Forum - A World of ideas

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Forum - A World of ideas

Por BBC
En BBC World Service

Inside the mind of crime writer Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was one of the most successful suspense writers of the 20th century. Known...

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Ibn Sina: The Persian polymath

Over a thousand years ago in the city of Bukhara in modern-day Uzbekistan, a young man was...

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The Panama Canal: the real story behind the engineering triumph

Completed in 1914, the Panama Canal has long been regarded as a triumph of American ingenuity, a...

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Ida Pfeiffer: 19th century globetrotter

Ida Pfeiffer's desire to see the world was like many childhood fantasies - destined to remain...

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Rain or shine? A short history of the weather forecast

How did we get from not having any reliable way of predicting the weather just 150 years ago, to...

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Emile Berliner, inventor of the gramophone

A young immigrant to the USA who started out working in a draper's shop, Emile Berliner ended up...

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Tracing the roots of ancient trees

Have you ever sat against the trunk of a large old tree, looked up into its canopy and wondered...

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The Wizard of Oz: A homegrown American fairy tale

The Wizard of Oz is best known as one of the most watched films of all time, or as one of its...

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Falconry: The history of hunting with birds of prey

The practice of hunting with birds of prey is thought to stretch back thousands of years. In...

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Aramaic: an imperial language without an empire

Aramaic is a language that for some three thousand years facilitated the exchange of ideas across...

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X-rays: New ways of seeing

The discovery of X-rays by the German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895 was nothing short of...

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Machiavelli, master of power

Over five hundred years ago, dismissed diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli produced his most famous...

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The birth of the modern car

The motor car is a feature of contemporary life the world over but when and where did motor...

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Ukulele - a history of Hawaii's national instrument

Throughout its 130-year-old history, the ukulele has often been underrated – for many, this tiny...

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Tadeusz Kosciuszko, groundbreaking fort builder

The American president Thomas Jefferson called Tadeusz Kosciuszko ‘as pure a son of liberty as I...

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The census: A snapshot of life

Anyone who has ever researched their family tree will have most likely come across the census,...

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Unravelling the history of knitting

Like many traditional domestic crafts, knitting has experienced a huge surge in popularity in the...

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One Hundred Years of Solitude: The story of Latin America

Considered to be one of literature’s supreme achievements, One Hundred Years of Solitude by the...

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Rabindranath Tagore: The Bard of Bengal

So prodigious was the polymath Rabindranath Tagore, there’s a saying in Bengal that one lifetime...

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Pauline Viardot: 19th-century diva

While the name of Pauline Viardot may be unfamiliar to many, in her lifetime she was one of the...

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