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I’d been fired once; it didn’t hurt: Melvyn Bragg – 1000 episodes of In Our Time
- mikhailfranco 3y agoThe IOT home page at the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl With 1,000 eclectic episodes you are sure to find something to pique your interest. The quality is mostly good, with a few gems. Occasionally it dissolves into academic point-scoring, but that is mercifully rare. I used to think that IOT defined what any well-educated person should know: given a title, you should be able to provide a 3-minute summary. Now it's reaching 1,000 episodes, it has probably moved beyond that universal core of cultural, historical and scientific knowledge. But hey, we have LLMs now, so we can just ask ChatGPT. Who needs to be well-educated.
- jfengel 3y agoI've listened to a substantial faction of those 1k episodes without noticing any of that point-scoring. But then, I might not: the whole thing is so dry and academic that even vicious arguments could be coded up in such a way that I could miss it. That's what I love about it. It's always real academics, rather than popularizers of the topic. They don't have that polished persona of the author-on-a-book-tour feel. They're experts, trying to explain why that topic is worth knowing, and willing to risk being dull to do it. They want to interest you rather than thrill you, and to me the result feels more sincere and thoughtful. I've been told that Bragg is regarded as a national treasure in the UK, and I believe it. I sometimes idly ponder what it would be like to host a show like that.
- I_complete_me 3y agoI've listened to a lot of episodes. The quality varies quite a bit. But for those who are new to IOT, Bird Migration gives an example of how good it can be. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wmk5j https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wmk5j