Episode #163- What Was The Galileo Affair? (P...

In this bonus episode Sebastian takes question from the listeners about the recent episodes on Henry Box Brown and Snow White. First, we hear some comments from a listener in Iceland who wanted to weigh in on the North American Vikings. Then Sebastian unpacks some tricky question ...  Show more

The Brothers Grimm once write that "Snow White" was Germany's best known folktale. When the beloved fairytale served as the inspiration for the famous 1937 Disney film the story reached new levels of international recognition. There are many elements of the Snow White tale that s ...  Show more

The philosophical issues at the heart of the notorious condemnation of Galileo and Copernican astronomy.

In the generation following Copernicus, the question of planetary motions was picked up by two remarkable astronomers: Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Tycho was a Danish nobleman and brilliant astronomer and instrument builder whose high precision naked-eye measurements of the s ...  Show more

There was a time when science and religion worked in harmony, as two parts of a celestial design. Astrologer and philosopher Johannes Kepler oversaw this marriage of theory and belief when he proposed the revolutionary laws of planetary motion in the early 17th century. Amidst pe ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) whose charts offered an unprecedented level of accuracy.In 1572 Brahe's observations of a new star challenged the idea, inherited from Aristotle, that the heavens were unchanging. He went o ...  Show more