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 |
| War in the 20th Century | ||
| Politics in the 20th Century | ||
| Science's Revelations | ||
| Science in the 20th century | ||
| The City in the 20th Century | ||
| The Brain and Consciousness | ||
| Work in the 20th Century | ||
| History's relevance in the 20th century | ||
| Cultural rights in the 20th Century | ||
| The American Century | ||
| Neuroscience in the 20th Century | ||
| The British Empire's Legacy | ||
| Feminism | ||
| Genetic Engineering | ||
| Modern Culture | ||
| Ageing | ||
| Psychoanalysis and its Legacy | ||
| Language and the Mind | ||
| Space in Religion and Science | ||
| The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century | ||
| Shakespeare and Literary Criticism | ||
| History as Science | ||
| Animal Experiments and Rights | ||
| Architecture in the 20th Century | ||
| Good and Evil | ||
| Writing and Political Oppression | ||
| Evolution | ||
| Fundamentalism | ||
| Artificial Intelligence | ||
| Mathematics | ||
| Multiculturalism | ||
| The Universe's Origins | ||
| Memory and Culture | ||
| Just War | ||
| The Monarchy | ||
| The Great Disruption | ||
| Capitalism | ||
| Intelligence | ||
| Africa | ||
| Truth, Lies and fiction | ||
| 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 |
| Genetic Determinism | ||
| Maths and Storytelling | ||
| Utopia | ||
| The Nation State | ||
| The Individual | ||
| Atrocity in the 20th Century | ||
| Education | ||
| The Novel | ||
| Progress | ||
| Consciousness | ||
| Tragedy | ||
| Childhood | ||
| Medical Ethics | ||
| Prayer | ||
| Time | ||
| Climate change | ||
| Information Technology | ||
| Masculinity in Literature | ||
| Economic Rights | ||
| Republicanism | ||
| Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment | ||
| Reading | ||
| Grand Unified Theory | ||
| Metamorphosis | ||
| The Age of Doubt | ||
| Lenin | ||
| Materialism and the Consumer | ||
| History and Understanding the Past | ||
| The Natural Order | ||
| New Wars | ||
| Englishness | ||
| Human Origins | ||
| Death | ||
| Shakespeare's Work | ||
| The Wars of the Roses | ||
| Chemical elements | ||
| The American Ideal | ||
| The Renaissance | ||
| Inspiration and Genius | ||
| Biography | ||
| Imagination and Consciousness |
2000–2001
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| London | ||
| Hitler in History | ||
| The Romantics | ||
| Laws of Nature | ||
| The Tudor State | ||
| Evolutionary Psychology | ||
| Psychoanalysis and Literature | ||
| Nihilism | ||
| Gothic | ||
| Mathematics and Platonism | ||
| The Enlightenment in Britain | ||
| Science and Religion | ||
| Imperial Science | ||
| Humanism | ||
| The Restoration | ||
| Quantum Gravity | ||
| Money | ||
| Shakespeare's Life | ||
| Fossils | ||
| The Philosophy of Love | ||
| [Fall of the Western Roman poetry|Roman Empire|The Roman Empire's Collapse in the 5th century] | ||
| Black Holes | ||
| The Glorious Revolution | ||
| Literary Modernism | ||
| Evil | ||
| The French Revolution's Legacy | ||
| The Sonnet | ||
| Existentialism | ||
| The Earth's Origins | ||
| Dickens | ||
| Byzantium |
2001–2002
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| Democracy | ||
| Napoleon and Wellington | ||
| Confucius | ||
| The British Empire | ||
| Surrealism | ||
| Oceanography | ||
| Third Crusade | ||
| Oscar Wilde | ||
| Genetics | ||
| Rome and European Civilization | ||
| Food | ||
| Sensibility | ||
| Nuclear Physics | ||
| Catharism | ||
| Happiness | ||
| Yeats and Mysticism | ||
| The Universe's Shape | ||
| Anatomy | ||
| The Celts | ||
| Virtue | ||
| Milton | ||
| The Buddha | ||
| Marriage | ||
| The Artist | ||
| Extra Terrestrials | ||
| Bohemia | ||
| Tolstoy | ||
| The Physics of Reality | ||
| The Examined Life | ||
| Chaos Theory | ||
| Drugs | ||
| The Grand Tour | ||
| The Soul | ||
| The American West | ||
| Wagner | ||
| Cultural Imperialism | ||
| Freedom | ||
| Psychoanalysis and democracy | ||
| Heritage |
