The Forum

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 such obscurity that there’s no known picture of her.

Bridget Kendall explores the life of this American scientist and inventor and asks why her ground-breaking research, carried out in the 1850s, was overlooked for so long. Discrimination against women, especially in the sciences, was a major reason, but might a transatlantic power struggle and even a case of intellectual theft have played their parts?

Eunice was also one of the founding members of the women’s rights movement in the United States – we discuss how she helped launch a campaign that would eventually win women the right to vote.

Plus, the story of how her work was recently re-discovered, and the quest to ensure her name gains greater recognition.

For more on Eunice and other key figures in the history of climate change visit https://bbc.in/3QXkiru

Producer: Simon Tulett

Contributors:

John Perlin, a research scholar in the department of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, who is working on what’s thought to be the first biography of Eunice Newton Foote;

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, a recently retired professor of history from the University of Minnesota, USA, and expert on women and gender in the history of science;

Roland Jackson, a historian of nineteenth century science, honorary research Fellow in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London, and author of ‘The Ascent of John Tyndall’;

Ray Sorenson, retired petroleum geologist, Oklahoma, USA;

Judith Wellman, professor emerita at the State University of New York at Oswego, USA.

(Picture: Smoke billowing from chimneys at the coal-fired Bełchatów Power Station, Poland, in 2009. Credit: Peter Andrews/Reuters).

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 shaped beliefs and actions for thousands of years – from their role as a connection to the dead and the spirit world, to their ability to predict the future.

We hear how these seemingly involuntary visions inspired key historical figures, changed the course of major events, and were used by many rulers as a propaganda tool.

Plus, we discuss what’s really happening in our brains when we have dreams and ask whether 21st-century life is placing them under threat.

Contributors:

Producer: Simon Tulett

(Picture: Dreamlike scene of a woman standing at fork in a stone pathway in a calm lake with clouds reflecting in the water. Credit: Thomas Barwick/Getty Images)

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 how did this famously shy and retiring man achieve global success? And did his fashion innovations for women shape social change in the 1960s, or were they a response to his times?

Bridget Kendall looks back at Saint Laurent’s life and legacy with former director of the Yves Saint Laurent Museum, Olivier Flaviano, fashion historian Emilie Hammen and one of Saint Laurent’s last assistants, designer Charles Sébline. First broadcast in 2018.

(Photo: Yves Saint Laurent, French designer, with two fashion models, Betty Catroux [left] and Loulou de la Falaise, outside his 'Rive Gauche' shop. Credit: John Minihan, Getty Images)

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 this type and it withstood repeated attempts by European colonialists to destroy it.

So how did Palmares keep going for over a century when so many other communities like it in Latin America vanished after a few years?

To help us sift through what we do know about Palmares, Bridget Kendall is joined by archaeologist Professor Pedro Paulo Funari from the University of Campinas in Brazil; Dr. José Lingna Nafafé, Senior Lecturer in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies at Bristol University; and Dr. Maria Fernanda Escallon, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. The reader is Natan Barreto.

(Photo: The monument to Zumbi, leader of Palmares, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Credit: Yasuyoshi Chiba/Getty Images)

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 the music business that some scholars have suggested that it was he who defined the sound which came to be known as bluegrass. He was certainly protective; Monroe is quoted as saying “the biggest job of bluegrass is to keep out what don’t belong in it.”

Played initially in America's rural south, bluegrass was later adopted by the counter-cultural college kid scene in the 1950s and '60s. And today the music is flourishing all over the world in the most unlikely places.

Rajan Datar is joined by Dan Boner, director of the Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Roots Music Studies programme at East Tennessee State University, who demonstrates how bluegrass works; writer and historian Tony Russell, whose publications on music include Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records; and Dr Lydia Hamessley, professor of music at Hamilton College whose research concentrates on old-time and bluegrass music. She is the author of Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton.

Producer: Fiona Clampin

(Photo: Lester Flatt (right) and Earl Scruggs (left) perform with The Foggy Mountain Boys at the Grand Ole Opry circa 1960. Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

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 2,000-year-old treatise has to say about deception, spying, and ruthlessness, and asks why it has come to be viewed as a guide to success in life in general.

But has it been misunderstood? We discuss whether it’s better viewed as a guide to avoiding war and conflict, rather than a manual for how to fight.

Plus, we try to get to the bottom of who really wrote it and learn about the blood-soaked period of Chinese history in which it’s believed to have been created.

