Journalist, author and historian Misha Glenny presents his first edition of In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg who retired from this role last summer. Misha and his guests discuss the landmark work On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, published in 1859 and the increasing recognition for his wife Harriet Taylor Mill's contribution. The subject matter of the essay is ‘civil or social liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual’ and it argues that the sole end for which mankind may interfere with the liberty of action of anyone is self-protection and even then only to prevent harm to others. This essay became enormously popular and a foundational text for liberalism.

With

Helen McCabe Professor of Political Theory at the University of Nottingham

Mark Philp Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at the University of Warwick

And

Piers Norris Turner Associate Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Jo Ellen Jacobs (ed.), Harriet Taylor Mill, Complete Works (Indiana University Press, 1998)

Bruce L. Kinzer, Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament: John Stuart Mill at Westminster, 1865-1868 (University of Toronto Press, 1992) Christopher Macleod and Dale Miller (eds.), A Companion to Mill (Wiley, 2016)

Helen McCabe, John Stuart Mill, Socialist (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021)

Helen McCabe, Harriet Taylor Mill (Cambridge, 2023)

Piers Norris Turner, ‘The Arguments of On Liberty: Mill’s Institutional Designs’ (Nineteenth-Century Prose 47 (1), 2020)

Piers Norris Turner et al (eds.), John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, On Liberty with Related Writings (Hackett Publishing, forthcoming 2026)

Mark Philp (ed.), John Stuart Mill: Autobiography (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Mark Philp and Frederick Rosen (eds.), John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, Utilitarianism and other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Frederick Rosen, Mill (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Alan Ryan, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill (Palgrave MacMillan, 1998)

Ben Saunders, ‘Reformulating Mill’s Harm Principle’ (Mind 125/500, 2016)

John Skorupski, Why Read Mill Today? (Routledge, 2006)

William Stafford, John Stuart Mill (Red Globe Press, 1998)

C. L. Ten (ed.), Mill: On Liberty: A Critical Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras (eds.), John Stuart Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

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

While you wait for the new season of In Our Time with Misha Glenny, we’re introducing you to The Global Story, a new daily podcast from the BBC. In this episode, writer and voracious reader James Marriott discusses the so-called 'death of reading'. He argues that we may be entering a post literate age – shaped by addictive screen culture, fragmented attention, and an overflow of trivial or unreliable information. The conversation traces how the 18th century 'reading revolution' helped shape the modern world, and what its decline could mean for education, culture, and democracy today. If you enjoy this episode, you can find new instalments of The Global Story every day wherever you get your BBC Podcasts.

Before Misha Glenny's first edition on 15th January, BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme Today has brought Melvyn Bragg and Misha Glenny together so they can share their ideas about In Our Time's success and discuss what, if anything, will change with Misha. While Justin Webb chaired this discussion, here you will hear Melvyn introduce it and at the end he has a message for Misha and for listeners around the world.

This is a longer version of the discussion broadcast on Today on Radio 4 on Christmas Eve 2025 which was produced by Jade Bogart-Preleur, when Melvyn Bragg was the guest editor.

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that Civility, in one of its meanings, is among the most valuable social virtues: the skill to discuss topics that really matter to you, with someone who disagrees and yet somehow still get along. In another of its meanings, when Civility describes the limits of behaviour that is acceptable, the idea can reflect society at its worst: when only those deemed 'civil enough' are allowed their rights, their equality and even their humanity. Between these extremes, Civility is a slippery idea that has fascinated philosophers especially since the Reformation, when competing ideas on how to gain salvation seemed to make it impossible to disagree and remain civil.

With

Teresa Bejan Professor of Political Theory at Oriel College, University of Oxford

Phil Withington Professor of History at the University of Sheffield

And

John Gallagher Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Teresa M. Bejan, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Harvard University Press, 2017)

Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 1998)

Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Polity Press, 1995)

Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack (eds.), Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas (Oxford University Press, 2000)

Keith J. Bybee, How Civility Works (Stanford University Press, 2016)

Nandini Das, João Vicente Melo, Haig Z. Smith and Lauren Working, Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England (Amsterdam University Press, 2021)

Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Polity, 1992)

Jennifer Richards, Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Austin Sarat (ed.), Civility, Legality, and Justice in America (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Keith Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England (Yale University Press, 2018)

Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas (Polity, 2010)

Lauren Working, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore dragons, literally and symbolically potent creatures that have appeared in many different guises in countries and cultures around the world.