2002–2003
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| Slavery and Empire | ||
| The Scientist | ||
| Architecture and Power | ||
| Human Nature | ||
| Victorian Realism | ||
| Muslim Spain | ||
| Imagination | ||
| The Enlightenment in Scotland | ||
| Man and Disease | ||
| The Calendar | ||
| The Epic | ||
| Chance and Design | ||
| The Lindisfarne Gospels | ||
| The Aztecs | ||
| Meteorology | ||
| Redemption | ||
| Originality | ||
| The Life of Stars | ||
| The Spanish Civil War | ||
| Proust | ||
| Youth | ||
| Roman Britain | ||
| The Jacobite Rebellion | ||
| The Holy Grail | ||
| Blood | ||
| Memory | ||
| The Lunar Society | ||
| The Art of War | ||
| The Aristocracy | ||
| The East India Company | ||
| Vulcanology | ||
| Nature | ||
| The Apocalypse |
2003–2004
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| Maxwell | ||
| Bohemianism | ||
| The Schism | ||
| Infinity | ||
| Robin Hood | ||
| Sensation | ||
| Duty | ||
| Ageing the Earth | ||
| St Bartholomew's Day Massacre | ||
| Wittgenstein | ||
| The Devil | ||
| The Alphabet | ||
| Lamarck and Natural Selection | ||
| Cryptography | ||
| Thermopylae | ||
| The Sublime | ||
| Rutherford | ||
| The Mughal Empire | ||
| Dreams | ||
| The Norse Gods | ||
| Theories of Everything | ||
| China's Warring States period | ||
| The Fall | ||
| The Later Romantics | ||
| Hysteria | ||
| Tea | ||
| Heroism | ||
| Zero | ||
| Toleration | ||
| The Planets | ||
| Babylon | ||
| Empiricism | ||
| Renaissance Magic | ||
| 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
- David Hume
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Plato
- Immanuel Kant
- Thomas Aquinas
- Socrates
- Aristotle
- Karl Popper
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| Pi | ||
| The Odyssey | ||
| Agincourt | ||
| The Origins of Life | ||
| Politeness | ||
| Sartre | ||
| The Han Synthesis | ||
| Witchcraft | ||
| Rhetoric | ||
| Electrickery | ||
| Zoroastrianism | ||
| Higgs Boson | ||
| The Venerable Bede | ||
| Jung | ||
| Machiavelli and the Italian City States | ||
| The Second Law of Thermodynamics | ||
| Faust | ||
| The Roman Republic | ||
| Tsar Alexander II's assassination | ||
| The Mind/Body Problem | ||
| The Cambrian Period | ||
| Alchemy | ||
| Stoicism | ||
| Modernist Utopias | ||
| Dark Energy | ||
| Angels | ||
| John Ruskin | ||
| Alfred and the Battle of Edington | ||
| Archaeology and Imperialism | ||
| The Aeneid | ||
| Perception and the Senses | ||
| Abelard and Heloise | ||
| Beauty | ||
| The French Revolution's Reign of Terror | ||
| Renaissance Maths | ||
| The Scriblerus Club | ||
| Paganism in the Renaissance | ||
| The KT Boundary | ||
| Merlin | ||
| Marlowe | ||
| Marx |
2005–2006
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| Magnetism | ||
| The Field of the Cloth of Gold | ||
| Mammals | ||
| Cynicism | ||
| Johnson | ||
| Asteroids | ||
| Greyfriars and Blackfriars | ||
| Pragmatism | ||
| The Graviton | ||
| Hobbes | ||
| Artificial Intelligence | ||
| The Peterloo Massacre | ||
| Heaven | ||
| The Oresteia | ||
| The Oath | ||
| Prime Numbers | ||
| Relativism | ||
| Seventeenth Century Print Culture | ||
| The Abbasid Caliphs | ||
| Chaucer | ||
| Human Evolution | ||
| Catherine the Great | ||
| Friendship | ||
| Negative numbers | ||
| Don Quixote | ||
| The Royal Society | ||
| The Carolingian Renaissance | ||
| Goethe | ||
| The Oxford Movement | ||
| Immunisation | ||
| The Great Exhibition of 1851 | ||
| Astronomy and Empire | ||
| Fairies | ||
| Mill | ||
| Mathematics and Music | ||
| The Heart | ||
| Uncle Tom's Cabin | ||
| Carbon | ||
| The Spanish Inquisition | ||
| Galaxies | ||
| Pastoral Literature | ||
| Comedy in Ancient Greek Theatre |
2006–2007
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| Humboldt | ||
| Averroes | ||
| The Diet of Worms | ||
| The Needham Question | ||
| The Encyclopédie | ||
| The Poincaré conjecture | ||
| Pope | ||
| The Peasants' Revolt | ||
| Altruism | ||
