Gresham College Lectures

Judges, who are typically drawn from privileged backgrounds, wield vast power over the lives of the most marginalised people in society. This lecture will explore the role of judicial racism in perpetuating injustice and inequality in the legal system. The Lammy Review found gross disparities sentencing for Black and white defendants – while also finding no systematic racial bias in juries’ decisions to convict or acquit. What should we do about racism in the judiciary and the legal profession? 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/judicial-racism 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

This lecture explores the destruction of libraries, archives and other knowledge, from Babylonian times until now, and its implications for society today. What are the motivations for destroying knowledge, and how have libraries and archives responded to these threats? What must we do now that knowledge is digital, and controlled by a small number of very powerful companies? A lecture by Richard Ovenden The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/ashurbanipal-trump 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.ins

This lecture takes a trip down Christmas’s unique and emotionally complex memory lane via the Christmas Carol. Carols paint a colourful picture of the Christmas story itself, frequently by adapting pre-existing material. The crowded stable at Bethlehem appears simultaneously ancient and modern, as do the carols that commemorate the Nativity. Christmas is indelibly associated with our own childhood experiences at home, in church, or out in the cold. 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/carols-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 F

European Protestant and evangelical Christians did not have to look far to find ‘infidels’ in the 16th and 17th centuries: as well as the ‘pagans’ of northern Scandinavia, Jews were scattered across the continent and Muslim powers were all too close. This lecture will consider the repeated, and repeatedly failed, attempts to convert these peoples: some naively well-intentioned, some openly violent. Those bitter experiences would become a crucial lens through which Christians viewed global missionary projects, sometimes with unexpected consequences. A lecture by Alec Ryrie The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/protestant-missions 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

Many major diseases are transmitted by food or drink. Cholera (water), brucellosis (milk), BSE/nvCJD, typhoid and many parasites are ingested as part of a normal diet. The more exotic the diet, the greater the range of possible infections. Water technology, sanitation, pasteurisation and animal husbandry can substantially reduce but not eliminate these diseases. 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/food-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/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcol

For thousands of years, some men assumed that the original or ideal human type was male, with women being pictured as weaker or imperfect men. This ancient prejudice inspired fictions from E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Sandman (1816) to Ira Levin’s novel The Stepford Wives (1972). This lecture looks at fantasies of artificial women (usually seen by their male creators as superior to biological women) to examine the complex connections between science and assumptions about the supposed naturalness of gender roles. 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-women 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.

When you tune into Netflix you might not be aware that the box in your living room starts a complex set of negotiations with servers on moving 563 Gbytes of information into your residence. That is equivalent to having 15,000 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica dumped into your home! So, why is watching a Netflix film not the equivalent of the Amazon-delivery from hell? Compression, which this lecture will show is economically and entropically a hot topic. 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/compression 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

The law has been used to impose religious and moral conformity and uniformity of thought at many times in history, perhaps most (in)famously in the trial of Socrates and the heresy trials of Giordano Bruno and Galileo. More recently the obscenity laws and equality legislation have challenged the limits of free speech. This lecture will explore how law has been used to respond to and try to delimit the expression of unpopular or challenging ideas. A lecture by Thomas Grant QC The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/free-thinking-law 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 Fa

People have always found symmetry aesthetically pleasing and examples of it are seen in the earliest art. The Platonic solids have been known to humanity for millennia, some possibly even to Neolithic man, as can be seen in the carved stone balls found by archaeologists. This lecture will look at how we can understand symmetry using mathematics, and explore how the rules of symmetry can deepen our appreciation of beautiful works of art and design. 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-beauty 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: h

This lecture will investigate the genesis of the Socialist Realism doctrine, which was imposed in 1934. The 'proletarian music' trend of the 1920s had offered some solutions to the task of creating 'music for the people', but because it had alienated the most accomplished professional musicians it was now abandoned. A new art music was called for, with potential mass appeal through the use of folk materials and the rejection of modernism. A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/socialist-realist 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 Face

Subsequent to the Hot Big Bang, as the Universe expanded and cooled, atoms formed and, later still, decoupled from radiation. This lecture will cover the intellectual revolutions in relatively recent history that paved the way to our modern understanding of the formation, existence and interactions of atoms. A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/atomic-universe 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

How can nature be accounted for? How can we track how we are using nature and ensure we are not destroying the environment? Natural Capital is becoming a central theme in national accounting systems. This lecture follows a series of entertaining exercises on how to assemble the evidence and undertake the accounting lying behind natural capital. 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/natures-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

For the second Annual Alfred Wiener Holocaust Memorial Lecture, Professor Jan Grabowski will discuss how scholars of the Holocaust find themselves confronted with the hostile reactions of various states pursuing the policies of Holocaust distortion. This situation has acquired particular importance and urgency in Poland, where the authorities have introduced a series of measures intended to freeze academic debate, hinder independent research and intimidate scholars whose writings are perceived as opposed to the official, state-approved historical narrative. A lecture by Jan Grabowski The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/holocaust-history 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 o

Most of us would consider Islam to be a religion, while we would generally view secularism as requiring the limiting of religion to the private sphere. But many scholars (and ideologues) beg to differ. Social scientists are divided over the definitions of religion and secularism, while Islam’s indigenous portrayal of itself as a 'dīn' is not easily translatable into English. This lecture asks both whether Islam might be viewed as an ideology, and whether secularism could be considered a religion. A lecture by Dr Usaama al-Azami The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/islam-secularism 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.

What is a perversion? This talk starts by exploring psychiatric and sexological debates about perverted sexual desires from the late nineteenth century textbooks to diagnostic manuals in the twenty-first century. It looks at the role of law, morality, and medicine. Who has the power to decide what sexual acts are 'normal' or 'abnormal'? By what mechanisms do sexual practices move from one category to the other? How have people labelled 'perverse' effectively challenged their status in society? 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/perversion 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:

The Malian city of Timbuktu is one of the world's oldest seats of learning and has an intellectual legacy of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, coming from three great West African desert empires: Ancient Ghana, medieval Mali, and the Songhai Empire. These manuscripts offer a unique window into their history. Many remain unread. This lecture will look at how their study can be used to advance our knowledge of the intellectual history of the premodern world. A lecture by Robin Walker The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/timbuktu-manuscripts 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/Gres

This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. Dr Anuj Misra will discuss Sanskrit Mathematics in the Language of Poetry (4pm). A lecture by Dr Anuj Misra The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/sanskrit-mathematics 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 lecture will examine the evidence for and the significance of events that unfolded in the early Universe. “Early” here refers to within the first few seconds after the Hot Big Bang. These very early developments give rise to fundamental characteristics of the nature of the Universe. A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/early-universe 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

Africans have been present in England for more than two thousand years, but we rarely see them or hear about them. And often their existence is dismissed as a figment of 'political correctness' or 'wokism.' This lecture will critically assess the myth of England's story as a 'sacred white space' and examine the evidence for diversity in medieval and early modern history. Africans are integral to English history and forgetting this diminishes Englishness, by preventing us from understanding ourselves. A lecture by Dr Onyeka Nubia The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/blacks-britannica 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.gresha

The Great Depression posed a serious threat to democratic capitalism as economic nationalism flourished and Communism and Fascism offered alternative models. In response, democratic capitalism was remade. Domestically, inequalities of wealth were reduced and social welfare extended to create a social contract between capital and labour. Internationally, new organisations created a rules-based international regime. Together, the result was ‘embedded liberalism’ that contained economic nationalism and allowed recovery of the international economy and rapid post-war growth alongside improvements in domestic welfare. A lecture by Martin Daunton The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/great-depression 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. T