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The Forum — 399 episodes · page 1 of 4
Robots and reality
Weddings: Romance and ritual
The unfolding history of the magazine
Movie theatre magic
Customer service: The rise of the doom loop
What makes us nostalgic?
How airports took off
Libraries in the digital age
How the US dollar came to dominate the world
The seductive dance of charisma
The rise of fans and fandom
The enduring allure of jewellery
Why sleep sometimes eludes us
The high-speed train race
The diary: A life page by page
The only way is up: A history of mountaineering
Music on the move
The fight for women’s education
Feeding the world and the Green Revolution
Etiquette
Supermarkets
Diplomacy
The story of throwaway living
Political parties and us
What makes a good boss?
The joy and sorrow of roads
Pets and us
The evolution of teenagers
Global mass tourism
A deep dive into deepfakes
How the mobile phone changed everything
The submarine: Stealth machine
Hazel Scott: Jazz star and barrier breaker
The bittersweet tale of cocoa
The dam builders
Alexander the Great or not so great?
Rituals: Our anchors in a changing world
Tropicália: the movement that defied Brazil’s dictatorship
How the shipping container changed the world
Neanderthals: Meet the relatives
Cavalry and code-breaking: The Polish-Soviet war
How we work: Redesigning the office
When money died: The world's worst inflation
The writer Rachel Carson who fought insecticide wars
Why do we have a seven-day week?
Forugh Farrokhzad: A trailblazing voice for women in Iran
The Cynics: Counter-culture from Ancient Greece
Calories: How to fuel a human
Belarus: The crossroads of Eastern Europe
Margaret Sanger: Mother of birth control
Alice Guy: The first female movie mogul
The Epic of Gilgamesh: A quest for immortality
Uruguay 1930: The first football World Cup
Moths: The story of the butterfly of the night
The end of civilisation: Bronze Age collapse
From straw poll to opinion poll
Süleyman the Magnificent: longest-reigning Ottoman sultan
William Cobbett: Champion of rural workers
How the paparazzi transformed photojournalism
The Sun: Myths and magnetism
A forgotten founder of climate science: Eunice Newton Foote
Dreams: Prophecy, propaganda and psychoanalysis
Yves Saint Laurent: Fashion revolutionary
Brazil's Palmares: A beacon of freedom
Bluegrass: Virtuoso music of Appalachia
The Art of War: Ancient Chinese guide to victory
Gandhi: Architect of Indian independence
Making scents: The story of perfume
Eleonora Duse: The first great modern actress
La Malinche: Mexico's great 'traitor'
Taras Shevchenko: The slave who became a symbol of Ukrainian independence
The unstoppable orange
Radio waves and plants: The life of JC Bose
Samurai: Japan’s elite warrior class
Ice cream: A cool history
The Popol Vuh: Central American epic that survived Spanish conquest
The Koryo Kingdom: Medieval dynasty that united Korea
Insulin: The discovery that transformed diabetic care
Eunuchs and empires
Vikings and their quest for silver
Fertiliser and poison gas: The legacy of chemist Fritz Haber
Emperor Nero: Bad boy of Ancient Rome
Mirror Mirror on the wall: The history of the looking glass
Kwame Nkrumah: Ghana’s Pan-African idealist
The Truman Doctrine: Beginnings of the Cold War
Margaret Fuller: Early feminist and war correspondent
Money: From coin to cryptocurrency
Pinocchio: The real story of the mischievous wooden puppet
The invention of numbers
Vincent van Gogh: The struggling artist
Franz Liszt: Hungarian pianist and painter in sound
Joseph Heller's Catch-22: A novel of twisted logic and absurd bureaucracy
Sofya Kovalevskaya: The eventful life of a maths pioneer
Machu Picchu: Secrets of a forgotten city
Pleasure and pain: The philosophy of Jeremy Bentham
Copper: From mining to microprocessors
Writer Agatha Christie: Murder and mystery
Boudica, warrior queen
Harry Houdini: Escape artist and showman
Antarctic Treaty: Protecting the icy continent