Enheduana was a Sumerian princess who lived around 2300 BCE and composed what is now regarded as the earliest poetry by a known author. Her father, Sargon of Akkad, is said to have created the world’s first empire, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and as part of his imperial mission he installed his daughter as the high priestess of the ... Show More
Nov 21
Aftershock: The War on Terror – Episode 1: With Us or Against Us
In the days after 9/11, George W. Bush declared a state of emergency and initiated what would become an unprecedented expansion of US power. Public debate narrowed: there were new limits on what was acceptable, and not acceptable, to say. The London Review of Books published a nu ... Show More
44m 54s
Nov 15
Introducing ‘Aftershock: The War on Terror’
After 9/11, George W. Bush launched a global War on Terror. What followed was an unprecedented expansion of American power, from Guantánamo Bay to drone strikes, mass surveillance to the weaponisation of the financial system. Asked when it would end, Vice-President Dick Cheney re ... Show More
3m 57s
Oct 2022
Ep 5 - Narrating the Middle East
Can we understand a culture and a region when we don’t read its authors? And what nuances do we miss when we read them in translation? How are authors and poets from the Middle East reaching new audiences? I speak to poet Zeina Hashem Beck, from Lebanon, living in California, abo ... Show More
43m 13s
Oct 2019
8. The Sumerians - Fall of the First Cities
In the dusts of Iraq, the ruins of the world's first civilization lie buried. This episode, we travel into the extremely distant past to look at the Sumerians. These ancient people invented writing and mathematics, and built some of the largest cities that the world had ever seen ... Show More
2h 29m
Jun 2023
The first Indian woman to conquer Everest
As a child, Bachendri Pal never dreamt of conquering mountains but a chance meeting with a climber changed all that.She applied for a mountaineering course and was chosen to be part of India’s first mixed-gender team to climb Mount Everest. On the journey, she faced icy winds, fr ... Show More
9m 13s