Melvyn Bragg steps down from presenting In Our Time

Its odd that when places like HN or Reddit ask for favourite podcasts the amazing resources of BBC radio (that precede all modern internet podcasts and the best of which still wipe the floor with most of them) are often forgotten.

In Our Time represents the best of the form, and the BBC, and that's significantly down to the excellence of Bragg.

The archive (you may need a VPN outside the UK):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/player

Some curated lists:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Dw1c7rxs6DmyK0pMR...

I do feel that IOT would benefit from being longer - it often feels rushed. Podcasts excel at "deep dives" in a way that radio is barred from doing: a podcaster can say "I think I'm gonna do 30 hours on George Jones this year" (real example), and nobody can stop them.

IOT's format has a lot of statements, but not many questions. Bragg doesn't often say "hold on, what are the consequences of that?" (unless it's a prepared question designed to move us through the biography). Ironically, this lack of curiosity gets worse on subjects he understands well (the arts).

The unscripted chat afterwards is often the best bit. I could do with 10 minutes of on-script introduction and 50 minutes of experts discussing something they're passionate about.