The Education of Melvyn Bragg

I love ‘In Our Time’ - it strikes a really good balance between being academic and accessible. The range of topics is so broad too that you find yourself learning about things you didn’t even know you wanted to learn about. For example, scrolling to a random point in the podcast feed, I see than in four weeks in Dec ‘18 there were episodes on the thirty years war, ‘Sir Gawain &amp; The Green Knight’, the poor laws and Venus.<p>Bragg’s book ‘The Adventure of English’ is a good survey of the evolution of the English language too.

&quot;Well, I think the fascination of knowledge is an addiction. And I sometimes think the fascination of knowledge is the meaning of life. I really do. I mean, it saved me when I was a kid. It got me out of a really, really bad hole. And I’ve tried to keep out of it ever since.&quot;

&gt; I forgot another rule, which is that we’re never knowingly relevant. It is very simple; it’s what it should be.<p>I never though about it that way, but it’s so true. There’s no cultural references. No talk about current affairs. The show is timeless and only new information on a topic can make it go stale.<p>What beautiful programming.

In Our Time is a wonderful podcast, always interesting content! Also, as an American, the pace of the show and way of speaking is itself interesting to me.

I find the duration constraint quite sad, to be honest. Would be fantastic to live in a world where Bragg&#x27;s intellect and interview style would fuse with long format podcasts (forgive me e.g. Rogan) where the conversation would last up to 4 or 5 hours.

It&#x27;s what Wikipedia is missing. Not only a brief summary of a topic, but, the opinion from the leading academics on a topic.<p>It&#x27;s the academic opinions, not just the information, that is of interest. Without knowing much on an esoteric topic, being introduced to just the fact, doesn&#x27;t help much. It&#x27;s good to hear an expert say what points they think are the most important. That&#x27;s why I like the show.

Did you ever get a turnip?<p>Every other week!

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