From the Ancient Greeks onwards, proportion and mathematics has been central to our ideas of form and beauty. This lecture looks at the famous golden ratio, from Greek temples to spiral seashells, discussing where it appears in nature (and why), and how people have tried to pinpoint the 'perfect' proportions of the human body and face. It will also look at why A4 paper is the shape it is and what cookbooks have to do with the Rhind Papyrus. A lecture by Sarah Hart The transcript and downloadable...
Feb 15, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Since the 1981 Brixton riots, many things have changed in British policing. However, Black people are still nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, and three times more likely to be arrested; Black people are far more likely to be searched, arrested and prosecuted for using drugs, and yet are no more likely to use drugs than white people. This lecture explores the persistence of police racism and what we can do about it. A lecture by Leslie Thomas QC The transcript a...
Feb 11, 2022•1 hr 10 min
COVID-19, pandemic influenza and tuberculosis are examples of the remarkable ability of infections to use the respiratory route of transmission. Infections which use this route can often spread very quickly, especially in crowded indoor environments. Human behaviours and engineering should be seen as much a part of our defences against respiratory infections as drugs and vaccines. A lecture by Professor Sir Chris Whitty The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from t...
Feb 10, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Protestant settlers in the Americas believed it was their duty to convert indigenous peoples to the true Gospel. Yet the task proved unexpectedly difficult. The effort revealed and challenged deep European assumptions about culture and the nature of Christianity itself. From Massachusetts to Chile, Protestant would-be missionaries took roads that were paved mostly, but not entirely, with good intentions. This lecture will show where they led. A lecture by Alec Ryrie The transcript and downloadab...
Feb 09, 2022•1 hr
When was the last time you opened a file and noticed a computer glitch? “Never” is the usual answer. Yet the underlying hardware makes continual errors: disks make errors, the internet loses packets of data, wifi signals get corrupted and so on. This lecture is about the secrets of the mysterious invulnerability that is Error Control Coding: a way of storing or transmitting information such that it knows it has been corrupted and can correct itself. A lecture by Richard Harvey The transcript and...
Feb 07, 2022•57 min
Measuring distances to astronomical objects outside our Galaxy is a surprisingly hard challenge: it wasn't until 1923 that Edwin Hubble obtained proof that Andromeda is indeed a galaxy in its own right. Today, astronomers extend distance measurements in the cosmos to the edge of the visible Universe, building up a 'cosmic distance ladder' made of several rungs. This talk will explore a major conundrum of contemporary astronomy: as observations have become more precise, the distance ladder appear...
Feb 04, 2022•58 min
What has Brexit come to mean? This lecture will explain how the Brexit deal the UK and the EU ended up with came to be. It will then investigate the new relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, put in place by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement of December 2020. Finally, the lecture will look to the future, to elucidate what Brexit will go on to mean for politics and public policy within the United Kingdom. A lecture by Anand Menon The transcript and downloadable versions...
Feb 03, 2022•59 min
The Revolutionary tribunals in 1790s Paris; the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s; and the prosecution of conspirators in the assassination attempt on Hitler by the so-called “People’s Court”, are well-known examples of the way the law and its processes can be misused in totalitarian societies. These were trials designed to terrorize the population and solidify the power of the state. This lecture will explore how the courts can be the vehicles of despotic power. A lecture by Thomas Grant QC ...
Feb 02, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Christianity’s centre of gravity has shifted to the Global South. Prosperity churches, 'born again' politicians, prophets, healers and exorcists are now typical expressions of Christianity worldwide. What do these changes mean for our understanding of the world’s largest religion, in particular with regard to secularism, politics, and international development? Drawing on examples from Africa, the lecture shows how these movements challenge established notions of Christian doctrine and instituti...
Feb 01, 2022•58 min
How did the cosmos transition into space characterised by galaxies in a plethora of different shapes of great beauty? This lecture will consider what happens when groups of galaxies interact with one another and what happens when these galaxies collide and merge. 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/structures-universe Gresham College has been givin...
Jan 28, 2022•1 hr
Individuals and businesses make financial decisions all the time – whether to go to university, buy a house, build a factory, or train one’s workforce. All these decisions involve spending certain money now for uncertain benefits in the future. This lecture will provide a simple framework for deciding whether or not to take an investment. It will also highlight the mistakes that people frequently make when taking financial decisions, and simple ways to avoid them. A lecture by Alex Edmans The tr...
