In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg and scholars on the history of ideas and science, open to challenge by historians
51:39Franklin missed the Nobel not only because she died young
She shot Photo 51 and was the first to see that DNA's two forms interconvert; but what really got her undercredited by history was that the King's College lab refused to share information, while Cambridge shared.
50:46Plato's Republic: Democracy Is One Demagogue Away from Tyranny
Plato held that democracy contains within itself the passage to tyranny, and that it is only a matter of time before an ambitious man exploits it; and that justice is not external behaviour but an order within the soul.
51:03Cixi was neither a reformer nor a reactionary — she just wanted the Qing to survive
She backed the Self-Strengthening Movement, founded the Imperial University, abolished the civil service exams — provided those reforms did not threaten the dynasty or her own power. The moment reform edged toward revolution, she turned on it.
44:27No Plate Tectonics, No Life: Earth Is a Lucky Planet
Plate tectonics reshapes the Earth's surface at the speed of fingernail growth, generating and destroying about 3 square kilometers of oceanic crust each year; it alters climate, isolates species, and even determines whether life exists—without it, there would be no life.
47:58Ancient Egypt had no queens: she could only be king, and was erased 20 years after her death
Hatshepsut took power gradually from the position of regent, building royal authority through temples, trade and oracles; about 20 years after her death Thutmose III erased her on a large scale.
56:52Coffee doesn't get you drunk, and that is exactly why it produced the modern commercial intelligence network
Coffee first supplied wakefulness for Sufi prayer; because it left drinkers sober rather than drunk, it left them talking, and the coffeehouse became an exchange for commercial intelligence, then reshaped the global economy through slave plantations and branding. Today's arguments about the latte are still written into these five hundred years of history.