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

Chris Clark

And

Colin Storer

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)

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)

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)

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

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

In 1710, the British Parliament passed a piece of legislation entitled An Act for the Encouragement of Learning. It became known as the Statute of Anne, and it was the world’s first copyright law.

Lionel Bently, Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Cambridge

Will Slauter, Professor of History at Sorbonne University, Paris

Katie McGettigan, Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Isabella Alexander, Copyright Law and the Public Interest in the Nineteenth Century (Hart Publishing, 2010)

Isabella Alexander and H. Tomás Gómez-Arostegui (eds), Research Handbook on the History of Copyright Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016)

David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu, Who Owns this Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs (Mountain Leopard Press, 2024)

Oren Bracha, Owning Ideas: The Intellectual Origins of American Intellectual Property, 1790-1909 (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

Elena Cooper, Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Ronan Deazley, On the Origin of the Right to Copy: Charting the Movement of Copyright Law in Eighteenth Century Britain, 1695–1775 (Hart Publishing, 2004)

Ronan Deazley, Rethinking Copyright: History, Theory, Language (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently (eds.), Privilege and Property: Essays on the History of Copyright (Open Book Publishers, 2010)

Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire and Will Slauter (eds.), Circulation and Control: Artistic Culture and Intellectual Property in the Nineteenth Century (Open Book Publishers, 2021)

Melissa Homestead, American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822-1869 (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Adrian Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (University of Chicago Press, 2009)

Meredith L. McGill, American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834-1853 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)

Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Harvard University Press, 1993)

Mark Rose, Authors in Court: Scenes from the Theater of Copyright (Harvard University Press, 2018)

Catherine Seville, Internationalisation of Copyright: Books, Buccaneers and the Black Flag in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Brad Sherman and Lionel Bently, The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law (Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Will Slauter, Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright (Stanford University Press, 2019)

Robert Spoo, Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing and the Public Domain (Oxford University Press, 2013)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the decisive role of one of the great 20th Century physicists in solving the question of nuclear fission. It is said that Meitner (1878-1968) made this breakthrough over Christmas 1938 while she was sitting on a log in Sweden during a snowy walk with her nephew Otto Frisch (1904-79). Both were Jewish-Austrian refugees who had only recently escaped from Nazi Germany. Others had already broken uranium into the smaller atom barium, but could not explain what they found; was the larger atom bursting, or the smaller atom being chipped off or was something else happening? They turned to Meitner. She, with Frisch, deduced the nucleus really was splitting like a drop of water into a dumbbell shape, with the electrical charges at each end forcing the divide, something previously thought impossible, and they named this ‘fission’. This was a crucial breakthrough for which Meitner was eventually widely recognised if not at first.

With

Jess Wade

Frank Close

And

Steven Bramwell

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Frank Close, Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age, 1895-1965 (Allen Lane, 2025)

Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California Press, 1996)

Marissa Moss, The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner (Abrams Books, 2022)

Patricia Rife, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Birkhauser Verlag, 1999)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Korea's brief but significant period as an empire as it moved from the 500-year-old dynastic Joseon monarchy towards modernity. It was in October 1897 that King Gojong declared himself Emperor, seizing his chance when the once-dominant China lost to Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War. The king wanted to have the same status as the neighbouring Russian, Chinese and Japanese Emperors, to shore up a bid for Korean independence and sovereignty when the world’s major powers either wanted to open Korea up to trade or to colonise it. The Korean Empire lasted only thirteen years, yet it was a time of great transformation for this state and the whole region with lasting consequences in the next century…

With

Nuri Kim

Holly Stephens

And

Derek Kramer

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Isabella Bird Bishop, Korea and her Neighbors: A Narrative of Travel, With an Account of the Recent Vicissitudes and Present Position of the Country (first published 1898; Forgotten Books, 2019)

Vipan Chandra, Imperialism, Resistance and Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea: Enlightenment and the Independence Club (University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1988)

Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1859-1910 (University of California Press, 1995)

Carter J. Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1910 (University of Washington Press, 1991)

George L. Kallander, Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2013)

Kim Dong-no, John B. Duncan and Kim Do-hyung (eds.), Reform and Modernity in the Taehan Empire (Jimoondang, 2006)

Kirk W. Larsen, Tradition, Treaties, and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Chosŏn Korea, 1850-1910 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2008)

Yumi Moon, Populist Collaborators: The Ilchinhoe and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1896-1910 (Cornell University Press, 2013)

Sung-Deuk Oak, The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876-1915 (Baylor University Press, 2013)

Eugene T. Park, A Family of No Prominence: The Descendants of Pak Tŏkhwa and the Birth of Modern Korea (Stanford University Press, 2020)

Michael E. Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History (University of Hawaii Press, 2007)

Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919 (Columbia University Press, 2002)

Vladimir Tikhonov, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings, 1880s-1910s (Brill, 2010)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great figures in world literature. The French playwright Molière (1622-1673) began as an actor, aiming to be a tragedian, but he was stronger in comedy, touring with a troupe for 13 years until Louis XIV summoned him to audition at the Louvre and gave him his break. It was in Paris and at Versailles that Molière wrote and performed his best known plays, among them Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope and Le Malade Imaginaire, and in time he was so celebrated that French became known as The Language of Molière.

