Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/sYqJomnunFg The deeper exploration of Paganism begins with its roots in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and the question of how ancient paganism was regarded then. It considers the mainstream views of that paganism in that period, which veered between regarding it as a religion of ignorance, tyranny and bloodshed, and one of great artistic and literary achievements that prepared the way for Christianity. It goes on to show how new ideas about it...
Nov 08, 2024•47 min
The management of water supplies, flooding and water pollution in the UK is currently the subject of great controversy, and public interest has never been higher. Following a short introduction by Professor Carolyn Roberts, this focused day will include three debates in which experts will discuss contrasting views on the nature of a specific problem, and how it might be solved. Audience involvement will be encouraged through questions. The First Panel Discussion will explore water supply in the ...
Nov 05, 2024•2 hr 18 min
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/D3Lz-M1P9Vk The 1968 Presidential Election remains the most divisive in modern U.S. history, with Democrat Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and independent George Wallace at the forefront, and outgoing President Lyndon Johnson working behind the scenes. This lecture explores the striking parallels between 1968 and the 2024 Election, drawing on previously unexplored archives and numerous interviews. It challenges conventional views, revea...
Nov 04, 2024•47 min
Behind the sublime precision and expressive power of Bach’s music lies a mischievous spirit. From puzzle canons (where the performer must solve a riddle to reach the score), melodies that run upside-down and backwards against themselves, hidden symbols, endless loops, to the embedding of numbers and names into the music, this lecture explores Bach’s ingenious trickery. Unravelling this thread, enhances an appreciation – and sense of humanity and playfulness – to his transcendent music. This lect...
Nov 03, 2024•47 min
This lecture was recorded by Martin Daunton on 22nd October 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. Martin is Visiting Professor of Economic History. Martin was also Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, between 2004 and 2014, and he is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are...
Oct 30, 2024•55 min
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gtCsGQ14nU0 This lecture examines ‘Send in the Clowns’, probably the most commercially successful song written by the revered Stephen Sondheim. Yet it confounds the expectations of a showstopper by being written for an actress of limited singing ability, the late Glynis Johns. This lecture reflects on how it works in the context the musical A Little Night Music and explores how it came to be covered by major singers including Frank Sinatra, Judy C...
Oct 25, 2024•52 min
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/YltPv0VUFgQ With the ongoing war in Ukraine, long-term planning for security in Europe is essential. What will be the role of NATO, EU enlargement, and the support of the UK to ensure a Europe of peace and prosperity? Against the backdrop of Russian aggression, potential changes in US policy and rising populism, what elements will constitute a new European security architecture? This lecture was recorded by Baroness Catherine Ashton on 7th October...
Oct 22, 2024•44 min
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/wiAFxEnq8t4 Gresham College has been delivering public lectures since 1597 through times of great social, political and technological change. Its commitment to deliver lectures for free to the general public has led to intermittent financial challenges to its generous sponsors. The arrival of the internet, mobile devices and social media have offered both opportunity and further challenge. In an era supposedly characterised by shorter attention sp...
Oct 22, 2024•51 min
Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRNuI4Vwmk We often think of immunity as being a human, or at least mammalian, phenomenon. But in fact almost all living organisms have some form of immune system. In this lecture we’ll lift the lid on the astonishingly diverse immune mechanisms used by bacteria, amoebae, nematodes and many other microbial forms of life in their constant battle against viruses and each other. This lecture was recorded by Robin May on 2nd October 20...
Oct 11, 2024•41 min
Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKaTcobzidk In a year of elections, climate change is emerging as a divisive political issue, and in many countries for the first time. This may be partly a consequence of past efforts to keep it apolitical through over-reliance on stealth policies and technocratic institutions. This lecture will discuss the need political debate about climate and the calls for an emphasis on “third way” climate solutions, designed to appeal to the ...
Oct 08, 2024•52 min
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 to Greek lawgivers in fact and legend, revealing how and why they captured later political imaginations – with mention of how some even set laws to music. This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on 26th September 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. Melis...
Oct 04, 2024•45 min
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 illustrate this difference from my own experience of bringing 88 cases against the President of the US. I have thus far lost just one. This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on 19th September 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. Clive is the Gresham Pro...
Oct 01, 2024•37 min
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 will show what they have in common, and what makes each one unique. It will suggest the ways in which Paganism differs from other religious traditions and what it has especially to offer the modern world. It will also address the question of its relationship ...
