When you tune into Netflix you might not be aware that the box in your living room starts a complex set of negotiations with servers on moving 563 Gbytes of information into your residence. That is equivalent to having 15,000 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica dumped into your home! So, why is watching a Netflix film not the equivalent of the Amazon-delivery from hell? Compression, which this lecture will show is economically and entropically a hot topic. A lecture by Richard Harvey The tran...
Nov 23, 2021•1 hr 3 min
The law has been used to impose religious and moral conformity and uniformity of thought at many times in history, perhaps most (in)famously in the trial of Socrates and the heresy trials of Giordano Bruno and Galileo. More recently the obscenity laws and equality legislation have challenged the limits of free speech. This lecture will explore how law has been used to respond to and try to delimit the expression of unpopular or challenging ideas. A lecture by Thomas Grant QC The transcript and d...
Nov 22, 2021•1 hr 10 min
People have always found symmetry aesthetically pleasing and examples of it are seen in the earliest art. The Platonic solids have been known to humanity for millennia, some possibly even to Neolithic man, as can be seen in the carved stone balls found by archaeologists. This lecture will look at how we can understand symmetry using mathematics, and explore how the rules of symmetry can deepen our appreciation of beautiful works of art and design. A lecture by Sarah Hart The transcript and downl...
Nov 22, 2021•59 min
This lecture will investigate the genesis of the Socialist Realism doctrine, which was imposed in 1934. The 'proletarian music' trend of the 1920s had offered some solutions to the task of creating 'music for the people', but because it had alienated the most accomplished professional musicians it was now abandoned. A new art music was called for, with potential mass appeal through the use of folk materials and the rejection of modernism. A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker The transcript and dow...
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr 7 min
For the second Annual Alfred Wiener Holocaust Memorial Lecture, Professor Jan Grabowski will discuss how scholars of the Holocaust find themselves confronted with the hostile reactions of various states pursuing the policies of Holocaust distortion. This situation has acquired particular importance and urgency in Poland, where the authorities have introduced a series of measures intended to freeze academic debate, hinder independent research and intimidate scholars whose writings are perceived a...
Nov 17, 2021•55 min
How can nature be accounted for? How can we track how we are using nature and ensure we are not destroying the environment? Natural Capital is becoming a central theme in national accounting systems. This lecture follows a series of entertaining exercises on how to assemble the evidence and undertake the accounting lying behind natural capital. A lecture by Jacqueline McGlade The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresh...
Nov 16, 2021•1 hr 4 min
When Albert Einstein tweaked his newly invented equations of General Relativity in 1917, he had one goal in mind: to find a solution that described a closed, static, eternal universe. He therefore minted a new universal constant to make it work. After Hubble's discovery of the expansion of the universe in 1929, Einstein reportedly declared it his "greatest blunder". In 1998 observations of distant exploding stars brought Einstein's "blunder" back into consideration: Einstein might have been righ...
Nov 15, 2021•51 min
What is a perversion? This talk starts by exploring psychiatric and sexological debates about perverted sexual desires from the late nineteenth century textbooks to diagnostic manuals in the twenty-first century. It looks at the role of law, morality, and medicine. Who has the power to decide what sexual acts are 'normal' or 'abnormal'? By what mechanisms do sexual practices move from one category to the other? How have people labelled 'perverse' effectively challenged their status in society? A...
Nov 11, 2021•59 min
Although Mesopotamian civilisations had assembled texts, the ancient Greeks brought the idea of the universal book collection to its near-legendary consummation in the Library of Alexandria, which edited and housed thousands of papyrus rolls on every subject and attracted brilliant scholars from all over the ancient world. But there were many other libraries, serving also as scientific laboratories, public record offices, restaurants, mausoleums and even baths. This illustrated lecture investiga...
Nov 10, 2021•57 min
Most of us would consider Islam to be a religion, while we would generally view secularism as requiring the limiting of religion to the private sphere. But many scholars (and ideologues) beg to differ. Social scientists are divided over the definitions of religion and secularism, while Islam's indigenous portrayal of itself as a 'dīn' is not easily translatable into English. This lecture asks both whether Islam might be viewed as an ideology, and whether secularism could be considered a religion...
Nov 09, 2021•58 min
The Great Depression posed a serious threat to democratic capitalism as economic nationalism flourished and Communism and Fascism offered alternative models. In response, democratic capitalism was remade. Domestically, inequalities of wealth were reduced and social welfare extended to create a social contract between capital and labour. Internationally, new organisations created a rules-based international regime. Together, the result was 'embedded liberalism' that contained economic nationalism...
Nov 09, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Subsequent to the Hot Big Bang, as the Universe expanded and cooled, atoms formed and, later still, decoupled from radiation. This lecture will cover the intellectual revolutions in relatively recent history that paved the way to our modern understanding of the formation, existence and interactions of atoms. A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/atom...
Nov 03, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Immense curiosity exists about the lives of people who lived in the past. Portraits and biographies play a major role in bringing the dead to life, but they may mislead and distort as much as they illuminate. Using writings about nineteenth-century British figures alongside images of them, Professor Ludmilla Jordanova will explore the intertwined roles of biography and portraiture in public history, suggesting ways in which it is possible to be constructively critical of current practices. A lec...
Nov 02, 2021•57 min
After the ravages of the First World War there was a widespread desire for 'sustainable security'. Contemporaries were preoccupied with hungry children and their impoverished environment, and worked on a wave of institution building intended to promote 'positive security'. The 1920s search for human security and the 1930s road to war pointed to Europe's common challenges, and global problems. This history was transformed after 1945 when European ideas and practices were globalized, and implanted...
