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PODCAST

Gresham College Lectures

Gresham College

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.

education

All Episodes

49:02

A World Remade by Decolonization? - Martin Thomas

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/08/19

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...

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53:17

Oil, Decolonisation, and the Future of the Climate...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/08/15

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...

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53:31

Shanawdithit: A Woman at the End of the World - Julia...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/08/12

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...

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63:03

Outsmart the System: How Psychology Hacks Your Money...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/08/08

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...

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46:53

Democracy and International Criminal Justice in the...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/08/05

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...

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51:34

The Future of Health - Chris Whitty

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/08/01

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...

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54:42

Sum Stories: Equations and their Origins - Robin Wilson

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/29

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 ...

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51:29

The Deceived Brain: Coding and Illusion - Alain Goriely

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/25

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 ...

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51:28

The Future of Immunity - Robin May

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/22

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...

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49:57

The Evolution of Music - Milton Mermikides and Robin May

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/18

This is the first lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025 Musical instruments have been found in the archaeological record from at least 40,000 years ago and despite the diversity of human civilization, we are yet to find a culture which lacks music. Other species also make ‘music’ – from a grasshopper’s chirp to a nightingale’s song – but is human music simply an extension of that evolutionary heritage? What can moder...

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43:16

Remixing the Music of the Spheres - Milton Mermikides...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/18

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 ...

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43:03

Climbing Mount Groove: Music and Dance in the Brain -...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/18

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...

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43:44

The Maths of Music (and the Music of Maths) - Milton...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/18

This is the fourth lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025 Professors Sarah Hart and Milton Mermikides reveal the deep connections between music and mathematics. Whether that’s the Euclidean rhythms that shape funky grooves, the set theory that maps every possible chord, or a live rendering of the geometric elegance of Gresham Professor Iannis Xenakis’s algorithmic compositions, this event will reveal how maths can hel...

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41:27

The Virtues of Music - Milton Mermikides and Melissa...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/18

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...

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46:15

Architecture of Enslavement, Colonialism and...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/15

Accra’s James Fort is an iconic monument for Ghana and modern Africa. This lecture explores the fort's evolution -from its role as a trading post in the early European-African encounters, through its significance during the trans-Atlantic trade and enslavement, to its later use as a modern colonial prison in the post-independence era. It also explores its connection to Ghana's liberation movement, particularly its role in imprisoning Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and other political leaders during their ...

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47:49

The Operatic Showstopper: ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ -...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/11

This lecture considers ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from Carousel (1945). Perhaps Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most operatic song, it was originally written for Metropolitan Opera star Christine Johnson but has gone on to be recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley and Marcus Mumford and sung at both the Last Night of the Proms and Liverpool Football Club. This lecture will include live performances by international soprano and Grammy Award winner Rebecca Evans CBE. This lecture was record...

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48:56

Carbon Takeback: How We Will Stop Fossil Fuels from...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/08

We have to stop fossil fuels from causing global warming – before the world stops using fossil fuels. There’s only one solution: safe and permanent disposal of one tonne of carbon dioxide for every tonne still generated by burning fossil fuels. But how do we achieve this without overheating the planet or stoking political conflicts? This lecture presents a simple answer: make carbon dioxide disposal a licensing condition of the sale and use of fossil fuels. This lecture was recorded by Myles ...

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50:20

Do Computers Get Sick? How Humans and Computers Fight...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/04

Whether you are human or computer, viruses can ruin your day, so taking steps to avoid them is important. This lecture will ask whether there are similarities between human immunity and computer immunity? Can we use discoveries in one system to help protect against infections in the other? Might we one day take our laptops for regular vaccinations, or run a ‘software update’ on our own immune systems to avoid an emerging pathogen? This lecture was recorded by Robin May & Victoria Baines ...

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52:12

Illuminating the Dark Side of the Moon - Milton...

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/07/01

Now over 50 years old, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon remains the perfect example of a concept album. Blending cyclical forms, jazz and modal harmony, experimental electronics, multi-layered guitars, studio techniques and haunting lyrics, this lecture will examine why this album has retained its popularity, critical success, and enduring influence. This lecture was recorded by Milton Mermikides on 12th June 2025 at Rich Mix, London. Milton Mermikides is Gresham Professor of ...

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50:13

Lawgivers in Modern Revolutions - Melissa Lane

Gresham College Lectures ·

2025/06/27

How have lawgivers featured in modern revolutions? This lecture considers key moments in revolutions, including seventeenth-century Britain, eighteenth-century France and (what would become) the United States, and twentieth-century Iran. The appeal to lawgivers (including ancient ones from many cultures) in revolutionary visions and in consolidating new constitutions is a striking feature of modern politics. This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on 5th June 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, Lo...

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165 results

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