Gresham College Lectures

Solving climate change is not something that can be achieved overnight; it is a long journey, one that is complicated by the economic problems we face after Covid-19. Every industry has a role in not only helping the economy recover from the pandemic, but also ensuring that any recovery is green-led. The City of London is a world leader in 'Green Finance' and has an important role in helping the country - and the world - to 'build back better'. Through supporting sustainable infrastructure and creating green financial products, the City - and the UK's - financial and professional services can fight climate change and, at the same time, support economic growth. Join the Lord Mayor and a panel of experts to find out more about how the City can help us transition to a sustainable and resilient future for all.A lecture by The Lord Mayor William Russell, Mark Carney, Liv Garfield and Rhian-Mari Thomas. Chaired by Loyd Grossman 1 FebruaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/2021-lord-mayorGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

In 1930, the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli did something that "no theorist should ever do": he invented a new particle that he thought nobody could ever detect in order to save the principle of energy conservation in certain radioactive decays he was studying. Pauli's impossible particle turned out to be real: the neutrino, a particle that one of its discoverers called "the most tiny quantity of reality ever imagined by a human being". This lecture will chart the fascinating history and science of neutrinos, from their discovery in 1956 to the role they played in understanding solar physics. We will see that neutrinos are today hunted for in the depths of the Antarctic ice cap, shot through the crust of the Earth and observed in huge water tanks under miles of rock. They are revealing the physics of distant supernovae, helping understand dark matter and might hold the key to the Big Bang itself.A lecture by Roberto Trotta 1 FebruaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/neutrinoGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

The long-playing record and the BBC's Third Programme changed the face of classical music in Britain. In popular music the 45 rpm record became the recorded medium of choice, and in 1970 the BBC's home networks grew to four in order to broadcast respectively (and respectably) pop, easy listening, classical music, and speech. Radio 3's flagship programmes such as the weekday drivetime slot Homeward Bound and Saturday morning's Record Review taught listeners what to listen to and how to listen.A lecture by Jeremy Summerly 28 JanuaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/radio-lpGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

Scriabin was Rachmaninov's classmate at the Moscow Conservatoire, and he likewise received a Gold Medal for his combined studies in piano and composition. His commitment was also as unswerving as Rachmaninov's, and yet public knowledge of his music remains hazy, especially outside of Russia, and it still has an esoteric and forbidding aura. Scriabin's starting point was Chopin, but where others were content to pay reverent homage to that earlier master, Scriabin took him as inspiration for bold experiments in his preludes, études and above all in his great series of ten sonatas, which span his career. Working within the loose artistic movement known as "Symbolism", his ambitions were fuelled by theosophy and his own syncretism of mystical ideas. For him, some of his later projects stretched far beyond the normal limits of art, and one partially written piece was designed to bring about the dissolution of the universe into nothingness. The Sonatas take us on a journey from his early post-Chopin soundworld through to refined sensations and rarefied sounds of his later Symbolism, and although his ideas descended through decadence to insanity, his musical judgement never left him.A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker and Peter Donohoe OBE 21 JanuaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/scriabin-pianoGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

Humans use computers to do gigantic calculations which would be impossible to do by hand - for example, weather prediction. But could an AI go beyond that and come up with a proof of a theorem which has stumped humankind? Could computers suggest how to attack problems, searching knowledge bases for known results? As automatic and interactive computer theorem provers become more powerful, should mathematical researchers begin to worry that they will soon be out of a job?A lecture by Kevin Buzzard 20 JanuaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/smart-computersGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

For nearly seventy years, what might be called 'the canon' of greatest films has been arbitrated by an international poll of critics delivering a 'ten best' list every decade, published in the BFI's Sight & Sound. Before the next such poll, due in 2022, this lecture considers what factors have made certain films and their makers 'classic'; and why the fifty-year reign of Citizen Kane was ended in 2012 by Hitchcock's eerie melodrama Vertigo.A lecture by Ian Christie 18 JanuaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/film-classicsGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

Amelia Dyer was one of the most prolific murderers in Victorian Britain. She made a living as a "baby farmer", or someone paid to care for unwanted or abandoned infants - except she killed around 400 of them. How could a mother and nurse murder so many defenceless babies? Was Dyer not only a baby-killer but also the real "Jack the Ripper" (as some sleuths have speculated)? Was she insane, or simply an "ogress" in feminine form?A lecture by Joanna Bourke 14 JanuaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/amelia-dyerGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

One of the most powerful tools in public health is screening - whether for cancers like cervical or breast cancer, genetic abnormalities, or infectious diseases. Screening can be transformational, detecting disease early and preventing it taking hold. It is, however, often useless and can be harmful, and its advantages are often exaggerated. This talk will consider the situations where screening can help, where it does harm, and why these are usually predictable.A lecture by Chris Whitty 13 JanuaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/medical-screeningGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

The interconnectivity of living organisms and the planet is brought to light through the development of digital intelligence of the planet. This lecture tells the story of how this started with early computing and chaos theory, and developed through models of how humans move around and inhabit different parts of the world, to open data systems. Stories from the voyages of Darwin and the first global explorers, to the new space science illustrate the different ways in which new knowledge is received by society.A lecture by Jacqueline McGlade 12 JanuaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/connected-knowledgeGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show

Is the jury system the bulwark of individual liberty? This lecture will look at the role of the so-called "perverse jury" in acquitting defendants where the law, or the charge itself, is deemed unjust. Famous examples are Kempton Bunton (for the "theft" of Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington in the 1960s), Clive Ponting, and Randle and Pottle. But the jury can also be a bastion of prejudice: white juries habitually acquitted white defendants in the US in race violence cases. Does the jury system need improvement? Should its right to deliver a perverse verdict be curtailed?A lecture by Thomas Grant QC 11 JanuaryThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/political-juryGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollegeSupport the show