With

Noel Peacock

Jan Clarke

And

Joe Harris

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

David Bradby and Andrew Calder (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Molière (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Jan Clarke (ed.), Molière in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Georges Forestier, Molière (Gallimard, 2018)

Michael Hawcroft, Molière: Reasoning with Fools (Oxford University Press, 2007)

John D. Lyons, Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Mariage (Oxford University Press, 2023)

Robert McBride and Noel Peacock (eds.), Le Nouveau Moliériste (11 vols., University of Glasgow Presw, 1994- )

Larry F. Norman, The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (University of Chicago Press, 1999)

Noel Peacock, Molière sous les feux de la rampe (Hermann, 2012)

Julia Prest, Controversy in French Drama: Molière’s Tartuffe and the Struggle for Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

Virginia Scott, Molière: A Theatrical Life (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore typology, a method of biblical interpretation that aims to meaningfully link people, places, and events in the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, with the coming of Christ in the New Testament. Old Testament figures like Moses, Jonah, and King David were regarded by Christians as being ‘types’ or symbols of Jesus.

This way of thinking became hugely popular in medieval Europe, Renaissance England and Victorian Britain, as Christians sought to make sense of their Jewish inheritance - sometimes rejecting that inheritance with antisemitic fervour. It was a way of seeing human history as part of a divine plan, with ancient events prefiguring more modern ones, and it influenced debates about the relationship between metaphor and reality in the bible, in literature, and in art. It also influenced attitudes towards reality, time and history.

With

Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London

Harry Spillane, Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge and Research Fellow at Darwin College

And

Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Associate Professor in Patristics at Cambridge.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

A. C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante (first published 1966; Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Margaret Christian, Spenserian Allegory and Elizabethan Biblical Exegesis: The Context for 'The Faerie Queene' (Manchester University Press, 2016)

Dagmar Eichberger and Shelley Perlove (eds.), Visual Typology in Early Modern Europe: Continuity and Expansion (Brepols, 2018)

Tibor Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb: Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art and Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 1992)

Tibor Fabiny, ‘Typology: Pros and Cons in Biblical Hermeneutics and Literary Criticism’ (Academia, 2018)

Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (first published 1982; Mariner Books, 2002)

Leonhard Goppelt (trans. Donald H. Madvig), Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New (William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1982)

Paul J. Korshin, Typologies in England, 1650-1820 (first published in 1983; Princeton University Press, 2014)

Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (T & T Clark International, 1999)

Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisee (University of California Press, 1999)

Montague Rhodes James and Kenneth Harrison, A Guide to the Windows of King's College Chapel (first published in 1899; Cambridge University Press, 2010)

J. W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies (Oxford University Press, 2008)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the best known events and figures in Irish history. In 1014 Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, defeated the Hiberno-Norse forces of Sigtrygg Silkbeard and allies near their Dublin stronghold, with Brian losing his life on the day of battle. Soon chroniclers in Ireland and abroad were recording and retelling the events, raising the status of Brian Boru as one who sacrificed himself for Ireland, Christ-like, a connection reinforced by the battle taking place on Good Friday. While some of the facts are contested, the Battle of Clontarf became a powerful symbol of what a united Ireland could achieve by force against invaders.

With

Seán Duffy

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh

And

Alex Woolf

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Howard B. Clarke, Sheila Dooley and Ruth Johnson, Dublin and the Viking World (O'Brien Press Ltd, 2018)

Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson (ed.), The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond: Before and After Clontarf (Four Courts Press, 2015)

Clare Downham, ‘The Battle of Clontarf in Irish History and Legend’ (History Ireland 13, No. 5, 2005)

Seán Duffy, Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf (Gill & Macmillan, 2014)

Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin XVI: Proceedings of Clontarf 1014–2014: National Conference Marking the Millennium of the Battle of Clontarf (Four Courts Press, 2017)

Colmán Etchingham, ‘North Wales, Ireland and the Isles: The Insular Viking Zone’ (Peritia 15, 2001)

Colmán Etchingham, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World (Brepols N.V., 2019)

David Griffiths, Vikings of the Irish Sea (The History Press, 2nd ed., 2025)

