Melvyn Bragg meets Misha Glenny

Before Misha Glenny's first edition on 15th January, BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme Today has brought Melvyn Bragg and Misha Glenny together so they can share their ideas about In Our Time's success and discuss what, if anything, will change with Misha. While Justin Webb chaired this discussion, here you will hear Melvyn introduce it and at the end he has a message for Misha and for listeners around the world. This is a longer version of the discussion broadcast on Today on Radio 4 on Christmas Eve 2025 which was produced by Jade Bogart-Preleur, when Melvyn Bragg was the guest editor. In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production.

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• 2:18Speaker 04

  Hello, it's Melvin Black here. On Christmas Eve, I had the pleasure of being guest editor on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4, and for this, I spoke to my successor on In Our Time, Misha Glenny. We thought you might like to hear this, so here it is. Our discussion was led by the Today presenter, Justin Webb.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  Melvin, let's begin with the eternal appeal. I mean, it's a kind of obvious place to begin, but it is an important place to begin. Why is it that this incredible thing, this cultural event, and this hugely important event in so many people's lives, not just in Britain, but around the world, why? What is it that took off?

• 2:56Speaker 04

  I think what took off is curiosity. I think one of the most striking characteristics that we have is curiosity. That's one thing, people want to know stuff. And when you're listening in pubs and that people are talking about what they know to each other. And secondly, I think that a lot of us, me included, had a very patchy education. And when things come up about, and almost anything to do with science, I'm more interested than in anything else, because they didn't teach it at my school, they skimmed through, you know. So it's those two things. And then, because of the way we, I was about to say constructed, because of the way we're

• 3:38Speaker 04

  put together, it was interesting to go from one thing to another, to another, to another. And then we decided that was one of the principles, we would go from talking about ancient China to talking about my favourite opening by any scientist, which is "A Billion Billion Light Years Away". And then he followed that, there's that. And the other thing is that we hit on something that I probably wanted to do when I was doing Start the Week, but we didn't do enough, which is we only, basically only talked to academics. And it became their programme, and they listened to it, each other listened to it, and it became their programme.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  And the next thing is, is that we then said, they have to be teaching academics.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  So they're used to talking to people like me who doesn't know anything. And that is almost a hundred percent kept. They teach, they finish in this studio and they go back to their universities or colleges and they teach.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  Uh, and those four things came together. Uh, also, there's a vacuum. People were bouncing on academics once or twice, but we were consistently talking to academics about stuff they knew more than anybody else to somebody who knew nothing at all.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  Misha, what would you, what would you add to that?

• 4:59Speaker 05

  I would add to that.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  If there's anything to be added to that.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  There is something to be added and that's Melvin himself. Because, Melvin, if you think about it, I mean, the format is really quite straightforward. It's not, you know, there aren't too many bells and whistles to it. It's three academics talking about stuff that they know about. Why does it work? Well, that's where you came in because you create in every episode, and I've listened to a lot of them now, a really comprehensible arc, a story whereby you come into a subject that you know nothing about. And forty five minutes later, or whatever it is, you go away thinking,

• 5:42Speaker 05

  I've always wondered what that is about and now at least I understand the basics of it.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  An example of that for you?

• 5:50Speaker 05

  Plate tectonics. I just, I, and I can remember when I was listening to it, it was about sort of ten, fifteen years ago. So I was rushing, I was making breakfast and I had to get out. And I was listening to this stuff about plate tectonics and I just dropped everything and sat down.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  Including the plates?

• 6:10Speaker 05

  Including the plates. Sat down and listened to it and when at the end, they, because it starts off with, you know, huge sort of rocks sliding underneath each other and everything. But by the end, there is this revelatory explanation that without plate tectonics, there is no life.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  And that, that it's at the very, it's the most fundamental level. I knew nothing about it and I have never forgotten it.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Melvin, do you, does it differ when you're doing a subject that you do know something about to when you're doing something, I assume with plate tectonics, when you don't? You're starting really from scratch. How, how does it affect you? Has it affected you when you've been doing your research?

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Well, I try harder when I don't know anything, but I also enjoy it more. And also, the people who are in that realm are extremely good talkers. And they're very used to doing things concisely and helping you to move on. They're quite generous to each other as well, really.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  That's interesting, more generous than in the arts, perhaps?

