Misha Glenny and guests discuss the provocative artistic phenomenon that first startled audiences in 1916 in Zurich. There, at the Cabaret Voltaire at the Holländische Meierei on the Spiegelgasse, Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball and others gathered on a small stage, sometimes dressed in cardboard, often performing nonsense poems. This was the start of Dada, a spirit more than a movement which spread to other cities in Europe during the war. In part the Dadas (as they called themselves) were protesting against the inevitability of constant wars on the continent and in part this was an artistic experiment around the absurd; they were creating poems, songs, costumes and art that made no obvious sense, just as the war around them made no sense to the artists, designers and poets at the Cabaret Voltaire.

With Dawn Ades Emeritus Professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex

Ruth Hemus Professor of French and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London

And

Stephen Forcer Professor of French at the University of Glasgow

Produced by Martha Owen

Reading list:

Dawn Ades (ed.), The Dada Reader: A Critical Anthology (Tate Publishing, 2006)

Hugo Ball (trans. Ann Raimes and ed. John Elderfield), Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary (first published 1927; University of California Press, 1996)

Stephen Forcer, Dada as Text, Thought and Theory (Legenda, 2015)

Ruth Hemus, Dada's Women (Yale University Press, 2009)

David Hopkins, Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Jed Rasula, Destruction was my Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century (Basic Books, 2015)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries of the 20th century: the archaea microorganisms. In the 1970s the American microbiologist Carl Woese (1928-2012) realised that the tiny bacteria-sized organisms he was studying were not actually bacteria but from an entirely different branch of the tree of life. It became clear that archaea, as he named them, share aspects of the cells in all plants and animals even if they often live in places where other life struggles including salty lakes, acidic pools, under the sea bed and in the gut. While aspects of what followed from Woese are still under debate, further discoveries suggest that life on Earth has been on a journey of separation and reunion: that the first cells developed into bacteria and archaea billions of years ago and that some of those later combined to form the complex cells from which we are made.

With

Christa Schleper Professor of Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Vienna

Thorsten Allers Professor of Archaeal Genetics at the University of Nottingham

And

Buzz Baum Group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

John Archibald, One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the evolution of complex life (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Buzz Baum, ‘I’: A Biography of the Biological Self (Allen Lane, forthcoming 2027)

Franklin M. Harold, In Search of Cell History: The Evolution of Life's Building Blocks (University of Chicago Press, 2014)

Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press, 2005)

David Quammen, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life (Simon & Schuster, 2018)

Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis (Oxford University Press, 1994)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the woman who, as a child bride, became mother to the boy who would eventually become the first king in the Tudor dynasty. Lady Margaret Beaufort (c1443-1509) was twelve when she married Edmund Tudor, half his age, and gave birth to their son Henry when she was thirteen and Edmund was already dead from the plague. Margaret Beaufort made it her life's work to protect Henry during the Wars of the Roses, which had begun soon before his birth and, as many more obvious successors to the crown died or were killed in the wars, she pivoted to supporting Henry when he became the strongest contender against Richard III. She was to survive Richard III declaring her a traitor and went on to see Henry become Henry VII, the first Tudor king, and herself become the King's Mother. Outliving her son by a few months, she was then to help her grandson Henry VIII succeed and the Tudor dynasty continue.

With

Joanna Laynesmith Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading

Katherine Lewis Honorary Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lincoln and Research Associate at the University of York

And

David Grummitt Staff Tutor in History at the Open University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Nathen Amin, The House of Beaufort (Amberley Publishing, 2017)

Rachel Delman, 'The Vowesses, the anchoresses, and the aldermen's wives: Lady Margaret Beaufort and the Devout Society of Late Medieval Stamford' (Urban History 49, 2022)

David Grummitt, A Short History of the Wars of the Roses (revised edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)

Michael Hicks, The Wars of the Roses (Yale University Press, 2010)

Lauren Johnson, Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025)

Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Rebecca Krug, Reading Families: Women's Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2008), especially the chapter ‘Margaret Beaufort's Literate Practice: Service and Self-Inscription'

J.L. Laynesmith, Cecily Duchess of York (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)

Susan Powell, The Household Accounts of Lady Margaret Beaufort, 1443-1509 (The British Academy, 2022)

Nicola Tallis, Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort, Tudor Matriarch (Michael O'Mara, 2019)

Micheline White (ed.), English Women, Religion, and Textual Production, 1500-1625 (Ashgate, 2016), especially ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort’s Translations as Mirrors of Practical Piety’ by Brenda M. Hosington In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange of cultures and biology across the Atlantic and Pacific after 1492. That was when Columbus reached the Bahamas, a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, arguably, syphilis in its most virulent form; the Americas had no cattle, bananas, sugar cane or smallpox. The lists of what was then exchanged are long and as these flora, fauna and diseases moved between continents, their impact ranged from transformation to devastation. In parts of the Americas, European viruses helped kill over 90 percent of the population. In parts of Europe, Africa and Asia populations boomed on the new American foods. Sheep from Europe grazed fertile land into deserts in some parts of the Americas, while the lowered populations in others led to local reforestation which, arguably, is linked to a particularly cold period in the Little Ice Age.

