Aramaic is a language that for some three thousand years facilitated the exchange of ideas across large tracts of the Middle East and Asia. In its heyday it was the main official and written language across the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid empires. It was the language in which several sections of the Old Testament Bible were written. A Galilean dialect of Aramaic was probably the language Jesus spoke. Different dialects of Aramaic still exist today but numbers of speakers are dwindling and there are fears that it could die out.So what is the story of Aramaic? Why did it become so influential and then go into decline? And how much has it changed over its long history?Bridget Kendall is joined by three distinguished scholars of Aramaic: Professor Holger Gzella from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich is the author of numerous publications on Aramaic as well as being an expert on other Old Testament languages.Professor Alison Salvesen from Oxford University works on ancient interpretations of the Hebrew Bible including its Aramaic versions. She is also an authority on Jacob of Edessa, a leading religious scholar who wrote in one of the many variants of Aramaic.Dr. Alinda Damsma teaches Biblical Hebrew at University College London and Aramaic at the Ecole Rabbinique in Paris. She studies medieval Aramaic dialects, especially in Jewish mystical literature, and has also done field research on the current use of the language.[Image: Aramaic script on a stone slab from Palmyra, Syria. Credit: mtcurado/Getty Images]

The discovery of X-rays by the German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895 was nothing short of ground-breaking, opening up a new era in medicine. For the first time, doctors could see inside the human body without the need for surgery, and diagnose many more living patients. X-rays had major implications for physics as well, allowing scientists to study the structure and arrangement of molecules. Within wider society, they inspired artists to explore what these new rays could tell us about the representation of reality. It wasn’t long before X-rays were being used to scan baggage, in airport security and even in shoe shops to measure feet before exposure to radiation was properly understood. Huge strides in X-ray technology have given us the type of modern scans that are used today to detect conditions such as cancer. Joining Bridget Kendall are Drs Adrian Thomas and Arpan Banerjee, both radiologists who’ve collaborated on publications about the history of X-rays, and artist Susan Aldworth who’s used brain scans in her work to investigate the nature of identity.Produced by Fiona Clampin for the BBC World Service[Image: Cogito Ergo Sum 3. Credit: Used with kind permission of the artist, Susan Aldworth]

Over five hundred years ago, dismissed diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli produced his most famous work, The Prince. Written on the fringes of the Italian city of Florence, the book has long been read as a priceless guide to power and what holding it truly involves. But who was the man behind the work? Why did he claim that a leader must be prepared to act immorally? And why did the name of this one-time political insider become a byword for cunning and sinister strategy?Rajan Datar explores the life and impact of Machiavelli’s The Prince with writer and scholar Erica Benner, historian professor Quentin Skinner, and journalist and novelist David Ignatius.[Image: Circa 1499, Niccolò Machiavelli. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images]

The motor car is a feature of contemporary life the world over but when and where did motor vehicles begin? How did we get from the slow, noisy, dangerous, early vehicles of the 19th century to the swish, sleek, practical cars of today? Why did the early electric vehicle – so popular early on and the first car to go faster than a hundred kilometres an hour - suddenly fall out of favour? And who were the early engineers whose major contributions to car design deserve to be better known? These are some of the questions that Bridget Kendall asks three automotive experts: writer and broadcaster Giles Chapman is the award-winning author of 55 books on car history, culture and design; Larry Edsall also has many automotive books to his name; he has written about cars for many American newspapers and is founding editor at ClassicCars.com; and Gundula Tutt is a leading German restorer of historic vehicles whose work graces many public and private museums. She has a particular interest in the science and technology of car paint and other finishes and is the founding member of the Institute for Automobile Forensics.[Photo: A restored 1907 veteran car. Credit: RapidEye/Getty Images]

Throughout its 130-year-old history, the ukulele has often been underrated – for many, this tiny four stringed instrument is a musical joke, a plastic toy or a cheap airport souvenir, but in fact, some of the world’s greatest musicians have played and admired it, and it has enduring associations with the struggle for Hawaiian independence since its arrival on the islands from Madeira in the late 19th century. The ukulele is also surprisingly versatile and musicians are forever involved in the challenge of expanding its repertoire, from Bach to ukulele concertos to jazz.Joining Bridget Kendall to find out more about this deceptively humble instrument is the award-winning musician Brittni Paiva, who’s been described as Hawaii’s pre-eminent ukulele artist; Jim Beloff, the co-founder of Flea Market Music, publishers of some of the first ukulele song books which played a key part in the modern ukulele revival, his forthcoming memoir is UKEtopia: Adventures in the Ukulele World; and Samantha Muir, a classical ukulele musician and composer, who’s doing a PHD at the University of Surrey in the UK to create new works for the classical ukulele repertoire. Produced by Anne Khazam for the BBC World Service. [Image: A ukulele sitting on its side on a Hawaiian beach. Credit: McCaig via Getty Images]

