom that exploded with incredible force. Hydrogen and helium were shot across the firmament, gravity caused the gases to condense into clouds and in these clouds the first stars were formed, then galaxies came and more galaxies in clusters, onwards and outwards, ever expanding. It is still expanding, runs the orthodox account, and may even be speeding up. It is still creating new galaxies and it continues to colonise more and more of infinite space, despite the fact that it is supposedly infinite itself.So, if our universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? If it is already infinite how can it be getting any bigger? And is there really only one?With Sir Martin Rees, Royal Society Research Professor in Astronomy and Physics, Cambridge University; Julian Barbour, Independent Theoretical Physicist; Janna Levin, Advanced Fellow in Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge.
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg explores the strange and mystical world of the poet W B Yeats. Celtic folklore, the Theosophical society, the Golden Dawn group, seances and a wife who communicated with the spirit world all had a huge effect on the work of this great Irish poet. He published his first collection in 1889 and won the Nobel prize for literature in 1923.At the close of the nineteenth century he published one of his best known works. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven: “Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half-light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” But Yeats the dreamer and the poet was also a mystic, a philosopher and a practitioner of magic. From the occult subcultures of Victorian London to the outlandish folklore of the Irish Peasantry, Yeats’ obsession with the spiritual world infused his poetic mind and even drove him to describe his own religion. Why was the period so alive with spiritualism? And how did the poems reflect the dreams? With Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University; Warwick Gould, Director of the Institute of English Studies, University of London; Brenda Maddox, author of George’s Ghosts: A New Life of W B Yeats.
Happiness
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure, or of virtue. It is an old question, and the Roman poet Horace attempted to answer it when he wrote; 'Not the owner of many possessions will you be right to call happy: he more rightly deserves the name of happy who knows how to use the gods's gifts wisely and to put up with rough poverty, and who fears dishonour more than death'. It seems a noble sentiment but for the Greek Sophist Thrasymachus this sort of attitude was the epitome of moral weakness: For him poverty was miserable, and happiness flowed from wealth and power over men, an idea so persuasive that Plato wrote The Republic in response to its challenge. What have our philosophers made of the compulsion to be happy? And how much does this ancient debate still define what it means to be happy today? Are we entitled to health, wealth and the pursuit of pleasure or is true contentment something else entirely? With Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick; Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University; Anthony Grayling, Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Catharism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cathars, a medieval European Christian sect accused of heresy. In 1215 Pope Innocent III called the greatest meeting of Catholic minds for a hundred years. He hoped that the Fourth Lateran Council would represent the crowning glory of a Papacy that was more powerful than ever before, and it laid down decrees to standardise Christian belief across the whole of Western Europe and heal the papal schism of a generation before. But despite the wealth and power of the Vatican, all was not as it should have been in the Catholic world; Jerusalem was lost, the Crusades were failing, and in the regions of Europe the spectre of heresy moved over the land. It loomed largest in the wealthy Languedoc region of Southern France, where celibate vegetarians called Cathars were proving more popular than Jesus. The Pope moved against the Cathars but why was Catharism such a threat, what were its beliefs and what was the intellectual and spiritual climate that made the high middle ages the era of the heretic?With Malcolm Barber, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Reading; Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of London; Euan Cameron, Professor of Modern History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Nuclear Physics
Melvyn Bragg examines one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, and certainly the most controversial; the development of nuclear physics. Harnessing the enigmatic qualities of the atom’s tiny core brought us nuclear power and gave us The Bomb, a breakthrough with such far-reaching consequences that it moved the physicist Albert Einstein to say, “Had I known, I should have become a watch maker”.How can such outlandish power be released from such infinitesimal amounts of matter and what does the science of the nucleus tell us about how our universe is built? Nuclear technology provokes strong emotional and political reactions, but what are the plain facts behind its development as a science? With Jim Al-Khalili, Senior Lecturer in Physics at the University of Surrey; Christine Sutton, Particle Physicist and Lecturer in Physics at St Catherine’s College Oxford; John Gribbin, Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.
