In Our Time

Misha Glenny and guests discuss a familiar feature of our beaches: seashells, from their astonishing shapes and patterns that teach us about Earth’s oceans, to the ways that humans have treasured shells throughout history. Seashells appear in the mythologies of countless cultures across the world - think of Botticelli’s Venus emerging from a giant scallop shell, Vishnu's sacred horn panchajanya, or the Aztec god Quetzalcōātl’s talisman cut from a conch shell. The urge to collect shells seems to be as old as our species. We’ve used them as decoration, currency, and musical instruments. But shells aren’t just beautiful objects washed up on our beaches. Many belong to one of the most diverse groups of the animal kingdom, Mollusca, and the remarkable morphology of forms and structures they grow in offer insight into the past, present, and future of the marine world.
With
Suzanne Williams
Merit Researcher at the Natural History Museum
Liz Harper
Professor of Evolutionary Malacology in the Department of Earth Sciences and Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge
Helen Scales
Marine biologist and Author.
Producer: Martha Owen
Reading list:
S. Peter Dance, Shells (DK, 2022)
A.R. Irwin, S.T. Williams, D.I. Speiser and N.W. Roberts, ‘The marine gastropod Conomurex luhuanus (Strombidae) has high-resolution spatial vision and eyes with complex retinas’ (Journal of Experimental Biology 225:16, 2022)
Michael F. Land and Dan-Eric Nilsson, Animal Eyes (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Andreia Salvador, Interesting Shells (The Natural History Museum, 2022)
Helen Scales, Shell Day: A Story of 24 Hours and 24 Molluscan Lives (University of Chicago Press, 2026)
Helen Scales, The Shell Spotter's Guide (National Trust Books, 2024)
Helen Scales, What a Shell Can Tell: Where They Live, What They Eat, How They Move, and More (Phaidon Press, 2022)
Helen Scales, Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2015)
Paul D. Taylor, Fossils: The Essential Guide (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
Suzanne Williams, ‘Molluscan shell colour’ (Biological Reviews, 2017)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production
Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the French portrait painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755 - 1842). From her teens she delighted her high society subjects in and around Paris, notably Marie Antoinette who she painted around 30 times, and she invariably found ways to show her sitters at their best. Some critics were affronted that she, a young woman, dared paint at all and, when they saw how good her portraits were, some spread a rumour that surely this could not really be her work and she must have had a secret male lover finishing her portraits in a studio. The French Revolution forced Vigée Le Brun out of France and so she set off from one European court to another to find more success from Naples to Vienna to St Petersburg and to London, eventually settling back in France. Today her works are on show in major galleries around the world.
With
Rosalind Polly Blakesley
Master of Pembroke College and Professor of Russian and European Art at the University of Cambridge
Robert Wenley
Deputy Director of Collections and Research at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
And
Francesca Whitlum-Cooper
Curator of Later Italian, Spanish and French Paintings at The National Gallery, London.
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Joseph Baillio, Katharine Baetjer and Paul Lang (eds), Vigée Le Brun (exhibition catalogue in English, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016)
Joseph Baillio et al., Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun: 1755-1842 (exhibition catalogue in French, Grand Palais, Paris, 2015/16)
Rosalind P. Blakesley, Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great (Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 2023), especially chapter 8 ‘The Triumphant Refugee’
Lucy Davies, Vigée Le Brun: Self Portrait in a Straw Hat (National Gallery Global, 2025)
Angelica Goodden, The Sweetness of Life: A Biography of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1997)
Franny Moyle, Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun: The Entwined Lives of Two Great Eighteenth-Century Women Artists (Apollo, 2025)
Jordana Pomeroy, Daring: The Life and Art of Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (Getty Publications, 2025)
Mary D. Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
Paris Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830 (Paul Mellon Centre, Yale University Press London, 2022)
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (trans. Sian Evans), The Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (Camden Press, 1989)
Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (first published 1869; Tredition Classics, 2012)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production
Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persian Wars. After the defeat of a second Persian invasion in 478 BCE, a league of cities across Greece came together and formed a new alliance led by Athens. That alliance is now known as the Delian League, after the island of Delos where it was established. In the following decades, Athens used the Delian League to grow its own wealth and formidable naval power. Cities which tried to leave the alliance found themselves violently put down and their lands confiscated by the Athenians. What had begun as a cooperative alliance sworn to resist the Persian Empire gradually started to seem like it may have created another imperial power: the Athenian Empire.
With
Leah Lazar
Lecturer in Hellenistic Culture at the University of Manchester
Polly Low
Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham
And
Paul Cartledge
AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge
Producer: Martha Owen
Aristophanes (trans. David Barrett and Alan H. Sommerstein), The Birds and Other Plays (Penguin Classics, 2003)
Mary Beard, The Parthenon (Profile Books, 2010)
M. Canevaro and D. M. Lewis, 'Between ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’ and The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (and beyond): The Popularity of the Athenian Empire Revisited' (Polis 41:1, 2024)
Paul Cartledge, Ancient Greece: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Lisa Kallet and John H. Kroll, The Athenian Empire: Using Coins as Sources (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Leah Lazar, Athenian Power in the Fifth Century BC (Oxford University Press, 2024)
Polly Low (ed.), The Athenian Empire (Edinburgh University Press, 2008)
Malcolm F. McGregor, The Athenians and their Empire (UBC Press, 1987)
Robin Osborne (ed. and trans.), The Athenian Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
P. J. Rhodes, The Athenian Empire (Clarendon Press, 1985)
Thucydides (trans. Robin Waterfield, introduced by Polly Low), The History of the Peloponnesian War (Basic Books, 2025)
Thucydides (ed. Robert B Strassler), The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (Free Press, 1998)
Thucydides (trans. Rex Warner), History of the Peloponnesian War (Penguin Books, 2000)
Thucydides (trans. Martin Hammond), The Peloponnesian War (Oxford University Press, 2009)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios production
Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the towering figures of Brazilian and world literature, Machado de Assis (1839 - 1908). He was the descendant of slaves and built his career while slavery was still in place in Brazil (abolished 1888) and many of his characters were from the slave-owning class who were also the readers of his books. At the time, those readers were delighted to see themselves represented and it was only later in the 20th Century that critics realized just how much Machado was satirising them. While he brings 19th Century Brazil vividly to life, Machado's works transcend time and place and, according to Salman Rushdie, they seem to have been written yesterday not 100 years ago.
With
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva
Associate Professor in Brazilian Studies at University College London
Claire Williams
Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, fellow of St. Peter's College
And
Viviane Carvalho da Annunciação
Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Lamonte Aidoo and Daniel F. Silva (eds.), Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
Helen Caldwell, The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis: A Study of Dom Casmurro (University of California Press, 1960)
Viviane Carvalho da Annunciação, The Contradictions of Science in Machado de Assis (Liverpool University Press, 2025)
Machado de Assis (trans. Daniel Hahn), The Looking-Glass: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press, 2022)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), 26 Stories (Liveright, 2019)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis (Liveright, 2018)

