The Reith Lectures

By BBC Radio 4

Society & Culture

What's The Reith Lectures about?

Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series

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From Climate Crisis to Real...

12.23.2020

Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, argues that the roots of the climate change threat lie in a deeper crisis of values. He suggests that we can create an ecosystem in which society’s values broaden the ...

The Reith Lectures episodes:

12.23.2020 From Climate Crisis to Real Prosperity Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, argues that the roots of the climate change threat lie in a deeper crisis of values. He suggests that we can create an ecosystem in which society’s values broaden the ...
12.16.2020 From Covid Crisis to Renaissance Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, observes that the pandemic has forced states to confront how we value health, wealth and opportunity. During the first few months of the crisis, most states chose to value human ...
12.09.2020 From Credit Crisis to Resilience Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, takes us back to the high drama of the financial crisis of 2008, which ended a period when bankers saw themselves as unassailable Masters of the Universe. More than a ...
12.02.2020 From Moral to Market Sentiments Mark Carney’s Reith 2020 Lectures chart how we have come to esteem financial value over human value and how we have gone from market economies to market societies. He argues that this has contributed to a trio of crises: of ...
06.18.2019 5/5. Shifting the Foundations Jonathan Sumption argues against Britain adopting a written constitution as a response to political alienation. The former UK Supreme Court Justice has argued that politics is in decline partly, at least, because the courts and the law is increasingly doing ...
06.11.2019 4/5. Rights and the Ideal Constitution Jonathan Sumption assesses the US and UK’s constitutional models. He describes Britain's unwritten constitution as a political institution. The US Constitution is by contrast essentially a legal document. This has led Americans to address what should be political questions – ...
06.04.2019 3/5. Human Rights and Wrongs Jonathan Sumption argues that judges - especially those of the European Court of Human Rights - have usurped power by expanding the interpretation of human rights law. Lord Sumption argues that concepts of human rights have a long history in ...
05.28.2019 2/5. In Praise of Politics Jonathan Sumption explains how democratic processes have the power to accommodate opposition opinions and interests. But he argues that in recent years that politics has shied away from legislating and now the courts have taken on more and more of ...
05.21.2019 1/5. Law's Expanding Empire Jonathan Sumption argues that the law is taking over the space once occupied by politics. Lord Sumption was until recently a justice of the UK’s Supreme Court, as well as being a distinguished historian. In this lecture, recorded before an ...
07.24.2018 War's Fatal Attraction Historian Margaret MacMillan looks at representations of war: can we really create beauty from horror and death? Speaking at the Canadian War Museum, she discusses the paradox of commemoration. She questions attempts to capture the essence and meaning of war ...
07.17.2018 Managing the Unmanageable Historian Margaret MacMillan assesses how the law and international agreements have attempted to address conflict. Speaking to an audience at the Northern Irish Parliament Buildings at Stormont in Belfast, Professor MacMillan outlines how both states and the people have sought ...
07.10.2018 Civilians and War Historian Margaret MacMillan dissects the relationship between war and the civilian. Speaking to an audience in Beirut, she looks back at the city's violent past and discusses the impact of conflict on noncombatants throughout the centuries. She explores how civilians ...
07.03.2018 Fearing and Loving: Making Sense of the Warrior Historian Margaret MacMillan asks why both men and women go to war. "We are both fascinated and repulsed by war and those who fight," she says. In this lecture, recorded at York University, she explores looks at the role of ...
06.26.2018 War and Humanity Is war an essential part of being human? Are we destined to fight? That is the central question that historian Professor Margaret Macmillan addresses in five lectures recorded in the UK, Lebanon and in Canada. In her series, called The ...
09.29.2017 Angela Stent on George Kennan Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series
09.28.2017 Grayson Perry on Nikolaus Pevsner Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series
09.27.2017 Brian Cox on Robert Oppenheimer Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series
09.27.2017 Anand Menon on Robert Birley Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series
09.27.2017 Michael Sandel on Bertrand Russell Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series
07.11.2017 Adaptation Hilary Mantel on how fiction changes when adapted for stage or screen. Each medium, she says, draws a different potential from the original. She argues that fiction, if written well, doesn't betray history, but enhances it. When fiction is turned ...
07.04.2017 Can These Bones Live? Hilary Mantel analyses how historical fiction can make the past come to life. She says her task is to take history out of the archive and relocate it in a body. "It's the novelist's job: to put the reader in ...
06.27.2017 Silence Grips the Town The story of how an obsessive relationship with history killed the young Polish writer Stanislawa Przybyszewska, told by best-selling author, Hilary Mantel. The brilliant Przybyszewska wrote gargantuan plays and novels about the French Revolution, in particular about the revolutionary leader ...
06.20.2017 The Iron Maiden How do we construct our pictures of the past, including both truth and myth, asks best-selling author Hilary Mantel. Where do we get our evidence? She warns of two familiar errors: either romanticising the past, or seeing it as a ...
06.13.2017 The Day Is for the Living Art can bring the dead back to life, argues the best-selling novelist Hilary Mantel, starting with the story of her own great-grandmother. "We sense the dead have a vital force still," she says. "They have something to tell us, something ...
11.08.2016 Culture The philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah says the idea of "Western civilization" or "Western culture" is a mistaken one and that we should abandon it. He uncovers the history of the idea from its roots at the time ...
11.01.2016 Colour The philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah argues for a world free of racial fixations. He tells the story of Anton Wilhelm Amo Afer. He was five years old when he was brought from the Gold Coast to Germany ...