Sometimes compared to snakes, alligators, lions and even dinosaurs, dragons have appeared on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, in the Chinese zodiac, in the guise of the devil in Christian religious texts and in the national symbolism of the countries of England and Wales.

They are often portrayed as terrifying but sometimes appear as sacred and even benign creatures, and they continue to populate our cultural fantasies through blockbuster films, TV series and children’s books.

With:

Kelsey Granger, Post Doctoral Researcher in Chinese History at the University of Edinburgh

Daniel Ogden, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Exeter

And

Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in the School of Welsh at the University of Wales. Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Paul Acker and Carolyne Larrington (eds.), Revisiting the Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Heroic Legend (Routledge, 2013), especially ‘Dragons in the Eddas and in Early Nordic Art’ by Paul Acker

Scott G. Bruce (ed.), The Penguin Book of Dragons (Penguin, 2022)

James H. Charlesworth, The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol became Christianized (Yale University Press, 2009)

Juliana Dresvina, A Maid with a Dragon: The Cult of St Margaret of Antioch in Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon: The Nature of the Beast in Germanic Literature (Hisarlik Press, 1998)

Daniel Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Daniel Ogden, The Dragon in the West (Oxford University Press, 2021)

Christine Rauer, Beowulf and the Dragon (D.S. Brewer, 2000)

Phil Senter et al., ‘Snake to Monster: Conrad Gessner’s Schlangenbuch and the Evolution of the Dragon in the Literature of Natural History’ (Journal of Folklore Research, vol. 53, no. 1, 2016)

Jacqueline Simpson, British Dragons: Myth, Legend and Folklore (first published 1980; Wordsworth Editions, 2001)

Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke, Dry Spells: State Rainmaking and Local Governance in Late Imperial China (Harvard University Press, 2009)

Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China (State University of New York Press, 2002)

Roel Sterckx, Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Cook Ding (Pelican Books, 2019)

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (first published 1983; HarperCollins, 2007)

Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Routledge, 2003)

Juliette Wood, Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore: From Medieval Times to the Present Day (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)

Yang Xin, Li Yihua, and Xu Naixiang, Art of the Dragon (Shambhala, 1988)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Barbour's epic poem The Brus, or Bruce, which he wrote c1375. The Brus is the earliest surviving poem in Older Scots and the only source of many of the stories of King Robert I of Scotland (1274-1329), popularly known as Robert the Bruce, and his victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314. In almost 14,000 lines of rhyming couplets, Barbour distilled the aspects of the Bruce’s history most relevant for his own time under Robert II (1316-1390), the Bruce's grandson and the first of the Stewart kings, when the mood was for a new war against England after decades of military disasters. Barbour’s battle scenes are meant to stir in the name of freedom, and the effect of the whole is to assert Scotland as the rightful equal of any power in Europe.

With

Rhiannon Purdie Professor of English and Older Scots at the University of St Andrews

Steve Boardman Professor of Medieval Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh

And

Michael Brown Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

John Barbour (ed. A.A.M. Duncan), The Bruce (Canongate Classics, 2007)

G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 1988)

Stephen Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III (Tuckwell Press, 1996)

Steve Boardman and Susan Foran (eds.), Barbour's Bruce and its Cultural Contexts: Politics, Chivalry and Literature in Late Medieval Scotland (D.S. Brewer, 2015)

Michael Brown, Disunited Kingdoms: Peoples and Politics in the British Isles, 1280-1460 (Routledge, 2013)

Michael Brown, The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 (Edinburgh University Press, 2004)

Thomas Owen Clancy and Murray Pittock, Ian Brown and Susan Manning (eds.), The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Vol. 1: From Columba to the Union (until 1707), (Edinburgh University Press 2006)

Robert Crawford, Scotland's Books: A History of Scottish Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

Robert DeMaria Jr., Heesok Chang and Samantha Zacher (eds.), A Companion to British Literature: Vol 1, Medieval Literature, 700-1450 (John Wiley & Sons, 2014), especially 'Before the Makars: Older Scots literature under the early Stewart Kings' by Rhiannon Purdie

Colm McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces: Scotland, England and Ireland 1306-1328 (Tuckwell Press, 2001)

Michael Penman, Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots (Yale University Press, 2014)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the evolution of lungs and of the first breaths, which can be traced back 400 million years to when animal life spread from rock pools and swamps onto land, as some fish found an evolutionary advantage in getting their oxygen from air rather than water. Breathing with lungs may have started with fish filling their mouths with air and forcing it down into sacs in their chests, like the buccal pumping that frogs do now, and slowly their swimming muscles adapted to work their lungs like bellows.

