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IN OUR TIME
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PROGRAMME INFO |
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The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds in the world. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |
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LISTEN AGAIN |
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PRESENTER |
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BIOGRAPHY |
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| "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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LATEST PROGRAMME |
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MAN AND DISEASE
The Book of Exodus makes clear that when God wants to strike man, he does so with plague and disease.
For millennia epidemics were understood exactly that way - as acts of divine retribution, a force of nature that could devastate empires and annihilate great swathes of population at a stroke.
From the bubonic plague to measles, from cholera to smallpox, epidemics have constantly reshaped our world, leaving destruction and huge social upheaval in their wake.
Before advanced science, what defences did humankind have? How much did the ancient Greeks understand of the root causes of disease - or did they simply explain it as an imbalance of the four humours that governed the body?
What were the social and political consequences of The Black Death of 14th century Europe which wiped out a third of the population? How did the scientific breakthroughs of the 19th century - and the discovery of germ theory - alter people's perception of disease? And is it possible to live in a disease free society?
Guests
Dr Anne Hardy
Reader in the History of Medicine at the Wellcome Trust Centre at University College London
David Bradley
Professor of Tropical Hygiene at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Dr Chris Dye
epidemiologist with the World Health Organisation
Next Week
Next week on In Our Time we’ll be looking at the history of the calendar, asking who invented it and how it came to take its present form.
Why are there seven days in a week, who named the months and why should Jan 1st be the new year?
The answers involve Egyptian astronomers, Roman Caesars, Catholic Popes, Hebrew theologians and Babylonian social diarists.
That’s a history of the calendar with Robert Poole, Kristen Lippenscott and Peter Watson
How have we understood these afflictions, how have we fought against them and is it a war we can ever win?
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