I have been trying to put my finger on why I have found Succession — HBO’s must-see series about fictional US media mogul Logan Roy and his dysfunctional family — to be at once utterly compelling and annoyingly dissatisfying.

My week, my cultural week, started last Sunday when I found time to catch up with Radio 4’s five-part series on Dorothy Hodgkin, an extraordinary scientist who was brought vividly to life through readings of her letters. Hearing the words created an immediacy that I am not sure I would have grasped from the printed page. If you have not yet heard it, the series is also available as a podcast.

CP Snow must be doing cartwheels in his grave. The BBC has made a beautiful, intelligent film about the second law of thermodynamics. You only have until Tuesday 30th Oct* to catch it on iPlayer and you should. Presented by Prof. Jim Al Khalili, the first episode of Order and Disorder is devoted to the slippery concept of Energy.

“There have been times in the history of man when the earth seems suddenly to have grown warmer… I don’t put that forward as a scientific proposition, but the fact remains that three or four times in history man has … Continue reading →

Having delighted in Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man earlier this year, I sat down to watch Carl Sagan’s Cosmos , which several commenters had recommended to me. You can read what I thought of it in my guest post at Grrlscientist’s Punctuated Equilibrium blog over at The Guardian . As you will see, it is wrapped up with the recent apparition of shiny sculptures by Anish Kapoor in Kensington Gardens.

It seems somehow to have always been there. I cannot remember when it first came to my attention but I have long been aware of it as a landmark or rather a landscape in the background of my mind. Jacob Bronowski’s documentary series, The Ascent of Man , was first broadcast on BBC2 in 1973.