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.

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Episodes

London Merchants and Their Residences

During the Middle Ages London was home to one of the largest and richest merchant communities in the world. These men and their families invested heavily in fine architecture both for business and pleasure. Simon Thurley, Visiting Professor of the Built Environment unearths the lost mercantile buildings of medieval London and shows how influential they were. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-...

Jan 17, 2018•58 min

The Guitar in the Age of Charles I

The courts of James I and his son Charles I were more cosmopolitan than their Elizabethan forebears. Many courtiers had now visited the Continent in early adulthood with a tutor, mostly after a period of residence at a university. The guitar at the English court entered a new and very lively phase, as sketched in a scenery design by Inigo Jones and played in a masque by a leading court musician. On the verge of the Civil War, the guitar rapidly became the fashionable instrument of elite London f...

Jan 17, 2018•48 min

Can We Prevent Coronary Artery Disease: Investing in your Arteries

Professor Deanfield is currently Professor of Cardiology at The Heart Hospital, as well as at Great Ormond Street Hospital and is British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at University College London. His main clinical interests are paediatric cardiology / adult congenital heart disease (covering the whole age range of patients born with congenital heart disease), and cardiovascular disease prevention. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham...

Jan 10, 2018•55 min

Will Bitcoin and the Block Chain Change the Way we Live and Work?

The block chain is the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that underlies the successful Bitcoin cybercurrency. What is it, how does it work, and why does a Government report say that DLTs have the potential to be radically disruptive to financial services, healthcare, real estate, public services and much more? The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/will-bitcoin-and-the-block-chain-cha...

Jan 09, 2018•57 min

Maths is Coded in Your Genes

We live in an information age, with vast amounts of data constantly sent around the world. This lecture will introduce you to the mathematics of information. I will explain how data is transmitted and received over vast distances by using carefully designed codes, and how work by a young French mathematician in the 19th century plays a vital role in this. I will then show how a huge amount of information is encoded in your genes and how maths can make sense of it. The transcript and downloadable...

Jan 09, 2018•59 min

Happily Ever After: The Romance Story

This talk delves into one of the most powerful and omnipresent cultural storylines: Find your one true love and live happily ever after. How does this narrative function in popular culture and especially in the massive global market of women-oriented romantic fiction? Catherine Roach uncovers what we learn from the romance story about today's changing norms for gender and sexuality and about the nature of happiness and love. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available f...

Jan 04, 2018•52 min

The Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Party was formed in the 1850s and was the dominant force in British politics for the next 30 years. But, after the First World War, it fell into decline, and it was almost extinguished in the 1950s. Since then, however, the Liberals and their successor party, the Liberal Democrats, have enjoyed a revival, and they re-entered government in 2010 for the first time since 1945. What is the explanation for the decline and subsequent revival of the party? The transcript and downloadable ve...

Dec 12, 2017•1 hr 1 min

House, Shop and Wardrobe in London's Merchant Community

During the Middle Ages, London was home to one of the largest and richest merchant communities in the world. These men and their families invested heavily in fine architecture both for business and pleasure. In the first of two lectures with the theme 'Merchants, Money and Megalomania', Simon Thurley will unearth the lost mercantile buildings of medieval London and show how influential they were. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College websi...

Dec 06, 2017•57 min

How Special Is Our Universe?

If the fundamental constants of nature differed from their measured values, life as we know it would not have emerged. Stars are witness to the forces of electromagnetism and gravity - displace this equilibrium and the existence of nuclear-burning stars is at risk. In such a universe, stars would never have formed, or might have collapsed to black holes. Theories of the multiverse suggest that life-containing universes are incredibly rare. We live in one of these, whether by cosmological natural...

Dec 06, 2017•52 min

NOW That's What I Call Carols: 1582!

Some of the world's most influential carol tunes were published in 1582. These Pious Songs' were collected by a student of Danish parentage, who was born in Finland, grew up in the Russian Federation, studied in Germany, worked in Sweden, and died in Poland. Without one of Queen Victoria's ambassadors who rescued the collection from obscurity, the English-speaking world would never have known 'Good King Wenceslas' or 'Gaudete'. Jeremy Summerly unwraps this Nordic Christmas gift, accompanied by t...

Dec 05, 2017•57 min

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