Melvyn Bragg steps down from presenting In Our Time | Hacker News Reader

Melvyn Bragg steps down from presenting In Our Time

bbc.co.uk

291 pointsaways162 comments

In Our Time has been my favorite podcast to listen. It made me appreciate how well moderated a discussion among experts can be and how poorly most moderators on other radio programs or conference panels do their jobs.

My complaint with In Our Time is that BBC started inserting the "this program is supported by ads outside of the U.K." ads in the middle of the discussions. The ads start and end with an extremely annoying loud chime that just blows out the speakers if I have the volume turned up to understand a guest that's speaking in a more soft voice.

VPN to the UK and pull the back catalogue from the BBC using get_iplayer, don't get it from the podcast feed

You don't even need VPN, you can just straight download the mp3 file of each episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/downloads

Only the streaming options (iPlayer and Sounds) are geolocked

Very nice! I'd also want to run a script to remove the BBC Sounds ident at the start

The audio is so much better when it begins with "<Melvyn inhales> Hello, 400 years ago in the Sahel region of Africa..."

Those introductions are iconic! There is no delay and no doubt about what is about to happen. I have the full back catalogue downloaded but never considered that I'd need to start trimming.

Audacity? Are there automations possible?

If the timing is consistent, maybe ffmpeg can trim the first n seconds off all the files.

This seems like a treasure trove. Thanks for sharing this link!

They closed off the website to unregistered in the UK too, last time I tried to access content it asked me for a license number (I don't have a TV license).

I used to follow topical comedy podcasts but they put a large delay in their publication cycle so they're no longer topical.

They also nag you to install the app. They seem often to just repeat the worst habits of commercial media.

They ask if you have a licence with a Yes / No choice. They don't ask for the licence number, which I'd be surprised if anyone in these islands could recall. Rather charmingly, they assume you will be honest in your answer.

The TV License check is purely an honor based system for now - you can simply say yes and no further inquiry is made, it does not ask for any kind of reference.

I suspect this changes in next few years once they finally decide on what TV license reform looks like, especially given the large drop in TV License receipts, but for now anyone can access in UK/via VPN, license or not.

The thing that makes it work (aside from Melvyn's excellent hosting) is that they have an unspoken but fundamental assumption about the audience, which is that the listeners are intelligent. Like, it's ok to have nuance, to dig deep into topics, it's even ok for listeners not to follow every point precisely. But the listeners are smart people that appreciate hearing from people who know what they're talking about.

That's a very rare assumption in modern media, when most mainstream things seemed to be aimed at some sort of lowest common denominator.

Imo this works well, especially in the podcast format, because it doesn't feel like they're trying to make every episode for every listener. You dip in on the espisodes that catch your curiosity so if you're listening there's a decent chance you're interested in the topic and are paying attention.

I feel strangely offended that here in Czechia there are actually no ads on BBC podcasts …

> how well moderated a discussion among experts can be

I've been listening to the podcast for years. I don't think the format counts as a 'discussion among experts'. It's more like Melvin asks prepared questions individually to each expert--a hub and spoke model. The experts rarely talk to or debate each other, although they often agree which each other. Melvin largely controls the narrative and direction, which I think works better. Guests do get to free-wheel at the end of the podcast, however.

He’s really, really good. Whenever I listen to the show I’m amazed at how precise his questions are - he’s perfect in the role of the intelligent non-expert, often asking about the exact thing that was confusing to me in the expert’s previous reply.

For what it's worth, the BBC has a premium podcasts subscription for the US and Canada, with no ads.

https://www.bbcselect.com/select-more/bbc-podcasts/

I believe it's currently Apple-exclusive, but if you enjoy BBC content, it's worth it.

If you pay for Spotify and listens there, this removes the ads.

It does not.

I've been listening to In Our Time on Spotify for years. I've never heard an ad, ever.

I looked, and there's more than 1000 available episodes of IOT on the BBC, they're all (at least every one I've heard) brilliant.

I'm curious if anyone here has any particular favourites?

I remember really enjoying the Plankton episode because it took me the classic IOT route of "That doesn't sound interesting, but I'll give it a listen" to looking up all the reading list.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r1t5

There is an episode on the Epic of Gilgamesh which is absolutely fascinating. Highly recommended.