The American president Thomas Jefferson called Tadeusz Kosciuszko "as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known". Kosciuszko was born in what is today Belarus, trained as an engineer in Poland and France and went on to become one of the important military players in the American War of Independence. This was when he wasn’t pursuing his dream of a free Polish republic against the might of a conservative aristocracy and neighbouring Russian and Prussian armies. Or campaigning against slavery and feudalism. Testimonials like that of Jefferson’s lauding his humility, energy and high moral principles flowed from around the world. He was toasted as a celebrity in London by the likes of Keats and Coleridge. In the USA and Europe there are bridges, statues and monuments in his name. And yet today Kosciuszko is relatively unknown outside of Poland. Rajan Datar aims to change that with the aid of three Kosciuszko experts: Dr. Betsey Blakeslee, President of the Friends of the American Revolution at West Point, an organisation that works to preserve the fortifications Kosciuszko designed and built at West Point. She earned her PhD in American Studies at the University of Maryland; Kamil Ruszala, Assistant Professor of History at Jagiellonian University in Kraków whose research focuses on the modern history of Central Europe; and writer and Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Alex Storozynski, Chairman of the Board of the Kosciuszko Foundation and author of Kosciuszko's biographies both in a book and film form.[Image: A portrait of Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Credit: Bettmann / Getty Images]

Anyone who has ever researched their family tree will have most likely come across the census, the process by which every citizen or subject of a country is counted and classified. Data collected by the census, often carried out every ten years, has been invaluable to genealogists, both amateur and professional. And the census has also developed into an essential tool for governments and organisations to plan how and where they focus their investment in public services such as health care and schools. Inventories of people are known to stretch back to antiquity in places such as Egypt and China, and asked for very basic information for the purposes of tax collection or military service. The modern-day census, however, focuses on questions that touch far more on an individual’s identity and has often been controversial. Now that modern technology makes population data easily accessible in a variety of forms, some are questioning whether there is a need for censuses at all.Bridget Kendall is joined by Dr Kathrin Levitan, Associate Professor at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and the author of A Cultural History of the British Census: Envisioning the Multitude in the Nineteenth Century; sociologist Dr Tukufu Zuberi, the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and head of the African Census Analysis Project; and data scientist and economist Andrew Whitby, author of The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations from the Ancient World to the Modern Age.Produced by Fiona Clampin for the BBC World Service.(Photo: Campaigners protest outside the US Supreme Court in 2019 over the inclusion of a citizenship question in the 2020 US Census. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Like many traditional domestic crafts, knitting has experienced a huge surge in popularity in the 21st century, making it fashionable and even radical. But the history of hand knitting is still relatively obscure. The oldest knitted artefacts are Coptic socks found in Egypt dating from the fourth century AD, but although they look like modern-day knitting, they’re actually made using a technique called nalebinding or needle-binding. So what then are the real origins of knitting? How did it develop into so many different regional patterns, from the famous Fair Isle of Scotland to distinctive Nordic and South American variations?Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss the global history of knitting are Professor Sandy Black of the University of the Arts London, Norwegian textile designer, Annemor Sundbo, and an expert on South American knitting, Cynthia LeCount Samaké.Produced by Jo Impey for the BBC World Service.Image: Knitting on Taquile Island, Peru Image credit: Hadynyah / Getty Images

Considered to be one of literature’s supreme achievements, One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez is reported to be the most popular work of Spanish-language fiction since Don Quixote in the 17th century. Written in 1967, it tells the story of seven generations of the Buendía family, whose patriarch is the founder of a fictional Colombian village called Macondo. But why is it said this novel – which fuses the fantastical and the real – tells the story of Latin America and has given an entire continent its voice? Joining Bridget Kendall are Ilan Stavans, Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College in Massachusetts, in the United States, and the biographer of Gabriel García Márquez; María del Pilar Blanco, Associate Professor in Spanish American literature at Oxford University, and Parvati Nair, Professor of Hispanic, Cultural and Migration studies at Queen Mary, University of London.Produced: Anne Khazam (Photo: Partial view of a mural painting by Oscar Gonzalez and Andrew Pisacane representing passages from One Hundred Years of Solitude at the National Library in Bogota. Credit: Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images)

So prodigious was the polymath Rabindranath Tagore, there’s a saying in Bengal that one lifetime is not enough to consume all of his work. Poet, playwright, thinker, activist, educator, social reformer, composer, artist… the list of his talents is long. Today his name is known all over India and Bangladesh; children recite his poetry at school and his legacy lives on in many different ways. When he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, Tagore was feted for a time by American and European literary figures who saw in him someone who embodied Western preconceptions of a mystic Oriental sage. As a result of his newfound fame outside India, Tagore travelled widely and exchanged ideas with many celebrated world leaders and thinkers from Einstein to Gandhi. Today Tagore’s thoughts on education and his stance vis-à-vis the natural world and our relationship to the environment are seen as remarkably forward-looking.Rajan Datar is joined by Kathleen O’Connell, retired lecturer in South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto and the author of Rabindranath Tagore: the Poet as Educator; the writer Aseem Shrivastava who lectures on Tagore and his ecological thought at Ashoka University in Delhi; and Chandrika Kaul, Reader in Modern History at the University of St Andrews, who’s published widely on imperial and modern India.Produced by Fiona Clampin for the BBC World Service.[Photo: Rabindranath Tagore. Credit: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images]