James Henthorn Todd (ed. and trans.), Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh: The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, or, the Invasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen (first published 1867; Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Brian Boru: Ireland's greatest king? (The History Press, 2006)

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Tales of Three Gormlaiths in Medieval Irish Literature’ (Ériu 52, 2002)

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib: Some Dating Consierations’ (Peritia 9, 1995)

Brendan Smith, The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 1, 600–1550 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), especially ‘The Scandinavian Intervention’ by Alex Woolf

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus whose names are entwined with the end of Rome's Republic and the rise of the Roman Emperors. As tribunes, they brought popular reforms to the Roman Republic at the end of the 2nd century BC. Tiberius (c163-133BC) brought in land reform so every soldier could have his farm, while Gaius (c154-121BC) offered cheap grain for Romans and targeted corruption among the elites. Those elites saw the reforms as such a threat that they had the brothers killed: Tiberius in a shocking murder led by the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest, in 133BC and Gaius 12 years later with the senate's approval. This increase in political violence was to destabilise the Republic, forever tying the Gracchi to the question of why Rome’s Republic gave way to the Rome of Emperors.

With

Catherine Steel

Federico Santangelo

And

Kathryn Tempest

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Appian (trans. John Carter), The Civil Wars (Penguin Classics, 2005)

Valentina Arena, Jonathan R. W. Prag and Andrew Stiles, A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), especially the chapter by Lea Beness and Tom Hillard

R. Cristofoli, A. Galimberti and F. Rohr Vio (eds.), Costruire la Memoria: Uso e abuso della storia fra tarda repubblica e primo principato (L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2017), especially ‘The 'Tyranny' of the Gracchi and the Concordia of the Optimates: An Ideological Construct.’ by Francisco Pina Polo

Suzanne Dixon, Cornelia: Mother of the Gracchi, (Routledge, 2007)

Peter Garnsey and Dominic Rathbone, ‘The Background to the Grain Law of Gaius Gracchus’ (Journal of Roman Studies 75, 1985)

O. Hekster, G. de Kleijn and D. Slootjes (eds.), Crises and the Roman Empire (Brill, 2007), especially ‘Tiberius Gracchus, Land and Manpower’ by John W. Rich

Josiah Osgood, Rome and the Making of a World State, 150 BCE-20 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert and Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis (Penguin Classics, 2010)

Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield, ed. Philip A. Stadter), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Nathan Rosenstein, ‘Aristocrats and Agriculture in the Middle and Late Republic’ (Journal of Roman Studies 98, 2008)

A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘The Lex Repetundarum and the Political Ideas of Gaius Gracchus’ (Journal of Roman Studies 72, 1982)

Catherine Steel, The End of the Roman Republic, 146 to 44 BC: Conquest and Crisis (Edinburgh University Press, 2013)

David Stockton, The Gracchi (Oxford University Press, 1979)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, his popularity has increased among philosophers in recent years. Merleau-Ponty rejected Rene Descartes’ division between body and mind, arguing that the way we perceive the world around us cannot be separated from our experience of inhabiting a physical body. Merleau-Ponty was interested in the down-to-earth question of what it is actually like to live in the world. While performing actions as simple as brushing our teeth or patting a dog, we shape the world and, in turn, the world shapes us.

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

Thomas Baldwin

And

Timothy Mooney

Produced by Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Peter Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of

Dimitris Apostolopoulos, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Language (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)

Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails (Chatto and Windus, 2016)

Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings (Routledge, 2004)

Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Reading Merleau-Ponty (Routledge, 2007)

Renaud Barbaras (trans. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor), The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Indiana University Press, 2004).

Anya Daly, Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)

M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Northwestern University Press, 1998, 2nd ed.)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Alden L. Fisher), The Structure of Behavior (first published 1942; Beacon Press, 1976)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Donald Landes), Phenomenology of Perception (first published 1945; Routledge, 2011)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (first published 1948; Northwestern University Press, 1964)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs (first published 1960; Northwestern University Press, 1964)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (first published 1964; Northwestern University Press, 1968)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Oliver Davis with an introduction by Thomas Baldwin), The World of Perception (Routledge, 2008)

Ariane Mildenberg (ed.), Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2019)

Timothy Mooney, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception: On the Body Informed

Katherine J. Morris, Starting with Merleau-Ponty (Continuum, 2012)

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2011)

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, The Routledge Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2011)

Jean-Paul Sartre (trans. Benita Eisler), Situations (Hamish Hamilton, 1965)

Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department (Penguin, 2003)

Jon Stewart (ed.), The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty (Northwestern University Press, 1998)

Ted Toadvine, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Northwestern University

Kerry Whiteside, Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of an Existential Politics (Princeton University Press, 1988)

Iris Marion Young, On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2005)

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