Machado de Assis (trans. Flora Thomson-Deveaux), The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Penguin, 2020)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Liveright, 2020)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Quincas Borba (WW Norton & Co, 2024)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Dom Casmurro (WW Norton & Co, 2024)
Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson), Memorial de Ayres (Liveright, August 2026)
John Gledson, Machado de Assis: Fiction and History (Francis Cairns, 1984)
Richard Graham (ed.), Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer (University of Texas Press, 1999)
James N. Green, Victoria Langland and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (eds.), The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2019)
Daniel Hahn and Padma Viswanathan (eds.), The Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories (Penguin, January 2027)
Mario Higa (ed.), A History of the Brazilian Novel (Cambridge University Press, August 2026), especially the chapter on Machado de Assis
K. David Jackson, Machado de Assis: A Literary Life (Yale University Press, 2015)
Anthony W. Pereira, Modern Brazil: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Roberto Schwarz (trans. John Gledson), A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism: Machado de Assis (Duke University Press, 2001)

Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling (eds.), Brazil: A Biography (Allen Lane, 2018)
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, Machado De Assis's Philosopher or Dog?: From Serial to Book Form (Routledge, 2010)
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Brazilian Novel (UCL Press, 2020), especially the chapters “Capitu against the Elegiac Narrator” by Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and “Machado de Assis and the Novel” by Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos
Marcus Wood, The Black Butterfly: Brazilian Slavery and the Literary Imagination (West Virginia University Press, 2019)
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production
Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

As 4th July approaches, we think you’ll like this episode of The Global Story. All week, The Global Story podcast is exploring the surprising and often hidden ways the US has shaped the modern world.
Roman Mars – the host of 99% Invisible and the new BBC series A History of the United States in 100 Objects – joins as a guest to set out his theory of how the US used design to shape the world in its image.
If you like this episode, find the special collection ‘US and the World at 250’ in The Global Story. If you’re in the UK, listen on BBC Sounds. If you’re outside the UK, listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.