The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

1. 1
   Number 1: M.C. Escher

   Misha Glenny and guests discuss the work of Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972), the graphic artist and printmaker best known for his impossible buildings, paradoxical perspectives, and repeating geometric patterns. Born in Leeuwarden and trained as a printmaker, Escher visited the Alhambra in Granada and found inspiration in the tessellating shapes of Islamic art. Through his career he went on to create some of the most famous images of the twentieth century and has been called a one-man art movement. After his work was exhibited in a 1954 conference, Escher’s work also caught the eye of mathematicians who appreciated his intuitive geometric precision. Escher was influenced by their work, and they were influenced by his – despite Escher never thinking he was actually very good at maths himself. With Marcus du Sautoy Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Professor of Mathematics and Fellow of New College, University of Oxford Sarah Hart Professor Emerita of Mathematics and Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London, and Fellow of Gresham College And Judith Kadee Exhibitions project manager and public programme curator at Hague Historical Museum Producer: Martha Owen Reading list: Marcus du Sautoy, Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity (Fourth Estate, 2025) Marcus du Sautoy, Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician’s Journey Into Symmetry (Harper Perennial, 2009) Bruno Ernst, The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher (Taschen, 2007) M.C. Escher, M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work (Taschen America Llc, 1992) Miranda Fellows, The Life and Works of Escher (Siena,1996) Frederico Giudiceandrea, Escher op reis or Escher’s Journey (Publisher Wbooks, 2018, in Dutch) Sarah Hart, Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature (Flatiron Books, 2023) Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (first published 1979; Basic Books, 1999) Siobhan Roberts, King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, The Man Who Saved Geometry (Profile Books, 2007) Claudio Salsi, Paolo Branca and Claudio Bartocci (eds.), M.C. Escher. Tra arte e scienza. Catalogo della mostra (24 Ore Cultura, 2025, in Italian) Doris Schattschneider, “The Mathematical Side of M.C. Escher” (Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 57, 6, 2010) Doris Schattschneider, M.C. Escher: Visions of Symmetry (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2004) Wouter van Reek, Nadir & Zenith in the World of Escher (Leopold, 2019) 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.

   May 14, 2026·56min
   Play
2. 2
   Number 2: Vigée Le Brun

   Misha Glenny and guests discuss the French portrait painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755 - 1842). From her teens she delighted her high society subjects in and around Paris, notably Marie Antoinette who she painted around 30 times, and she invariably found ways to show her sitters at their best. Some critics were affronted that she, a young woman, dared paint at all and, when they saw how good her portraits were, some spread a rumour that surely this could not really be her work and she must have had a secret male lover finishing her portraits in a studio. The French Revolution forced Vigée Le Brun out of France and so she set off from one European court to another to find more success from Naples to Vienna to St Petersburg and to London, eventually settling back in France. Today her works are on show in major galleries around the world. With Rosalind Polly Blakesley Master of Pembroke College and Professor of Russian and European Art at the University of Cambridge Robert Wenley Deputy Director of Collections and Research at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham And Francesca Whitlum-Cooper Curator of Later Italian, Spanish and French Paintings at The National Gallery, London. Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Joseph Baillio, Katharine Baetjer and Paul Lang (eds), Vigée Le Brun (exhibition catalogue in English, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016) Joseph Baillio et al., Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun: 1755-1842 (exhibition catalogue in French, Grand Palais, Paris, 2015/16) Rosalind P. Blakesley, Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great (Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 2023), especially chapter 8 ‘The Triumphant Refugee’ Lucy Davies, Vigée Le Brun: Self Portrait in a Straw Hat (National Gallery Global, 2025) Angelica Goodden, The Sweetness of Life: A Biography of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1997) Franny Moyle, Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun: The Entwined Lives of Two Great Eighteenth-Century Women Artists (Apollo, 2025) Jordana Pomeroy, Daring: The Life and Art of Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (Getty Publications, 2025) Mary D. Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (University of Chicago Press, 1997) Paris Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830 (Paul Mellon Centre, Yale University Press London, 2022) Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (trans. Sian Evans), The Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (Camden Press, 1989) Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (first published 1869; Tredition Classics, 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.

   July 23, 2026·57min
   Play
3. 3
   Number 3: Joseph Roth

   Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the great writers on Central Europe after the first world war and on the dying of the old orders with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As a German speaking Jew from Brody in the north-eastern edge of that Empire, which was then in Galicia, next in Poland and is now in Ukraine, Roth (1894 - 1939) was to spend his short life moving first to Lviv then to Vienna and finally to Paris via Berlin without ever finding a settled home. Roth explored the loss of homeland and anticipated the dangers of the new nationalism through his journalism and in his novels including Radetzky March, Job, Rebellion and Flight Without End, and his books were among the first the Nazis burned. With Helen Chambers Emeritus Professor of German at the University of St Andrews Deborah Holmes Associate Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Salzburg And Jon Hughes Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Jon Hughes, Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s (MHRA, 2006) Heinz Lunzer and Victoria Lunzer-Talos, Joseph Roth: Leben und Werk in Bildern (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994) Keiron Pim, Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth (Granta, 2022) Joseph Roth (trans. Deborah Holmes, ed. Helen Constantine), Vienna Tales (Oxford University Press, 2014) Joseph Roth (trans. and ed. Michael Hofmann), A Life in Letters (Granta, 2012) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Collected Shorter Fiction (Granta, 2001) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Rebellion (Granta, 2000) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Radetzky March (Granta, 2022) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Granta, 2022) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Wandering Jews (Granta, 2001) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933 (Granta, 2022) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars (Granta, 2015) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), Reports from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France 1925-1939 (Granta, 2004) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Emperor’s Tomb (Granta, 2013) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The String of Pearls (Granta, 1999) Joseph Roth (trans. Michael Hofmann), The White Cities: Reports From France 1925-1939 (Granta, 2013) Joseph Roth (trans. David Le Vay), Weights and Measures (Pushkin Press, 2024) Joseph Roth (trans. Daved Le Vay and Beatrice Musgrave), Flight Without End (Pushkin Press, 2024) Joseph Roth (trans. Ruth Martin), The Coral Merchant: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press, 2020) Joseph Roth (trans Will Stone), On the End of the World (Pushkin Press, 2019) Joseph Roth (trans. Dorothy Thompson), Job: The Story of a Simple Man (Granta, 2022) Wilhelm Von Sternburg, Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009) 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.

