Gresham College Lectures

When Albert Einstein tweaked his newly invented equations of General Relativity in 1917, he had one goal in mind: to find a solution that described a closed, static, eternal universe. He therefore minted a new universal constant to make it work. After Hubble’s discovery of the expansion of the universe in 1929, Einstein reportedly declared it his “greatest blunder”. In 1998 observations of distant exploding stars brought Einstein’s "blunder" back into consideration: Einstein might have been right the first time around. A lecture by Roberto Trotta The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/einsteins-blunder Gresham 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: h

Although Mesopotamian civilisations had assembled texts, the ancient Greeks brought the idea of the universal book collection to its near-legendary consummation in the Library of Alexandria, which edited and housed thousands of papyrus rolls on every subject and attracted brilliant scholars from all over the ancient world. But there were many other libraries, serving also as scientific laboratories, public record offices, restaurants, mausoleums and even baths. This illustrated lecture investigates their history and the continuing influence on our modern world. A lecture by Edith Hall The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/ancient-libraries Gresham 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

This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Karine Chelma The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/numbers-cultures Gresham 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/greshamcollege

This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Manuel Medrano The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/knot-just-numbers Gresham 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/greshamcollege

Immense curiosity exists about the lives of people who lived in the past. Portraits and biographies play a major role in bringing the dead to life, but they may mislead and distort as much as they illuminate. Using writings about nineteenth-century British figures alongside images of them, Professor Ludmilla Jordanova will explore the intertwined roles of biography and portraiture in public history, suggesting ways in which it is possible to be constructively critical of current practices. A lecture by Ludmilla Jordanova The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/portraits-biographies Gresham 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.u

After the ravages of the First World War there was a widespread desire for 'sustainable security’. Contemporaries were preoccupied with hungry children and their impoverished environment, and worked on a wave of institution building intended to promote ‘positive security’. The 1920s search for human security and the 1930s road to war pointed to Europe’s common challenges, and global problems. This history was transformed after 1945 when European ideas and practices were globalized, and implanted in new regional institutions. A lecture by Patricia Clavin The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/europes-security Gresham 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. Webs

Elaborate plotting is the novelistic skill least often valued by critics, even if relished by readers. This lecture will look at novelists who raise plot to a literary art. We begin with Henry Fielding, the first great novelist to delight in cunning narrative design. Then Dickens’s complex plot making, including the half-finished and tantalizing The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Finally, the lecture will celebrate the plotting artistry of modern writers like Ian McEwan and John le Carré. A lecture by John Mullan The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/novel-plot Gresham 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://twitt

This lecture will explore our financial system. Why do banks exist, and what do they do with the money that savers lend to them? We’ll explore what risks they face and how they can go bust – even if they make completely safe investments. How does the stock market work – what happens when you trade shares, and why do some companies raise money on the stock market and others don’t? Can ordinary citizens influence how the money they save is used? A lecture by Alex Edmans The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/financial-system Gresham 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:

How does the law consider children in cases involving medical consent? This lecture will look at how doctors (and parents) should talk their children about illness. It will also consider what should happen when parents and doctors disagree about what a child should be told. The overall law on consent has changed markedly in England and Wales since Montgomery (2015), and requires doctors to share and explain risks, but it is not clear how far this applies to children, particularly older children. A lecture by Imogen Goold The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/children-medicine Gresham 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

How do Shakespeare's familiar plays Othello and Romeo and Juliet reflect the early modern preoccupation with race and emerging concepts of colour-based racism? How do these ideas play out in early modern as well as in contemporary performance? A lecture by Farah Karim-Cooper The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/shakespeare-race Gresham 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/greshamcollege

The skeleton of King Richard III was discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012. Modern forensic techniques were used to analyse the injuries to the skull, rib and pelvis. The talk will discuss what computed and micro-computed tomography reveal about the injuries that were inflicted on him, and his probable cause of death; and how well the findings align with the historical record. A lecture by Sarah Hainsworth The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/richard-III-bones Gresham 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:

