Alan Turing – In Our Time | Hacker News Reader

Alan Turing – In Our Time

bbc.co.uk

62 pointsjweir27 comments

Ooh I didn't know these were so easily available online. I wake up to Radio 4 and quite often there's something interesting that I wish I were more awake for, or that I didn't have to abandon for a shower and a stand-up.

I should just restart from the web player later on those days.

Reading about Turing and visiting Bletchley is entirely responsible for me becoming a software engineer after a childhood of laser-focussed intent on electronics. Fascinating period, genius, and acceleration of the field - if you think computers went from being women to commercial machines basically (be lenient) resembling what we have today in, say, just twenty years from '35.

In our time episodes are also available as a podcast https://castro.fm/podcast/2b5f1391-0ea8-488b-8220-8bb43c7e42... :)

Or direct from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/downloads

Nice that this is available to download outside of the UK (I'm in the US). I've already downloaded this and will listen tomorrow.

I was under the impression that the BBC region locked such downloads to the UK due to their public funding.

We need to pay a licence fee for the television (online or not) but not radio.

Television licence isn't connected to BBC iPlayer (online BBC television live/VoD stream) accounts, so I think the region lock is just a lazy way to prevent people who certainly don't pay the licence fee from accessing the content.

Since radio doesn't require a licence, no account, and anyone can access online. (Or offline if you manage to pick it up. Or DAB. Or the World Service, but quick search suggests it doesn't air In Our Time.)

Not only are they available online, they're better! Since internet distribution don't suffer from the same time slot problem broadcast media suffer from, they frequently add some extra discussion with the guests at the end.

These discussions are often the star of the show, because the scientists get to talk about what they really wanted to talk about but didn't fit in the condensed radio length narrative.

I remember pre-Internet Radio 4 being incredibly frustrating, as they'd have excellent programmes, but the chances of actually catching them was far more fleeting than a TV show, as there was no readily available technology analogous to a video recorder. The very best (eg the Lord of the Rings dramatisation) would (eventually) be released commercially but vast amounts of quality output would never reach the people who'd appreciate it.

I can’t recommend the In Our Time podcast enough. It’s a fabulous library of high quality discourse.

One of the great things about In Our Time is the breadth of topics: at the end of an episode about ancient Roman history, Melvyn will say that next week they will be talking about particle physics, and after an episode about palaeontology he will say next week they are talking about a 19th C. novelist. Fantastic :-)

They have an absolutely huge library of old editions of the programme. I quite like looking at their twitter feed https://twitter.com/bbcinourtime for suggestions about old episodes to listen to, because it gives me some of the randomness of listening to the latest weekly edition.

I love this podcast for anything in British history or literature. The aristocracy episode was particularly interesting. But the further afield it gets from that I feel like I don't come away having learned much about the history. He'll make random talking points like "Ghengis Kahn is remembered as a great conqueror" and then 3 phDs try to use that as a jumping off point to say something intelligent but end up arguing in different directions.

If you’re into British history checkout of “fall of civilizations” podcast on YouTube and other podcast apps. The first episode is of how Rome departed Britain

That's a very ungenerous characterisation of the show. Melvyn is very careful to keep a coherent progression in each episode, and he invites experts in fields relevant to the topic at hand. Among the ~1,000 episodes I'm sure there are some weak ones, but the way you frame it is as if British academics are not capable of discussing topics outside of their own culture or Melvyn is some amateur host who just wants to hear some pop history fun facts.

Possibly I am judging too harshly on a few weaker podcasts (though isn't that always the risk when a show has so many episodes) but "pop history fun facts" is how I would characterize a lot of the non Western ancient/medieval history episodes. 45 minutes on "the Samurai" feels a little thin when we have no background on Japan prior to that episode. And "Maths in the early Islamic World" was really frustrating how sometimes the guests are in the middle of making an interesting technical point and he interrupts with a totally different question.

Absolutely. I’ve learned a tonne of things I never knew where interesting. Knowledgeable guests and a wide range of topics. It’s rare that I retain as much information as with this podcast.

And Melvyn Bragg, the host, is such a character. I’d listen to it for him alone.

I’m the beginning I tended to dislike him but he has definitely grown on me over time

It's wonderful. Melvyn is an excellent 'man on the Clapham omnibus' - quietly intellectual, ever inquisitive, but never looking to show off his own knowledge and always more than happy to cede the limelight to the academics whom he hosts.

He did struggle to follow along just a little bit in the P vs NP episode, though :-) Worth a listen for the HN crowd if only to see what trying to get to grips with computational complexity feels like to a true outsider.

For those interested in this series, you might also like Desert Island Disks, which is a series that's been going for about 70 years with over 2000 episodes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr/episodes/player

It's a great listen for short drives and commutes.

I highly recommend this series of podcasts. I think i have listened to nearly all of them now. Melvyn Bragg is an acquired taste, at first i didn't like the way he interjects very much but now i am used to his style it's fine.

The main attraction is the calibre of his guests who tend to be excellent. Some people have had problems with the direct downloads in the UK, i think maybe only streamed in the UK. I find it odd (ironic?) that it can be easier to get BBC content abroad!

I particularly like the physics podcasts. The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximal[1] is one of my favourites.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/topics/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eo...

Thanks. Now I've listened to [1], I can see why it's one of your favourites. Enlightening to say the least.

I remember watching some sort of British documentary on Alan Turing on youtube when I was in high school. It had interviews from all of the people that knew him during his lifetime. This was long before his story was popularized by "The Imitation Game" and so I can't find it now that there is so much other content.

Does anybody else remember it? It was one of the good ones. From what I remember, the "asshole genius" trope was greatly played up for the film and he was much more human than that even with the treatment he endured.

Does youtube keep your watch history infinitely far back?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-sTs2o0VuY

("Horizon: The Strange Life and Death of Dr. Turing" (1992) )

In Our Time is great - a recent favorite was the episode on bird migrations. I had no idea that topic was so fascinating!

This seems to be gated behind a login wall? Is there an alternative source?

There's also an MP3 download without login here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/downloads

In Our Time episodes are also available as a podcast "from wherever you get your podcasts". There's a feed with all episodes and then there are separate feeds for each of history, science, culture, religion and philosophy.

Just listened to it last night. What an extraordinary man.

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