Gresham College Lectures

It is now easier to breach the security of people’s personal and business lives than perhaps at any time in recent human history. Technology has brought unimaginable speed, scale and reach to hackers. This lecture looks at the consequences of technology on privacy and security, and considers what options there are for the future, including new technologies and regulations such as blockchain and the right to privacy. A lecture by Richard Harvey, 25 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/computer-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. Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.face

When black holes merge, the world shakes. Such quakes in space-time are now detectable and indeed the detection of such gravitational waves from cosmic coalescences comprises an entirely new type of astronomy that is completely independent of light itself. A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE, 19 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/space-quakes 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

Lord Richard Harries has selected 30 images to convey the essential truths of the Christian faith, some ancient and some modern. Drawn from both the West and the East, a few are well-known masterpieces and others will be unfamiliar. He will discuss these with Professor Alec Ryrie, who will join in a discussion on the rich and sometimes fraught relationship between the Christian faith and the visual arts. A lecture by Alec Ryrie and Lord Richard Harries, 17 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/seeing-god-in-art 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:/

Knife violence is one of the biggest challenges facing our society. Simulation offers a way to involve young people in exploring the consequences of carrying a knife and responding when incidents occur. Realistic physical simulation invites participants to co-design scenarios that show the effects of a stab wound. Building on over ten years of research, the lecture shows how healthcare and criminal justice professionals can work with young people to develop ‘reciprocal illumination’ for everyone who takes part. A lecture by Roger Kneebone, 12 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/tackling-knife-violence 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. We

CEOs make mistakes due to their own psychological biases – but they also profit from the biases of others. Some exploit investors by catering to sentiment – adding “.com” to their name during the Internet bubble or entering “hot” industries to inflate their valuations. Other exploit customers – selling cheap printers hoping they’ll ignore the price of expensive toners, or offering mobile phone plans that profit from customers underestimating their usage. The talk shows how we can guard against such behaviour. A lecture by Alex Edmans, 11 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/profit-mistakes 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:/

Serial murderer Myra Hindley is often portrayed as an “evil icon”. Her crimes of sadistic murder against children continue to shock. There are few artistic sights so terrifying as the giant portrait of Hindley composed of the handprints of children. Sadistic women are uniquely evil: in the entire history of humanity, there are only a few and, even then, they generally offend alongside a man (in Hindley’s case, Ian Brady). What do we know about rape-murdering women? Is redemption possible? A lecture by Joanna Bourke, 13 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/myra-hindley 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 Tw

What the NHS has provided and had to treat over its existence has changed much more radically than most people realise. Some of this change is rightly the domain of politics, but much is driven in response to changing health needs, improvements in medical science and priorities of society. The next two decades of changes in health will be as striking as any seen previously: this lecture will address some of the predictable changes public health and the NHS will need to address. A lecture by Chris Whitty, 19 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/health-trends 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

The nature of investment is changing to better reflect the ecosystem of the planet we live on. The days of fossil fuel are numbered by the move to renewable energy. Resources and a healthy environment are finally being seen as core to our future. In this lecture we explore the response of the finance industry and whether green bonds and/or green public procurement can make a difference in delivering better environmental outcomes. A lecture by Jacqueline McGlade, 18 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/invest-nature 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: ht

Could AI replace stand-up comedians and scriptwriters? This may not be an impossible dream if you accept that nothing we do is forever beyond the scope of computer modelling. This lecture explores attempts to create jokes from rules, and programs that create not-quite-relevant responses that hearers can make meaningful and comic. Will computers ever tell good jokes? A lecture by Yorick Wilks, 11 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/ai-humour 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/

Has the time come for some form of political appointment of Supreme Court judges? Should there be parliamentary scrutiny of judicial appointments? This lecture contrasts the position of British and American Supreme Court judges. It looks at the dangers of governmental interference in the judiciary, looking at historic examples in the Soviet Union and South Africa, and recent cases in Poland and Hungary. Might the politicisation of the judiciary challenge the international reputation of the English courts? A lecture by Thomas Grant QC, 10 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/judicial-appointment-politics 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.

