Best General History Podcast – Today
You should listen to some history podcasts. But if you only have to pick one, choose In Our Time , the venerable BBC radio show and podcast, which covers a different topic with each episode. This is the best opportunity to learn a little about a lot. And this is the best way to find out which parts of the story really interest you for further study.
Each week, host Melvin Bragg talks to a group of scholars about one person, era, culture, concept or work of art. Past episodes have included Beethoven, Edith Wharton, King Solomon, Frida Kahlo, Judas Maccabee, al-Biruni, Simone de Beauvoir, Emily Dickinson, Iliad , The Art of War , Candide , Robinson Crusoe , Hamlet , Egyptian Book of the Dead. , scientific method, Hindu goddess Lakshmi, time measurement, game theory, The Great Theorem of the Farm, Mayan empire, druids, ice ages, feathered dinosaurs, purgatory, enzymes, borgias and the war of 1812.
300 episodes have been available as podcasts since 2011 and over 500 more on the BBC website since 1998. (The earliest episodes of the show cover much broader topics such as science in the 20th century, feminism, and “modern culture.” You can spend years catching up, even if you choose episodes like me.
Despite this incredible breadth, the show carefully and rigorously addresses each topic thanks to Bragg and his guests’ extensive research and training. The tone is dry, but not devoid of humor: usually the funniest thing is that Bragg grumbles at his guests to hurry up, because they only have 45 minutes to cover the entire empire.
The show can get intimidating pretty quickly, so don’t be discouraged if you skip to the next episode in 10 or 15 minutes, or stop to check out Wikipedia. And if that’s too much, try Curiosity with Jonathan Van Ness , which is a kind of super-friendly version of the same approach, much more talkative and forgiving of the gaps in your education.
Van Ness (guy from Queer Eye !) Talked about Brexit, the Romanov dynasty, gender identity, US-China relations, Internet security, the Sunni-Shiite rift, Agent Orange and “what’s happening in the Middle East right now. ? »Van Ness asks basic questions so you don’t have to, which is often an advantage over In Our Time’s breakneck speed and basic knowledge assumption. But depending on the subject, you might like both. I do.
In our time | BBC Radio 4