10.25.2016 Country The philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah argues against a mythical, romantic view of nationhood, saying instead it should rest on a commitment to shared values. He explores the history of the idea, born in the 19th century, that ...
10.18.2016 Creed Philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that when considering religion we overestimate the importance of scripture and underestimate the importance of practice. He begins with the complexities of his own background, as the son of an English Anglican ...
02.02.2016 Black holes ain't as black as they are painted The Cambridge cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking delivers the second of his BBC Reith Lectures on black holes. Professor Hawking examines scientific thinking about black holes and challenges the idea that all matter and information is destroyed irretrievably within them. He ...
01.26.2016 Do black holes have no hair? Professor Stephen Hawking delivers the first of his two BBC Reith Lectures on black holes. These collapsed stars challenge the very nature of space and time, as they contain a singularity - a phenomenon where the normal rules of the ...
12.16.2014 The Idea of Wellbeing The surgeon and writer Atul Gawande calls for a new focus on medical systems to ensure doctors work more effectively, alongside far greater transparency about their performance. Speaking to an audience at the India International Centre in Delhi, he describes ...
12.09.2014 The Problem of Hubris Surgeon and writer Atul Gawande calls for a new approach to the two great unfixable problems in life and healthcare - ageing and death. He tells the story of how his daughter's piano teacher faced up to terminal cancer and ...
12.02.2014 The Century of the System The surgeon and writer Atul Gawande argues that better systems can transform global healthcare by radically reducing the chance of mistakes and increasing the chance of successful outcomes. He tells the story of how a little-known hospital in Austria managed ...
11.25.2014 Why Do Doctors Fail? Surgeon and writer Atul Gawande explores the nature of fallibility and suggests that preventing avoidable mistakes is a key challenge for the future of medicine. Through the story of a life-threatening condition which affected his own baby son, Dr. Gawande ...
11.05.2013 I Found Myself in the Art World In the last of his four Reith Lectures, recorded in front of an audience at Central St Martins School of Art in London, the artist Grayson Perry discusses his life in the art world; the journey from the unconscious child ...
10.29.2013 Nice Rebellion, Welcome In! In the third of four lectures, recorded in front of an audience at The Guildhall in Londonderry, the artist Grayson Perry asks if revolution is a defining idea in art, or has it met its end? Perry says the world ...
10.22.2013 Beating the Bounds The award-winning artist Grayson Perry asks whether it is really true that anything can be art. We live in an age when many contemporary artists follow the example of Marcel Duchamp, who famously declared that a urinal was a work ...
10.15.2013 Democracy has bad taste In the first of four lectures, recorded in front of an audience at Tate Modern in London in 2013, the artist Grayson Perry reflects on the idea of quality and examines who and what defines what we see and value ...
07.10.2012 Civil and Uncivil Societies The historian Niall Ferguson examines institutions outside the political, economic and legal realms, whose primary purpose is to preserve and transmit particular knowledge and values. In a lecture delivered at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he asks if the modern ...
07.03.2012 The Landscape of the Law The historian Niall Ferguson delivers a lecture at Gresham College in the heart of legal London, addressing the relationship between the nature of law and economic success. He examines the rule of law in comparative terms, asking how far the ...
06.26.2012 The Darwinian Economy The eminent economic historian Niall Ferguson travels to the world's financial centre to deliver a lecture at the New-York Historical Society. He reflects on the causes of the global financial crisis, and argues that many people have drawn erroneous conclusions ...
06.19.2012 The Human Hive The eminent economic historian Professor Niall Ferguson argues that institutions determine the success or failure of nations. In a lecture delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science, he says that a society governed by abstract, impersonal rules ...
09.20.2011 Eliza Manningham-Buller: Freedom In this third and final Reith lecture the former Director General of the security service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller, discusses policy priorities since 9.11. She reflects on the Arab Spring, and argues that the West's support of authoritarian regimes did, to ...
09.13.2011 Eliza Manningham-Buller: Security The former Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller gives the second of her BBC Reith Lectures 2011. In this lecture called " Security" she argues that the security and intelligence services in a democracy have a good record ...
09.06.2011 Eliza Manningham-Buller: Terror The former Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller gives the first of her BBC Reith Lectures 2011 called " Terror." On the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the United States on September 11th she reflects on the ...
07.05.2011 Aung San Suu Kyi: Dissent The pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, examines what drives people to dissent in the second of the 2011 Reith Lecture series. 'Securing Freedom'. Reflecting on the history of her own party, the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu ...
06.28.2011 Aung San Suu Kyi: Liberty The Burmese pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, explores what freedom means in the first of the 2011 Reith Lecture series, 'Securing Freedom'. Reflecting on her own experience under house arrest in Burma, she explores the universal human aspiration to ...
06.22.2010 The Runaway World THE REITH LECTURES 2010 4. The Runaway World In the last Reith Lecture of 2010, Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, explores how fast our world is moving in the 21st century. Speaking at the Open ...
06.15.2010 What We'll Never Know 3. What We'll Never Know In the third of this year's Reith Lectures, recorded at the Royal Society during its 350th anniversary year, its President Martin Rees continues to explore the challenges facing science in the 21st century. He stresses ...
06.08.2010 Surviving the Century Lecture 2: 'Surviving the Century' In the second of this year's Reith Lectures, recorded for the first time in Wales in the National Museum Cardiff, Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, continues to explore the challenges ...

