Épisodes

  • #39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the magicians?

    #39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the magicians?
    May 20 2026

    Having considered the arguments in favour of defining Sir Isaac Newton as an early 'scientist', we now consider the other side of the coin.

    Newton’s best-known breakthrough – the identification of gravity – belonged not to the latest tradition of European Cartesian rationalism, but to a very English strand of occult philosophy. In fact it was only because Newton worked in this tradition that he was able to think of gravity as an unseen and mysterious force. Europeans like Leibnitz wrote the idea off as magic.

    More striking, like other English philosophers, Newton believed that all this had been known to ancient thinkers going back to Noah, and spent much of his life trying to decode the myths and symbols they left behind. He was, he believed, the only man in his generation privileged to understand them. The last of magicians? Maybe.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    45 min
  • #38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the magicians?

    #38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the magicians?
    May 13 2026
    The short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good science (although he would have called himself both a natural philosopher and a chymist). It was well conceived and measured and drew on the work of his contemporaries and of many men before him. And Newton was certainly not the last person in Europe to practise alchemy of this kind. Within fifty years of his death it would simply evolve into modern chemistry.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    36 min
  • #123 Pissing on bagpipes - Ep 5 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #123 Pissing on bagpipes - Ep 5 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    May 6 2026
    Was Shakespeare a Catholic? We examine the evidence and then ask whether his audience would have compartmentalised the world into Protestant, Catholic or alchemical. Wasn’t their world full of magic? In his last solo play, The Tempest, a white magus, Prospero, tells the audience that it’s up to them to make good things happen, to create a ‘brave new world’ in which everyone can be reconciled. Is this Shakespeare’s leave-taking?

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    46 min
  • #122 Queen Elizabeth's Toyboy - Ep 4 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #122 Queen Elizabeth's Toyboy - Ep 4 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    Apr 29 2026
    The Earl of Essex, it always used to be said, was an airhead. Elizabeth’s swaggering toyboy who posed as a military genius. And yet Shakespeare took the young Earl of Essex seriously, portraying him as Henry V in early performances in 1595. It riled Essex’s rival at court, the Queen’s Chief Minister, Robert Cecil, so much that he ensured English history plays were banned.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    41 min
  • #121 The naked King Lear - Ep 3 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #121 The naked King Lear - Ep 3 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    Apr 22 2026
    Shakespeare confronts homelessness with his aging king, reduced to beggary. He makes the audience ask what it would be like if it was you who found yourself out of house and home, shivering and hoping someone would give you their cloak. Is it not, Shakespeare asks, an outrage to blame the poor for their condition?

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    38 min
  • #120 'Hang, beg, starve' - Ep 2 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #120 'Hang, beg, starve' - Ep 2 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    Apr 15 2026
    We reveal the real-life factional feud that inspired the Montagues v Capulets and which makes the groundling audience so angry. It’s London. 1595. Life is tough. It’s wet and cold and only three years ago 20% of the population died of the plague. And it’s not fair. The rich can commit murder, duelling in the streets, and get away with it. While young apprentices are hanged for arguing over the price of a fish because the Queen’s Chief Minister, Robert Cecil, is in a feud with the Lord Mayor. As the Prince says in Romeo and Juliet ‘some shall be pardoned and some punished.’ It’s an outrage.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    39 min
  • #119 'Fair is foul and foul is fair' - Ep 1 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #119 'Fair is foul and foul is fair' - Ep 1 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    Apr 8 2026

    Nothing is what it seems? We, poor Londoners, paying our penny to stand at the Globe in 1606 would agree with that. With Robert Cecil’s government relentlessly pumping out fake news around the Gunpowder Plot, it’s not at all clear who the real criminals are. As Macbeth, murderer of a Scottish king, is overtaken by the evil of ambition we begin to see that our Scottish king James is also in danger. Doesn’t the ambitious scheming of his Principal Secretary threaten to reduce him to an irrelevance? Didn’t Cecil’s father, Elizabeth’s chief adviser, kill our own king’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots?


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    36 min
  • #96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?

    #96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?
    Apr 1 2026
    Henry VII invented the idea of the Wars of the Roses and the notion that he alone could end them. With a comparatively weak claim to the throne he found a novel way to deal with the nobility - through extortioners and hatchet men. He could only get away with this because the Black Death had fatally damaged the status of the nobility and caused the rise of the small independent farmer. Feudalism in England and Wales was over… or at least we thought it was, until now. (R)

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    29 min