Producer: Simon Tulett

Credit: Excerpts from the text were based on translations from Michael Nylan's book (see below), published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

Contributors:

Michael Nylan, professor of early Chinese history at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States, and author of 'The Art of War: A New Translation by Michael Nylan';

(Picture: Terracotta warriors - sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China who unified the country after the Warring States period. Credit: Getty Images)

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 of the 20th century, and has inspired protest movements around the world.

Rajan Datar explores the experiences, ideas and people that turned Gandhi from a timid schoolboy and failed lawyer into a man bold enough to take on the might of the British Empire.

Plus, we ask whether he achieved the kind of Indian independence he really wanted, and find out why his legacy is the subject of intense debate in India to this day.

Producer: Simon Tulett

Contributors:

Tridip Suhrud, a professor at CEPT university, in Ahmedabad, India, and a Gandhi scholar who has translated many of his works into English, including the first critical edition of Gandhi’s autobiography, ‘My Experiments with Truth’;

Image: Gandhi photographed in London in 1931 (Credit: Rühe/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

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 behind this liquid luxury in a bottle, now found on the shelves of bathrooms and department stores worldwide?

In this programme, Bridget Kendall and guests explore the modern history of perfume, including its flowering in France and the explosive chemical discoveries that helped to make fine fragrance what it is today. They also explore perfume’s ancient roots and ask: what’s in a name?

Bridget is joined by scientist and critic Luca Turin, writer and curator Lizzie Ostrom and the perfumer Thomas Fontaine. Also featuring William Tullett and James McHugh.

(Photo: Perfume bottle and flowers. Credit: Brian Hagiwara/Getty Images)

Eleonora Duse was an actress ahead of her time. As a performer in the late 19th century when elaborate gestures, exotic costumes and lavish decors were the norm, Eleonora Duse stunned audiences with her truthfulness and intense absorption in the characters she played. She wore no make-up, you could see her blush or turn pale, she was a master of subtle body language and vocal modulation, and her aim was to eliminate the self and become her characters. Today she is often credited with having inspired modern acting, and the Russian theatre director Stanislavsky saw her as the perfect actress, and was greatly influenced by her when he created his acting method. Born in 1858 in what is now northern Italy, Eleonora Duse started acting at the age of four years old with her family’s touring theatre troupe. By her twenties, working as both a theatre manager and a performer, she began to achieve worldwide popularity, travelling all over the world, from South America to Russia to Egypt. She was soon acknowledged as one of the greatest actresses of her generation and her independent lifestyle turned her into an early feminist icon. So what was the secret of her genius and why is she largely forgotten today? And with no recordings of her voice, how do we know she was such a great performer?

Joining Bridget Kendall is Dr Anna Sica, Professor of Theatre at the University of Palermo in Italy, author of The Murray Edwards Duse Collection, and D’Amore e D’Arte, the letters written to Duse from her Russian lover Alexander Wolkoff, soon to be published in English. Professor Paul Fryer, the co-editor of an essay collection on Eleonora Duse and Cenere (Cenere is the Italian word for Ashes, the title of the silent film Duse made in 1916, and the only record of Duse actually performing). Paul Fryer also directs the Stanislavsky research centre at the University of Leeds. And Dr Enza de Francisci, lecturer in Translation studies at the University of Glasgow, who specialises in the critical reception of Duse’s plays, and is the author of A 'New' Woman in Verga and Pirandello: From Page to Stage.

The reader is Cecilia Gragnani.

Produced by Anne Khazam for the BBC World Service.

(Photo: Eleonora Duse in “Lady of the Camelias” by Alexandre Dumas Fils. Credit: ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

In Mexico the name La Malinche has become synonymous with treachery and betrayal - it even forms one of the country’s most vicious insults. Some have described its owner, an indigenous slave who became the interpreter and mistress of conquistador Hernán Cortés, as the most hated woman in Mexico’s history.

But by helping the Spanish topple the Aztecs in the early sixteenth century was she really guilty of selling out her own people, or simply doing everything she could to survive? Might we credit her with limiting the lives lost in the bloody conflict – one she knew her people could not hope to win?

Bridget Kendall explores the little-known life, and hotly-contested legacy of one of the most controversial figures in Latin American history, and the role she played in the meeting of the Old World and the New.

We hear how La Malinche’s story, and motives, have been re-interpreted over the last 500 years, and learn why she remains important in discussions of national identity, gender, culture and politics in Mexico to this day.

Producer: Simon Tulett

Contributors:

(Picture: La Malinche – a Mexican engraving, 1885, from the library of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain. Credit: Prisma/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)