Episode summary: When World War Two came to Greece, a period of terrible human suffering followed. There was a brutal battle with Italian and then Nazi forces, followed by an occupation in which thousands were executed and a terrible famine swept the nation. There’s an often repeated number that app...

Episode summary: How did the “15 Minute City,” a simple urban planning idea, spark protests, conspiracy theories, and death threats? This week, we unravel how a concept for livable cities became a global flashpoint.

Episode summary: Is power made in palaces or kitchens?

Episode summary: From the fields of Ukraine to a bakery in Beirut, we find out what it costs to produce a global staple - bread.

Episode summary: Natalie Haynes, critic, writer and reformed stand-up comedian, brings the ancient world entertainingly up to date. In each episode, she profiles a figure from ancient Greece or Rome and creates a stand-up routine around them. She then goes in search of the links which make the ancie...

Episode summary: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable rise of Venice in the eastern Mediterranean. Unlike other Italian cities of the early medieval period, Venice had not been settled during the Roman Empire. Rather, it was a refuge for those fleeing unrest after the fall of Rome who sett...

Episode summary: 5x15 is delighted to announce a special online event with Oliver Burkeman, author of the international breakout bestseller Four Thousand Weeks, a book that touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of readers. Inspired by its investigation into time and how we use it, some of those...

Episode summary: Today’s bad idea is about how ideas get adopted, argued over and rejected: David talks to political philosopher Alan Finlayson about what’s wrong with seeing this as a competitive marketplace. From St. Paul to Citizens United, from John Stuart Mill to Jordan Peterson, what happens w...

Episode summary: After Toronto unveiled its “raccoon-resistant” compost bins in 2016, some people feared the animals would be starved but many more celebrated the innovative design. Rolling out this novel locked bin opened a new battlefront in city’s ongoing “war on raccoons.”

Episode summary: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which Hayek (1899-1992) warned that the way Britain was running its wartime economy would not work in peacetime and could lead to tyranny. His target was centralised planni...