In 2017, the Government paved the way for the civil and family courts of England and Wales to provide 'innovative methods of resolving disputes.' New legislation will underpin a £1bn investment in digitising the courts, that may see defendants convicted by computer and disputes settled by software. Tribunals dealing with benefits claims will also be reformed. But how effective are online courts? Are they just a way of saving money? Joshua Rozenberg reports on what's been achieved so far and asks...
Feb 20, 2018•51 min
Human beings often have generous views of themselves - not always easy to defend. Massive scientific advances are sometimes used for destructive purposes. This lecture looks at our changing understanding of ourselves, focussing on Charles Darwin's theory of human origins and the religious, scientific and ethical questions raised. Does a tendency to violence reflect our evolutionary past? If so, what can be done about it? Does it help us understand what is going on? Or to work out what we can do ...
Feb 20, 2018•53 min
After the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, many artists and intellectuals in China saw the overthrow of 'tradition' as the means to rescue the nation from poverty and backwardness. Rejecting what thev saw as irrelevant avant-garde artistic trends, they looked to the art of the Soviet Union and anti-fascism in Western Europe, as well as to a more 'authentic' tradition of folk art. Following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, artists engaged with the politics of nationa...
Feb 19, 2018•54 min
Euler's pioneering equation, the 'most beautiful equation in mathematics', links the five most important constants in the subject: 1, 0, π, e and i. Central to both mathematics and physics, it has also featured in a criminal court case, on a postage stamp, and appeared twice in The Simpsons. So what is this equation - and why is it pioneering? The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/eule...
Feb 15, 2018•1 hr 1 min
There is an apparent conflict between the increase in technology in medicine and the importance of a relationship between patient and doctor. This Valentine's Day lecture considers the importance of that relationship. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/does-a-good-bedside-manner-matter Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today wi...
Feb 14, 2018•53 min
Online voting in local and national elections could be more convenient, greatly increase voter turnout and deliver results within a few minutes of the polls closing. Some countries have adopted online voting and some have regarded it as extremely dangerous for democracy. What are the facts? The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/should-we-vote-online Gresham College has been giving free...
Feb 13, 2018•47 min
Robotics is another of HM Government's 'eight great technologies'. Is it possible that in a few years we might have machines with artificial intelligence? In this lecture I will describe the mathematics of machine learning and explain its applications to robotics. In particular I will show how the modern ideas of deep learning allow a robot to make sense of the world it exists in, including the ideas behind speech and face recognition. I will also address the important (at least to mathematician...
Feb 13, 2018•1 hr
National Parks were designated to protect some of the world's most loved landscapes from being eaten away by industrial and housing development. But Britain's National Parks are exploited by intensive agriculture and sucked dry of their water for neighbouring cities. They sustain non-native invasive species and unlike National Parks elsewhere in the world, they are not 'natural parks'. A movement is emerging with the aim of developing Greater London as the world's first National Park City. But i...
Feb 08, 2018•1 hr 3 min
In 1643 an English landowner, Sir Ralph Verney, fled to France in the depths of the Civil War. He settled in Blois and, while there, amassed a vast archive that is still unpublished. The letters Verney kept, and his financial accounts, show that almost every member of his family learned the guitar. These records provide a wealth of information about the music they played, the guitars they bought and their reasons for cultivating a light and fashionable instruments far from home. The transcript a...
Feb 07, 2018•49 min
Despite the explosion of genetic information in recent years, we have surprisingly little insight into the peculiar history of life on our planet. Most genetic variation - natural experiments in evolution - is found in simple bacteria, yet they have barely changed over four billion years. No complex animals or plants are composed of bacterial cells. Why not? Why did complex cells only arise once in the history of life? And why are we complex beings so alike, with humans and mushrooms and trees a...
Feb 06, 2018•1 hr 8 min
Computer bugs, reported in heart pacemaker software and many other devices, are but one example of the risks that IT systems can create for patients. The extent of the problem of software bugs in the medical arena, and elsewhere, suggest an increasing number of avoidable deaths and injuries in UK hospitals. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/computer-bugs-in-hospitals-a-new-killer G...
Feb 06, 2018•1 hr 1 min
The campaign to achieve the parliamentary vote for women (6 February 1918) took 52 years, from 1866 to 1918. During that time women and their male supporters employed both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary tactics, ranging from the presentation of petitions to the detonation of bombs. The campaign will be examined, concentrating on the work of the constitutional suffragists as well as on the more notorious suffragettes. Although the latter group steals the headlines, it was the efforts of th...