| The Speed of Light | ||
| Anarchism | ||
| Indian Mathematics | ||
| Hell | ||
| Constantinople Siege and Fall | ||
| Jorge Luis Borges | ||
| Mars | ||
| The Jesuits | ||
| Archimedes | ||
| Genghis Khan | ||
| Popper | ||
| Heart of Darkness | ||
| Wilberforce | This programme was a documentary rather than a discussion. The programme can be streamed rather than downloaded. | |
| Optics | ||
| Microbiology | ||
| Epistolary Literature | ||
| Bismarck | ||
| Anaesthetics | ||
| St Hilda | ||
| The Opium Wars | ||
| Symmetry | ||
| Greek and Roman Love Poetry | ||
| Spinoza | ||
| Victorian Pessimism | ||
| Gravitational Waves | ||
| The Siege of Orléans | ||
| Ockham's Razor | ||
| Siegfried Sassoon | ||
| Renaissance Astrology | ||
| Common Sense Philosophy | ||
| The Permian-Triassic Boundary | ||
| The Pilgrim Fathers | ||
| Madame Bovary |
2007–2008
2008–2009
2009–2010
2010–2011
2011–2012
2012–2013
2013–2014
2014–2015
2015–2016
From the start of 2016 the podcast version of the programme started to include a few minutes of unbroadcast extra material, which would generally be prompted by the question So, what did we miss?2016–2017
2017–2018
2018–2019
2019–2020
The 2019–2020 series was truncated because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020–2021
2021–2022
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| The Evolution of Crocodiles | ||
| Herodotus | ||
| The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | ||
| The Manhattan Project | ||
| The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth | ||
| Iris Murdoch | ||
| Corals | ||
| The Song of Roland | ||
| William and Caroline Herschel | ||
| The Decadent Movement | ||
| Plato's Gorgias | ||
| The Battle of Trafalgar | ||
| The May Fourth Movement | ||
| A Christmas Carol | ||
| The Hittites | ||
| Fritz Lang | ||
| Thomas Hardy's Poetry | ||
| The Gold Standard | ||
| Colette | ||
| The Temperance Movement | ||
| Walter Benjamin | ||
| Romeo and Juliet | ||
| Peter Kropotkin | ||
| The Arthashastra | ||
| Seismology | ||
| Charisma | ||
| Antigone | ||
| The Sistine Chapel | ||
| Polidori's The Vampyre | ||
| Homo erectus | ||
| Olympe de Gouges | ||
| Early Christian Martyrdom | ||
| The Davidian Revolution | ||
| Tang Era Poetry | ||
| Comenius | ||
| Hegel's Philosophy of History | ||
| The Death of Stars | ||
| Dylan Thomas | ||
| Angkor Wat | ||
| John Bull |
2022–2023
2023–2024
2024–2025
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| Benjamin Disraeli | ||
| Wormholes | ||
| The Haymarket Affair | ||
| Robert Graves | ||
| Hayek's The Road to Serfdom | ||
| Little Women | ||
| The Venetian Empire | ||
| George Herbert | ||
| The Antikythera Mechanism | ||
| Italo Calvino | ||
| The Hanoverian Succession | ||
| Nizami Ganjavi | ||
| The Habitability of Planets | ||
| Plutarch's Parallel Lives | ||
| Vase-mania | ||
| Slime Moulds | ||
| The Battle of Valmy | ||
| Socrates in Prison | ||
| Pope Joan | ||
| Sir John Soane | ||
| Catherine of Aragon | ||
| Oliver Goldsmith | ||
| Kali | ||
| Pollination | ||
| Cyrus the Great | ||
| Thomas Middleton | ||
| Maurice Merleau-Ponty | ||
| The Gracchi | ||
| The Battle of Clontarf | ||
| Typology | ||
| Molière | ||
| The Korean Empire | ||
| Lise Meitner | ||
| Copyright | ||
| Paul von Hindenburg | ||
| Hypnosis | ||
| The Vienna Secession | ||
| The Evolution of Lungs | ||
| Barbour's 'Brus' | ||
| Dragons | ||
| Civility: talking with those who disagree with you | ||
| Melvyn Bragg meets Misha Glenny | Melvyn Bragg and Misha Glenny meet on BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme Today to discuss In Our Time's appeal and what Misha will bring to the series from 15th January. |
The 2024–2025 series was the last to be hosted by Melvyn Bragg.
2026
| Broadcast date Listen again | Title | Contributors and positions held at time of broadcast |
| Welcoming Misha Glenny to the In Our Time studio | ||
| On Liberty | ||
| The Mariana Trench | ||
| The Roman Arena | ||
| Henry IV, Part 1 |