Nov 01, 2021•1 hr 2 min
The Malian city of Timbuktu is one of the world's oldest seats of learning and has an intellectual legacy of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, coming from three great West African desert empires: Ancient Ghana, medieval Mali, and the Songhai Empire. These manuscripts offer a unique window into their history. Many remain unread. This lecture will look at how their study can be used to advance our knowledge of the intellectual history of the premodern world. A lecture by Robin Walker The trans...
Oct 28, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Elaborate plotting is the novelistic skill least often valued by critics, even if relished by readers. This lecture will look at novelists who raise plot to a literary art. We begin with Henry Fielding, the first great novelist to delight in cunning narrative design. Then Dickens's complex plot making, including the half-finished and tantalizing The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Finally, the lecture will celebrate the plotting artistry of modern writers like Ian McEwan and John le Carré. A lecture by ...
Oct 27, 2021•1 hr 2 min
This lecture will explore our financial system. Why do banks exist, and what do they do with the money that savers lend to them? We'll explore what risks they face and how they can go bust - even if they make completely safe investments. How does the stock market work - what happens when you trade shares, and why do some companies raise money on the stock market and others don't? Can ordinary citizens influence how the money they save is used? A lecture by Alex Edmans The transcript and download...
Oct 26, 2021•59 min
How does the law consider children in cases involving medical consent? This lecture will look at how doctors (and parents) should talk their children about illness. It will also consider what should happen when parents and doctors disagree about what a child should be told. The overall law on consent has changed markedly in England and Wales since Montgomery (2015), and requires doctors to share and explain risks, but it is not clear how far this applies to children, particularly older children....
Oct 25, 2021•58 min
The skeleton of King Richard III was discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012. Modern forensic techniques were used to analyse the injuries to the skull, rib and pelvis. The talk will discuss what computed and micro-computed tomography reveal about the injuries that were inflicted on him, and his probable cause of death; and how well the findings align with the historical record. A lecture by Sarah Hainsworth The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the G...
Oct 21, 2021•55 min
This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Karine Chemla The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/numbers-cultures Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are curr...
Oct 20, 2021•59 min
This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Manuel Medrano The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/knot-just-numbers Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are cu...
Oct 20, 2021•46 min
This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Karine Chelma The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/numbers-cultures Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are curr...
Oct 20, 2021•59 min
Dr Anuj Misra will discuss Sanskrit Mathematics in the Language of Poetry (4pm). A lecture by Dr Anuj Misra The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/sanskrit-mathematics Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currentl...
Oct 20, 2021•27 min
How do Shakespeare's familiar plays Othello and Romeo and Juliet reflect the early modern preoccupation with race and emerging concepts of colour-based racism? How do these ideas play out in early modern as well as in contemporary performance? A lecture by Farah Karim-Cooper The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/shakespeare-race Gresham College has been giving free public lectures sinc...
Oct 19, 2021•52 min
The Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi, designer of the dome of Florence cathedral, is also known for developing the rules of linear perspective. In a famous experiment, viewers looked alternately from a vantage point at his perspective painting of the Florence Baptistery, and then the real building, to appreciate the realism made possible by the technique. This lecture explores the maths of perspective, including modern examples like televised sports where sponsors paint their logos so they...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr 1 min
What do we mean when we refer to the State of Israel as 'the Jewish State'? What does it mean for the politics of the state to be identified as 'Jewish'? And what does it mean for an academic and intellectual field to study Israel as a Jewish state? The lecture will trace the contours of a wide-ranging debate on these issues, that shapes both Israeli and Middle Eastern politics. A lecture by Yaacov Yadgar The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham Coll...
Oct 14, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Many of the major diseases of humans are transmitted by insect vectors. Malaria, sleeping sickness, typhus, dengue, Zika and plague are examples where mosquitoes, flies, fleas or ticks transmit. The advantage to the infection is that you can be infected by someone you have never met, often over wide distances. The advantage to humans is that we can act on the insect vector and break the cycle of transmission. A lecture by Chris Whitty The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are a...
Oct 13, 2021•59 min
In 1977 or thereabouts a collection of scientists huddled around a secret radio receiver in the US desert. This was the start of GPS, Glonass, Gallileo and the whole navigation industry. A GPS chipset now costs, in bulk, a few dollars so your watch, your phone, your computer all have GPS receivers and everyone knows where they are all the time. But how does this technology work? And are there situations when it does not work? A lecture by Richard Harvey The transcript and downloadable versions o...
Oct 12, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Sex manuals can incite revolution. In the early 1970s a feminist collective released Our Bodies, Ourselves (1970) while 'free love' proponent Dr. Alex Comfort published The Joy of Sex (1972). Both manuals have been read and updated and republished many times. What do changes in the advice given in these and other manuals tell us about the way sexual mores and practices have shifted between the 1970s and the present? What factors contribute to changes in ideas about sexual pleasure? A lecture by ...
Oct 07, 2021•52 min
Africans have been present in England for more than two thousand years, but we rarely see them or hear about them. And often their existence is dismissed as a figment of 'political correctness' or 'wokism.' This lecture will critically assess the myth of England's story as a 'sacred white space' and examine the evidence for diversity in medieval and early modern history. Africans are integral to English history and forgetting this diminishes Englishness, by preventing us from understanding ourse...
Oct 06, 2021•55 min