Feb 05, 2018•51 min
Do the courts respect diversity or punish it when it comes to parenthood? What disabilities does it encounter? How can the learning disabled parent ensure their voice is heard in court? What to do when the wish to parent might not be matched by an ability to parent? What does the justice system do to protect the rights of the disabled person to be a parent, and of the child to be adequately parented? Does a disability prevent someone from being a good parent? The transcript and downloadable vers...
Feb 01, 2018•54 min
When Lenin died in 1924, he had effected a temporary stabilisation of the Soviet order. But many political, economic, social and international trends grew more worrisome to Bolsheviks who still wished to preserve 'the gains of October'. The solution that the Politburo adopted at Stalin's suggestion was a comprehensive revolutionary offensive. It increased the powers of the state over society, but this was never wholly acceptable in the communist central leadership, and tensions contributed to St...
Jan 31, 2018•53 min
View the sky through an x-ray telescope and the conception of the universe changes dramatically. Black holes are best seen in x-rays, because impinging gas collides with the black hole at near light speed, resulting in intense x-ray and gamma ray emission. Optical light also plays a role in discovering black holes since the most luminous objects in the universe emit bursts of gamma radiation which only lasts minutes, but leaves an optical afterglow. The transcript and downloadable versions of th...
Jan 31, 2018•54 min
The Labour Party was formed in 1900 as a coalition between trade unions and socialist intellectuals with the aim of securing representation for the working class in parliament. During the First World War, Labour was transformed from a pressure group to a party of government, and in 1945 it formed its first majority government, which carried out an extensive programme of social reform. Today, however, like other social democratic parties in Western Europe, the party finds itself in retreat. What ...
Jan 30, 2018•1 hr 2 min
Housing represents the main asset class held by UK households and we shall try to understand why it is held as such a large share of assets. We shall then outline whether this choice has other knock on effects in the economy such as labour and social mobility. And what the case is for changes the tax treatment of housing. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-housing-market Gresham...
Jan 25, 2018•51 min
Professor Steve Jones will consider sunshine and its effects on health, on sleep, on memory and more: and why today's twilight world of tablets and smart-phones is taking us back to the middle ages. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/here-comes-the-sun-sunshine-and-its-effects-on-health-sleep-and-memory Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition ...
Jan 24, 2018•52 min
William Shakespeare made his name as a poet before he became famous as a playwright. His erotic poem Venus and Adonis was the most popular work of literature of the Elizabethan Age, while its dark companion piece The Rape of Lucrece set the mould for Shakespeare's exploration of the tragic consequences of sexual desire turning to violence. Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare developed these themes from his reading of the great Roman poet Ovid. The transcript and downloadable versions of the ...
Jan 23, 2018•52 min
Isaac Newton saw his demonstration of the regularity of the universe as having great religious significance. Newton's ideas were initially seen as very supportive of religion; yet within 50 years, they were being seen in a very different light. So what are the religious, aesthetic, and scientific implications of Newton's approach? The latest scholarship will be considered in order to unpack some of the deep questions that are raised by the scientific approach to nature. The transcript and downlo...
Jan 23, 2018•54 min
A sustainable solution to the UK's housing crisis, or a flimsy excuse for high-profile, profitable construction activity in the green belt? Architects may love them, but most ecologists are sceptical. Eco-town proposals have attracted controversy, with local residents alleging that their environment will be irrevocably damaged with the arrival of sprawling new estates, thousands of cars and the loss of important wildlife habitats. Drawing upon live audience opinion, the lecture will weigh up the...
Jan 18, 2018•58 min
The heroine of Charles Gounod's French opera Sapho (1851) sings her last aria O My Immortal Lyre on a Greek cliff before plunging to her death. Sappho, the most famous poet of the 'Lyric Age' of Greece, in the 7th to 6th centuries BC, addressed passionate love poems to women. This lecture uncovers what we know about the 'real Sappho', an aristocrat who lived between 630 and 570 BCE on the island of Lesbos and socialised in the lavish courts of upstart tyrants. This historical context in no way d...
Jan 18, 2018•54 min
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 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
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
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
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
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 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
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
