Episode summary: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an early masterpiece of French epic poetry, from the 12th Century. It is a reimagining of Charlemagne’s wars in Spain in the 8th Century in which Roland, his most valiant knight, chooses death before dishonour, guarding the army’s rear from a pagan am...

Episode summary: When Professor Martin Schweinsberg found that he was consistently reaching different conclusions to his peers, even with the same data, he wondered if he was incompetent. So he set up an experiment. What he found out emphasises the importance of the analyst, but calls into question...

Episode summary: Less but better? With the COP26 climate summit underway Dan Saladino looks at how meat and dairy can play a positive role for the future of people and planet. Produced by Dan Saladino.

Episode summary: Maciej Ceglowski is not just the founder of one of the indie web’s success stories — the modest yet long-running subscription bookmarking service Pinboard — but a prolific commentator on the world the Internet is helping to create. This week, we’re thrilled to chat with Maciej about...

Episode summary: David and Helen talk to Jason Bordoff, Dean of the Columbia Climate School and former Special Assistant to Barack Obama, about climate, COP26 and the enormous challenges of the energy transition. How can we balance the need for energy security with the need to wean the world off its...

Episode summary: Born in 1872, American architect and engineer Julia Morgan designed hundreds of buildings over her prolific career, famous for her work on incredible structures like the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.

Episode summary: In County Cork, Ireland, there’s a tree that locals call the Chalice Tree. Local lore says it’s where British Redcoats disrupted a secret Catholic mass, killed two priests and took a sacred chalice. Now that chalice sits in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. But what happened in the...

Episode summary: Earth’s changing climate is already displacing millions of people, worsening tension and conflict, and sometimes violence – for example, between farmers and traditional nomadic herders in Nigeria. Part 6 of The Repair, our series on the climate emergency. Reported by Ugochi Anyaka-O...

Episode summary: An update on SB 8, Executive Privilege of presidential records, and a short digression into criminal law with the tragic death on a movie set

Episode summary: Who is counting, why are they counting, and what are they are counting? These three questions are important to ask when trying to understand numbers, according to Deborah Stone, author of Counting, How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters. In this episode, she explains how differen...