Sensibility
Melvyn Bragg examines the 18th century idea of Sensibility. In Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, the lead character Yorick comforts a young woman who has been abandoned by a little pet goat that had proved as faithless as her lover. Yorick describes her effect upon his ‘sweet sensibility’, “I sat down close by her, and Maria let me wipe the tears away as they fell, with my handkerchief. I then steeped it in my own - and then in hers - and then in mine - and then I wiped hers again - and as I did it, I felt such undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion. (I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the contrary.)”It seems a bit mawkish to us now but Sterne, Richardson and Mackenzie were all part of the ‘cult of sensibility’ in the eighteenth century which elevated the sentimental novel to the height of literary art. Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Sense and Sensibility, has traditionally been taken as a parody of sensibility. But what caused the rush to emotion that so infused and enthused the Sensibility movement and was Jane Austen really so critical of the expression of feeling?With Claire Tomalin, literary biographer and author of Jane Austen: A Life and The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; John Mullan, Senior Lecturer in English at University College London; Hermione Lee, Goldsmiths Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford.
Food
Melvyn Bragg explores the history of food in Modern Europe. The French philosopher of food Brillat-Savarin wrote in his Physiology of Taste, 'The pleasures of the table belong to all times and all ages, to every country and to every day; they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures; outlast them, and remain to console us for their loss' . The story of food is cultural as well as culinary, and what we eat and how we eat has always been linked to who we are or whom we might become, from the great humanist thinker Erasmus warning us to 'Always use a fork!' to the materialist philosopher Feuerbach telling us baldly, 'You are what you eat'.But what have we eaten, and why? In Europe since the Renaissance how have our intellectual appetites fed our empty stomachs? With Rebecca Spang, Lecturer in Modern History at University College London; Ivan Day, food historian; Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University.
Rome and European Civilization
Melvyn Bragg assesses the role Rome has played in European civilization. The myths that surround the foundation of Rome are a potent brew. Romulus and Remus, the sons of Mars, raised by a she-wolf in the woods of Latium, the Sabine women raped by the Latins, Aeneas the Trojan General, wrecked off Carthage, loved by Dido and finally founding a new civilisation on the Tiber’s banks. According to William Shakespeare, after Brutus slayed his friend Caesar he claimed, “Not that I loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more”. But what was the idea of Rome that demanded such devotion? And how was an identity forged that exported its values to the greatest Empire the world had ever seen? Rome has meant Republicanism, as well as Imperialism; it has stood for Pax Romana and also for the machinery of war, it is an eternally pagan city that still beats as the Catholic Heart of the Christian Church. With Mary Beard, Reader in Classics at Cambridge University, Catherine Edwards, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, London University; Greg Woolf, Professor of Ancient History at St Andrews University.
Genetics
Melvyn Bragg looks at the development of the science of genetics. In the 1850s and 60s, in a monastery garden in Burno in Moravia, a Franciscan monk was cultivating peas. He began separating the wrinkly peas from the shiny peas and studying which characteristics were passed on when the next crop of peas were grown. In this slow and systematic way Gregor Mendel worked out the basic law of heredity and stumbled upon what was later to be described as the fundamental unit of life itself…the gene.But Mendel’s work was ignored when he published his findings in 1865, and it was not until the 20th century that he was rediscovered and the science of genetics was born. What effect did the discovery of the gene have on Darwin’s ideas? How do our genes work upon us, and how can we manipulate them?With Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics and Head of the Galton Laboratory at University College London, Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and the genetic scientist Linda Partridge, NERC Research Professor at the Galton Laboratory, University College London.
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg examines Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetes. In February 1895 Oscar Wilde was at the height of his powers, he was known on both sides of the Atlantic, he was feted in London society and celebrated in the West End where An Ideal Husband continued to play to packed houses as The Importance of Being Earnest opened to ecstatic reviews. “The man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world” he is reputed to have said, and he seemed on course to do just that. But in April that year he was arrested for the crime of ‘gross indecency’ and his swift decent from omnipotence began; it ended five years later, when exiled and humiliated he died, famously ‘beyond his means’, in a Paris hotel.Wilde’s reputation spent a long time in the wilderness but just over a century after his death his stock is higher than ever before. Now that his rehabilitation seems complete how should we understand his legacy? Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism? Was there a coherent philosophy behind those beguiling epigrams or was there little more to aestheticism than dressing up and showing off? With Valentine Cunningham, Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University, Regenia Gagnier, Professor of English at the University of Exeter and Neil Sammells, Dean of Humanities at Bath Spa University and author of Wilde Style.