Lars Tharp explores the Chinese porcelain industry. He travels to Jingdezhen, west of Shanghai, the most important city in the maufacture of pocelain for 1,000 years and follows the trail linking Jingdezhen to Britain.

Lars Tharp explores the Chinese porcelain industry. He travels to Jingdezhen, west of Shanghai, the most important city in the maufacture of pocelain for 1,000 years and follows the trail linking Jingdezhen to Britain.

Writer and poet Ruth Padel investigates the qualities of her great great grandfather Charles Darwin and attempts to discover the man behind the science.

Ruth Padel explores how Darwin established relationships as a husband and father.

Ruth Padel explores the way in which Darwin learned to become a writer.

Ruth explores the losses which Darwin experienced in his life and their effect on him.

Edward Stourton tries to make sense of a decade in which history has been put on fast forward. There has been a revolution in the way we communicate, widespread alarm about the planet's very survival and a challenge to the world order. What does it mean for the way we live as we head into 2010? The impact of the internet - dreamt up by visionaries, embraced by commerce and full of (not always welcome) surprises.

1905 is the year that shook the world of science, and sent Newton, unchallenged for well over 200 years, tumbling from his throne. In Einstein's Shadow takes a look at the huge impact of Einstein's theories and talks to the scientists, who one hundred years later are still heavily influenced by his work.

General Relativity and Einstein's "biggest blunder". All cosmology today is essentially based on Einstein's theory of general relativity and so far, every prediction he made about the universe has turned out to be true. Even his so called "biggest blunder" may well solve the greatest riddle in cosmology today, the nature of dark energy - the mysterious force that makes up nearly 80% of the universe.

Quantum Theory and why God does play dice It's not just cosmologists who claim to be working in his shadow. Particle Physicists trying to discover how the very first atoms formed at the beginning of the universe, through to quantum theorists and those working on a unified theory of everything all site Einstein as a major influence. And his theories remain unchallenged to this day.

Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria' is Freud's first great case history. Dora was brought to Freud for analysis by her father because of hysterical symptoms and threatened suicide. Dora rejected Freud's interpretations and fled before her treatment was over. Why did she leave and what did Freud learn from his apparent failure? Lisa talks to psychoanalyst and writer, Susie Orbach to find out why 'Dora' would lead to the invention of one of psychoanalysis's most important tools.

Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, begins his series examining 600 years of German history through objects, with a reflection on Germany\'s floating frontiers

Continuing the week\'s theme of Germany\'s floating frontiers, Neil MacGregor visits two cities now beyond Germany\'s present borders, but which played important roles in Germany\'s intellectual and literary history.

Neil MacGregor visits Strasbourg, now in France, but also a city with a key place in German history, culture and precision engineering, as revealed by a model of the cathedral clock, now in the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series with a week of programmes with a focus on the things which bind Germans together - ranging from the importance of the great German writer Goethe, and the significance of the Grimm brothers\' fairy tales, to the long-standing history of German beer and sausages.

Neil MacGregor focuses on two great emblems of Germany\'s national diet: beer and sausages. He visits Munich to find out how regional specialities represent centuries of regional history and diversity.

Neil MacGregor began his journey through 600 years of German history at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and ends it at the Reichstag, seat of the German Parliament. These two extraordinary buildings, only a few hundred yards apart, carry in their very stones the political history of the country.

Spinoza was one of the founding fathers of the Idealist school of philosophy, and was described by Bertrand Russell as, "the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers".

James Cook is one of Britain's foremost explorers. His three voyages to the Pacific added greatly to the fields of navigation, anthropology and biology. His aim was to go, "farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for a man to go".

Eighteenth-century satirist and painter William Hogarth is nominated by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop. The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon joins the discussion.

Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and ideas of the 19th century American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. His guests this week are Kathleen Burk, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London; Tim Morris, Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Dundee; and Stephen Fender, Honorary Professor in English at University College London.

