The Forum

Completed in 1914, the Panama Canal has long been regarded as a triumph of American ingenuity, a conquest over nature that helped secure the United States’ position as a world power. Taking ten years to build, it opened up new trading routes between East and West by providing a vital waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But what was the real story behind this challenging engineering project? How were the Panamanians affected? Who were the tens of thousands of workers who built the canal? And what was the environmental impact of work that literally cut through a mountain and redirected two oceans? And with climate change, will the Panama Canal be such a vital waterway in the future? Joining Bridget Kendall, is the Panamanian academic Dr Marixa Lasso, author of “Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal”, the first major book on the Canal from the Panamanian point of view; Julie Greene, Professor of History at the University of Maryland, and the author of “The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal”, and Paul Sutter, Professor of Environmental History at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of a forthcoming book on the impact of US public health measures during the construction of the Panama Canal.Producer: Anne Khazam(Image: A painting depicting the S.S. Ancon, the first ship to pass through the Panama Canal on the opening day on 15 August,1914 in the Canal Zone, Panama. Credit: Illustration by Ed Vebell/Getty Images)

Ida Pfeiffer's desire to see the world was like many childhood fantasies - destined to remain just that. And yet at the age of 44 once her sons had reached adulthood, she set off from her home in Vienna on a series of journeys that no woman of her time or background had contemplated. Beginning with a trip to the Middle East, Pfeiffer travelled mostly alone, documenting her voyages and collecting specimens that she later sold to help finance her adventures abroad. Budget travel was her mantra, as she was not a wealthy aristocrat like many travellers of that time. On her journeys Pfeiffer was attacked, kidnapped, robbed and almost drowned. She met head-hunters and endured extreme conditions to pursue her dream. Defying all convention, Pfeiffer became celebrated as the most travelled woman on the planet, circumnavigating the globe twice. But despite her trailblazing attitude, she was no feminist, believing that women should be either professionals or home-builders, not both.Rajan Datar discusses the life of this most unlikely traveller with the social and cultural anthropologist Hiltgund Jehle; Ulrike Brisson, whose research has focused on 19th and early 20th-Century European women's travel writing; and John van Wyhe, senior lecturer in the department of biological sciences at Tembusu College in Singapore, and author of Wanderlust: The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer, the first female tourist.Producer: Fiona Clampin(Image: Portrait of the Austrian traveller Ida Pfeiffer (1797-1858), from Il Giro del mondo (World Tour), Journal of geography, travel and costumes, Volume XVII, Issue 8, February 23, 1873. Credit: DEA /Biblioteca Ambrosiana/Getty Images)

How did we get from not having any reliable way of predicting the weather just 150 years ago, to today's accurate, tailor-made forecasts for places as small as a village? Bridget Kendall and guests trace the history of meteorology, from its first steps as an aid to quicker trans-Atlantic shipping to the latest methods which can help anticipate weather events as short-lived as a tornado.Bridget is joined by Kristine Harper, a former US Navy forecaster and now a history professor at Florida State University; Peter Gibbs who started out as a meteorologist with the British Antarctic Survey and the UK's Met Office before becoming one of the best known weather forecasters on BBC radio and television; and Peter Moore, a writer and historian with a particular interest in weather discoveries of the 19th century.Photo: A hurricane is seen from the International Space Station. (Scott Kelly/NASA via Getty Images)

A young immigrant to the USA who started out working in a draper's shop, Emile Berliner ended up paving the way for the world of recordings and home entertainment that we delight in today. But even before he got to work on his recording machine - which he would later call the gramophone - Berliner made a major contribution to another piece of technology that's very familiar to us today: the telephone. And not content with all these achievements, he also promoted the pasteurisation of milk, financed a major scholarship for women to pursue academic research and tried to develop a working helicopter. So how did Berliner come up with these ideas? Why was he at one point prevented from selling his gramophones and records? And why is his name less well known today than those of his contemporaries Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell?Bridget Kendall is joined by three Berliner experts: Dr. Anja Borck, director of the Musee des ondes Emile Berliner in Montreal; Sam Brylawski, former head of recorded sound at the Library of Congress in Washington which houses an extensive Berliner archive; and David Giovannoni, a historian of recorded sound and the co-author of E. Berliner's Gramophone - a study of the American disc industry from 1892 to 1900.[Image: Berliner gramophone, 1890. Credit: Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL/Getty Images]

Have you ever sat against the trunk of a large old tree, looked up into its canopy and wondered what it’s seen in its lifetime? There are many species of tree that survive well beyond a human lifespan, for hundreds of years, and some that can live far longer than that, spanning millennia. What can we learn from large old trees around the world? How do they influence the environment? And how can we preserve them for future generations?Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss ancient trees are Peter Crane, former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London; Valerie Trouet, Professor at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in the US; and conservation biologist, Michael Gaige.Produced by Jo Impey for BBC World ServiceImage: A Bristlecone Pine, one of the oldest living organisms on earthImage credit: Piriya Photography / Getty Images

The Wizard of Oz is best known as one of the most watched films of all time, or as one of its many re-incarnations, such as the hugely successful Broadway musical Wicked or the Soviet, The Wizard of the Emerald City. But fewer people nowadays may be aware of the original book by the American writer L. Frank Baum that inspired these stories about a young girl who travels through a magic land in the company of a talking scarecrow, a tin man and a fearful lion. While he was a controversial figure, it was L. Frank Baum’s ideas about social justice and rights for women which pervade not just The Wizard of Oz but also its sequels, and explain why this story in its many forms has inspired many minority groups, from the African American to the LGBT communities. Joining Bridget Kendall is Michael Patrick Hearn, considered to be the world’s leading Oz scholar, and author of The Annotated Wizard of Oz; Dr Sally Roesch Wagner, who specialises in the feminist aspects of The Wizard of Oz including the influence of Frank Baum’s mother-in-law, the women’s rights campaigner, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and the Russian writer Olga Zilberbourg who has studied the very popular Soviet version of the story.Produced by Anne Khazam for the BBC World Service.[Image: Publicity still from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Credit: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images]

The practice of hunting with birds of prey is thought to stretch back thousands of years. In early nomadic societies, falconry was used to hunt animals to provide food and clothing in places such as the steppes of Central Asia. As the practice spread, falconry evolved into a pastime that attracted the elite of European society, reflected in the extensive iconography of noblemen and women and their falcons. Today falconry is found in more than 90 countries around the world.At its core remains the importance of the relationship between falconer and the bird of prey, a bond unlike any other between man and beast. But although falconry has been classed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, there are challenges to its survival. And some argue that falconry itself is exploitative.Rajan Datar is joined by the president of the International Association for Falconry, His Excellency Majid al-Mansouri; Adrian Lombard, Chair of the South African Falconry Association; art historian Anne-Lise Tropato, the first Falconry Research Fellow at New York University Abu Dhabi, and social anthropologist Sara Asu Schroer who's researched the relationships between falconers and birds of prey through fieldwork in Britain and Europe.Produced by Fiona Clampin for the BBC World Service[Image: Emirati Ali Mansouri trains a falcon in the Liwa desert. Credit: KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images]

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]