Should there be a legal duty on the state to be more transparent in sudden and unexpected death cases? The lecture discusses the duty of candour, namely the principle that public authorities must assist the court with full and accurate explanations of the facts relevant to the issues the court must decide, rather than the authority’s objective being to win at all costs. What would a new legal duty look like? Who would enforce it? What would the sanctions be? A lecture by Leslie Thomas QC & Pete Weatherby QC, 6 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/state-candour 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:

This lecture will explore Napoleon‘s life through his interactions with the natural world and a series of gardens that were important to him during the rise and fall of his power. The point of doing this is to approach his life from oblique angles, exploring material that is often overlooked. It is also a way of evoking the dramatic trajectory of his life. A lecture by Dr Ruth Scurr, 6 May The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/napoleon-gardens 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/gre

Prokofiev followed in the footsteps of Rachmaninov and Scriabin as a joint graduate in piano and composition, but his final graduation performance made an even greater splash, since he dared to present his own new modernist Piano Concerto (No.1) before his examiners. This distinguished panel of judges had cultivated nationalist and late-romantic styles in their own music, and they were not well pleased by the work of a self-declared “anti-Romantic” who delighted in harsh, provocative dissonances that called for a new manner of playing that was metronomic rather than flexibly expressive, with a drier, more percussive approach. When Prokofiev moved abroad after the Revolution, his brilliant performances of his own works made a deep impression on a wide range of composers, from Rachmaninov to Stravinsky, and French composers from Ravel to Poulenc. It seemed that Prokofiev had invented a way of making music that matched the new era: its dynamism was compared to sport (“football music”), and its grinding repeate

International negotiations concerning our environment such as on climate and biodiversity, often put the scientific case behind economic and political interests, with potentially disastrous consequences. What does that mean for human prosperity and even survival? Can the tension between science, policy and diplomacy be resolved? What would a new form of environmental justice that internalised nature within economic and social rights look like? A lecture by Jacqueline McGlade, 27 April The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/nature-rights 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/GreshamCol

Where do we get our mathematical symbols from? Why is the set of integers called ℤ ? When was the equals sign first used? How about zero? Good notation tends to catch on quickly, whereas bad notation can obscure beautiful theory. The lecture explores how the introduction of new notation has paved the way for new leaps in understanding, and considers some mathematical quirks of language, such as what the number 4 in English has in common with the number 11 in Russian. A lecture by Sarah Hart, 27 April The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/maths-symbols 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.

“In space, no one can hear you scream”. The chillingly accurate tagline of Ridley Scott’s 1979 space horror classic, Alien, is often belied in science fiction movies, forgetting that in space there is no air, and hence no sound. Space today is terrifyingly silent. But it wasn’t always thus: the early universe was filled with hot plasma in which sound waves could travel. The cosmos was quivering with the aftershocks of the Big Bang. It is one of the greatest achievements of modern physics that we are able to pick up the cosmic harmony of the baby universe. These sounds were not meant to be heard by human ears: the base note has a wavelength of 450 million light years. Nevertheless, this triumph of science (and music) rivals in beauty anything written by Bach. This lecture will investigate the many, surprising ways in which sound waves of various kinds are found in the cosmos: from the relic radiation form the Big Bang, to the distribution of galaxies in the sky; from the trembling of stars to gravitational

On 17 August 1982, the first commercial CD was released. Digital recording and editing have changed the face of music by making recordings easy to originate and share. But has this affected musical quality, and what are the financial and artistic consequences? Where does BBC Radio stand within this technological revolution? Has the BBC’s ability to adapt effectively signed its own death warrant? And does public service broadcasting have a future in the internet age? A lecture by Jeremy Summerly, 15 April The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/radio-digital 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://twit

Every time you look at the world you are building a model. With every new experience these representations of your environment are refined and reconfigured. Each piece of sensory information you perceive makes the model of reality in your head more detailed and complex. The building of mathematical models, designed to capture our complex reality, is the best way we have of making sense of the rules that govern the world around us. The key to exemplifying these rules is to demonstrate their effects on people's lives: from the extraordinary to the everyday. This talk will relate true stories of life-changing events in which the use (or abuse) of mathematics has played a critical role. We will meet athletes banned by faulty tests and patients crippled by faulty genes; innocent victims of miscarriages of justice and the unwitting victims of mathematical bugs. We follow stories of investors who have lost fortunes and parents who have lost children, all because of mathematical misunderstanding. We wrestle with eth

The criminalisation of religious speech before the ordinary courts in England began in 1676. Although the law on blasphemy was finally abolished in 2008, many of the troubling aspects of the old law remain in the form of the offence of incitement to religious hatred. This lecture will explore the current and future scope of the law of incitement to religious hatred in light of our long and troubled history of dealing with religious speech. A lecture by Ivan Hare QC, 22 April The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/incitement-to-hatred 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

This illustrated lecture marks 150 years since Dickens’s death by reflecting on the nature of his creative genius and his legacy. It examines the theatrical performance of Dickens’s public readings in relation to his writing practices, and suggests how this gives us an insight into his creative processes as well as the close relationship he forged with his public – a relationship which, as he said, was ‘personally affectionate and like no other man’s’. A lecture by Malcolm Andrews, 22 April The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/dickens-public-readings 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.