Gresham College Lectures
Gresham College has been providing free public lectures since 1597, making us London's oldest higher education institution. This podcast offers our recorded lectures that are free to access from the Gresham College website, or our YouTube channel.
Episodes
2835 episodes
Were Laws created by Greek Legends? - Melissa Lane
While Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens are now the best-known lawgivers of Greek antiquity, there were many others, from king Minos in Crete to Zaleucus and Charondas in southern Italy. This lecture explores the specific roles attributed ...
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44:49
Human Rights Law: Bringing Power to the Powerless - Clive Stafford Smith
This first lecture looks at the power that is given to advocates in a country that has a constitutional structure like the US. I have brought The American Constitution powers an American lawyer in ways unavailable to the British. I will i...
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36:31
What is Modern Paganism? - Ronald Hutton
What is modern Paganism, and how does it relate to witchcraft, Druidry and other phenomena? This lecture is designed to answer that question, and in doing so to provide an overview of the different traditions that make up Paganism today. It wil...
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45:27
Does having a big brain make your smarter? - Alain Goriely
Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFCDvsq6N5gFor centuries scientists have tried to identify what is special about the human brain. How do we approach this problem from a mathematical standpoint? The first ...
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55:07
A Mirror in the Sky - Chris Lintott
The first lecture in the series considers the most famous telescope of all, the Hubble space telescope. A project more than forty years in the making, Hubble overcame an initial disaster with a misshapen mirror to drive a revolution in every pa...
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44:15
The Stories We Make Up & The Stories That Make Us - Bernardine Evaristo OBE
Many decades ago, as a young graduate from drama school, I was presented with a stark choice – either to shape my story myself, through writing, or to feel aggrieved at the detrimental narratives circulating about people like me in Britain at t...
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35:29
Does the UK Constitution need reform? - Charles Falconer PC, KC
The Gray's Inn Reading 2024Does the UK’s constitution provide too much freedom for those that wish to abuse it? Specific examples of this might include Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lawbreaking during COVID, the selection o...
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36:55
Plato's Cave: Thinking about Climate Change - Melissa Lane
In The Republic, Plato explores the predicament of the Cave: a passive citizen body, a conniving and self-interested set of sophistic opinion-formers and demagogic political leaders, a systematically misleading and damaging order of political s...
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39:34
The Bloomsbury Group: A Queer History - Nino Strachey
This lecture will explore the world of the second Bloomsbury generation, delving into the intricacies of being young and queer in the 1920s, and how their open way of living and loving is still relevant to our present day. Lesser known than the...
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41:56
Are Financial Markets Efficient? - Raghavendra Rau
One of the crucial ideas in finance is that markets are efficient – that they fully reflect all available information. If so, what about market bubbles?Over the last year, people have been willing to pay exorbitant amounts for extremely ...
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53:24
Witch-Hunting in European and World History - Ronald Hutton
This lecture confronts the worldwide phenomenon of the persecution of suspected witches, now a serious, contemporary problem condemned by the UN in 2021.It will show what has been unusual about Europe in this global pattern, and why the ...
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48:48
A Mathematician's View of Proof - Sarah Hart
The idea of proof is fundamental to mathematics. We could argue that science consists of testable theories, and therefore that it is about what can be disproved, not what can be proved. In law, the test is “beyond reasonable doubt”.Famou...
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51:09
Experts in politics: Lessons from Socrates and Aristotle - Melissa Lane
Socrates sought to test the expertise of everyone around him: the bombastic know-it-alls, the bashful youths, the confident generals, those (including the enslaved) with unsuspected mathematical competence, the workaday artisans. Aristotle late...
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57:20
First light: Revealing the Early Universe - Chris Lintott
The final lecture in the series returns to the theme of how insight is derived from observations, considering the cosmic microwave background.This oldest light in the Universe, emitted just 400,000 years after the Big Bang, contains the ...
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59:40
Race, Disability & Education: Law's Uphill Battle - Leslie Thomas KC
This lecture traces the history of race and disability law in the English education system. It examines the impact of discriminatory policies on Black children, children of colour, and disabled children, and how narratives around race and disab...
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1:10:54
Logarithms: Mobile Phones, Modelling & Statistics?
Logarithms were perhaps once thought of as just an old-fashioned way to do sums on slide rules. But they underpin much of modern life, from modelling the COVID pandemic to Claude Shannon’s mathematical theory of information (which makes mobile ...
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52:24
A Just and Inclusive Net Zero: Who should get there first? - Myles Allen
Eventually, net zero needs to include everyone: for emissions to continue in half the world while the other half mops them up is both unsustainable and unfair. But this does not mean every country should reach net zero at the same time.H...
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59:16
Asymmetric Information in Finance Explained - Raghavendra Rau
In every financial transaction, one side has more information than the other. For example, when someone buys a used car, the seller will know better than the buyer whether the car is a plum or a lemon. Does more information leave you better off...
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1:01:22
Is Music Infinite? - Milton Mermikides
This lecture explores the very limits of music: investigating historical efforts to catalogue musical materials including the melacarta of Carnatic music, the wazn of Arabic maqam, Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, Schilling...
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1:07:28
Twentieth-Century Divas: Julie Andrews - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
Starring in My Fair Lady (1956), The Sound of Music (1965) and Cinderella (1957) gave Dame Julie Andrews unparalleled profile.These were among the most successful Broadway, Hollywood and TV musicals of their time. Yet following this gold...
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58:58
Health after Extreme Cold, Heat, Storms and Floods - Professor Sir Chris Whitty
Weather and climate-related events can cause significant mortality and disability.Sudden cold, heat, storms and floods all present risks to health, especially to the most vulnerable. Even in countries with temperate climates like the UK,...
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54:31
How to Prove 1=0, And Other Maths Illusions - Sarah Hart
In this lecture I will show you some mathematical illusions: “proofs” that 1=0, that fractions don’t exist, and more. There are curious and important implications behind what’s going on.These “proofs” reveal some very common logical slip...
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1:03:37
Evolution Tomorrow and Beyond - Robin May
Evolution has led from amoebae to blue whales and from algae to giant redwoods. So what might it do in the future? What species might evolve in the next ten million years? How will evolutionary processes change as a result of human ...
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1:00:07
The Next Fifty Years of Tech - Dr Victoria Baines
Come take a ride in the Tech Time Machine and explore how IT may change our lives in the next fifty years. By employing techniques used by science fiction writers, we can imagine how Artificial Intelligence, extended reality, mobile connectivit...
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1:03:34
Musical Consonance and Dissonance: The Good, Bad and Beautifully Ugly - Milton Mermikides
What makes a piece of music challenging, bland, intriguing, beautiful or ugly?This lecture explores the concept of ‘musical flavour’ formed by intervallic, rhythmic and timbral components and how they contribute to a sense of consonance ...
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57:05
