The Forum

The Forum episodes:

• 04.20.2024

  Feeding the world and the Green Revolution

  In February 2024, the renowned Indian geneticist Dr. MS Swaminathan was posthumously awarded the country’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna. This was in recognition of the dramatic increase in the yields of food staples, such as rice and wheat,...

  
• 03.16.2024

  Etiquette

  ‘Always pass the salt and pepper together, even if your fellow diner has asked just for one of them’. That’s the standard advice given by countless dining etiquette manuals, one of the many rules regarding proper manners that have been...

  
• 02.17.2024

  Supermarkets

  Supermarkets: they are ubiquitous yet hard to define, lauded and vilified in roughly equal measures, and in many countries they have a huge influence on what we eat. Technological innovations, big social changes and new shopping habits have all shaped...

  
• 01.20.2024

  Diplomacy

  In the 1990s, an advert for a brand of chocolate depicted a sophisticated gathering hosted by the foreign ambassador of an unspecified country. It hinted at a gilded existence of cocktail parties and small talk among influential, wealthy guests. Iszi...

  
• 12.16.2023

  The story of throwaway living

  The humble plastic bag is actually a marvel of engineering: it is cheap, light, strong, waterproof and it has conquered the world. In countries where plastic bags have been banned, they are still being smuggled in. The environmental pollution and...

  
• 11.18.2023

  Political parties and us

  Political parties come in all shapes and sizes and their ideas are just as varied. But what kind of parties best reflect 21st-century society? How do we, as voters, choose between them at elections? What are their ever-increasing expenses spent...

  
• 10.21.2023

  What makes a good boss?

  We can probably all think of examples of bad bosses – the people who we love to gossip about with our colleagues outside work. And even if you’re lucky enough to have had good experiences of management, you may...

  
• 09.16.2023

  The joy and sorrow of roads

  Whether we are pedestrians, cyclists or drivers, roads play a crucial role in our everyday lives. But where and how should we build any new ones? What kind of roads do we need? And how did we end up with...

  
• 08.19.2023

  Pets and us

  For every young American under the age of 18, there are about two cats or dogs receiving free food and lodgings in US homes and that pattern is replicated in many other countries. So why do so many of us...

  
• 07.15.2023

  The evolution of teenagers

  In some ways the 21st century is a very unusual time when it comes to adolescence - a study in the US found that teenagers smoke less, drink less and have less sex than the previous generation. And worldwide young...

  
• 06.17.2023

  Global mass tourism

  From Bhutan to The Bahamas and Iceland to Indonesia, mass tourism has grown at an unprecedented rate over the last few decades. Today’s top destinations are struggling with the sheer numbers of visitors and the United Nations has called for...

  
• 05.20.2023

  A deep dive into deepfakes

  Are we in a new age of information warfare? The technology to create deepfakes has progressed steadily over the past decade and enables anyone to create videos of people saying and doing things they didn’t actually say or do. But...

  
• 04.15.2023

  How the mobile phone changed everything

  When telecoms engineer Martin Cooper first chatted in public on a mobile phone 50 years ago few would have predicted that this brief telephone call would be the start of a revolution that would change the lives of billions. ...

  
• 04.13.2023

  The submarine: Stealth machine

  Given the submarine's importance to many of the world's navies, it's perhaps surprising to learn that for many years it was considered an inventor's folly and of little use in maritime warfare. Indeed the submarine had a difficult birth...

  
• 04.06.2023

  Hazel Scott: Jazz star and barrier breaker

  A child prodigy on the piano, then a glamorous jazz and popular music entertainer, a civil rights campaigner and the first black American woman to host her own TV show: for the first three decades of her life, Hazel Scott’s...

  
• 03.30.2023

  The bittersweet tale of cocoa

  Do you like cocoa? You are in good company: in South and Central America people have been enjoying the fruit of the cacao tree - the source of cocoa, chocolate and much else - for thousands of years. Ancient empires...

  
• 03.23.2023

  The dam builders

  The Hoover Dam in the US, the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the recently opened, and sumptuously named, Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam. Since modern times, huge mega dams like these to tame rivers, create water storage and hydropower, have become...

  
• 03.16.2023

  Alexander the Great or not so great?

  From Persia to India to Greece – they called him The Great – that is Alexander the Great. Also known as Alexander III of Macedon, he was one of the most successful military leaders of all time. Undefeated by the...