Sep 23, 2024•45 min
Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFCDvsq6N5g For 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 hypothesis is that bigger is better, in some sense. In this introductory lecture, scaling laws and simple ideas from statistics will be used to study this problem, both in humans and animals, as well as uncover some basic principles that govern brain size and tes...
Sep 20, 2024•55 min
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 part of astronomy, providing iconic views of everything from a comet crashing into Jupiter to a surprisingly vibrant, distant Universe. This lecture focuses in particular on what Hubble has revealed about the life - and death - of stars. This lecture was rec...
Sep 17, 2024•44 min
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 that time. I chose the latter, and in this talk I will talk about how story-making is a conscious act of speaking ourselves into being - drawing on literature, theatre and the visual arts. This lecture was recorded by Bernardine Evaristo on 25th June 2024 a...
Sep 06, 2024•35 min
The Gray's Inn Reading 2024 Does 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 of Liz Truss as Prime Minister, the ability of the Government to force controversial policies (such as the Rwanda Bill) and the sacking of the Cabinet Secretaries and Permanent Secretaries. Or does the UK constitution, perhaps in contrast to that of the United States and many...
Aug 21, 2024•37 min
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 structures and common beliefs and appetites. Does this have lessons for tackling climate change? In clinging to our current way of life and its fossil-fuel infrastructure, are we trapping ourselves in a modern version of Plato’s Cave—and if so, how might we...
Aug 09, 2024•40 min
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 their predecessors, they continued the celebration of freedom of expression and creativity. The lecture will introduce artists and intellectuals such as Eddy Sackville-West, Stephen Tomlin and Julia Strachey, who led an unapologetic life by pushing gender bou...
Aug 02, 2024•42 min
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 odd assets such as Non-Fungible Tokens, meme stocks etc. Why do they do this? This lecture will explore some investors’ systematic behavioural biases, and how these can be used to predict returns. This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on 10th June 2024 at...
Jul 26, 2024•53 min
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 notorious early modern witch hunts there commenced and ended. This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on 5th June 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-n...
Jul 22, 2024•49 min
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”. Famous conjectures in mathematics have been tested by computers for trillions of numbers – but we still call them conjectures. In this lecture we’ll talk about what mathematicians mean by proof, and I’ll show you some of my favourites. This lecture was recorded by Sa...
Jul 12, 2024•51 min
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 later explored the ways in which expert claims can be made credible to popular judgement. This lecture considers the role of experts in contributing to public debate in a democracy, bringing Aristotle's work on rhetoric to bear on norms for expert communicatio...
Jul 09, 2024•57 min
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 seeds of the structures we see around us, and tells us about conditions at the Universe's beginning. It will also consider how measurements of the Universe's expansion, made using the CMB, are leading to unexpected results, creating tension in modern cosmology. ...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr
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 disability have changed. The lecture questions why inequality persists and explores possible solutions. This lecture was recorded by Leslie Thomas KC on 23rd May 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham Coll...
Jun 24, 2024•1 hr 11 min
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 phones a reality) and making sense of Cristiano Ronaldo’s crazy Instagram follower numbers. This lecture will explore the basics and history of logarithms, and then show how they are a natural way to represent many models and datasets. This lecture was rec...
Jun 20, 2024•52 min
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. Historical emitters like the UK should aim for net zero before the world as a whole, but a “staggered net zero” also carries risks for developing countries, lest they are left stranded in the race to a sustainable future. This lecture was recorded by Myles Allen ...
Jun 17, 2024•59 min
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? One of the fascinating ideas behind the concept of asymmetric information is that more information can lead to you being actually worse off. This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on 20th May 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London The transcript of the...
Jun 14, 2024•1 hr 1 min
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, Schillinger’s Encyclopedia of Rhythms, Forte numbers, and contemporary attempts to ‘pre-copyright’ every possible melody yet to be written. It also tackles the bigger questions: how much music might exist, whether it ever will be exhausted, and if there are any bou...
Jun 12, 2024•1 hr 7 min
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 golden decade, she made few films and appeared in no Broadway shows during her forties and fifties, typically an artist’s most productive period. How did she then become one of the most revered female stars of the late twentieth century? This lecture was recorded by...
Jun 06, 2024•59 min