With

Rebecca Earle Professor of History at the University of Warwick

John Lindo Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University

And

Mark Maslin Professor of Earth System Science at University College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list

Steven R. Brechin and Seungyun Lee (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society (Routledge, 2024), especially the chapter ‘Human Impacts on the Climate Prior to the Industrial Revolution’ by Alexander Koch, Simon Lewis, Chris Brierley and Mark Maslin

Judith Carney and Richard Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World (University of California Press, 2009)

EJ Collen, AS Johar, JC Teixeira and B. Llamas, ‘The Immunogenetic Impact of European Colonization in the Americas’ (Front Genet, August 2022)

Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Greenwood Press, 1972)

Rebecca Earle, ‘‘‘If You Eat Their Food . . .”: Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America’ (American Historical Review 115:3, 2010)

Raymond Grew (ed.), Food in Global History (Routledge, 1999), especially ‘The Impact of New World Food Crops on the Diet and Economy of China and India, 1600-1900’ by Sucheta Mazumda

Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (Pelican, 2018)

Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, ‘The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas’ (Journal of Economic Perspectives 24:2, 2010)

Jeffrey Pilcher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Food History (Oxford University Press, 2012), especially ‘The Columbian Exchange’ by Rebecca Earle

In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the short life and lasting works of Keats (1795-1821), who in one year wrote some of the most loved poems in English. Among these are Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode on Melancholy. That most productive year began in autumn 1818, when Keats had been stung by some reviews labelling him an uncouth Cockney who should go back to his former work as an apothecary, work he had left for poetry only two years before with the encouragement of enthusiastic friends. Just over two years later, Keats was dead in Rome from tuberculosis, before his work found fame, though some who knew him, including Shelley, believed his true killer was the critics.

With

Fiona Stafford Professor of English Language and Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford

Nicholas Roe Wardlaw Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews

And

Meiko O’Halloran, Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature at Newcastle University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

John Barnard, John Keats (Cambridge University Press, 1987)

Katie Garner and Nicholas Roe (eds), John Keats and Romantic Scotland (Oxford University Press, 2022)

Ian Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art (Oxford University Press, 1967)

John Keats (ed. John Barnard), John Keats: Selected Writings (Oxford University Press, 2020)

John Keats (ed. John Barnard), John Keats: Oxford 21st-Century Authors (University Press, 2017)

John Keats (ed. John Barnard), Selected Poems (Penguin, 2007)

John Keats (ed. John Barnard), The Complete Poems (Penguin, 2nd edition, 1977)

John Keats (ed. Jeffrey N. Cox), Keats’s Poetry and Prose: A Norton Critical Edition (W. W. Norton & Company, 2008)

Carol Kyros Walker, Walking North with Keats (Edinburgh University Press, 2021)

Richard Marggraf Turley (ed.), Keats’s Places (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

Lucasta Miller, Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph (Jonathan Cape, 2021)

Michael O’Neill (ed.), John Keats in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Christopher Ricks, Keats and Embarrassment (Oxford University Press, 1974)

Nicholas Roe, John Keats: A New Life (Yale University Press, 2012) Helen Vendler, The Odes of Keats (Belknap Press, 2004)

Susan J. Wolfson, Reading John Keats (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Susan J. Wolfson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Keats (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the laws that Hammurabi (c1810 - c1750 BC), King of Babylon, had carved into a black basalt pillar in present day Iraq and which, since its rediscovery in 1901 in present day Iran, has affirmed Hammurabi's reputation as one of the first great lawmakers. Visitors to the Louvre in Paris can see it on display with almost 300 rules in cuneiform, covering anything from ‘an eye for an eye’ to how to handle murder, divorce, witchcraft, false accusations and more. The Code of Hammurabi, as it became known, made such an impression in Mesopotamia that it was copied and shared for a millennium after his death and, since its reemergence, Hammurabi and his Code have been commemorated in the US Capitol and the International Court of Justice.

With

Martin Worthington Professor in Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College Dublin

Frances Reynolds Shillito Fellow and Associate Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College

And

Selena Wisnom Lecturer in the Heritage of the Middle East at the University of Leicester

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Zainab Bahrani, Mesopotamia: Ancient Art and Architecture (Thames and Hudson, 2017)

Dominique Charpin, Hammurabi of Babylon (I.B. Tauris, 2021)

Prudence O. Harper, Joan Aruz and Françoise Tallon, The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures from the Louvre (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992)

J. Nicholas Postgate (ed.), Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern (British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2007), especially ‘Babylonian and Assyrian: A History of Akkadian’ by Andrew R. George

Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (2nd edition, Scholars Press, 1997)

Marc Van De Mieroop, King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography (Wiley, 2005)

Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000–323 BC (4th edition (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006)

Selena Wisnom, The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History (Allen Lane, 2025)

Martin Worthington, Complete Babylonian: A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding Babylonian with Original Texts (Teach Yourself Library, 2012)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most successful of Shakespeare's plays in his own time. Written with no Part 2 in mind as 'Henry the Fourth', the play explores ideas about who can be a legitimate ruler and why, and how anyone can rightly succeed to the throne. This was an especially pressing question for his Tudor audience as Elizabeth I had named no successor. Playwrights, banned from openly discussing the jeopardy her subjects faced, turned to these themes of power, legitimacy and succession in distant and recent history. When Shakespeare combined this relevance with the vivid characters of Falstaff, Hotspur and Hal and with the tensions between noble fathers and sons, he had a play that fascinated well into the Jacobean era and has been revived throughout the centuries.

