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Gresham College Lectures

Gresham College

1000 episodes

7 hours ago

When – and how – did Athenian democracy begin? There is no unambiguous answer to this question. This lecture explores one plausible origin: the popular uprising in 508 BCE overthrowing foreign invaders (who had previously expelled an Athenian-bred family of tyrants). In the aftermath of that revolution, the Athenians – led by Kleisthenes – reorganised their political system to foster new identities and interactions. As further political and social changes were made, Athenian democracy took sh...

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When – and how – did Athenian democracy begin? There is no unambiguous answer to this question. This lecture explores one plausible origin: the popular uprising in 508 BCE overthrowing foreign invaders (who had previously expelled an Athenian-bred family of tyrants). In the aftermath of that revolution, the Athenians – led by Kleisthenes – reorganised their political system to foster new identities and interactions. As further political and social changes were made, Athenian democracy took sh...

Show more...

Episodes (20/1000)

Gresham College Lectures

From Tyranny to Athenian Democracy - Melissa Lane

When – and how – did Athenian democracy begin? There is no unambiguous answer to this question. This lecture explores one plausible origin: the popular uprising in 508 BCE overthrowing foreign invaders (who had previously expelled an Athenian-bred family of tyrants). In the aftermath of that revolution, the Athenians – led by Kleisthenes – reorganised their political system to foster new identities and interactions. As further political and social changes were made, Athenian democracy took sh...

13 hours ago

49 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

China and Chineseness: Lessons from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan - Steve Tsang

This lecture is about the meaning of China and being Chinese. It examines critically how the Chinese state, under the control of the Communist Party defines them. It highlights the historical reality that the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan adopted different political systems. The Communist Party installed a powerful Leninist party-state on the Mainland. Laisses-faire British colonial rule gloomed Hong Kong people to desire democratization. Taiwan has become a vibrant democracy. This l...

4 days ago

45 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

War's Toxic Legacy - Ian Mudway

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/3LrIEG26m78 War's environmental legacies disproportionately burden the civilian populations left behind. While research focuses on combatant exposures, civilians face chronic contamination from heavy metals, chemical residues, unexploded ordnance, and asbestos, often exacerbated by disrupted infrastructure and psychological trauma. Framed through the exposome, this lecture highlights the need for greater research and policy focus on these long...

1 week ago

59 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

How Does Mathematics Last? Heritage and Heritage-making in Mathematics - Caroline Ehrhardt

How is mathematical knowledge recorded and preserved across generations? Contrary to the idea that mathematics itself is somehow ‘permanent’, in this talk we will explore heritage-making in mathematics, that is the people, institutions, and material objects that can give mathematical ideas longevity. We will explore the heritage-making found in two very different types of French nineteenth-century libraries: those of famous mathematicians and those of secondary schools. We will especially foc...

1 week ago

46 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Evoking Empathy through Animal Portraiture

The natural world faces unprecedented threats, challenging historical perceptions of nature as inexhaustible. Photographer Tim Flach draws on his acclaimed works, including Endangered, More Than Human, and Birds, to reveal how photography transcends traditional wildlife representation. By employing critical anthropomorphism and human portraiture techniques, Flach’s images foster empathy and kinship with animals. Collaborating with social scientists, he illustrates how visual storytelling evok...

2 weeks ago

47 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Why Do We Fear? - Robin May

Fear is one of the earliest emotions to have evolved. Most vertebrates – and possibly some invertebrates – show fear when they are threatened. At its most core, fear keeps us alive, helping us flee from predators or avoid dangerous environments. But why does this process sometimes backfire, leaving us paralysed by otherwise harmless phobias? And why do so many people deliberately seek out fearful situations, from horror movies to parachute jumps, when instinct tells us to do the opposite? Can...

2 weeks ago

45 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Hitler, Jesus & How to Win a Culture War - Alec Ryrie

Since 1945 Hitler and the Nazis have been the Western world’s one fixed moral reference point: the way we know what evil is. But that consensus has always been more fragile than it felt, and now it is unravelling. This lecture will trace how we came to build our values around the memory of the Second World War, why that consensus isn’t enough to deal with our current predicaments – and why the resolution to all this might be more hopeful than you think. This lecture was recorded by Ale...

3 weeks ago

45 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

How It Ends: What We Know about the Fate of the Universe - Chris Lintott

How will it all end? Predicting the far future of our Universe depends on understanding its present. This lecture starts with what seems to be a paradox in modern cosmology: that we have a model that does a fantastic job of explaining what we see, but which says 95% of the Universe is in forms (dark matter and dark energy) that we don’t understand. From there, we get a quick tour of the next 100 billion years – and speculate how the Universe’s end may hold the secrets of its beginnings. This ...

3 weeks ago

49 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

AI Will Be Your Overlord: Faster, Brighter, Better Than You?

“Scary”, “Worried”, “Dangerous” were some of the most frequent words to describe AI in a recent UK Government public survey. Do you fear, as many do, that AI will lead to us becoming second-class entities? In this first lecture, we will explore this ascendency, considering how notions of intelligence, sentience, perception, consciousness and reasoning are being framed and challenged in an AI-centred world; and surface the social, economic and ethical implications of these developments. This l...

4 weeks ago

49 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Shakespeare’s Musical Fairies - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh

Written in the era of the founding of Gresham College, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream portrays the hypnotic dreaminess of a fairy world in which the real and the fantastic are blurred. This lecture explores how the innate musicality of Shakespeare’s original has provoked adaptations across the centuries, including Ashton and Balanchine’s ballets based on Mendelssohn’s incidental music for the play, Britten’s opera, Purcell’s masque The Fairy Queen, Henze’s Eighth Symphony and Elvis C...

1 month ago

1 hour 6 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Lessons from Guantánamo Bay - Clive Stafford Smith

This lecture looks at the evolution of Guantánamo Bay, first as a focal point of Haitian immigration in 1991 (Gitmo 1.0), to the more famous detention of terror suspects in 2002 (Gitmo 2.0), and back to immigration in 2025. We will explore how Gitmo 3.0 is probably already over, and how we were able to head it off so quickly through legal challenges. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the U.S. is “actively searching” for countries to accept migrants deported from the U.S., with ...

1 month ago

53 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

The Shape of Hands: Symmetry, Chirality and Handedness - Alain Goriely

The reflection of my right hand in a mirror is a left hand that looks similar yet is very different from the right. Many natural structures such as proteins, climbing vines, and seashells exhibit the same property known as chirality. Some of these objects are clearly left-handed, some are right-handed, some are both. The ultimate origin of chirality is one of Nature's great mysteries. In this talk, I will discuss the general problem of determining the chirality of an object and how it impacts...

1 month ago

57 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Earth – Our Planetary Life Support System - Professor Helen Czerski

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 ...

1 month ago

46 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Automation Anxiety - Daniel Susskind

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...

1 month ago

47 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Galileo’s Journey to the Underworld: The Case for Interdisciplinary Thinking - Sarah Hart

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...

2 months ago

55 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

A World Remade by Decolonization? - Martin Thomas

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...

2 months ago

49 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Oil, Decolonisation, and the Future of the Climate Emergency - Adam Hanieh

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...

2 months ago

53 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

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

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...

2 months ago

53 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Outsmart the System: How Psychology Hacks Your Money Decisions - Raghavendra Rau

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...

2 months ago

1 hour 3 minutes

Gresham College Lectures

Democracy and International Criminal Justice in the Fragile World of the Rule of Law - Howard Morrison

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...

3 months ago

46 minutes