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Yes, on the whole.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think they're, they're, they're very generous. But I do notice, Melvin, I mean, again, I'm listening very closely to these programs now, that when somebody is rabbiting on a bit too long, you always find the right moment to come in and say, absolutely fascinating, but let's move on.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  Good.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  But it's really, but it's really important because otherwise they'd just be rabbiting on for forty minutes or whatever.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  What's the skill of doing that, then?

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Well, everybody who comes on the program now, the academics, then we're talking about very, very bright people. They generally know each other, they don't want to steal time from each other, and they got the hang of it. And you can tell, really, by waving a finger, it's your turn now, and they, they go that way. It's very, very rarely that anybody wants to filibuster. They see it as what it is, I mean, conversation. It's more than a conversation, it's an investigation between three people who really know what they're talking about and don't begrudge other people talking as well. They often say, oh, he knows a bit more about that than I do. And, and so it's always a shared investigation. I think that's what people like.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Also, there's no, there's no plugging at all. I said, we have no plugging, and we have no plugging, and I think that's a big thing.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  You also don't tell me, as the listener, how I should think differently about my, my previous thoughts, prejudices, et cetera. In other words, there's no sort of, you go to a museum now and there'll be some set of contexts written for you that you should think of decolonizing or whatever the thing is that you're meant to be thinking about. You don't do that, do you? You've never done it?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  No.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Why not?

• 9:01Speaker 04

  I just want to stick to the subject, and that's quite enough to do. And when you're surrounded by people who know as much as these people do. So they want to pass this information on. And it's curiosity, we're all curious, but it's the teaching thing, I think, that was the key to it.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  So Misha, how does it change now?

• 9:20Speaker 05

  Well, first of all, I want to say, try stepping into these boots. This is going to be really difficult. Melvin is the programme, the programme is Melvin. There's no getting away from that. I am hugely honoured to be taking this role on. But I don't want to go in and smash up the China, as it were. I want to do what Melvin has been doing very well. I mean brilliantly for so many years. And I need to get my feet under the table. Now, it may be that there are certain areas. I'm thinking particularly of some aspects of European literature. South American history possibly.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  Where I've done work in the past that I would like to bring up. I mean, I'm going through all of the episodes to see what you've done and what you haven't.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  What he's missed.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  That will be a difficult task, I suspect, yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  It is a difficult task because there are so many. But I think there'll be a slightly more European focus, but I don't want to forget the rest of the world either. But I love the science programmes. I find the science programmes for exactly the same reason as you did. I now confess I got an unclassified in my O level physics. And I've been struggling to overcome that.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Catch up ever since.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  So this is very useful.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Lord Carrington used to say, when asked about scientific matters, former Foreign Secretary, of course, in a early Thatcher government, used to say, "I went to school before science was invented, my dear", which I always thought was a rather good, good thing to say. Now, tell us more. The first time I met you, Misha, we were in a hotel in Bosnia under mortar fire and you were broadcasting in German. So you are a man of many talents. Tell us about the way in which you've gone from there to here.

• 11:20Speaker 05

  Well, I was at the BBC as the Central Europe correspondent, which is when you met me, based in Vienna, but I'd been obsessed by Eastern Europe in particular and the communist world ever since my teens. So to be the BBC Central Europe correspondent in 1989, when you have the biggest foreign story since the Second World War, was a dream. I mean, what can I, what can I say? I, I knew Havel, I knew Van Wensen, I knew all these people and had done for ten years or so. So when they were forming the new governments, I knew who was in the government before they'd even thought of it. It was fantastic. But

• 12:00Speaker 05

  after that came the wars in Yugoslavia. And one of the things I picked up on during the wars in Yugoslavia was the fact that organised crime played an absolutely critical role in the atrocities in that war. And it was that study of organised crime which made me realise there's a lot more going on in the world than just the Balkans. I'd spent too much time in the Balkans by then. And so I embarked on going around the world studying organised crime by talking to a lot of bad people and one or two good people as well. And that is really was my in our time experience of going to places and doing things that

• 12:45Speaker 05

  I'd never come across before. And it just expanded my whole understanding of how the world works. And that's the kind of thing that I get from listening to the, to the programme. There's always something that you either never quite understood or never even knew about.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  What's your advice to him, Nerven, as he starts?