With

Emma Smith Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford

Lucy Munro Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at Kings College London

And

Laurence Publicover Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Bristol

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Hailey Bachrach, Staging Female Characters in Shakespeare’s English History Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

Warren Chernaik, The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s History Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power (Bodley Head, 2018)

Graham Holderness, Shakespeare: The Histories (Red Globe Press, 1999)

Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories (Routledge, 1997)

William Shakespeare (eds. Indira Ghose, Anna Pruitt and Emma Smith), Henry IV Part I: The New Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2024)

William Shakespeare (ed. Gordon McMullan), 1 Henry IV: A Norton Critical Edition, 3rd edition (Norton, 2003)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the countless venues across the Roman Empire which for over five hundred years drew the biggest crowds both in the Republic and under the Emperors. The shows there delighted the masses who knew, no matter how low their place in society, they were much better off than the gladiators about to fight or the beasts to be slaughtered. Some of the Roman elites were disgusted, seeing this popular entertainment as morally corrupting and un-Roman. Moral degradation was a less immediate concern though than the overspill of violence. There was a constant threat of gladiators being used as a private army and while those of the elite wealthy enough to stage the shows hoped to win great prestige, they risked disappointing a crowd which could quickly become a mob and turn on them.

With

Kathleen Coleman James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University

John Pearce Reader in Archaeology at King’s College London

And

Matthew Nicholls Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John’s College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

C. A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton University Press, 1993)

Roger Dunkle, Gladiators: Violence and Spectacle in Ancient Rome (Pearson, 2008)

Garrett G. Fagan, The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

A. Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power (University of Texas Press, 1997)

A. Futrell, The Roman Games: A Sourcebook (Blackwell Publishing, 2006)

Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard, The Colosseum (Profile, 2005)

Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003)

Eckart Köhne and Cornelia Ewigleben (eds.), Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome (University of California Press, 2000)

Donald Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Routledge, 1998)

F. Meijer, The Gladiators: History’s Most Deadly Sport (Souvenir, 2004)

Jerry Toner, The Day Commodus killed a Rhino: Understanding the Roman Games (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014)

K. Welch, The Roman Amphitheatre from its Origins to the Colosseum (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

T. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (Routledge, 1992)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the wonders of the natural world. In 1875 in the western Pacific, the crew of HMS Challenger discovered the Mariana Trench which turned out to be deeper than Everest is high, by two kilometres. Trenches like Mariana form when one tectonic plate slips under another and heads down and there are around fifty of them globally. While at one time some thought it was too dark and deep for life there and others wildly imagined monsters, the truth has turned out to be much more surprising.

With

Heather Stewart, Director of Kelpie Geoscience and Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia

Jon Copley Professor of Ocean Exploration and Science Communication at the University of Southampton

And

Alan Jamieson Director of the Deep Sea Research Centre at the University of Western Australia

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean (Doubleday, 2023)

Jon Copley, Deep Sea: 10 Things You Should Know (Orion Books, 2023)

Hali Felt, Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor (Henry Holt & Co, 2012)

M.E. Gerringer, ‘Pseudoliparis swirei: A newly-discovered hadal liparid (Scorpaeniformes: Liparidae) from the Mariana Trench’ (Zootaxa 4358 (1), 161-177, 2017)

A.J. Jamieson, The Hadal Zone: Life in the Deepest Oceans (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

A.J. Jamieson et al., ‘A global assessment of fishes at lower abyssal and upper hadal depths (5000 to 8000 m)’ (Deep-Sea Research Part 1. 178: 103642, 2021)

A.J. Jamieson et al., ‘Fear and loathing of the deep ocean: Why don’t people care about the deep sea?’ (ICES Journal of Marine Science. 78: 797-809, 2020)

A.J. Jamieson et al., ‘Microplastic and synthetic fibers ingested by deep-sea amphipods in six of the deepest marine environments on Earth’ (Royal Society Open Science, 6, 180667, 2019)

A.J. Jamieson et al., ‘Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna’ (Nature Ecology and Evolution. 1, 0051, 2017)

V.L. Vescovo et al., ‘Safety and conservation at the deepest place on Earth: A call for prohibiting the deliberate discarding of nondegradable umbilicals from deep-sea exploration vehicles’ (Marine Policy. 128, 104463, 2021)

J.N.J. Weston et al., ‘New species of Eurythenes from hadal depths of the Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean (Crustacea: Amphipoda)’ (Zootaxa. 4748(1): 163-181, 2020)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios 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 Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

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