»In our time«-BBC legend Melvyn Bragg: Working in a more sophisticated world

I’ve never written fan mail. But to Melvyn Bragg.

Of course, no one knows Melvyn Bragg here. In a world culture rather averted country like this, you grow up like in a sect. Mental sizes that you have to deal with are July Zeh, Jakob Augstein or Richard Precht; If you want to make yourself interesting, you give yourself as a kafka connoisseur or pretend you have read the “Magic Mountain”, and you know when you have to talk to “Luhmann”, “Adorno” or “Maybrit Illner”. The whole thing runs under the label “Land of poets and thinkers”, and the Raonnement behind it is probably: We have seldom heard of poets and thinkers from other countries, so they can’t be so bad.

Which poets, which thinkers have shaped other countries and even more: which joke, which esprit, which formation of the heart and mind are possible elsewhere is rarely dared to think about this; Throwing thinkers such as religious critics Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens do not take place out of misunderstood tolerance, about influential conservative US Youtuber such as Jordan Peterson, Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro is not in the slightest, simply because nobody takes note of them. Because the world out there, it rarely finds in Germany.

I therefore allow myself the note: In Great Britain you have an old man who has been making a wonderful radio broadcast for eons, a new episode every week. This is Melvyn Bragg. Melvyn Bragg was already a legend in 1998 when he lost his television show. Then he had just been raised to the nobility and was now part of the House of Lords of the Labor Group: They kicked him out for supposed overlaps in interests, and when the BBC offered a dusty broadcasting station in Thursday radio, one that nobody wanted.

Three guests with an idea, charm, esprit. And Melvyn, who swings the whip: “In our time”, on the air since 1998. Great radio can be so easy.

Melvyn did not expect that the fun would take longer than a few months in the dead corner of perception, so there was ease over him. He decided to “do what I always wanted to do”, an educational program with the most simple conceivable concept: three experts in the studio, all academics and academics, a conversation. In every episode one would discuss a topic from culture, history, science or philosophy, across the garden, whether it was Shakespeare’s sonnets or echo-sorting at bats, whether it was the battle in the Teutoburg Forest or the Beowulf saga, whether feathered dinosaurs would be discussed, dark matter or the fate of the temple knights: every topic would be worked as intensely as possible. Hosts and all of his listeners to joy and finish.

For half an hour, Bragg would snack with his guests, done. No Tüdelüt, no jingles, no players, no O-tones, no music, no nothing. Only an educated conversation, held together and forced by Baron Bragg, was the concept. You can take advantage of how many debates could trigger such an idea, for example in a public service German broadcast: here is still a water head, since there is still a bearer (“not contemporary!”), On the right and left-wing requirements and the listeners who are also thought out, which should not be overwhelmed.

Melvyn simply started how he always gets started: with “Hello” he has introduced the show since 1998, then introduces the topic in a few sentences (although he immediately shows a certain amount of rushing), spends himself through the names and merits of his guests – with great reliability, always women at the start – then it goes into the colorful carousel of research and knowledge: The listener is out of the heart, because the heart is on the heart, because the heart is on the heart, He has never heard anything like that. Academics who know how to set every sentence. Whose serious interest never comes along without noticeable joy. The charm, wit, Esprit. Weaked out, witty people who, to make matters worse, also politely go into each other. Astonishing what there is out there in the world! To Melvyn Bragg, her strict master, they like to come again and again, they enjoy their stage as well as his sincere interest, which express themselves as impatience, but can also discharge in real enthusiasm.

He used the moment of freedom that Melvyn Bragg had in 1998. Within a short time, he was able to triple the audience on the forgotten Thursday broadcasting station. The now 85-year-old has already moderated over 1000 rounds of discussion, now 42 minutes each. Plus bonus material for podcast listeners: Bragg’s miracle chamber of the knowledge has been completely accessible online since 2011, all episodes have provided the BBC (bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl). Many of them can be heard again and again, just like in childhood a good radio play box, such as the episode of the attempted attack by Spanish Armada in England in 1588 or those about the historical Lawrence of Arabia or, for friends of paleontology, “The Fish Tetrapod Transition”, the landing conquest of the fish, or you can be infected by Melvyn’s solar eclipse if they are Describe your solar eclipses with enthusiasm.

Melvyn Bragg delights and forms the people in the United Kingdom and all over the English -speaking world, and some lonely German listeners help him to a vision of life, as the American music broadcaster perhaps did in the 1950s.

A program like “In our time” would hardly be upset in Germany, as local academics often lack the happiness and dexterity in thinking. And nobody has the Brüske directness with which the Nordgländer Bragg the whip swings over its guests: expert people can be enjoyed with caution, because they usually know too much. They would like to tell everything. Want to illuminate a semi -dark train of thought here and leave a footnote print there. Melvyn, however, has a schedule, and if only two minutes are intended for the general political situation in the late phase of the Roman Republic, then Melvyn becomes really a little uncomfortable after two minutes.

How he keeps pushing his sheep on the right path, how he drives her, his view of the clock – sorry, we have to move on – nobody in Germany would dare to meet academic half -gods with submissive respect. Melvyn Bragg comes with the self -confidence of the Working Class Boy, whose watchful ghost carried him to the House of Lords and made him the bearer of various honorary documents. Nobody can show him anything, and his selective grumpiness is not an attitude, but is fed out of enthusiasm for his topic and his format. The intensity with which he follows his guests can break out at any time into a dry joke and a laugh together, and what intrinsic joy Bragg has on his show comes to the end of successful episodes when he thanked his guests from the bottom of his heart: I think, this was Terrific – I think that was fantastic.

How much do you thanks him as a listener! You thanks his courage and his open look, the view of the discoverer, trained in a seafaring nation, which is unthinkable without a curiosity. Melvyn Bragg also has some poets and some thinkers to discover, of whom we have never heard of here.