''In Our Time'' is a

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

discussion series and

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

exploring a wide variety of historical, scientific and philosophical topics, presented by Melvyn Bragg, since 15 October 1998.BBC ''In our time''
It is one of Radio 4's most successful discussion programmes, acknowledged to have "transformed the landscape for serious ideas at peak listening time". The series passed its 1,000th episode in September 2023 and attracts a weekly audience exceeding two million listeners.

Programme

The series, devised and produced by Olivia Seligman (with others) and currently produced by Simon Tillotson with Victoria Brignell, runs weekly throughout the year on

, except for a

summer Summer or summertime is the hottest and brightest of the four temperate seasons, occurring after spring and before autumn. At or centred on the summer solstice, daylight hours are the longest and darkness hours are the shortest, with day ...

break of approximately eight to ten weeks between July and September. Each programme covers a specific historical, philosophical, religious, cultural or scientific topic. In a November 2009 interview, Bragg described how he prepares for each show: "It's not easy, but I like reading. I enjoy what was called swotting in my day. I get the notes late Friday afternoon for the following Thursday morning. I find all the spare time I can for reading, get up very early on a Thursday morning, have a final two hours of nervousness, and away we go." Bragg hosts discussion of the week's subject featuring what he has characterised as "three absolutely top-class academics" on the subject. The programme is normally broadcast live and unedited on Thursday mornings at 9a.m., lasting around 42 minutes, and is then available online. He begins each episode with a short summary of the week's topic, then introduces the three guests. He guides the discussion along a generally chronological route, then either concludes the programme himself or invites summation remarks from one of the specialists.

History

''In Our Time'' was conceived for Bragg in 1998 after he was forced to quit his decade-long role as presenter for '' Start the Week'' due to a perceived conflict of interest arising from his appointment as a Labour

life peer In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. Life peers are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister. With the exception of the D ...

. He was offered the Thursday "death-slot" and decided he would "do what ealways wanted to do," and "hastily battered out a simple idea" with producer Olivia Seligman expecting the show would only last a few months. By September 1999, he had taken a time slot that was previously attracting an audience of 600,000 and grown it to 1.5 million. By 2000, the half-hour show was expanded to 45 minutes and to include three guest speakers. In 2004, the programme was made available as a

from the BBC website and

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

for one week after broadcast. Until July 2014, listeners could also sign up for weekly email newsletters from Bragg, where he mentioned any additional information relating to the programme, along with snippets from his own personal and intellectual life. In 2009, selected transcripts of episodes from the programme were compiled in the book ''In Our Time: A Companion to the Radio 4 series'', edited by Bragg. Since 2010, every episode of the programme has been available from its website as streaming audio, making it one of the first BBC programmes to have its entire archive released. Since 2011, the entire archive has been available to download as individual podcasts.

Cultural impact

The programme is considered one of the BBC's most successful projects, acknowledged to have "transformed the landscape for serious ideas at peak listening time". Frequent contributors to the programme since 1998 include Angie Hobbs,

Simon Schaffer Simon J. Schaffer (born 1 January 1955) is a historian of science, previously a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and was editor of '' The B ...

, Martin Palmer, Steve Jones , Paul Cartledge, Carolin Crawford,

Edith Hall Edith Hall, (born 4 March 1959) is a British scholar of classics, specialising in ancient Greek literature and cultural history, and professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She is a Fellow of the Bri ...

, A. C. Grayling, Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Jonathan Bate, and Karen O'Brien. In 2005, listeners were invited to vote in a popularity contest for the "greatest philosopher in history" with the winner selected as the subject of the final programme before the summer break. With 30,000 votes cast, the contest was won by

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

with 27.9% of the votes. Other shortlisted figures were

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist who was best known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beg ...

(12.7%),

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ...

(6.8%),

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...

(6.5%),

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

(5.6%),

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...

(5.6%),

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas ( ; ; – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest, the foremost Scholasticism, Scholastic thinker, as well as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the W ...

(4.8%),

Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...

(4.8%),

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

(4.5%) and

Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the ...

(4.2%). The poll was controversial but led to widespread reporting, and a boost in the programme's overall listenership, as various UK celebrities and news outlets championed their favourites.

References

External links

*
In Our Time
'

homepage, wit
iPlayer archive
of past programmes * *

of ''In Our Time'' episodes {{BBC Radio 4 1998 radio programme debuts 2004 podcast debuts Audio podcasts BBC Radio 4 programmes British podcasts Educational broadcasting in the United Kingdom History podcasts Philosophy podcasts Philosophy radio programs Science podcasts Science radio programs