The Big Idea

2019 marks 100 years of the Spanish degree at the University of Edinburgh. An exhibition and series of events are taking place to mark the occasion, under the ‘Conectando’ banner. This year also marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that saw the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and led to Spain being ruled by a Fascist dictatorship until 1975. In this edition of the Big Idea podcast, Ranald Leask is joined by two experts on the conflict, from the University’s School of History, Classics, and Archaeology. Dr Julius Ruiz and Dr Fraser Raeburn have written extensively on the conflict, a period in Spain’s history that continues to divide opinion in the country to this day. This podcast looks, in particular, at the contribution of the International Brigades, those foreign volunteers who travelled to Spain to defend the elected Republican government against General Franco’s forces, which sought to topple it. Scotland produced a disproportionately high number of volunteers for the Brigades, many of whom were killed. In this podcast we hear from those volunteers who left Scotland for Spain, and ask what their legacy is.

November 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that brought the First World War to an end. More than 15 million people died in the conflict, which ushered in a horrifying new type of industrial slaughter; high explosive shells, poison gas, aircraft, machine guns, and tanks mechanised killing to a brutal new level. Now, a century on, how do we remember those who perished? What does remembrance mean and how has it changed? How different is the British act of remembrance from those countries where conflict continued for many years after 1918, and for the defeated nations? In this special edition of the Big Idea podcast, Ranald Leask is joined by three University experts with a keen interest in these questions. Professor Ewen Cameron and Dr David Kaufman, both from the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, along with Jolyon Mitchell, professor of Communications, Arts and Religion in the School of Divinity examine the impact and legacy of ‘the War to end all wars’.

Recorded live at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, a discussion with this year’s winners of Britain’s oldest literary awards. Eimear McBride, winner of the fiction prize for The Lesser Bohemians, talks about her modernist novel, set in the bedsits and fraught headspaces of 1990s London. Laura Cumming, winner of the biography prize for her book, The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez, talks about her centuries-hopping tale of a lost masterpiece, the man who painted it, and the man that it destroyed.

We all love a conspiracy theory: 9/11 was an inside job; the moon landings were faked; Princess Diana was assassinated. There is a thrill in joining the dots between seemingly random events and discovering hidden patterns. As the University hosts Edinburgh Spy Week, the annual event that examines espionage fiction and film and the ways in which secrecy runs through culture, the organisers ask why such theories have such a pull on the imagination, and what happens when they are elevated to the status of historical truth. They discuss the surprising origins of President Trump's post-truth world and the layers of nostalgia within John le Carre's masterpiece of spy fiction, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

On Tuesday 8 November voters in America will go to the polls to choose the country’s 45th president. Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton will square off in what has been as one of the most bitter and divisive elections in US history. But, what have we actually learned about each of the candidates? What would their presidencies look like? And following an election that has bent traditional politics out of shape - has everything changed? Experts from the University of Edinburgh unpack the policies, the pitches and the promises offered by the respective Republican and Democratic nominees, look at the forces that have shaped this election, and suggest the implications for the future.