  
• 03.09.2023

  Rituals: Our anchors in a changing world

  From coronations to cup finals, many of us love a big event, a ceremony with age-old observances. Indeed rituals, whether public spectaculars or more personal ones, such as a particular daily routine, have been part of human experience since time...

  
• 03.02.2023

  Tropicália: the movement that defied Brazil’s dictatorship

  Drawing on traditional music, pop culture, kitsch, rock and modernist poetry to mention just a few of their sources of inspiration, the short-lived Tropicália movement in late 1960s Brazil was provocative and anti-authoritarian. Perhaps most importantly it represented a...

  
• 02.23.2023

  How the shipping container changed the world

  Nearly everything we consume is transported by ship. The biggest container ships in the world are among the largest moving structures made by man and can carry over 24,000 20-foot container units. The standardisation of these simple metal containers in...

  
• 02.16.2023

  Neanderthals: Meet the relatives

  Developments in new technology such as DNA sequencing have transformed our understanding of the Neanderthals, one of a group of archaic humans who occupied Europe, the Middle East and Western Asia more than 300,000 years ago. First identified by fossil...

  
• 02.09.2023

  Cavalry and code-breaking: The Polish-Soviet war

  A Russian army stands at the gates of the capital of another country, a country that Russia has previously occupied and one that, according to Russian politicians, has no right to independent existence. Sounds familiar? That capital city was Warsaw...

  
• 02.02.2023

  How we work: Redesigning the office

  The pandemic has made us all rethink how we work. Where once millions of people used to travel into work in tall glass buildings in big cities every day, now our idea of the office has come to include the...

  
• 01.26.2023

  When money died: The world's worst inflation

  In the summer of 1946 inflation in Hungary reached 41.9 quadrillion per cent. That’s 41.9 followed by 14 zeros – the highest rate of inflation ever recorded anywhere in the world. It meant prices of everyday goods and services doubled,...

  
• 01.19.2023

  The writer Rachel Carson who fought insecticide wars

  Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring has probably done more than any other to raise concerns about the damage that uncontrolled use of chemicals can cause to the natural world. Carson imagined a ‘silent spring’ in a world where birds...

  
• 01.12.2023

  Why do we have a seven-day week?

  Why do we divide our lives into 7-day chunks? Unlike the day, month or year, there’s no natural reason for this cycle, but nevertheless the week is now deeply ingrained in us and has proven very resistant to change. ...

  
• 01.05.2023

  Forugh Farrokhzad: A trailblazing voice for women in Iran

  Forugh Farrokhzad burst into the public consciousness with a series of poems that sent shockwaves through Persian society in the mid-1950s. Her early poetry focused on the female experience and female desire, overturning – in the words of one biographer...

  
• 12.29.2022

  The Cynics: Counter-culture from Ancient Greece

  Today’s counter-culture and alternative movements question mainstream norms, such as putting too much value on material possessions. The Cynics, practical philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, also rejected conventional desires to seek wealth, power and fame. They were not your...

  
• 12.22.2022

  Calories: How to fuel a human

  Calories are fundamental to the way many of us view food and our own bodies - you’ll find them on supermarket shelves, restaurant menus, and in cookbooks. But they didn’t start out that way. Originally coined during the study...

  
• 12.15.2022

  Belarus: The crossroads of Eastern Europe

  Belarusian lands have seen dramatic upheavals throughout the twentieth century and today, like its neighbour Ukraine to the south, Belarus finds itself on the cusp, in between the countries of the European Union on one side and Putin’s Russia on...

  
• 12.08.2022

  Margaret Sanger: Mother of birth control

  Activist Margaret Sanger is responsible for one of the most significant medical and social changes of the 20th Century – giving women the means to control the size of their families. The former nurse, who’d witnessed the aftermath of...

  
• 12.01.2022

  Alice Guy: The first female movie mogul

  In the late 19th Century, when the motion picture camera was invented and cinema was born, a young French woman called Alice Guy ended up becoming the first ever woman film-maker; rising from being a lowly young secretary to a...

  
• 11.24.2022

  The Epic of Gilgamesh: A quest for immortality

  Unearthed from the ruins of ancient cities in modern-day Iraq, the reconstruction of the epic from fragments of clay tablets has been a labour of love for scholars of ancient Mesopotamia. This painstaking work has brought to life a sophisticated...

