Chalke Talk

The podcast from the Chalke Valley History Festival
Released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings

Chalke Talks for THEME: Science


  • 39. A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYONE WHO EVER LIVED: THE STORIES IN OUR GENES
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    In a captivating journey through the expanding landscape of genetics, Adam Rutherford, geneticist and broadcaster, argues that our genomes should be read not as instruction manuals, but as epic poems. Touching on everything from Neanderthals to murder, redheads to race, and dead kings to plague, he decodes the mystery behind who we are and how […]

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  • 130. MAN OF IRON: THOMAS TELFORD AND THE BUILDING OF BRITAIN
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    Thomas Telford was a shepherd boy who changed the world with his revolutionary engineering and whose genius we still benefit from today. Julian Glover’s original portrait of the great engineer covers decades of gloriously obsessive, prodigiously productive energy, building churches, canals, bridges and the backbone of our national road network.

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  • 163. THE MAP OF KNOWLEDGE: HOW CLASSICAL IDEAS WERE LOST AND FOUND
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    Violet Moller traces the journey taken by the ideas of three of the greatest scientists of antiquity – Euclid, Galen and Ptolemy – through seven cities and over a thousand years. In tracing these fragile strands of knowledge, Moller reveals the web of connections between the Islamic world and Christendom, connections that would both preserve […]

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