Yes, that one was the first I thought of as well.

You might like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd7MrGy_tEg

I'll do the opposite: The P vs NP episode is aboslutely horrid. Probably the first and last time that they had any informatics people on the show. One major issue is that the experts didn't explain what we mean by "hard". Melvyn thought, as normal people do, that 'hard problem' means you've gotta be real clever to solve it, not that it takes a lot of steps to solve (and how the number of steps increases as the problem gets larger). When they had the example of purchasing Christmas gifts as a stand-in for maximum bipartite matching, coupled with Melvyn's misconception, the train wreck was a fact.

That's my memory of the event, that was a frustrating lunch walk.

IOT is great, but there's a distinct lack of computer subjects which has always seemed like a big omission. There are multiple episodes on obscure medieval people, but not a single one on Open Source Software, for example.

In 45 minutes assuming only the education of the (wo)man on the Clapham Omnibus explaining P vs NP is always going to be extremely difficult.

I've never made the mistake of thinking that after a 45 minute episode of in our time on, say, Cyrus the Great, that I'm now in a position to write an essay on the man. I would assume that none M/NS/CS types don't make that mistake after listening to the episode on P vs NP.

I'm not sure what the goal was here, that's not what I'm saying.

The intention was to observe that the standard you are holding the show to are extremely hard to do in the context of fields which have a great deal of context, last for only 45 minutes, and are targeted at the standard user of the Clapham Omnibus.

Assuming that you had perhaps not contemplated this observation by way of analogy I shared my suspicion that an expert on Cyrus the Great might be very annoyed about the way he was discussed.

The problem, of course, is that such analogies are extremely difficult to make as subjects such as M/NS/CS very much have right and wrong answers in the way that history tends not to.

"In 45 minutes": the podcast episodes have Bonus Time ...

That was the first episode i listened to and got hooked after that.

I recently listened to the episode on The Antikythera Mechanism and found it quite fun - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024x0g

Also, I wanted to mention something interesting - back when LLM-driven applications were just emerging, someone posted on Hacker News about how they categorized In Our Time episodes using the Dewey Decimal System with LLMs. Cool stuff - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35073603

I love this one and actually posted the wiki to the The Antikythera Mechanism here (although didn't get traction unfortunately).

Shameless plug, but I have a podcast about the history of astronomy and did an hour long episode on the Antikythera Mechanism a little while back if you're interested in more detail: https://songofurania.com/episode/022

Calendar was brilliant. I think it was the first time I fully appreciated the misery of the human mind in the face of various orbit periods that aren't simple integer ratios of one another. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548m9

Great Fire of London too. Pepys burying his cheese! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ft63q

Politeness. Social barriers were coming down, you were interacting with people of different rank, how do you not get into a swordfight? Also, the letter from the wife complaining about her husband! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y29m

I think they did all the big interesting things in history and then struggled with a lot of minor events that were hard to find interesting angles on.

As I've listened to more and more of it, I start to gravitate not to particular topics, but to particular experts. There are many guests who are regulars when topics in their field come up, and the good ones make any topic in that field interesting. For instance, if there's an episode about religious history and Martin Palmer is on it, it's bound to be a banger (listened to one on Augustine's Confessions recently, for instance, and it was great). Same with Ancient Greece and Paul Cartledge and Angie Hobbs. If I'm looking for something to listen to, I just put one of those three into the search field of my podcast player, and I'm never disappointed.

The Photon

Climate Change

Cryptography

Electrickery

The one about Shakespeare featuring Harold Bloom.

I can't pick a favourite, but "Consciousness" (1999) definitely sticks in my mind as one of the most amusing due to the prickly debate.

The one about Victorian sewers is fantastic.

One of my favorites was the one on the evolution of crocodiles [1].

Aside from being surprisingly fascinating, I thought the guests were excellent. IOT's academics can sometimes be bone dry (sometimes not a problem if the subject matter is good, but sometimes it can sink the episode), and in this episode all three guests were both energetic and articulate, and there was some good banter.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zmhf

Crocodiles

The Taiping Rebellion

I remember one about randomness/probability was my favourite

I'm going to miss his waffle-free 'Hello' intro. It is/was like stepping on to an airport travelator that's moving 30% faster than you were expecting.