  
• 11.17.2022

  Uruguay 1930: The first football World Cup

  As the spotlight falls on Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, we tell the story of how the world's biggest sporting spectacle began, in Uruguay in 1930. How did a small South American nation of just two million...

  
• 11.10.2022

  Moths: The story of the butterfly of the night

  The moth is an insect that’s almost 200 million years old. Throughout human history, its attraction to light, its amazing ability to camouflage, and its nocturnal activity have given rise to myths, spiritual beliefs and been the inspiration for art...

  
• 11.03.2022

  The end of civilisation: Bronze Age collapse

  More than 3,000 years ago a group of powerful and intricately connected Mediterranean kingdoms collapsed over the course of just a few decades. The palaces of Mycenaean Greece were destroyed, entire cities in Hittite Turkey were abandoned, and whole...

  
• 10.27.2022

  From straw poll to opinion poll

  Today, we can’t imagine an election without an opinion poll gauging public opinion on who’s leading, who’s won a debate or who’s more popular with a specific group of voters. Even our favourite chocolate bars and footballers are subject to...

  
• 10.20.2022

  Süleyman the Magnificent: longest-reigning Ottoman sultan

  The 46-year reign of Süleyman the Magnificent across central Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East was defined by territorial expansion and economic growth, as well as a flowering of art, architecture and culture. The epithet ‘magnificent’ invites us to...

  
• 10.11.2022

  William Cobbett: Champion of rural workers

  William Cobbett was a 19th century English writer, politician and campaigner, at a time when England was on the verge of riots and revolution, and many lived in extreme poverty. Born in 1763, Cobbett started off as a ploughboy, educated...

  
• 10.06.2022

  How the paparazzi transformed photojournalism

  They are the bane of every celebrity’s life: that pack of press photographers who stake out the homes, hotels and other haunts of the rich and famous in the hope of bagging a revealing and lucrative image to sell to...

  
• 09.29.2022

  The Sun: Myths and magnetism

  The sun might not shape the pattern of our daily lives to the extent it did in the past. But understanding its behaviour is a focus of scientific research to grasp how activity on the surface of the sun -...

  
• 09.21.2022

  A forgotten founder of climate science: Eunice Newton Foote

  Eunice Newton Foote was the first person to suggest that an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide would lead to a warmer planet, but her discovery was largely ignored and her name disappeared for more than 150 years. She fell into...

  
• 09.14.2022

  Dreams: Prophecy, propaganda and psychoanalysis

  The images, sensations and emotions we experience during sleep were once seen as the gateway to the gods and had the power to alter lives and even whole societies. Rajan Datar explores the way dreams, and their interpretation, have...

  
• 09.08.2022

  Yves Saint Laurent: Fashion revolutionary

  Since his death in 2008, the impact of designer Yves Saint Laurent on women’s fashion remains undimmed. The pea coat, the trench, the trouser suit – many of his designs are now staples of the modern Western woman’s wardrobe. So...

  
• 09.01.2022

  Brazil's Palmares: A beacon of freedom

  As Brazil celebrates 200 years of independence from Portugal, we look at the 17th-century community of people seeking freedom from slavery in the north-east of the country known as Palmares. It lasted longer and was larger than other settlements of...

  
• 08.25.2022

  Bluegrass: Virtuoso music of Appalachia

  It is rare in music history that scholars can point to the beginning of a particular style, but bluegrass would appear to be the exception to the rule. Mandolin player Bill Monroe from rural Kentucky had so much clout in...

  
• 08.17.2022

  The Art of War: Ancient Chinese guide to victory

  The Art of War is one of the most important military strategy texts ever written, and it has become just as influential, perhaps even more so, in the worlds of business, sport, and politics. Bridget Kendall learns what the...

  
• 08.10.2022

  Gandhi: Architect of Indian independence

  Mohandas K Gandhi’s decades-long campaign against British rule was the driving force behind Indian independence in August 1947. The way he did it - through ‘satyagraha’, or non-violent resistance - made him one of the most famous and revered thinkers...

  
• 08.04.2022

  Making scents: The story of perfume

  Throughout history, fragrance has been used to scent both the body and our surroundings. With just one drop, perfume has the potential to stir memories, awaken the senses and even influence how we feel about ourselves. But what’s the story...