Gresham College Lectures

Planet Earth is an intricate and interconnected system, with some fundamental rules that we usually ignore. But we are part of our planet, not separate to it or just perched on top of it. This lecture will consider the two primary rules of Earth: that energy continually flows through the system (in from the Sun and then out again to space) and that matter/atoms must be continually recycled and use these to build up an outsider’s view of our planet. This lecture was recorded by Helen Czerski ...

Ever since modern economic growth began three centuries ago, people have suffered from periodic bursts of anxiety about the technologies of the time taking on the work that they do. This opening lecture explores the history of ‘automation anxiety’ – from the Luddites who smashed framing machines at the start of the Industrial Revolution in Britain to the protestors who set driverless cars on fire on the streets of San Francisco today. Time and again, their main worry – that there would not be...

ttps://x.com/GreshamCollege Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/tv554JY9TPU In 1588, the young Galileo delivered some lectures that were impressive enough to secure him a mathematics professorship at the University of Pisa. His subject? The geometry of Dante’s Inferno. In this lecture we’ll look at some of Galileo’s deductions, and how the questions raised may have influenced his later mathematical research. Using this and other examples of creative work in mathematics that...

The lecture shares perspectives from global history, comparative politics, and international relations to revaluate whether the twentieth-century collapse of European colonialism was as definitive as often portrayed. It suggests that, while in some ways, ending European Empires remade our contemporary world, in others processes of decolonization are far from complete. This lecture was recorded by Martin Thomas on the 9th of April 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Martin is Professor of Imp...

Decolonisation movements sought to win sovereignty and control over national resources, especially oil. This lecture explores oil’s influence on national independence struggles, from the 1955 Bandung Conference to the rise of OPEC and the nationalisation of crude reserves. It examines how these shifts reshaped global power, exposing both the successes and limits of decolonisation, and their contemporary relevance to understanding the roots of today’s climate crisis. This lecture was recorde...

Shanawdithit was a woman who bore witness to the death of her world in the early nineteenth century, creating the only first-hand account we have of the Beothuk people from the Island of Newfoundland. This lecture seeks to narrate the history of her fascinating and important life, alongside the history of her island, which was England’s first transatlantic colony. It will illuminate the profound connections between the hyper-extraction of the island’s resources, the hyper-exploitation o...

Ever feel like the financial world works against you? This lecture discusses "behavioral finance" – how our brains get tricked by money matters. We will explore how to use these insights to your advantage, navigate conflicts of interest with financial "experts," and make smarter decisions for yourself and your investments. This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on the 16th of June 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Raghu is the Mercers School Memorial Professor of Business H...

The lecture will examine the pros and cons of democracy in today's world, focusing on the importance of domestic and international rule of law to maintain democratic ideals, which are fragile in times of conflict. There will be examples given, highlighting the current War in Ukraine and the political situation in the United States, the influence of other players and the legacy of the Cold War. Lastly, there will be an observation on the ways that the principal judicial organs operate, their c...

Health over the last 150 years in the UK and internationally has been transformed and this rapid rate of change will continue. Improvements in public health and the shifting demographic structure are altering the trajectory and frequency of disease. Advances in science including new drug classes, diagnostics and AI are changing what is possible in diagnosis and treatment. This lecture will consider the possible, and likely, direction of health over the next decades. This Annual Sir Thomas Gr...

How long is the coastline of Britain? What is a rhombicuboctahedron? Which US president proved Pythagoras’s theorem? These and many other intriguing questions will be addressed in this lecture on renowned mathematical equations and their history. The selected equations span various areas of mathematics and cover a timeline of 4000 years, from early geometry to fractal art. This lecture was recorded by Robin Wilson on the 4th of June 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. Professor Robin Wilson ...

We perceive the world through the processing of information given by our senses. Sometimes, this processing is faulty leading to illusions: shapes or sounds that we perceive differently from their physical reality. These illusions have delighted children and scientists alike for centuries. This lecture reveals how simple geometric illusions can be modelled mathematically, based on our understanding on how visual signals are coded and decoded by the brain, leading to a better understanding of ...

Our understanding of the human immune system today is vastly different from that of 50 years ago. This knowledge has led to immune-based therapies that would have seemed like science fiction to our grandparents: monoclonal antibodies, T-cell therapies, anti-cancer vaccines, precision immune suppression – the list is endless. In this lecture, we look to the future and ask, “What next for immunity?” This lecture was recorded by Robin May on the 11th of June 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, Lo...

This is the fifth and final lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025 Professors Lintott and Mermikides present and discuss historical and contemporary musical representations of astronomical data including Pythagoras’s parallelism of tuning purity and celestial movement, Plato’s cosmic harmony in Timaeus, Kepler’s representations of orbital eccentricity as musical scales, Herschel’s blending of music and cosmology, and ...

This is the third lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025 This dialogue presents the what and why of Ancient Greek music, and its profound role in philosophy, society and the individual. Education without music was an impossibility in ancient Greece; virtue without music, equally so. One scholar (writing in the late twentieth century) compared the pervasive social presence and impact of the medium of mousikē in Ancient...

This is the second lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025 Why does a rhythm make us tap our feet—or even get up and dance? In conversation with Professor Milton Mermikides, neuroscientist Professor Morten Kringelbach reveals how the brain finds pleasure, meaning, and movement in music. Drawing on extensive brain imaging, analysis and real-world studies, the talk explores how music and dance engage our brain’s predicti...