Ha! I feel the same. So much better than the tiresome intros in modern podcasts.

For your listening pleasure, here's a supercut of Melvyn's iconic intro: https://pascalwyse.com/blog/2017/12/15/in-our-time-machine

Its odd that when places like HN or Reddit ask for favourite podcasts the amazing resources of BBC radio (that precede all modern internet podcasts and the best of which still wipe the floor with most of them) are often forgotten.

In Our Time represents the best of the form, and the BBC, and that's significantly down to the excellence of Bragg.

The archive (you may need a VPN outside the UK):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/player

Some curated lists:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Dw1c7rxs6DmyK0pMR...

I always thought it was appropriate that the UK nuclear deterrence fleet apparently would check for Radio 4 still being broadcast to check whether civilisation as we know it (at least in these damp isles) has ended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort

I believe that to be precise they check for the Today programme, the Radio 4 current-affairs slot where Cabinet ministers go to get monstered.

The Today program is a shadow of its former self I think, as is a lot of BBC News today.

There was a long history of the PM listening to it, and it set the agenda for the day. At some point after Thatcher that stopped happening (Blair, maybe? Definitely by Cameron), and it became a lot less important to politicos to appear on it.

But yes, the BBC was always the voice of the Establishment (which is fine) but it's definitely been neutered. You can see it in the documentary output very clearly.

Yes, feels like it's just a grandstanding format for both presenter and interviewees with very little meaningful content.

Laura Keunsburg completely neutered the BBC.

Robbie Gibb is the name you're looking for. He ran BBC Politics on TV for over a decade including before and after the referendum, then went to work for Teresa May in No10.

No, Laura Keunsburg was the name I was looking for, that's why I used it.

You seem to suggest I'm confused about this and I would appreciate if you could explain why.

I think they were agreeing with you in point of "the BBC has been neutered," and also adding to the conversation like "Oh Laura is probably bad, but have you heard of Robbie Gibb?!"

It really didn't read to me like they wanted to completely invalidate your statement.

So we need to make sure that we don't get nuked on a Sunday! [I mean what kind of monster would do that]

Hah, reminds me of the joke in Asterix in Britain, where the Brits would stop fighting at 5 o'clock: https://youtu.be/asBo3JUWwDU?t=468 , to drink hot water (because they hadn't discovered tea yet).

> the amazing resources of BBC radio (that precede all modern internet podcasts and the best of which still wipe the floor with most of them) are often forgotten

I don't know, there are some definite bright spots like IOT but the typical output of Radio 4 is definitely not massively in advance of the big podcasts. The Rest Is History/Politics are clearly hugely popular inside the UK and basically constitute "the competition" for your average R4 listener.

I actually think that the podcast model is a big threat for traditional radio. Podcasts are much more lucrative for the makers, the reach is as-big (or bigger) and you don't have to negotiate with the government like R4 does.

the typical output of Radio 4 is definitely not massively in advance

I agree, I chose the wording "best of" rather than "typical" for that reason.

For instance, I regret the asinine tendency to provide "humourous" expositions of subjects in the various programmes co-chaired by second-rate comedians and apparently aimed at what low-expectations BBC execs feel young people can handle.

I was a massive fan of TRIP at the start but these days I find it tedious to listen to sometimes.

The News Agents has almost entirely replaced TRIP for me. I still like some of their Leading interviews but TRIP itself I've gone right off.

I've heard about The News Agents before but never really checked it out.

I fear Emily Maitlis will annoy me more than Alistair Darling does though. Can't win.

There's always The Rest Is History for neutral interesting information!

TRIP was formed in the turbulence of the crashing conservative governerment and it was a breath of fresh air to have people close to the inside who were commenting on unfolding events nearly daily while also saying all the things that traditional media didn't. I looked forward to TRIP every time Boris blundered so that I could hear the guys disect it with a few personal anecdotes thrown in from their time in power. Now, there's nothing much new about hearing Alasdair talk about Tony Blair again and I don't think the centrist dad approach has anything much to say about Kier Starmer's government.

