Unlock First-Class Learning: Discover BBC Sounds’ Religious Gems

Unlock First-Class Learning: Discover BBC Sounds’ Religious Gems December 26, 2024

Over the holiday, you might find some down time to listen to podcasts. If so, I have some great advice for you. Arguably the very best source of first-class podcasts, all free, is BBC Sounds. BBC offers hundreds of programs on a near-infinite variety of themes, with multiple updates daily, including many on specifically religious themes.

Here, though, let me concentrate on one item, namely the superb In Our Time, introduced by veteran broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, who is fairly universally known by his first name, even to those who have never met him. (Technically he is Lord Bragg, but let’s forgive and forget that). Every week, Melvyn chooses a topic, and brings together three first-class specialists in the area – scholars and academics – to discuss and expound it. The topic can range across the whole range of arts and sciences, and the themes can seem incredibly specialized. Many are historical or literary, and a great many have a  religious focus. The intended audience is a literate non-expert, who knows nothing about the matter in question but is keen to learn.

I was reminded of this recently when a friend drew my attention to a program on George Herbert, the seventeenth century Anglo-Welsh cleric who was one of the very greatest Christian poets in English.

Typically for In Our Time, the program enlisted three world class experts on the subject, namely the academics Helen Wilcox. Victoria Moul and Simon Jackson, who chat learnedly about the topic for fifty minutes or so. If you check out the page here, you will find not just an account of the program but also a really solid academic reading list. By the time you have finished listening to each episode, you have something close to a college-level familiarity with the topic.

Pro tip! When you listen to the program, on any topic, do not give up when you hear Melvyn Bragg say that we are all done and finished here, and that is the end of the program. Carry on listening after the deceptive conclusion, and he goes on to ask the assembled experts what topics they might have missed in the program, and what would they add now? That final and less formal section can add ten minutes to the forty minute “main” program, and it is often the most interesting part of the whole thing. That more freeform chat will then continue until the producer walks in and asks everyone if they want tea or coffee. That is the real end, and you are then free to turn off. It is all very British!

The topics covered in In Our Time range enormously in terms of theme and discipline. Hundreds of past programs are archived at the site. If we focus on topics with some religious element, then just from the past year or so, we find

Julian of Norwich

The Ramayana

Karma

Karl Barth

Julian the Apostate

The Dead Sea Scrolls

We also find The Shimabara Rebellion, and before you ask what that is, a helpful note explains that the title refers to a 1637-8 Christian uprising in Japan.  I mean, this is high level stuff!

This page alone lists programs of seventeenth century interest.

This page gives the major programs on religion.

Going back  into the archives, we find programs on, for instance,

The Salem Witch Trials

The Talmud

The Trinity

The Book of Common Prayer

Wyclif and the Lollards

The Pelagian Controversy

Prophecy

Gnosticism

George Fox and the Quakers

The Battle of Lepanto

Matteo Ricci and the Ming Dynasty

Hildegard of Bingen

You really can achieve quite a high level of academic knowledge from these programs, and more to the point, the conversations are really entertaining. Try it for yourself.

You’re welcome!

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