In Our Time

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the countless venues across the Roman Empire which for over five hundred years drew the biggest crowds both in the Republic and under the Emperors. The shows there delighted the masses who knew, no matter how low their place in society, they were much better off than the gladiators about to fight or the beasts to be slaughtered. Some of the Roman elites were disgusted, seeing this popular entertainment as morally corrupting and un-Roman. Moral degradation was a less immediate concern though than the overspill of violence. There was a constant threat of gladiators being used as a private army and while those of the elite wealthy enough to stage the shows hoped to win great prestige, they risked disappointing a crowd which could quickly become a mob and turn on them.
With
Kathleen Coleman
James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University
John Pearce
Reader in Archaeology at King’s College London
And
Matthew Nicholls
Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John’s College, Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
C. A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton University Press, 1993)
Roger Dunkle, Gladiators: Violence and Spectacle in Ancient Rome (Pearson, 2008)
Garrett G. Fagan, The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
A. Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power (University of Texas Press, 1997)
A. Futrell, The Roman Games: A Sourcebook (Blackwell Publishing, 2006)
Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard, The Colosseum (Profile, 2005)
Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003)
Eckart Köhne and Cornelia Ewigleben (eds.), Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome (University of California Press, 2000)
Donald Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Routledge, 1998)
F. Meijer, The Gladiators: History’s Most Deadly Sport (Souvenir, 2004)
Jerry Toner, The Day Commodus killed a Rhino: Understanding the Roman Games (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014)
K. Welch, The Roman Amphitheatre from its Origins to the Colosseum (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
T. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (Routledge, 1992)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the wonders of the natural world. In 1875 in the western Pacific, the crew of HMS Challenger discovered the Mariana Trench which turned out to be deeper than Everest is high, by two kilometres. Trenches like Mariana form when one tectonic plate slips under another and heads down and there are around fifty of them globally. While at one time some thought it was too dark and deep for life there and others wildly imagined monsters, the truth has turned out to be much more surprising.
With
Heather Stewart,
Director of Kelpie Geoscience and Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia
Jon Copley
Professor of Ocean Exploration and Science Communication at the University of Southampton
And
Alan Jamieson
Director of the Deep Sea Research Centre at the University of Western Australia
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean (Doubleday, 2023)
Jon Copley, Deep Sea: 10 Things You Should Know (Orion Books, 2023)
Hali Felt, Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor (Henry Holt & Co, 2012)
M.E. Gerringer, ‘Pseudoliparis swirei: A newly-discovered hadal liparid (Scorpaeniformes: Liparidae) from the Mariana Trench’ (Zootaxa 4358 (1), 161-177, 2017)
A.J. Jamieson, The Hadal Zone: Life in the Deepest Oceans (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
A.J. Jamieson et al., ‘A global assessment of fishes at lower abyssal and upper hadal depths (5000 to 8000 m)’ (Deep-Sea Research Part 1. 178: 103642, 2021)
A.J. Jamieson et al., ‘Fear and loathing of the deep ocean: Why don’t people care about the deep sea?’ (ICES Journal of Marine Science. 78: 797-809, 2020)
A.J. Jamieson et al., ‘Microplastic and synthetic fibers ingested by deep-sea amphipods in six of the deepest marine environments on Earth’ (Royal Society Open Science, 6, 180667, 2019)
A.J. Jamieson et al., ‘Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna’ (Nature Ecology and Evolution. 1, 0051, 2017)
V.L. Vescovo et al., ‘Safety and conservation at the deepest place on Earth: A call for prohibiting the deliberate discarding of nondegradable umbilicals from deep-sea exploration vehicles’ (Marine Policy. 128, 104463, 2021)
J.N.J. Weston et al., ‘New species of Eurythenes from hadal depths of the Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean (Crustacea: Amphipoda)’ (Zootaxa. 4748(1): 163-181, 2020)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production
Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Journalist, author and historian Misha Glenny presents his first edition of In Our Time, succeeding Melvyn Bragg who retired from this role last summer. Misha and his guests discuss the landmark work On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, published in 1859 and the increasing recognition for his wife Harriet Taylor Mill's contribution. The subject matter of the essay is ‘civil or social liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual’ and it argues that the sole end for which mankind may interfere with the liberty of action of anyone is self-protection and even then only to prevent harm to others. This essay became enormously popular and a foundational text for liberalism.
With
Helen McCabe
Professor of Political Theory at the University of Nottingham
Mark Philp
Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at the University of Warwick
And
Piers Norris Turner
Associate Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Jo Ellen Jacobs (ed.), Harriet Taylor Mill, Complete Works (Indiana University Press, 1998)
Bruce L. Kinzer, Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament: John Stuart Mill at Westminster, 1865-1868 (University of Toronto Press, 1992)

Christopher Macleod and Dale Miller (eds.), A Companion to Mill (Wiley, 2016)
Helen McCabe, John Stuart Mill, Socialist (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021)
Helen McCabe, Harriet Taylor Mill (Cambridge, 2023)
Piers Norris Turner, ‘The Arguments of On Liberty: Mill’s Institutional Designs’ (Nineteenth-Century Prose 47 (1), 2020)
Piers Norris Turner et al (eds.), John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, On Liberty with Related Writings (Hackett Publishing, forthcoming 2026)
Mark Philp (ed.), John Stuart Mill: Autobiography (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Mark Philp and Frederick Rosen (eds.), John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, Utilitarianism and other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Frederick Rosen, Mill (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Alan Ryan, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill (Palgrave MacMillan, 1998)
Ben Saunders, ‘Reformulating Mill’s Harm Principle’ (Mind 125/500, 2016)
John Skorupski, Why Read Mill Today? (Routledge, 2006)
William Stafford, John Stuart Mill (Red Globe Press, 1998)
C. L. Ten (ed.), Mill: On Liberty: A Critical Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras (eds.), John Stuart Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Misha Glenny introduces himself to you ahead of his first episode on 15th January, answering some questions from producer Simon Tillotson and sharing what's coming up in the first few weeks.
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

While you wait for the new season of In Our Time with Misha Glenny, we’re introducing you to The Global Story, a new daily podcast from the BBC.
In this episode, writer and voracious reader James Marriott discusses the so-called 'death of reading'. He argues that we may be entering a post literate age – shaped by addictive screen culture, fragmented attention, and an overflow of trivial or unreliable information. The conversation traces how the 18th century 'reading revolution' helped shape the modern world, and what its decline could mean for education, culture, and democracy today.
If you enjoy this episode, you can find new instalments of The Global Story every day wherever you get your BBC Podcasts.