Many of the major diseases of humans are transmitted by insect vectors. Malaria, sleeping sickness, typhus, dengue, Zika and plague are examples where mosquitoes, flies, fleas or ticks transmit. The advantage to the infection is that you can be infected by someone you have never met, often over wide distances. The advantage to humans is that we can act on the insect vector and break the cycle of transmission. A lecture by Chris Whitty The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/insect-diseases Gresham 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/greshamcolle

The Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi, designer of the dome of Florence cathedral, is also known for developing the rules of linear perspective. In a famous experiment, viewers looked alternately from a vantage point at his perspective painting of the Florence Baptistery, and then the real building, to appreciate the realism made possible by the technique. This lecture explores the maths of perspective, including modern examples like televised sports where sponsors paint their logos so they look right on camera. A lecture by Sarah Hart The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/maths-perspective Gresham 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:

In 1977 or thereabouts a collection of scientists huddled around a secret radio receiver in the US desert. This was the start of GPS, Glonass, Gallileo and the whole navigation industry. A GPS chipset now costs, in bulk, a few dollars so your watch, your phone, your computer all have GPS receivers and everyone knows where they are all the time. But how does this technology work? And are there situations when it does not work? A lecture by Richard Harvey The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/gps Gresham 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/gresh

The music we listened to when we were young makes us feel emotional and often nostalgic, transporting us to a particular time and place. Composers over the past 300 years have frequently offered musical tributes to bygone styles – Mozart to Bach, Stravinsky to Tchaikovsky, Sondheim to Ravel, and Barry Manilow to Chopin. This lecture observes how music is a highly effective tool in the promotion of cultural and personal nostalgia. A lecture by Jeremy Summerly The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/music-nostalgia Gresham 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://ww

What do we mean when we refer to the State of Israel as 'the Jewish State'? What does it mean for the politics of the state to be identified as 'Jewish'? And what does it mean for an academic and intellectual field to study Israel as a Jewish state? The lecture will trace the contours of a wide-ranging debate on these issues, that shapes both Israeli and Middle Eastern politics. A lecture by Yaacov Yadgar The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/jewish-state Gresham 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.insta

How can we help human society flourish without destroying nature? The Wellbeing Economy and Natural Capital are linked strategies that can help achieve this. The Wellbeing Economy provides design principles to ensure that our planet serves both humanity and the planet’s ecosystems. Natural capital provides design parameters to track the quality and quantity of ecosystems and resources, including the invisible value of nature. A lecture by Jacqueline McGlade The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/planet-first Gresham 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.fac

Commonwealth citizens once enjoyed the right to live, work and settle in the UK without any restrictions. But a racist backlash against Black and Asian immigration led to legislators introducing immigration controls in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, which were broadened by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 to deprive East African Asians of the right to settle in the UK. Its shameful successor, the Immigration Act 1971 continues to form the basis of our xenophobic immigration laws today. A lecture by Leslie Thomas QC The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/immigration-act Gresham 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.

Sex manuals can incite revolution. In the early 1970s a feminist collective released Our Bodies, Ourselves (1970) while 'free love' proponent Dr. Alex Comfort published The Joy of Sex (1972). Both manuals have been read and updated and republished many times. What do changes in the advice given in these and other manuals tell us about the way sexual mores and practices have shifted between the 1970s and the present? What factors contribute to changes in ideas about sexual pleasure? A lecture by Joanna Bourke The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/pleasure Gresham 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://twitt

Because apes seem most like humans, science fiction has used them as a mirror in which to view ourselves. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau saw in orangutans the original, natural man, uncorrupted by society. Meanwhile most of his contemporaries used apes to embody racially charged fantasies of bestial brutality. These conflicting views shaped the numerous versions of King Kong and the Planet of the Apes films, which the lecture will use to look at evolving images of humanity. A lecture by Jim Endersby The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/scifi-apes Gresham 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