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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun's 3000 year old tomb and its impact on the understanding of ancient Egypt, both academic and popular. The riches, such as the death mask above, were spectacular and made the reputation of Howard Carter who led the excavation. And if the astonishing contents of the tomb were not enough, the drama of the find and the control of how it was reported led to a craze for 'King Tut' that has rarely subsided and has enthused and sometimes confused people around the world, seeking to understand the reality of Tutankhamun's life and times. With Elizabeth Frood Associate Professor of Egyptology, Director of the Griffith Institute and Fellow of St Cross at the University of Oxford Christina Riggs Professor of the History of Visual Culture at Durham University and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford And John Taylor Curator at the Department of Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum Producer: Simon Tillotson

Gregor's parents are pushing 90. Gregor wants to move them out of their big Victorian home. But they refuse. So, he's come up with a bold plan.

You can find Etta’s work on Instagram @ettabehrlich

Get ad-free episodes of Heavyweight by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. You'll also get an exclusive bonus episode where Jonathan, Stevie, and Kalila remember how the beloved Jackie calls came to be and share a never-before-aired opening that could have started the show in an alternate Heavyweight universe. Thanks for your support—and be sure to check out the other offerings available to Pushkin+ subscribers, including ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive binges of other podcasts throughout the year.

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In this episode we invite Colm Tóibín to the breakfast table to discuss his new book A Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures and Other Writings. The book collects the blogs he wrote during his term as Laureate for Irish Fiction,  one written each month on topics as diverse as  Artificial Intelligence, reading Ulysses, the discomfort of Salman Rushdie in the wilds of County Dublin, Bob Dylan in concert, a life of Thom Gunn and the author’s role in a campaign to save the House of The Dead. Also included are essays on abiding interests –  music and the visual arts. It's a wide-ranging collection full of fascinating insights into the mind of one of Ireland’s beloved writers.

This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.

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In the early 1960s, Unesco appealed for scientists to go to Egypt to save antiquities that were threatened by the construction of one of the largest dams in the world, the Aswan High Dam on the River Nile.

Professor Herman Bell answered that call from the UN. He spoke to Louise Hidalgo in 2020.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.

(Photo: Construction of the Aswan High Dam. Credit: Getty Images)

Charles Bowden, sgraffito by Alice Leora Briggs

Last time I said I was going to look for some creativity or inspiration, and so I went fishing for a week up in my favorite mountains, and it worked. I forgot all about the problems of the world and felt like a new man, happy to be alive, but then I came back down from the mountains and Charlie Kirk was shot at the university where I used to work, from the top of the building where I had an office I almost never went to. Back then, over a decade ago, lots of students at this school were carrying guns in their backpacks.

I asked one, “Why do you bring a gun to class?”

And he said, “To fight evil.”

And I said, “In school, we learn how to fight evil with words, not guns.”

He said nothing, but the look on his face was like he wanted to shoot me, like I was evil.

Charlie Kirk thought he was teaching students how to fight evil with words, this was his purpose in speaking at Utah Valley University, but a student (from another school) thought Kirk was spreading hatred—that Kirk was evil and needed to be killed.

It’s all very confusing and kind of scary. Now the flags around town are flying at half mast and people are saying Kirk is a Christian martyr, like Joan of Arc, and that democrats and liberals are evil.

I know I should be out talking to people about what is happening to our country, but I also know I don’t want to hear what they will say. Not yet. So I’m going to play a piece by Charles Bowden that seems to sum up what’s happening now, even though he wrote it 30 years ago, in a book called “Blood Orchid.” He called it a response or a riff on Imagine, the song by John Lennon.

Thanks for listening, thanks for donating, and thanks to Lisa Miller, Erica Heilman and Alice Leora Briggs.

I’m going to try to stay calm and ride out this wave of insanity.

Many emotions drive politics and culture: ambition, greed, altruism, anger. But what about humiliation? An Australian anthropologist makes the case that humiliation and its counterpart, dignity, are overlooked motivators of politics, both locally and globally.

• Guest: Professor Ghassan Hage, Professorial Fellow in Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne
• Producer: Alex Tighe

David Commins, author of the new book Saudi Arabia: A Modern History, brings decades of scholarship and firsthand experience to explain the kingdom's unlikely rise. Tyler and David discuss why Wahhabism was essential for Saudi state-building, the treatment of Shiites in the Eastern Province and whether discrimination has truly ended, why the Saudi state emerged from its poorer and least cosmopolitan regions, the lasting significance of the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure by millenarian extremists, what’s kept Gulf states stable, the differing motivations behind Saudi sports investments, the disappointing performance of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology despite its $10 billion endowment, the main barrier to improving its k-12 education, how Yemen became the region's outlier of instability and whether Saudi Arabia learned from its mistakes there, the Houthis' unclear strategic goals, the prospects for the kingdom's post-oil future, the topic of David’s next book, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded August 22nd, 2025.

This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.

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I interviewed Ada Limón and Joy Harjo, two of America’s most celebrated poets and former U.S. Poet Laureates. We talked about the art of deep listening, how to translate the music of the world into language, and why silence is never empty but always alive. We explored how poetry resists “clock time,” why metaphor is essential to truth, how culture lives through song and dance, and what it means to trust your voice across a lifetime of writing.If you want to write with more presence, rediscover the mystery of language, or understand how poetry can awaken a deeper way of being, this conversation will give you timeless insights from two masters of the craft.

Hey! I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.

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‘With his electric Soho, Richard Scott has arrived like a lightning bolt in our midst’ said T.S. Eliot Prize judge Sinéad Morrissey on the publication of his first collection in 2018. To celebrate publication of his second, That Broke into Shining Crystals (Faber), Richard will be reading alongside fellow poets Emily Berry (Dear Boy, Stranger Baby and Unexhausted Time) and Jane Yeh (Discipline, Marabou and Ninjas).

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Dr. Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology, psychiatry, and behavior sciences at Stanford School of Medicine. His research centers on brain development, neural plasticity, and how vision and respiration shape human performance and cognitive function. Beyond his work in academia, Huberman is the creator and host of the Huberman Lab podcast, the world’s leading health podcast, where he shares science-based insights on brain and body optimization. Exploring how to improve mental and physical health alike, he is also the author of the upcoming book Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body.