In Our Time: Religion - Podcast Rankings and reviews

Melvin Bragg is a host from a different era: knighted for his public radio work, a writer himself, he prepares extensively for each program and holds the guests to a much higher standard than do hosts in almost all other podcasts around these days. Yes he is direct and sometimes rude, probably more so to female guests than male guests (although it’s obvious that some of his favorites are women, eg Angie Hobbes), but at least some instances are actually maneuvers whereby he keeps the guests on topic and in check. The intelligence and articulateness of some of his repeating guests are stunning: I can spend all day listening to Marcus du Sautoy and Ian Stewart on math, Edith Hall on Ancient Greece, or Anthony Grayling on philosophy, and he brings on sometimes independent researchers with extremely unconventional and yet interesting ideas. I take notes on each program as they are so dense in contents. Dislikers can go listen to politically correct hosts politely interview a carefully curated list of racially and ethnically diverse guests (I say this as a colored woman academic), but I take In Our Time with its actual focus on intelligent inquiry and genuine curiosity any day.

Melvin Bragg is an intelligent and witty host. I have listened to this show for years and I have enjoyed learning about ancient and modern religions. Melvin is good at getting to the point and challenging oversimplified assumptions about Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and various faiths. He has very knowledgeable guests each show which add unique perspectives on many ideas and topics. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genuine experts on interesting subjects. Melvin keeps the discussions brisk and entertaining. I learn so much listening to this show!

I enjoy the podcast, but how infrequently it releases makes it not worth subscribing. I understand this is a subset of the whole In Our Time podcast, but I don’t care about the other stuff they produce.

I was very excited to learn about Lakshmi but in that episode I only made it about 15 minutes through because I was already totally lost thanks to the host. It was very difficult to stay with the story of Lakshmi and understand what the guests were trying to teach because the host just kept interrupting them literally over and over again. What’s the point of having guests on if you think you know better than them and you won’t let them finish their thought?

Melvyn Bragg is extremely condescending toward many of his expert guests (the Lakshmi episode was too painful to listen to in full). He cuts them off and poses non-sequitur questions with a strange unnerving aggression. To give this person the entire series makes no sense to me. He grills each expert and has no curiosity about what they then say in response to his questions. His interest seems to be solely directed back toward his own musings. The guests are great, yet the program is often painful.