Welcoming Misha Glenny

Welcoming Misha Glenny

Author: BBC Radio 4 February 5, 2026 Duration: 6:05

Misha Glenny introduces himself to you ahead of his first episode on 15th January, answering some questions from producer Simon Tillotson and sharing what's coming up in the first few weeks.

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production


For anyone with a restless mind, the weekly In Our Time podcast from BBC Radio 4 offers a deep and engaging conversation across the vast terrain of human thought and experience. Host Misha Glenny guides a panel of distinguished academics, not in lecture format, but through a lively, accessible discussion where ideas genuinely collide and unfold. You might find yourself immersed in the complex legacy of a figure like Napoleon one week, and the next be untangling the scientific principles of photosynthesis or the philosophical arguments of the Enlightenment. The scope is deliberately broad, covering history, religion, culture, science, and philosophy, because understanding one often requires context from another. What you hear is the genuine process of exploration-the questions, the debates, and the connections made in real time by leading experts. It’s the kind of podcast that doesn’t just recount the Sack of Rome or the intricacies of Russian court politics, but examines why these moments mattered and how their echoes are still felt. The result is a consistently stimulating hour that treats listeners as curious equals, offering the intellectual satisfaction of following a great conversation to its illuminating conclusion.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

In Our Time
Podcast Episodes
Imperial Science [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:21
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what drove the British Empire, especially in Victoria’s century. Was it science, more specifically, the science of plants, of agriculture, a scientific notion of nature and the improvement…
Science and Religion [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:06
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the areas of conflict and agreement between science and religion.What space should science leave to religion? What ground should religion give to science? Do they need to give ground to ea…
The Enlightenment in Britain [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:11
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Enlightenment. In Germany it's called Aufklarung, in France it's the Siecle De Lumieres, and in Britain it's called the Age of Enlightenment. It's the period around the eighteenth cent…
Mathematics and Platonism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:20
Melvyn Bragg looks at the deep claims made for mathematics, the discipline some believe to be the soul and true key to the understanding of all life, from the petals on the sunflower to the pulse in our wrists. The notio…
Gothic [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:19
Horace Walpole and then Anne Radcliffe appeared to have triggered an anti-enlightenment movement: the Gothic that swept in Coleridge, two Shelleys, Byron, the Brontés, Walter Scott and Dickens, innumerable painters and a…