In Our Time

I've been listening to Radio 4 for more than 5 years now, and (despite loving I'm Sorry I Haven't a A Clue, Laura Solon's Talking and Not Talking and various other 6.30-slot comedies) my favourite program remains In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg. Little can make you feel as sophisticated and intelligent as listening to Baron Bragg and his distinguished academic guests discussing the fall of Carthage, the Observatory at Jaipur, Schopenhauer, or some other deep topic.

Anyway, every now and then, we get treated to a maths topic for 45 minutes, usually involving Ian Stewart and Marcus Du Sautoy. I've heard discussions on Godel, infinity, the Calculus, the Poincare Conjecture, pi and many more subjects In My Time :)

After what seems to have been forever (though I could easily have missed some without noticing), it was a mathsy topic again this morning, namely Game Theory. I'm not overly interested in Game Theory myself, but it was entertaining enough, and gave me something to listen to while doing the washing up and tidying the kitchen. Ian Stewart was there as anticipated, and was as brilliant as ever. I'm quite an Ian Stewart fan for what it's worth. I made the (blindingly obvious) prediction to Kim, that John Nash would get a mention, and lo, at 18 past 9, he did. Other stars included von Neumann, and a tramp.

If anyone's interested, a cut-down-to-thirty-minutes version is usually repeated at 9.30pm tonight. It's also available on the Radio 4 website, as are all the episodes of In Our Time since 1998. Actually, I got rather good at Minesweeper a few years ago when I played it to keep myself visually stimulated (I tend to drop off eventually if the only thing I am doing is listening to something) while going through all the science and maths ones that caught my eye... and there were quite a few. I'm not very cultured, so I didn't bother with the art, philosophy, religion, &c, but I do listen to them if they're "live."

More maths please Melvyn!