Brilliant series, can't recommend highly enough to anyone who's not encountered it.
Very reminiscent of Sir Patrick Moore presenting his final episodes of The Sky at Night. (Sadly missed).
listen to a 10+ year old episode and he sounds much clearer
as a native speaker its all fine and intelligeable, but for anyone ESL it'd be challenging bc its so much mumbling now
Not to take anything away from the content though. It's the sort of programme the licence fee was made for.
While he doesn't throw blackboard dusters at them, he prods and harumphs when the egos and waffle of dons has them momentarily forget they aren't doing this in class but broadcasting to the nation...
And making broad connections across topics wasn't his style anyway. He's a legend but the show can totally go on without him, and it should.
Frankly, I believe that instead of finding a new presenter, the BBC could be retire the whole series and its legend. Let the new presenter start a new series, even if the set-up remains the same (including having further discussions with a cup of tea after the radio time limit has ended)
I'm curious if anyone here has any particular favourites?
I remember really enjoying the Plankton episode because it took me the classic IOT route of "That doesn't sound interesting, but I'll give it a listen" to looking up all the reading list.
That's my memory of the event, that was a frustrating lunch walk.
I've never made the mistake of thinking that after a 45 minute episode of in our time on, say, Cyrus the Great, that I'm now in a position to write an essay on the man. I would assume that none M/NS/CS types don't make that mistake after listening to the episode on P vs NP.
Also, I wanted to mention something interesting - back when LLM-driven applications were just emerging, someone posted on Hacker News about how they categorized In Our Time episodes using the Dewey Decimal System with LLMs. Cool stuff - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35073603
Great Fire of London too. Pepys burying his cheese! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ft63q
Politeness. Social barriers were coming down, you were interacting with people of different rank, how do you not get into a swordfight? Also, the letter from the wife complaining about her husband! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y29m
I think they did all the big interesting things in history and then struggled with a lot of minor events that were hard to find interesting angles on.
I'm still working through the back catalogue, been at it for years, I've listened to every episode from the start until about mid 2012. I'll finish it eventually!
My complaint with In Our Time is that BBC started inserting the "this program is supported by ads outside of the U.K." ads in the middle of the discussions. The ads start and end with an extremely annoying loud chime that just blows out the speakers if I have the volume turned up to understand a guest that's speaking in a more soft voice.
Only the streaming options (iPlayer and Sounds) are geolocked
I used to follow topical comedy podcasts but they put a large delay in their publication cycle so they're no longer topical.
They also nag you to install the app. They seem often to just repeat the worst habits of commercial media.
That's a very rare assumption in modern media, when most mainstream things seemed to be aimed at some sort of lowest common denominator.
People might also enjoy "This Cultural Life" https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010fl4 More than 100 episodes already with some of the world's leading artists and creatives.
Looking through the archives, this one with Melvyn Bragg might be interesting as a way to start: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001q0kd
Boffinphobia is where an otherwise interesting scientific topic gets downplayed by a programme or news presenter as being too difficult for them to understand, and in particular said in a dismissive jokey way.
Bragg was particularly susceptible to this! In almost every episode* that touches on cosmology he would resort to a whimsical “gosh these numbers are too big for me!” or a “wow that’s going over my head!”. There’s one notorious episode on computer science** where he’s downright rude to the guests regarding complexity. Contrast with how he can barely contain himself when showing how much he knows about Horace or Napoleon or Brahms. (I contend that the virtue signalling exhibited by claiming “maths is too hard, leave it to the boffins!” is the opposite side of the same coin to showing off how much poetry and history one has memorized.)
Basicism is where, for example, black hole discussions always talk about spaghettification and then run out of steam before the interesting stuff. Any discussion of a complex topic will touch on the first handful of spectacular introductory facts and never get any further, all on the assumption that the listener has never encountered the topic before in their lives. I know the pigeon story about cosmic microwave background already: please elaborate on the latest anisotropy findings!
In Our Time is a fantastic listen, but brace yourself for a bit of eye-rolling at — and forgive me for paraphrasing Lord Bragg’s tone a little, here — the “omg stahp, nerd stuff makes my brain hurt!” schtick.
* Bragg seems to take things more seriously when Simon Schaffer is there. Carolin Crawford is part of the dream team as well. Both are exceptional science communicators.
** Another commenter points out this is the P vs NP episode: https://www.braggoscope.com/2015/11/05/p-v-np.html
Which is fine, of course, everyone has preferences; but the contrast with the much more rote science episodes did make me a little sad.
We know that story, but many non-scientists don't.
The genius of In Our Time is genuine academic discussions accessible to the lay man. I found the In Our Time discussions on ancient Greece and the arts fascinating, despite these being two subjects I have no background in and know sweet FA about.
similar issues are with non european cultural topics. You often get what i'd label wikipedia-depth
Perhaps you'd prefer The Life Scientific with Jim Al-Kalili? More than 10 years of him interviewing scientists and covering their careers and discoveries: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sqc7
Alternatively, The Infinite Monkey Cage is more comedic and science themed than In Our Time, with two scientists and one idiot for every topic: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snr0w
I'm not sure whether someone with a background in arts or history would say the same about the other episodes.
For those who want something entirely outside the STEM-heavy HN sphere of interest, there is another great BBC podcast about social science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Allowed
How economics became a cukt
In Our Time represents the best of the form, and the BBC, and that's significantly down to the excellence of Bragg.
The archive (you may need a VPN outside the UK):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/player
Some curated lists:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Dw1c7rxs6DmyK0pMR...
I don't know, there are some definite bright spots like IOT but the typical output of Radio 4 is definitely not massively in advance of the big podcasts. The Rest Is History/Politics are clearly hugely popular inside the UK and basically constitute "the competition" for your average R4 listener.
I actually think that the podcast model is a big threat for traditional radio. Podcasts are much more lucrative for the makers, the reach is as-big (or bigger) and you don't have to negotiate with the government like R4 does.
At the end of each podcast there's the outro when they ask if Melvyn and his guests would like tea of coffee.
This keeps throwing me back to the bit at the end of episodes of Bod, when the Frog conductor is asked which flavour milk shake he'd like.
Once having itemised all of the contents of Thunderbird 4's pods over time, I have had an inkling to use some Machine learning system to gather the drinks options from each In Our Time.
Water has cropped up?
Perhaps I place too close attention to it.
My weekly dose of highbrow-ness from the UK:
1. In Our Time
2. University Challenge
I highly recommend the back catalog In Our Time if you want some good brain fodder on an amazingly wide range of subjects.
RobinL•2h ago
a_bonobo•2h ago
NitpickLawyer•2h ago
haunter•1h ago
or here https://open.spotify.com/episode/5YjqWk1rqxANmNifyUW92B
or here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0092j0x (to download the mp3 file)
BBC Sounds not available outside of the UK anymore
NitpickLawyer•1h ago
Popeyes•1h ago
haunter•1h ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/listening-outsid...