An independent companion to In Our Time, the iconic BBC Radio 4 programme. Each episode returns to one conversation from the archive and asks what happened to the ideas after the conversation ended: what held up, what changed, what deepened, and what we know now. After Time is independently produced and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC.
In 2016, In Our Time explored a poem already known through broken and changing witnesses. After Time returns after the Electronic Babylonian Literature project made that reconstruction publicly searchable, computational matching helped place a fragment of the latest-dated known Gilgamesh tablet, and new editions added pieces to scenes of death and mourning. The machine did not solve Gilgamesh; it changed how scholars can find and test its fragments.
Original In Our Time episode: Epic of Gilgamesh (3 November 2016): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080wbrq
After Time is an independent companion to In Our Time and is not produced by, affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC.
This episode uses synthetic voices to perform an original After Time script. It contains no BBC audio and does not imitate the voices of In Our Time presenters or guests.
4 Oct 2026
Gravitational Waves: What Gravity Revealed
In 2007, In Our Time explored gravitational waves before anyone had detected one directly. After Time returns after the first black-hole chirp, a neutron-star collision seen in both gravity and light, hundreds of catalogue candidates and the strongest single-event tests yet of general relativity. The old promise of a new way to observe the universe is now a working science.
Original In Our Time episode: Gravitational Waves (17 May 2007): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007h8gv
After Time is an independent companion to In Our Time and is not produced by, affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC.
This episode uses synthetic voices to perform an original After Time script. It contains no BBC audio and does not imitate the voices of In Our Time presenters or guests.
3 Oct 2026
The Bronze Age Collapse: What Actually Collapsed?
In 2016, In Our Time asked what really collapsed at the end of the Late Bronze Age. After Time returns with a decade of sharper archaeology, climate evidence, network modelling and ancient DNA. The destructions are less simultaneous, drought is less uniform, migration is more local, and the old image of one civilisation-ending wave has become much harder to sustain.
Original In Our Time episode: The Bronze Age Collapse (16 June 2016): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07fl5bh
After Time is an independent companion to In Our Time and is not produced by, affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC.
This episode uses synthetic voices to perform an original After Time script. It contains no BBC audio and does not imitate the voices of In Our Time presenters or guests.
3 Oct 2026
1816, the Year Without a Summer: What the Evidence Remembers
In 2016, In Our Time traced the Year Without a Summer from Mount Tambora’s eruption to cold, rain and human upheaval. After Time returns to that conversation with a decade of new evidence, from climate models and tree rings to lake mud and Mary Shelley, asking which links in the story became stronger and which became more complicated.
Original In Our Time episode: 1816, the Year Without a Summer (21 April 2016): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b077j4yv
After Time is an independent companion to In Our Time and is not produced by, affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC.
This episode uses synthetic voices to perform an original After Time script. It contains no BBC audio and does not imitate the voices of In Our Time presenters or guests.
16 Sept 2026
Romulus and Remus: What Rome Found After the Legend
In 2013, In Our Time asked what historians could really know about Romulus and Remus. Since then, new archaeology and ancient DNA have made early Rome clearer without turning its legendary founder into a historical biography.
Original In Our Time episode: Romulus and Remus (24 January 2013): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01q02t7
After Time is an independent companion to In Our Time and is not produced by, affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC.
This episode uses synthetic voices to perform an original After Time script. It contains no BBC audio and does not imitate the voices of In Our Time presenters or guests.
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