   June 04, 2026·56min
   Play
4. 4
   Number 4: Nizami Ganjavi

   Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest romantic poets in Persian literature. Nizami Ganjavi (c1141–1209) is was born in the city of Ganja in what is now Azerbaijan and his popularity soon spread throughout the Persian-speaking lands and beyond. Nizami is best known for his Khamsa, a set of five epic poems that contains a famous retelling of the tragic love story of King Khosrow II (c570-628) and the Christian princess Shirin (unknown-628) and the legend of Layla and Majnun. Not only did he write romances: his poetry also displays a dazzling knowledge of philosophy, astronomy, botany and the life of Alexander the Great. With Christine van Ruymbeke Professor of Persian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge Narguess Farzad Senior Lecturer in Persian Studies at SOAS, University of London And Dominic Parviz Brookshaw Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at the University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Laurence Binyon, The Poems of Nizami (The Studio Limited, 1928) Barbara Brend, Treasures of Herat: Two Manuscripts of the Khamsah of Nizami in the British Library (Gingko, 2020) Barbara Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami (British Library, 1995) J-C. Burgel and C. van Ruymbeke, A Key to the Treasure of the Hakim: Artistic and Humanistic Aspects of Nizami Ganjavi’s Khamsa (Leiden University Press, 2011) Nizami Ganjavi (trans. P.J. Chelkowski), Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975) Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Dick Davis), Layli and Majnun (Penguin Books, 2021) Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke), The Story of Layla and Majnun (first published 1966: Omega Publications, 1997) Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke), The Story of the Seven Princesses (Bruno Cassirer Ltd, 1976) Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Julie Scott Meisami, The Haft Paykar: A Medieval Persian Romance (Oxford University Press, 1995) Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Colin Turner), Layla and Majnun (Blake Publishing, 1997) Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran (Bloomsbury, 2019) Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton University Press, 2014) Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Layli and Majnun: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Nizami’s Epic Romance (Brill, 2003) Kamran Talattof, Jerome W. Clinton, and K. Allin Luther, The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric (Palgrave, 2000) C. van Ruymbeke, Science and Poetry in Medieval Persia: The Botany of Nizami's Khamsa (Cambridge University Press, 2007) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

   January 02, 2025·53min
   Play
5. 5
   Number 5: Italo Calvino

   Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Italian author of Invisible Cities, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Cosmicomics and other celebrated novels, fables and short stories of the 20th Century. Calvino (1923 -1985) had a passionate belief that writing and art could make life better for everyone. Despite his parents being scientists, who dearly wanted him to be a scientist too, and his time fighting with the Partisans in Liguria in WWII during which his parents were held hostage by the Nazis, Calvino turned away from realism in his writing. Ideally, he said, he would have liked to be alive in the Enlightenment. He moved towards the fantastical, drawing on his childhood reading while collecting a huge number of the fables of Italy and translating them from dialect into Italian to enrich the shared culture of his fellow citizens. His fresh perspective on the novel continues to inspire writers and delight readers in Italian and in translations around the world. With Guido Bonsaver Professor of Italian Cultural History at the University of Oxford Jennifer Burns Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Warwick And Beatrice Sica Associate Professor in Italian Studies at UCL Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Elio Baldi, The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020) Elio Baldi and Cecilia Schwartz, Circulation, Translation and Reception Across Borders: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities Around the World (Routledge, 2024) Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially the chapter ‘Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco: Postmodern Masters’ James Butler, ‘Infinite Artichoke’ (London Review of Books, vol. 45, no. 12, 15 June 2023) Italo Calvino (trans. Martin McLaughlin), The Path to the Spiders’ Nests (first published 1947; Penguin Classics, 2009) Italo Calvino (trans. Mikki Taylor), The Baron in the Trees (first published 1957; Vintage Classics, 2021) Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo (first published 1963; Vintage Classics, 2023) Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver and Ann Goldstein), Difficult Loves and Other Stories (first published 1970; Vintage Classics, 2018) Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver), Invisible Cities (first published 1972; Vintage Classics, 1997) Italo Calvino (trans. Patrick Creagh), The Uses of Literature (first published 1980; Houghton Mifflin, 1987) Italo Calvino (trans. Geoffrey Brock), Six Memos for the Next Millennium (first published 1988; Penguin Classics, 2016) Italo Calvino (trans. Tim Parks), The Road to San Giovanni (first published 1990; HMH Books, 2014) Italo Calvino (trans. Ann Goldstein), The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays (Mariner Books Classics, 2023) Kathryn Hume, Calvino's Fictions: Cogito and Cosmos (Clarendon Press, 1992) Martin McLaughlin, Italo Calvino (Edinburgh University Press, 1998) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

   December 19, 2024·49min
   Play