The Forum

Born more than six hundred years ago, Joan of Arc is regarded as a French national heroine – a peasant girl who, inspired by saintly visions, battled to break the Siege of Orléans and see Charles VII finally crowned King of France in a grand cathedral. But in 1431, she was burned at the stake.

Bridget Kendall and guests discuss the life and death of this medieval teenage celebrity who helped to shape the course of the Hundred Years War with England. They also reflect on her status as an enduring symbol in popular culture through the ages, including on the stage and the big screen.

Photo: Joan of Arc: Painting by J D Ingres in the Louvre. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

With its Hanging Gardens and huge walls, Babylon was celebrated as one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world; to the Israelites enslaved there under Nebuchadnezzar, it was a lasting emblem of oppression and depravity, where they wept as they remembered Zion. It is only in the last two hundred years that Babylon's fuller history has been unearthed, both the remains of its buildings and a huge number of clay tablets covered in writing, revealing a complex world that created epic stories, powerful people and an understanding of science and the stars, and it was their 60 based numbering system that led to our 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. It has been called a cradle of civilisation.

Bridget Kendall explores the reputation of Babylon and its contribution to the world with four experts: Frances Reynolds, Shillito Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford; Grant Frame, Professor of Assyriology at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator of the Babylonian Section of Penn Museum; Daniel Schwemer, Chair of Ancient Oriental Studies at the University of Würzburg; and Jaafar Jotheri, Assistant Professor in Geoarchaeology at the University of Al-Qadisiyah, Iraq.

(Image: Detail of the Ishtar gate, Babylon. Credit: Veronique Durruty/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Aesop, with his tales of tortoises and hares, foxes and grapes, and wolves in sheep's clothing has been a part of world literature for over two thousand years. Since the time of the Ancient Greeks successive generations have drawn moral lessons from his fables, and over history his animals' exploits have been used to support differing ideals. Malcolm X was a fan, as was Imperial Britain, the Nazis had their version and the Trade Union movement published the fables too. There are over 700 fables, and they are supposedly written by a black slave far clever than his philosopher master.

Bridget Kendall traces the origin and meaning of Aesop's fables and explores what they can teach us about understanding our own extraordinary times with three world experts: Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Kings College London; Vayos Liapis, Professor of Theatre at the Open University of Cyprus; Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University.

(Image: The fox telling Aesop about animals, decoration from a Greek vase, 5th century BC, Vatican Museums. Credit: De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images)

The German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe considered his monumental book known in English as The Theory of Colours to be his greatest achievement. The book is a record of hundreds of Goethe’s observations about the way colour affects our mood, as well as a long and heated polemic with Isaac Newton’s colour theory. Goethe’s understanding of light and colour was scientifically flawed yet his book had a surprisingly strong influence on the fine and applied arts. To find out why, Bridget Kendall talks to art historian Alexandra Loske, colour writer Victoria Finlay and designer Odette Steele.

Photo: Goethe’s colour wheel, 1809. (Credit: Freies Deutsches Hochstift / Frankfurter Goethe-Museum)

From 1849, hundreds of thousands of prospectors from across the USA headed for California in the hope of finding gold. Some made great fortunes, and there was a new Californian dream for these 49ers, willing to risk everything and, if they failed, to try again. California was to become the engine house of the US economy, while expanding so rapidly that it unbalanced the free and slave-owning states and hastened the USA towards civil war. Yet the new arrivals also drove out competing miners from around the Pacific who had reached the goldfields first, and destroyed the lives of Native Americans there, and excluded Chinese people who had begun to settle, with lasting consequences.

Joining Bridget Kendall to explore who won and who lost in the California Gold Rush are Cliff Trafzer, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside; Mae Ngai, Professor of History at Columbia University, and author of the forthcoming book The Chinese Question, a study of Chinese gold miners; and HW Brands, Professor of History at The University of Texas at Austin and author of Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West.

(Image: Gold Nuggets Credit: bodnarchuk/Getty Images)

A century ago a deadly flu virus swept the planet, uniting the world in a disaster on a par with World War One. Over 50 million people died. Social distancing was put in place but drugs were ineffective, there was no vaccine, and in many places medicine could not cope. The world recovered but was never the same again.

What can the last great pandemic teach us about how to combat Covid-19 today?

Three world experts join Bridget Kendall: Laura Spinney, science journalist and author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World;. Svenn Erik Mamelund, historical demographer and research professor at Oslo Metropolitan University; Siddharth Chandra, director of the Asian Studies Centre and professor at James Madison College, Michigan State University.

(Photo: Japanese school girls wear protective masks to guard against the influenza outbreak. Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)

It’s the map of the world we all recognise today, but until Gerard Mercator came up with his elegant solution in 1569, the question of how to turn the earth’s three dimensional sphere into a flat image had long flummoxed mapmakers. Nearly 500 years later, Mercator’s model is still the standard for modern mapmaking. What makes it so enduring?

Joining Rajan Datar to discuss the man who defined the way we see the world are geographer and explorer Nicholas Crane, philosopher Emily Thomas and professor of cartography Philippe De Maeyer.

Illustration: Portrait of Gerard Mercator, Flemish cartographer (born Gerard de Kremer, 1512 - 1594). Image credit: Stock Montage/Getty Images

How many people can lay claim to playing a key role in three different 20th century protest movements across the world, each of which largely succeeded in their aims? Margaret ‘Gretta’ Cousins, the daughter of a minor court official from Boyle in Ireland and a musician by profession certainly can.

Rajan Datar is joined by historians Dr. Margaret Ward from Queen's University in Belfast, Dr. Jyoti Atwal from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and University of Limerick and Dr. Emily Rook-Koepsel from the University of Pittsburgh.

(Photo: Margaret Cousins, c.1931)

Natsume Soseki is one of the greatest writers in the history of Japan. The backdrop to his work is the disorientation and social anxiety of the early 20th Century as Japan undertook rapid modernization after centuries of being closed to the world. Soseki has had a huge influence on generations of Japanese authors and has obsessed some international artists. His work is taught to generations of school children in Japan and greatly admired by scholars but remains obscure to much of the rest of the world. Why?

(Photo: Natsume Soseki on a 1000 Yen note, series D. Credit: A Dagli Orti/DEA/Getty Images)

The popular view of an Epicurean is that of somebody who focuses on pleasure as our guiding principle, indulging in the finer things of life to achieve happiness. And yet what the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus understood by pleasure was far more nuanced. In fact, Epicurus and his followers advocated a simple lifestyle, withdrawn from society, where we are content with little.

(Image: Bust of Epicurus. Photo: DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini via Getty Images)