25: The smartest man who ever lived - history...

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Well, that is the embodiment of Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines, and Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the French Revolution. You probably know these women’s stories, so you may not see it at first, ...  Show more

To this day, 5% of Americans believe that the Apollo Moon landings were faked - that’s more than 16 million people. How did this theory start? And why, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, do some still believe it? This & the Flat Earth conspiracy theory will be discussed t ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, in 1905, produced several papers that were to change the world of physics and whose name went on to become a byword for genius. This was Albert Einstein, then still a technical expert at a Swiss patent office, and that year of 1905 bec ...  Show more

In the summer of 1944, as the German forces were retreating in northern Italy, a small group of soldiers made a detour to a remote villa in search of Albert Einstein's cousin. Robert Einstein posed no threat to the Nazi regime, but nonetheless they were determined to hunt him dow ...  Show more

The prize most coveted by the best and brightest minds in society owes its name to one man: Alfred Nobel. This Swedish inventor born in 1833, has a complicated history after battling through childhood poverty in which only three of his seven siblings reached adulthood. Parcasters ...  Show more

Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of history’s greatest novelists, but he is also one of history’s greatest psychologists. His stories contain depictions of characters who span the spectrum of human personality, from those of abject evil, to those saintly in nature. Friedrich N ...  Show more