Jan 25, 2022•59 min
This lecture focuses on one of the watershed moments of Soviet music history: the censure of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and the composer’s path through reform to rehabilitation. The Shostakovich story was only the tip of the iceberg, and almost all Soviet composers had to adjust their aesthetic and style at this point, unless they were prepared to languish in obscurity and poverty. Shostakovich's Songs on the Texts of English Poets is performed by Bass Ed Hawkins and the piani...
Jan 21, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Do we own our own body parts? What can we do with them? Can we sell them and control what others do with them? People often say, "it’s my body", but the law is much more complex. This lecture explains the law on body part ownership, tracing it from the early legal cases through the body-snatching years of the Victorian period, to the present day. Should we use the law of property to regulate human tissue? A lecture by Imogen Goold The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are avail...
Jan 20, 2022•1 hr
Does nature have a universal value? Can we consider natural capital as equivalent to financial capital? This lecture gives a brief history of value, exploring the similarities between historical arguments as to why the value of housework and nature are not reflected either in theory or in the system of national accounts and GDP. It will explore the difficulties with putting a value on nature, for example trying to make meaningful estimates of what contribution water makes to our lives. A lecture...
Jan 17, 2022•59 min
Some diseases are specialised in using sexual behaviour for transmission. Major pandemics including HIV and syphilis have been transmitted via this route, along with the cancer-causing infections Hepatitis B and HPV. Along with these are highly transmissible diseases such as gonorrhoea and herpes. Another way people share bodily fluids is via needles, and several diseases can be transmitted this way, including HIV and Hepatitis. Changing sexual behaviour is hard, so other methods have to be foun...
Jan 14, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Pornography reflects as well as creates sexual norms and practices. The period from the 1960s to the mid-1980s has been called the 'Golden Age of Porn'. An unexpurgated Lady Chatterley’s Lover was openly published in the UK and Linda Lovelace’s pornographic film Deep Throat (1972) went mainstream. Vigorous debates about morality, consent, and feminism erupted. The “porn wars” continue in popular culture and academic debates today. How has mainstream pornography changed? What is the role of techn...
Jan 07, 2022•54 min
This lecture takes a trip down Christmas's unique and emotionally complex memory lane via the Christmas Carol. Carols paint a colourful picture of the Christmas story itself, frequently by adapting pre-existing material. The crowded stable at Bethlehem appears simultaneously ancient and modern, as do the carols that commemorate the Nativity. Christmas is indelibly associated with our own childhood experiences at home, in church, or out in the cold. A lecture by Jeremy Summerly The transcript and...
Dec 09, 2021•53 min
Judges, who are typically drawn from privileged backgrounds, wield vast power over the lives of the most marginalised people in society. This lecture will explore the role of judicial racism in perpetuating injustice and inequality in the legal system. The Lammy Review found gross disparities sentencing for Black and white defendants - while also finding no systematic racial bias in juries' decisions to convict or acquit. What should we do about racism in the judiciary and the legal profession? ...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr
This lecture explores the destruction of libraries, archives and other knowledge, from Babylonian times until now, and its implications for society today. What are the motivations for destroying knowledge, and how have libraries and archives responded to these threats? What must we do now that knowledge is digital, and controlled by a small number of very powerful companies? A lecture by Richard Ovenden The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham Colleg...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr
European Protestant and evangelical Christians did not have to look far to find 'infidels' in the 16th and 17th centuries: as well as the 'pagans' of northern Scandinavia, Jews were scattered across the continent and Muslim powers were all too close. This lecture will consider the repeated, and repeatedly failed, attempts to convert these peoples: some naively well-intentioned, some openly violent. Those bitter experiences would become a crucial lens through which Christians viewed global missio...
Dec 01, 2021•1 hr 1 min
For thousands of years, some men assumed that the original or ideal human type was male, with women being pictured as weaker or imperfect men. This ancient prejudice inspired fictions from E.T.A. Hoffman's The Sandman (1816) to Ira Levin's novel The Stepford Wives (1972). This lecture looks at fantasies of artificial women (usually seen by their male creators as superior to biological women) to examine the complex connections between science and assumptions about the supposed naturalness of gend...
Nov 29, 2021•1 hr
Many major diseases are transmitted by food or drink. Cholera (water), brucellosis (milk), BSE/nvCJD, typhoid and many parasites are ingested as part of a normal diet. The more exotic the diet, the greater the range of possible infections. Water technology, sanitation, pasteurisation and animal husbandry can substantially reduce but not eliminate these diseases. A lecture by Chris Whitty The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https...
Nov 24, 2021•53 min
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