I find Political Currency better these days since Ed Balls and Osborne are at least both people who had very key political roles in their own right (Balls during the Blair government in the Treasury with Gordon Brown, then Shadow Chancellor, Osborne as part of Cameron's rise to power and Chancellor), plus there's the odd tidbit of opinion on the current government which you sometimes wonder whether is coming through from inside knowledge due to Balls being married to Yvette Cooper.

Interesting, I'll check it out, even though both of them seem to be even more unlikeable that Alastair and Rory!

There are podcasts I like but a lot of the popular ones in the UK are very self indulgent. The Rest Is Politics is definitely one of those. They're also able to be opinionated in a way that the BBC's output obviously can't be as a state broadcaster. I always find the BBC output more professionally scripted, presented and edited as well, even if the content is similar. Some podcasts are horrendous at not balancing the audio - Not Another One (politics) is one of those even though I think it's great.

> Its odd that ...the amazing resources of BBC radio ... are often forgotten.

> you may need a VPN outside the UK

Not that odd, really.

That's a very recent feature. I agree it was a foolish decision to require it.

You may need a VPN inside the UK nowadays...

You can listen to In Our Time on every podcast app from anywhere in the world, just like any other podcast.

I do feel that IOT would benefit from being longer - it often feels rushed. Podcasts excel at "deep dives" in a way that radio is barred from doing: a podcaster can say "I think I'm gonna do 30 hours on George Jones this year" (real example), and nobody can stop them.

IOT's format has a lot of statements, but not many questions. Bragg doesn't often say "hold on, what are the consequences of that?" (unless it's a prepared question designed to move us through the biography). Ironically, this lack of curiosity gets worse on subjects he understands well (the arts).

The unscripted chat afterwards is often the best bit. I could do with 10 minutes of on-script introduction and 50 minutes of experts discussing something they're passionate about.

The time pressure is probably more important than you realise.

The guests are often pretty eminent academics, feted in their field and used to being indulged. There have been some I know that very much enjoy the sound of their own voice as they tediously ramble for hours, bending any topic to their own pet themes, with colleagues and students obediently hanging on their words. Melvyn has the stature to get testy "Enough about his wife, you still haven't answered the question, get on with it!" and the Oxford emeritus professor complies.

The after show chat works because it's post-time-crunch. It's pressure release and reflection. If you do recruitment this is something to learn. You will have a much more valuable interaction after you have scraped off interviewee armour.

I generally agree with you and the "short" format is what makes it successful, but Melvyn said himself that they choose teaching professors because they would know how to explain subject clearly and after almost two decades of listening I'd say it has mostly worked.

> they choose teaching professors because they would know how to explain subject clearly

Hmm! The majority of academics in the UK teach... most of them reluctantly and badly because it's mandatory for their research contract!

Those that revel in it are used to monologuing extemporanously for hours every day in the lecture hall and supervision without interuption. It's quite far from a snappy conversational media performer.

Yeah he always cuts them off in order to make sure each person gets their rationed time, preventing any real points being made

I like it exactly because it moves through biographies quickly and to the point. I can ponder about “what are the consequences” on my own.

Most of the time I don’t care enough about each topic or what are passions of the experts are to listen to it.

Having an episode where someone prepared information so I can get acquainted with the topic but I don’t have to deal with forwarding some professor ranting about his pet peeve is huge amount of value.

The fact it never extends further than an hour is what I like about it.

If ever I feel there is a need for a deeper dive into a subject, there a thousand ways I can spend hours listening or watching someone drone on about it.

I'm British and live in the UK so BBC is a big part of my radio listening anyway, but I agree, the quality both in terms of content and recording quality is largely miles ahead of most podcasts.

Excluding things like political things which wouldn't land the same to international listeners, my favourites are:

The Kitchen Cabinet You're Dead To Me Crowdscience Inside Science Just a Minute The Unbelievable Truth Nature Table Take Four Books Witness History Last Word Gardener's Question Time A Good Read (I wrote a blog post a while ago about scraping the books using LLMs to extract from the text of the descriptions: https://rpep.dev/posts/a-good-read-extracting-books-with-llm...)