Melvyn Bragg and guests Roy Foster, Jeri Johnson and Katherine Mullin discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland. Many novelists choose their own young life as the subject for their first book. But very few have subjected themselves to the intense self-scrutiny of the great Irish novelist James Joyce. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916, Joyce follows his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, from babyhood to young adulthood. He takes us from Stephen wetting the bed, through a teenage visit to a prostitute, and on through religious terrors to the prospect of freedom. When it was published, the book met with shock at its graphic honesty. Joyce shows Stephen wrestling with the pressures of his family, his Church and his nation. Yet this was far from being a straightforward youthful tirade. Joyce's novel is also daringly experimental, taking us deep into Stephen's psyche. And since its publication almost a century ago, it has had a huge influence on novelists across the world. With: Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History and Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford Jeri Johnson, Senior Fellow in English at Exeter College, Oxford Katherine Mullin, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Leeds.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of animals in humankind's search for knowledge.

The role which architecture has played in our public life throughout history, whether in homage to an individual or as a monument to an institution or ideology, has always been a potent symbol of wealth, status and power. From castles to cathedrals, from the pyramids to Canary Wharf, architecture has always served to glorify in some way the animating ideal of the time. Why is architecture such a powerful form of expression? Have architects concerned themselves mainly with the masses, or restricted their designs to the demands and aspirations of the elite? What can a country’s buildings tell us about its ideas of its own past and present identity?

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss artificial intelligence. Can we create a machine that creates?

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the widespread and chilling atrocities of the 20th century.

Six thousand years ago, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the first cities were being built. The great empire to spring from the region was Babylon, which held sway for over a thousand years and in that time managed to garner an extraordinarily bad press: it’s associated with the Tower of Babel, with Nineveh where Jonah is sent to preach repentance and, perhaps most famously, with “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth” - the whore of Babylon, who in Revelation is taken to personify the city itself. It’s not just the Bible; Herodotus described the Babylonians as effeminate, lascivious and decadent as well. But what is the true story? Classics in this country has meant a study of Greece and Rome, but there is an increasingly vocal contingent that claims that Babylonian culture has been hugely undervalued, and that there is a great wealth of extraordinary literature waiting to be translated.

Otto von Bismarck was one of Europe's leading statesmen in the 19th Century and credited with the unification of Germany. He had a voracious ambition for his home state Prussia and made it supreme among other states in the German Confederation. After vanquishing Austria and France, he led the new industrialising Germany, managing to remain in power for a further two decades. He founded one of Europe's first welfare states. But he was also known for his ruthless tactics, ignoring democratic institutions if they blocked his will and never afraid to dabble in dirty politics, leaking opportunely to the press and bribing journalists. Bismarck said: “The art of statesmanship is to steer a course on the stream of time.” So was the unification of Germany a carefully planned campaign or a series of unpredictable events that Bismarck made the most of? How did his encouragement of nationalism bear fruit in Nazi Germany? And what is his legacy today in contemporary Germany?

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Black Holes. They are the dead collapsed ghosts of massive stars and they have an irresistible pull: their dark swirling, whirling, ever-hungry mass has fascinated thinkers as diverse as Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen Hawking and countless science fiction writers.

In Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery hangs perhaps the most well-known picture of Russia's most well-known ruler. Dimitri Levitsky's 1780 'Portrait of Catherine the Great in the Justice Temple' depicts Catherine in the temple burning poppies at an altar, symbolising her sacrifice of self-interest for Russia. Law books and the scales of justice are at her feet, highlighting her respectful promotion of the rule of law. But menacingly, in the background an eagle crouches, suggesting the means to use brutal power where necessary. This was one of many images that Catherine commissioned that demonstrated her skill at manipulation and reinvention. For an obscure, small town, German princess her ambition was large - the transformation of a semi-barbaric country into a model of the ideals of the French 18th century Enlightenment. How far was Catherine able to lead her country into full participation in the political and cultural life of Europe? Was she able to liberate the serfs? And should she be remembered as Russia's most civilised ruler or a megalomaniacal despot?