While lungs developed in different ways, there are astonishing continuities: for example, the distinct breathing system that helps tiny birds fly thousands of miles now is also the one that once allowed some dinosaurs to become huge; our hiccups are vestiges of the flight reaction in fish needing more oxygen; and we still breathe through our skins, just not enough to meet our needs.

With:

Steve Brusatte Professor of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh

Emily Rayfield Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol

And

Jonathan Codd Professor of Integrative Zoology at the University of Manchester

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Roger B. J. Benson, Richard J. Butler, Matthew T. Carrano and Patrick M. O'Connor, ‘Air-filled postcranial bones in theropod dinosaurs: physiological implications and the ‘reptile’–bird transition’ (Biological Reviews: Cambridge Philosophical Society, July 2011)

Steve Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (Mariner Books, 2018)

Jennifer A. Clack, Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods (2nd edition, Indiana University Press, 2012)

Camila Cupello et al, ‘Lung Evolution in vertebrates and the water-to-land transition’ (eLife, July 2022)

Andrew Davies and Carl Moore, The Respiratory System (Elsevier, 2010)

Kenneth Kardong, Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution (8th edition, McGraw-Hill Education, 2018)

Ye Li et al, ‘Origin and stepwise evolution of vertebrate lungs’ (Nature Ecology & Evolution, Feb 2025)

P. Martin Sander and Marcus Clauss, ‘Sauropod Gigantism’ (Science, Oct 2008)

Goran Nilsson, Respiratory Physiology of Vertebrates: Life With and Without Oxygen (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Steven F. Perry et al, ‘What came first, the lung or the breath?’ (Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A: Molecular & Integrative Biology, May 2001)

Michael J. Stephen, Breath Taking: The Power, Fragility, and Future of Our Extraordinary Lungs (Grove/Atlantic, 2022)

Mathew J. Wedel, ‘The evolution of vertebral pneumaticity in sauropod dinosaurs’ (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Aug 2010)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of radical artists to break free from the cultural establishment of Vienna and found a movement that became known as the Vienna Secession.

In the vibrant atmosphere of coffee houses, Freudian psychoanalysis and the music of Wagner and Mahler, the Secession sought to bring together fine art and music with applied arts such as architecture and design.

The movement was characterized by Klimt’s stylised paintings, richly decorated with gold leaf, and the art nouveau buildings that began to appear in the city, most notably the Secession Building, which housed influential exhibitions of avant-garde art and was a prototype of the modern art gallery. The Secessionists themselves were pioneers in their philosophy and way of life, aiming to immerse audiences in unified artistic experiences that brought together visual arts, design, and architecture.

 With:

Mark Berry, Professor of Music and Intellectual History at Royal Holloway, University of London

Leslie Topp, Professor Emerita in History of Architecture at Birkbeck, University of London

And

Diane Silverthorne, art historian and 'Vienna 1900' scholar

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Mark Berry, Arnold Schoenberg: Critical Lives (Reaktion Books, 2018)

Gemma Blackshaw, Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 (National Gallery Company, 2013)

Elizabeth Clegg, Art, Design and Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1920 (Yale University Press, 2006)

Richard Cockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World (Yale University Press, 2023)

Stephen Downes, Gustav Mahler (Reaktion Books, 2025)

Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (Oxford University Press, 1979)

Tag Gronberg, Vienna: City of Modernity, 1890-1914 (Peter Lang, 2007)

Allan S. Janik and Hans Veigl, Wittgenstein in Vienna: A Biographical Excursion Through the City and its History (Springer/Wien, 1998)

Jill Lloyd and Christian Witt-Dörring (eds.), Vienna 1900: Style and Identity (Hirmer Verlag, 2011)

William J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (Yale University Press, 1974)

Tobias Natter and Christoph Grunenberg (eds.), Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life (Tate, 2008)

Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Vintage, 1979)

Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Brandeis University Press, 2016)

Diane V Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds and Megan Brandow-Faller, Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902-1911 (Letterform Archive, 2023)

Edward Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture & Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (Yale University Press, 1989)

Leslie Topp, Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918: Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and Their Contemporaries (4th ed., Phaidon, 2015)

Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.), Vienna 1900: Birth of Modernism (Walther & Franz König, 2019)

Hans-Peter Wipplinger (ed.), Masterpieces from the Leopold Museum (Walther & Franz König)

Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography (University of Nebraska Press, 1964)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Ever since Franz Anton Mesmer induced trance-like states in his Parisian subjects in the late eighteenth century, dressed in long purple robes, hypnosis has been associated with performance, power and the occult.

 It has exerted a powerful hold over the cultural imagination, featuring in novels and films including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and George du Maurier’s Trilby - and it was even practiced by Charles Dickens himself.

But despite some debate within the medical establishment about the scientific validity of hypnosis, it continues to be used today as a successful treatment for physical and psychological conditions. Scientists are also using hypnosis to learn more about the power of suggestion and belief.

With:

Catherine Wynne, Reader in Victorian and Early Twentieth-Century Literature and Visual Cultures at the University of Hull

Devin Terhune, Reader in Experimental Psychology at King’s College London

And

Quinton Deeley, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, where he leads the Cultural and Social Neuroscience Research Group.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (Vol. 1, Basic Books, 1970)

William Hughes, That Devil’s Trick: Hypnotism and the Victorian Popular Imagination (Manchester University Press, 2015)

Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Fred Kaplan, Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction (first published 1975; Princeton University Press, 2017)

Wendy Moore, The Mesmerist: The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2017)

Michael R. Nash and Amanda J. Barnier (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis Theory, Research, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, Hypnosis: A Brief History (John Wiley & Sons, 2008)

Amir Raz, The Suggestible Brain: The Science and Magic of How We Make Up Our Minds (Balance, 2024)

Robin Waterfield, Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis (Pan, 2004)

Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago University Press, 1998)

Fiction:

Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician: & other stories (first published 1930; Vintage Classics, 1996)

George du Maurier, Trilby (first published 1894; Penguin Classics, 1994)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (first published 1897; Penguin Classics, 2003)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and role of one of the most significant figures in early 20th Century German history. Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) had been famous since 1914 as the victorious commander at the Battle of Tannenberg against Russian invaders, soon burnishing this fame on the Western Front and Hindenburg was to claim he would have won there too, if enemies at home had not 'stabbed Germany in the back'. He won Germany’s Presidential election twice during the Weimar Republic, as a candidate of national unity and, while he gained his second term as a ‘stop Hitler’ candidate, President Hindenburg was to appoint Hitler as Chancellor and transfer some of his charisma onto him – a move so disastrous that Germans were later to ask if the myth of Hindenburg had always been an illusion.

With

Anna von der Goltz Professor of History at Georgetown University, Washington DC

Chris Clark Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge

And

Colin Storer Associate Professor in Modern European History at the University of Warwick

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

William J. Astore and Dennis E. Showalter, Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Books, 2005)

Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power (William Heinemann, 2018) Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (first published 1964; Princeton University Press, 2016)

Jürgen W. Falter, 'The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions' (Central European History, 32/2, 1990)

Peter Fritzsche, 'Presidential Victory and Popular Festivity in Weimar Germany: Hindenburg's 1925 Election' (Central European History, 32/2, 1990) Larry Eugene Jones, Hitler Versus Hindenburg: The 1932 Presidential Elections and the End of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2016) Martin Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916-1918 (first published 1976; Routledge, 2021) John Lee, The Warlords: Hindenburg and Ludendorff (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005) Frank McDonough, The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall, 1918-1933 (Apollo, 2023) Nadine Rossol and Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic (Oxford University Press, 2022)

Richard Scully, 'Hindenburg: The Cartoon Titan of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1934' (German Studies Review, 35/3, 2012)

Colin Storer, A Short History of the Weimar Republic (Revised Edition, Bloomsbury, 2024)

Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford University Press, 2009) Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918 (Penguin, 2015)

J. W. Wheeler-Bennett, Hindenburg: The Wooden Titan (first published 1936; Macmillan, 1967)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production