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just

this

Ach, very sad. Like Paxman on University Challenge, he was clearly finding it harder and harder towards the end. I hope he's alright, it'd be a tough one to let go of, I can't imagine a better show to present.

Brilliant series, can't recommend highly enough to anyone who's not encountered it.

> he was clearly finding it harder and harder towards the end

Very reminiscent of Sir Patrick Moore presenting his final episodes of The Sky at Night. (Sadly missed).

Same as Letter from America with Alastair Cooke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_America

“Hello again”

Shows my age I guess that I only really associate Patrick Moore with GamesMaster.

He continued presenting the Sky At Night for more than a decade after Games Master ended.

i wouldnt be surprized if hes been gently pushed out. unfortunately the clarity of his voice has noticeably worsened.

listen to a 10+ year old episode and he sounds much clearer

as a native speaker its all fine and intelligeable, but for anyone ESL it'd be challenging bc its so much mumbling now

His voice is noticeably frail and less full of life in the last 4-5 years of episodes

I'm ESL, I'm Polish native speaker.

I had, and I still have a lot of issues with understanding his accent. It's very hard for me to get what he's saying.

Try the older episodes (go back at least a decade).

His voice had started to become a problem about 10 years ago, in my view. He also started finding it harder and harder to keep all the threads of the discussion in his mind and to herd all the experts and steer them towards productive talk. The earlier episodes were almost all great.

May be of interest: https://www.braggoscope.com/directory (a categorised catalogue of episodes)

I remember when that made the rounds on HN, it is one of the earliest examples of AI-generated classifications/summaries. I used to show braggoscope as an example in many talks... before vector databases, agents, etc.

Clicked on "listen on bbc" for the Ada Lovelace episode, 404. Sad.

Here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ada-lovelace/id7333089...

or here https://open.spotify.com/episode/5YjqWk1rqxANmNifyUW92B

or here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0092j0x (to download the mp3 file)

BBC Sounds not available outside of the UK anymore

Thanks! This works, listening to it now. Yeah, the bbc link someone posted below doesn't work from EU :(

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0092j0x here it is.

BBC Sounds not available outside of the UK anymore

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/listening-outsid...

Sad news - I hope it continues and they manage to get someone who keeps the quality high. As others have pointed out, the thing that makes In Our Time great is it assumes the people listening are interested in learning something without pointless fluff.

I was watching the first episode of the new-ish BBC TV series Human last night and, although there was some interesting information in there, it was unbearably slow and overwrought - 20 minutes of interesting content stretched out to 60 minutes by overly dramatic speech and pointless visual interstitials with soaring music. Such a stark contrast in terms of information density if you watch the original big BBC documentary series like Life On Earth or Civilisation.

I think the finest BBC documentary series was The Ascent of Man - probably because my father made me watch it when I was about 8:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Man

There are quite a few in that vein - Jonathan Millers’ The Body in Question; Attenborough ‘s original Life On Earth

Although I am often critical of modern day BBC output, or indeed all "mainstream Tee-Vee" output, this is among their best work. Exposure to higher culture trains the mind to think abstractly, to appreciate beauty, and to orient life toward something greater than just existing.

I like his very slightly impatient, very slightly interrupty manner with his guests.

He was great, had always done his homework!

Maybe it's just me but that always grated with me a bit. It felt sometimes a bit like a Today programme interview where "presenter style" was the product.

Not to take anything away from the content though. It's the sort of programme the licence fee was made for.

It has to do with him driving the conversation to a specific point in the narrative; academics tend to meander and go off on tangents, but he invited three of them and the next topic is the point of expertise of the following person. You can sometimes hear him reward the guests "yes, that's what I was getting it" or "that's a great way to put it". In other words; he did some prep! Unlike many podcasters.

It's not just you, that does grate on me sometimes as well. I get that he needs to move the show on, but I often feel like the guest is trying to make quite an important point when he interrupts. Still love it, though.

Adds a bit of seasoning

Yes, me too - he reminds me of the iconic (UK) public school teacher, shepherding bright but wayward charges through a complicated discussion.

While he doesn't throw blackboard dusters at them, he prods and harumphs when the egos and waffle of dons has them momentarily forget they aren't doing this in class but broadcasting to the nation...

