Perhaps you'd prefer The Life Scientific with Jim Al-Kalili? More than 10 years of him interviewing scientists and covering their careers and discoveries: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sqc7
Alternatively, The Infinite Monkey Cage is more comedic and science themed than In Our Time, with two scientists and one idiot for every topic: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snr0w
We know that story, but many non-scientists don't.
The genius of In Our Time is genuine academic discussions accessible to the lay man. I found the In Our Time discussions on ancient Greece and the arts fascinating, despite these being two subjects I have no background in and know sweet FA about.
similar issues are with non european cultural topics. You often get what i'd label wikipedia-depth
Which is fine, of course, everyone has preferences; but the contrast with the much more rote science episodes did make me a little sad.
I'm not sure whether someone with a background in arts or history would say the same about the other episodes.
For those who want something entirely outside the STEM-heavy HN sphere of interest, there is another great BBC podcast about social science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Allowed
Boffinphobia is where an otherwise interesting scientific topic gets downplayed by a programme or news presenter as being too difficult for them to understand, and in particular said in a dismissive jokey way.
Bragg was particularly susceptible to this! In almost every episode* that touches on cosmology he would resort to a whimsical “gosh these numbers are too big for me!” or a “wow that’s going over my head!”. There’s one notorious episode on computer science** where he’s downright rude to the guests regarding complexity. Contrast with how he can barely contain himself when showing how much he knows about Horace or Napoleon or Brahms. (I contend that the virtue signalling exhibited by claiming “maths is too hard, leave it to the boffins!” is the opposite side of the same coin to showing off how much poetry and history one has memorized.)
Basicism is where, for example, black hole discussions always talk about spaghettification and then run out of steam before the interesting stuff. Any discussion of a complex topic will touch on the first handful of spectacular introductory facts and never get any further, all on the assumption that the listener has never encountered the topic before in their lives. I know the pigeon story about cosmic microwave background already: please elaborate on the latest anisotropy findings!
In Our Time is a fantastic listen, but brace yourself for a bit of eye-rolling at — and forgive me for paraphrasing Lord Bragg’s tone a little, here — the “omg stahp, nerd stuff makes my brain hurt!” schtick.
* Bragg seems to take things more seriously when Simon Schaffer is there. Carolin Crawford is part of the dream team as well. Both are exceptional science communicators.
** Another commenter points out this is the P vs NP episode: https://www.braggoscope.com/2015/11/05/p-v-np.html