• 13:07Speaker 04

  I think follow what you really want to do. There's so much information out there. And so many people are good at reciting it and so many people who send in contributions. We have hundreds of lists saying, you should do this, you should do that, you should do the other. And one of the things about bumping into people on the heath or whatever it is, you haven't done this, you haven't done that.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  And do you take their advice?

• 13:30Speaker 04

  Sometimes. It seems to have taken it, taken off in its own way. From the beginning, we wanted it, I wanted it to be eclectic. And, sorry.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  Melvin, why do you think it's so popular with younger audiences? Because in terms of BBC programmes, it's one of the top for the under thirty-fives.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  I have to come back to what I said at the start, really. The people who are talking about it are teachers and they come in here, these small studios, and they know they've got to get a move on, they know they've got to cut it short, they know they can't wander on forever, and so they have to cut their cloth. And I think they all think it's, as I do, it's an absolute delight. And the archive that we have now is phenomenal.

• 14:17Speaker 05

  Incredible.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  It is a phenomenal archive. It's probably the greatest archive in the world, cultural archive.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  It's an interesting point you make about the appeal to young people, because one of the things we sort of try sometimes to convince ourselves, it seems to me, is that everything intellectually is going down the tubes, basically, that we are not the people we once were, that we've lost our ability to cope with things that challenge us, that we don't read lengthy things anymore, that we don't do this, we don't do that. And actually, in a sense, this is, this is the opposite, isn't it? And it's, and it's telling us a very different story about ourselves and particularly the young.

• 14:59Speaker 05

  It is, Justin, and for the last three and a half years, I've been running an institute in Vienna called the Institute for Human Sciences, which is an advanced research centre. And we get younger fellows, fellows in their twenties, who are either doing their doctorates or have just finished their doctorates. And their scholarship is phenomenal. I mean, way ahead of anything I ever managed to to achieve academically or intellectually. Absolutely terrific. And we get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of applications to come and study in that institute. And so I see this on the ground, that there is still an intellectual ferment,

• 15:44Speaker 05

  even though we know that all of our brains are being turned to mush by social media and so on. We are still learning and we are still curious.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  And holding steady. I mean, there is around the place at the moment, an epidemic of incompetence. Uh, but on this programme, if we've been doing a programme which you will happily take over, there's none of that allowed, because the other people on the programme just shake their heads, say, you can't say that, that doesn't work, you can't do that. It's down to them, it is down to them and down to the fact that, I go back to the beginning of what we were all talking about. I think that we are the a curious species. They want to know what's round the corner, what's on the moon, why is this happening? Why is this happening? I think that's the biggest drive, I think, I mean, maybe you're wrong.

• 16:33Speaker 05

  But Melvin, you also, you of course, point out legendarily that you are never knowingly relevant in this programme. And yet, when I listen to these programmes, you're right, on the surface, it's not knowingly relevant at all. But underneath, at the back of your mind, your ideas are percolating and you can't help but wonder how that relates to your own experience or something that's going on at at the moment. So it's never knowingly relevant, but it often is relevant.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Yes, that's the way knowledge works.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  A very good moment at which to finish. Misha, Melvin, thank you both.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  It's been a great privilege to present in our time for so many years, and I'm delighted that Misha will be taking on the role. His first programme will be available on Radio 4 and on BBC Sounds on the 15th of January. I wish Misha the programme and you, our listeners, around the world, every success.

• 17:37Speaker 06

  Hi, it's India here. I'm very excited to bring you the return of Child. So we've been on the journey of an embryo all the way to a baby's first birthday. And now we are going to enter the explosive life of the toddler. Because this is the perfect place to unpick the very complicated world of emotions, the emotions that affect us all. So come with us as over eight episodes, we fall through the abundant and dizzying world of happiness, descend into the depths of fear and the gendered and dangerous world of anger, and then crawl, wobble and bounce our way through awe, love, anxiety and surprise.

• 18:19Speaker 06

  From BBC Radio 4, this is Child with me, India Rakassan. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

• 18:29Speaker 01

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• 19:14Speaker 01

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