Radio review: In Our Time

It's all Greek to me, you might have found yourself thinking during In Our Time (Radio 4). And so it was, for a bit. Peter Adamson, one of Melvyn Bragg's guests in a discussion about the philosopher Heraclitus decided to recite one of his best-known aphorisms ("you can never step into the same river twice") in Greek. This wasn't enough for Bragg. "I didn't catch that properly the first time," he said, asking for a second rendition. "It sounds like bubbling water, right?" Adamson optimistically suggested. His reaching for helpful similes continued. "It's like a salad vinaigrette, right?" he mooted, after an especially boggling discussion of flux. Bragg was his usual hosting self: an intellectual sheepdog herding the discussion his way and not letting it stray. This, as much as the ideas, is the joy of the programme. "We'll do his death towards the end if you don't mind," he told one guest. "This is a big bundle of a question. I don't apologise," he told another. When James Warren referred to the group discussing a particular issue later, Bragg was having none of it: "Why don't you talk about it?" And when Angie Hobbs described Heraclitus as a hero, adding that he simply renounced talking at one point, Bragg teased her: "One of your heroes gave up speaking?"