I love ‘In Our Time’ - it strikes a really good balance between being academic and accessible. The range of topics is so broad too that you find yourself learning about things you didn’t even know you wanted to learn about. For example, scrolling to a random point in the podcast feed, I see than in four weeks in Dec ‘18 there were episodes on the thirty years war, ‘Sir Gawain & The Green Knight’, the poor laws and Venus.
Bragg’s book ‘The Adventure of English’ is a good survey of the evolution of the English language too.
Bragg’s book ‘The Adventure of English’ is a good survey of the evolution of the English language too.