It’s gone a bit overboard in the recent years. I do enjoy the full body of work though.

He's one of the great ones!

People might also enjoy "This Cultural Life" https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010fl4 More than 100 episodes already with some of the world's leading artists and creatives.

Oh thanks! That one looks worth sampling this weekend.

Looking through the archives, this one with Melvyn Bragg might be interesting as a way to start: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001q0kd

Just wanted to say thanks. I burned through a few episodes this weekend on a trip and found them all quite interesting and thought provoking. The Allende and Nick Cave episodes were particular hits in our car.

You could see this coming with his voice weakening over the years. It’s nice that he was able to continue for as long as he did.

My weekly dose of highbrow-ness from the UK:

1. In Our Time

2. University Challenge

I highly recommend the back catalog In Our Time if you want some good brain fodder on an amazingly wide range of subjects.

If you want to add to that list, check out Only Connect on the BBC. Best quiz show for smart people in the world.

Thanks! I watched a few episodes recently and did enjoy how smart everyone was, and the questions too.

I must not be smart, because I can't stand Victoria Coren-Mitchell. As annoying as her husband, but without being hilariously funny at the same time. About as insufferable as her brother too..

Also - obviously annual not weekly - don't forget the Reith Lectures (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9): long-form lecture series by (often) the most brilliant people of their time. Back catalogue available from 1948 in podcast form. Recommend starting with Bertrand Russell in the inaugural lectures - he's fantastic to listen to, even now.

Can the new host stop the 'as it were' thing?

The show has long and consistently had this weird tic where they must announce every analogy, or even non-analogy with 'as it were'.

"He was over the moon, as it were".

"He was very excited, as it were".

We know what analogies are! No disclaimer needed! And when it isn't one, even bloody more so!

Forgive my affectionate grumble. I've enjoyed the show for many years. Bragg is a unique talent, and will be hard to follow.

British working-class hero, though he'd probably prefer I say English.

I'm still working through the back catalogue, been at it for years, I've listened to every episode from the start until about mid 2012. I'll finish it eventually!

>though he'd probably prefer I say English.

I'm curious why you say this. He's a member of the British establishment now. Has he spoken on the topic, or ...?

Here's a t-SNE map of all 1,000+ episodes:

https://www.braggoscope.com/explore

(Outside the UK, the "Listen" link doesn't work except for the most recent ~350 episodes. You'll need to get the program page link instead which is in the footer.)

are there any science episodes on there? i don't see 'em

Melvyn Bragg would always rush the experts, pressuring them to get to the point asap. I found him a bit off-putting and even rude at times, but it was what made made the show unique and never stagnant.

I found it so off-putting, I couldn't really listen to the show. On some episodes he would basically lead them through his notes, as if he were the expert and was having to suffer these people explaining things badly to him.

Bragg has been a strong force in intellectual culture in the UK for many decades. I remember my Mum and Sister being upset by a trailer for The South Bank Show back in the early 1980s, and he was a prominent "elder statesman" figure of the media by then, really - so he's had very good run.

But to be honest, I am hoping we get somebody a little bit less frumpy and grumpy picking up the space he will inevitably leave behind. I just hope it's not closed down and we end up with more middling dross.

His notes, of course, were assembled by his producers, based on the notes & writing of those academics (and others, I'm sure, thus the weekly reading list). He sometimes made reference to this, saying things like "Well you said it in your notes; what did you mean?"

You do realise that those notes, are notes provided to him by the experts he is talking to, right?

Without his personality driving the show I suspect it will have a tough time finding it's footing.

I mean his whole job was to make sure that the conversation didn't get too wildly off topic. I have to say I appreciated his nudging based on his notes.

In this day and age it seems like people get a soap box and get to say whatever they want without interruption. Someone needs to keep things in order and he did a fantastic job curating the show.

That's the only way they managed to cover such big subjects in relative depth in such a short slot! All the guests are used to waffling for a full uninterrupted hour to captive audiences about tiny segments of each topic; without that pressure the show couldn't exist.

I love this programme and have listened to it since its inception. My goodness though is it guilty of reinforcing two quite negative parts of British media culture to which I am quite sensitive: let’s call them boffinphobia and basicism.

