Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Politics & Social Sciences

A collection of BBC radio full-cast dramatisations of Jane Austen's six major novels. Jane Austen is one of the finest writers in the English language, and this volume includes all six of her classic novels. Mansfield Park: on a quest to find a position in society, Fanny Price goes to live with her rich aunt and uncle. Northanger Abbey: young, naïve Catherine Morland receives an invitation to stay at the isolated Gothic mansion Northanger Abbey.

Advertising guru Rory Sutherland is a world-leading proponent of behavioural economics. In Hacking the Unconscious, he looks at how this emerging science is used by marketers to influence us and challenges us to reassess which ideas we hold dear.

An odyssey into life’s challenging questions during an unforgettable summer motorcycle trip Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance became an instant bestseller upon its publication in 1974...

Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother and uncle in the small Southern town of Stamps in Arkansas. Struggling with rejection, they endure the prejudice of their white neighbours and suffer several racist incidents. One day, their father unexpectedly returns and takes the children to live with their mother in St Louis, Missouri. Aged only eight, Maya is abused by her mother's boyfriend, an experience that haunts her for a lifetime.

The books that make up the life and times of Maya Angelou are some of the best, most beautiful and haunting pieces of autobiography written. They run the gamut from life affirming to tragedy and back again with a tone that is a joyous, direct and searingly honest and are an extraordinary portrait of 20th century black America.

In 2010, the BBC and the British Museum embarked on an ambitious project: to tell the story of 2,000,000 years of human history using 100 objects selected from the museum's vast and renowned collection. Presented by the British Museum's then director Neil MacGregor, each episode focuses on a single object - from a Stone Age tool to a solar-powered lamp - and explains its significance in human history.

Summer, 1945. The war is over, and Germany has surrendered. Across Europe, the top surviving Nazis are being tracked down, arrested and imprisoned in a once-opulent Luxembourg hotel, on 24-hour suicide watch. Now, the Allies must decide what to do with them. After much deliberation, Britain, America, Russia and France agree that Hitler's high command must be formally tried. This will be an entirely new kind of trial, with utterly new charges: those of 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide'. And before it can even take place, numerous crises and obstacles must be overcome.

Captivating radio dramatisations of seven of Charles Dickens' most famous novels. Charles Dickens is one of the most renowned authors of all time, and this first digital volume of the dramatised canon of his work includes seven of his most popular novels. This collection includes the episodic...

Collected in this special thematic anthology are 25 episodes showcasing notable individuals from Renaissance times to the present day who have transformed the way we think about the world. Included are philosophers such as Descartes, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Karl Marx, authors Albert Camus, Iris Murdoch, Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir, psychoanalyst Carl Jung and many other celebrated thinkers. Also featured are programmes on key philosophical themes, traditions and theories, among them existentialism, empiricism and feminism.

The Write Stuff is the book-based panel show that takes a witty and whimsical look at well-known authors and their work. Host James Walton challenges the erudite contestants with tricky literary teasers, which they endeavour to answer using a combination of knowledge and guesswork.

In this wildly entertaining A to Z of verbal acrobatics, Gyles takes you on a whirlwind tour of our mother tongue – from the origins of words and correct grammar and punctuation, to similes, euphemisms and record breaking tongue twisters (try getting your mouth around floccinaucinihilipification!). An idiosyncratic blend of history, word play, anecdote, and hyperbole, all in 60-second instalments, this is Gyles Brandreth at his word-perfect, Just-a-Minute best. You’ll never mix your metaphors again...

Sir Mark Tully was the BBC’s Foreign Correspondent in India from 1972 to 1994. He has become familiar to listeners around the world for his incisive and thought-provoking reports. On this special recording, he looks back at a career that coincided with a remarkable period in Indian history...

Bettany Hughes reveals the surprising and invigorating history of civilisation's most influential ideas. In this compelling 'archaeology of philosophy', award-winning historian Bettany Hughes takes 25 single-word ideas from ancient Greek culture and traces their development. Travelling backwards and forwards through time, she investigates how they first emerged and have evolved throughout history - and how those changes have shaped us

Oliver Burkeman's guides to leading a better life in an age of confusion Journalist and author Oliver Burkeman is well-known for his long-running Guardian column, 'How to Change Your Life', and has written three bestselling books on happiness, productivity and time management. In this radio...

Over the course of the series, David eats his lunchtime sandwiches with children in a primary school and later goes to a street market to see manners - good and bad - in action. He explores where our manners come from with Professor Steven Pinker from Harvard University and the author Henry Hitchings. What do we mean by 'civility' and 'good manners' in public places? Why are people still pinching vicars' bottoms, and what can the state do to improve standards of public behaviour? And, David asks, how is the digital age changing our sense of public space?

David Mitchell investigates how the humble meeting took over the world - and what we should do about it In this fantastic follow-up to Behaving Ourselves: David Mitchell on Manners, the comedian and columnist turns his attention to meetings, examining our love/hate relationship with them and...

Alistair Cooke looks back on a rich and varied life, one which has taken him across the ocean but never far away from the BBC. Drawing on archive recordings, this selection includes interviews from radio and television, Cooke's Letter From America, and a speech made to the Royal Television...

Once a watchword for African Americans in the early 1900s, 'woke' is now used as an insult across the political spectrum, and it has become synonymous with our era of angry debate. As the word has spread, what people mean by it has become less clear than ever. Award-winning journalist and author Matthew Syed is on a mission to uncover the roots of this social phenomenon and, in this series, he follows the evolution of 'woke' through five key stories.

Much of human history is hidden from us, buried deep under our feet. Layered beneath the landscape are the unknown stories of ancient peoples and civilizations, written in bones and long-lost artefacts, waiting to be revealed and deciphered. In these eight series, renowned author and broadcaster Aubrey Manning delves into the past, following geological and archaeological clues in an attempt to unravel some of these mysteries – from the Lost Map of London and the Amber Room to the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Antikythera Mechanism and the Land of Punt.

All three series of the award-winning topical panel show from 2025 Andy Zaltzman returns for a triple helping of comic quizzing, as he serves up a satirical smorgasbord of choice news morsels for his esteemed panellists to feast on. Making short work of them are some of the biggest names in...