Gresham College Lectures

Despite the explosion of genetic information in recent years, we have surprisingly little insight into the peculiar history of life on our planet. Most genetic variation – natural experiments in evolution – is found in simple bacteria, yet they have barely changed over four billion years. No complex animals or plants are composed of bacterial cells. Why not? Why did complex cells only arise once in the history of life? And why are we complex beings so alike, with humans and mushrooms and trees all plotting for sex?

Nick Lane will explore the importance of energy flow in shaping life from its very origins to the flamboyant complexity around us, and ask whether energy flow would direct evolution down a similar path on other planets.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/how-energy-flow-shapes-the-evolution-of-life

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 campaign to achieve the parliamentary vote for women (6 February 1918) took 52 years, from 1866 to 1918. During that time women and their male supporters employed both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary tactics, ranging from the presentation of petitions to the detonation of bombs.

The campaign will be examined, concentrating on the work of the constitutional suffragists as well as on the more notorious suffragettes. Although the latter group steals the headlines, it was the efforts of the former that slowly eroded the deep-seated prejudice that had characterised women, as Keats put it, as ‘milk-white lambs, bleating for man’s protection’ - a phrase deeply scorned by the suffragists. The lecture will discuss which of the groups was more successful in achieving ‘Votes for Women’.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/votes-for-women-a-centenary-celebration

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

Do the courts respect diversity or punish it when it comes to parenthood? What disabilities does it encounter? How can the learning disabled parent ensure their voice is heard in court? What to do when the wish to parent might not be matched by an ability to parent? What does the justice system do to protect the rights of the disabled person to be a parent, and of the child to be adequately parented? Does a disability prevent someone from being a good parent?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/vulnerbale-clients-and-the-family-justice-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: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

National Parks were designated to protect some of the world's most loved landscapes from being eaten away by industrial and housing development. But Britain's National Parks are exploited by intensive agriculture and sucked dry of their water for neighbouring cities. They sustain non-native invasive species and unlike National Parks elsewhere in the world, they are not 'natural parks'. A movement is emerging with the aim of developing Greater London as the world's first National Park City. But is there any significant environmental advantage to this and would London benefit from becoming one?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/national-parks-and-national-park-cities

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

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Computer bugs, reported in heart pacemaker software and many other devices, are but one example of the risks that IT systems can create for patients. The extent of the problem of software bugs in the medical arena, and elsewhere, suggest an increasing number of avoidable deaths and injuries in UK hospitals.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/computer-bugs-in-hospitals-a-new-killer

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 courts of James I and his son Charles I were more cosmopolitan than their Elizabethan forebears. Many courtiers had now visited the Continent in early adulthood with a tutor, mostly after a period of residence at a university.

The guitar at the English court entered a new and very lively phase, as sketched in a scenery design by Inigo Jones and played in a masque by a leading court musician. On the verge of the Civil War, the guitar rapidly became the fashionable instrument of elite London from Covent Garden to Westminster.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-guitar-in-the-age-of-charles-i

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

In 1643 an English landowner, Sir Ralph Verney, fled to France in the depths of the Civil War. He settled in Blois and, while there, amassed a vast archive that is still unpublished. The letters Verney kept, and his financial accounts, show that almost every member of his family learned the guitar. These records provide a wealth of information about the music they played, the guitars they bought and their reasons for cultivating a light and fashionable instruments far from home.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/an-englishman-with-a-guitar-abroad

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

Support the show

Despite the explosion of genetic information in recent years, we have surprisingly little insight into the peculiar history of life on our planet. Most genetic variation - natural experiments in evolution - is found in simple bacteria, yet they have barely changed over four billion years. No complex animals or plants are composed of bacterial cells. Why not? Why did complex cells only arise once in the history of life? And why are we complex beings so alike, with humans and mushrooms and trees all plotting for sex?

Nick Lane will explore the importance of energy flow in shaping life from its very origins to the flamboyant complexity around us, and ask whether energy flow would direct evolution down a similar path on other planets.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/how-energy-flow-shapes-the-evolution-of-life

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

Support the show

Computer bugs, reported in heart pacemaker software and many other devices, are but one example of the risks that IT systems can create for patients. The extent of the problem of software bugs in the medical arena, and elsewhere, suggest an increasing number of avoidable deaths and injuries in UK hospitals.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/computer-bugs-in-hospitals-a-new-killer

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

Support the show

When Lenin died in 1924, he had effected a temporary stabilisation of the Soviet order. But many political, economic, social and international trends grew more worrisome to Bolsheviks who still wished to preserve ‘the gains of October’. The solution that the Politburo adopted at Stalin’s suggestion was a comprehensive revolutionary offensive. It increased the powers of the state over society, but this was never wholly acceptable in the communist central leadership, and tensions contributed to Stalin’s Great Terror.

The USSR became a great European power and helped defeat Nazi Germany but had ‘October’ been saved or its foundations been destroyed?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-fate-of-the-october-revolution-under-stalin

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