Boffinphobia is where an otherwise interesting scientific topic gets downplayed by a programme or news presenter as being too difficult for them to understand, and in particular said in a dismissive jokey way.

Bragg was particularly susceptible to this! In almost every episode* that touches on cosmology he would resort to a whimsical “gosh these numbers are too big for me!” or a “wow that’s going over my head!”. There’s one notorious episode on computer science** where he’s downright rude to the guests regarding complexity. Contrast with how he can barely contain himself when showing how much he knows about Horace or Napoleon or Brahms. (I contend that the virtue signalling exhibited by claiming “maths is too hard, leave it to the boffins!” is the opposite side of the same coin to showing off how much poetry and history one has memorized.)

Basicism is where, for example, black hole discussions always talk about spaghettification and then run out of steam before the interesting stuff. Any discussion of a complex topic will touch on the first handful of spectacular introductory facts and never get any further, all on the assumption that the listener has never encountered the topic before in their lives. I know the pigeon story about cosmic microwave background already: please elaborate on the latest anisotropy findings!

In Our Time is a fantastic listen, but brace yourself for a bit of eye-rolling at — and forgive me for paraphrasing Lord Bragg’s tone a little, here — the “omg stahp, nerd stuff makes my brain hurt!” schtick.

* Bragg seems to take things more seriously when Simon Schaffer is there. Carolin Crawford is part of the dream team as well. Both are exceptional science communicators.

** Another commenter points out this is the P vs NP episode: https://www.braggoscope.com/2015/11/05/p-v-np.html

I felt you could really tell his enthusiasm was for the arts.

Which is fine, of course, everyone has preferences; but the contrast with the much more rote science episodes did make me a little sad.

> I know the pigeon story about cosmic microwave background already: please elaborate on the......

We know that story, but many non-scientists don't.

The genius of In Our Time is genuine academic discussions accessible to the lay man. I found the In Our Time discussions on ancient Greece and the arts fascinating, despite these being two subjects I have no background in and know sweet FA about.

yep, i skip those episodes

similar issues are with non european cultural topics. You often get what i'd label wikipedia-depth

In Our Time is meant to be a brief tour of basically every topic in arts, science, philosophy, etc. And yes, Melvyn has been an arts presenter for decades (his The South Bank Show started in 1978), science is not his forte.

Perhaps you'd prefer The Life Scientific with Jim Al-Kalili? More than 10 years of him interviewing scientists and covering their careers and discoveries: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sqc7

Alternatively, The Infinite Monkey Cage is more comedic and science themed than In Our Time, with two scientists and one idiot for every topic: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snr0w

For me, with a STEM background (and, I, suspect for many people here) the science episodes were never the most informative (though I would still learn a great deal about the history of the subject)

I'm not sure whether someone with a background in arts or history would say the same about the other episodes.

For those who want something entirely outside the STEM-heavy HN sphere of interest, there is another great BBC podcast about social science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Allowed

Likewise - I always skip the science episodes and wondered whether there were hordes of historians tutting their way through the other episodes. It feels to me like there are two types of science episodes though - one where it's pure science, and one where it's the history of a particular branch of science. Like you, the second I could generally stick for the historical perspective, but I always wondered why they have the first type on what is ostensibly a programme about history.

Sad news. 'In Our Time' episodes are actually timeless, I am frequently amazed by the quality of episodes from over twenty years ago.

Frankly, I believe that instead of finding a new presenter, the BBC could be retire the whole series and its legend. Let the new presenter start a new series, even if the set-up remains the same (including having further discussions with a cup of tea after the radio time limit has ended)

I know what you mean, but I have a feeling that if this series ends it's not going to be replaced by anything that's its equal in terms of intellectual depth. Feels to be like keeping the brand would keep the producers focused on what makes it great.

Is it just me?

At the end of each podcast there's the outro when they ask if Melvyn and his guests would like tea of coffee.

This keeps throwing me back to the bit at the end of episodes of Bod, when the Frog conductor is asked which flavour milk shake he'd like.

Once having itemised all of the contents of Thunderbird 4's pods over time, I have had an inkling to use some Machine learning system to gather the drinks options from each In Our Time.

Water has cropped up?

Perhaps I place too close attention to it.

That was the best part of Bod.

> I have had an inkling to use some Machine learning system to gather the drinks options from each In Our Time.

This is a thought of whimsical genius. I do hope you go for it...

Highly recommended. "In our time" is incredibly informative, and we're so lucky to live in an era where we can enjoy the endless recordings of this show!

His genuine interest in such a vast range of topics and his ability to keep experts away from rabbit holes made the show exceptional. He will be sorely missed

That makes me sad. I will miss his voice. I loved how he interrupted his guests and kept them honest and on point. I loved the casual offer for tea/coffee at the end. I would love how it had this encore bit at the end, sometimes!

This podcast chose its listeners and kept it real. Thanks to everyone who makes it possible. Hope they get a fitting replacement for Melvyn and keep it going!

Sometimes I have felt his interruptions to be kind of rude, and have almost sensed an air of irritation by the interrupted guest. But I am not a native English speaker so may have misinterpreted it.

The best interviewers are OK with irritating their guests. An interview guest generally has some conversational line or script that they plan to use. A good host has to break them out of that script - otherwise every interview with that guest will sound the same.

For example, take Demis Hassabis' recent interview with Lex Friedman. Friedman wanted to talk about cellular automata; Hassabis wanted to talk about Gemini AI. Friedman asked questions about cellular automata, Hassabis signalled that he wanted to use his prepared script about AI, Friedman ignored Habbis' signals and continued to ask about cellular automata. The end result is that Lex Friedman listeners get to hear Demis Hassabis talk about cellular automata for 10 minutes - a unique side of Demis Hassabis' mind that you couldn't hear anywhere else. Friedman eventually relented and let Hassabis talk about AI.

(I'm not saying that Friedman is the best interviewer, but he's good. All good interviewers do this: Howard Stern, David Letterman, Charlie Rose, Dick Cavett, etc.)

Basically you have to squeeze your guest to get juice out of them.

one of the greats, his interview and moderation style was exceptional - being able to challenge experts with respect, encouraging them to say more.

I always wished I could download all the episodes and sort them by time period, listen to human history unfolding.

Sad to hear this. All the best to Mr. Bragg.

Related note: The Empire podcast w/ Anita Anand and William Dalrymple has been my latest favorite history podcast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(podcast)

This has been my go to podcast for bedtime or when I can’t sleep… the broad topics, depth of discussion and tone are all fantastic… the ONLY thing that bugs me is the volume of guests microphones not being equalized, so you get some guests on the same episode being so much quieter than others

I hate to say this out loud but I keep going back to some particular episodes to help me nod off when insomnia grips. I'm not sure I know how the episode on the gold standard ends and I must have listened to it more than 10 timss.

I love how he ends every show by forcing the producer to come in and humbly serve tea to the guests.

I interpret this as some kind of cute little power play by Melvin. Even if so, he definitely earned it, and if were the producer I would serve with pride.

`In Our Time` is a joy! Very fast intellectual conversation on relevant topics by academics in the field. Their enthusiasm is infectious.

It won't be easy to find somebody with his breadth of knowledge to replace him.

I don’t think you need a particular depth of knowledge. You need someone willing to do the pre-work -clearly there are notes from and conversations with the contributors beforehand, someone with curiosity to learn about things outside their areas of expertise. A good journalist would be fine

I agree. It's almost all prep. In fact that's exactly what I recall him saying in an interview once, that he still gets stressed by the amount of reading he has to do before each and every episode. He never winged it and rely on his knowledge alone.

And making broad connections across topics wasn't his style anyway. He's a legend but the show can totally go on without him, and it should.

I always hoped they would do a behind the scenes episode on what they do to create one episode - pre-reading, selection of experts, discussion of questions to ask etc.

I for one would love to hear what refreshments they would like after the recording.

He very often brings other knowledge to bear in conversations that clearly wasn't just prep work for the specific topic. He's not strong on science but he has a firm grounding in literature, philosophy and history that isn't common these days.

He will be missed, but it’s also a chance for fresh perspectives to take the reins.

I've listened to quite a few dozens of episodes ... I'm wondering ... did they seek out experts with speech impediments.

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