Older episodes

The Reith Lectures

What's The Reith Lectures about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Reith Lectures episodes:

From Climate Crisis to Real Prosperity

From Covid Crisis to Renaissance

From Credit Crisis to Resilience

From Moral to Market Sentiments

5/5. Shifting the Foundations

4/5. Rights and the Ideal Constitution

3/5. Human Rights and Wrongs

2/5. In Praise of Politics

1/5. Law's Expanding Empire

War's Fatal Attraction

Managing the Unmanageable

Civilians and War

Fearing and Loving: Making Sense of the Warrior

War and Humanity

Angela Stent on George Kennan

Grayson Perry on Nikolaus Pevsner

Brian Cox on Robert Oppenheimer

Anand Menon on Robert Birley

Michael Sandel on Bertrand Russell

Adaptation

Can These Bones Live?

Silence Grips the Town

The Iron Maiden

The Day Is for the Living

Culture

Colour

Country

Creed

Black holes ain't as black as they are painted

Do black holes have no hair?

The Idea of Wellbeing

The Problem of Hubris

The Century of the System

Why Do Doctors Fail?

I Found Myself in the Art World

Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!

Beating the Bounds

Democracy has bad taste

Civil and Uncivil Societies

The Landscape of the Law

The Darwinian Economy

The Human Hive

Eliza Manningham-Buller: Freedom

Eliza Manningham-Buller: Security

Eliza Manningham-Buller: Terror

Aung San Suu Kyi: Dissent

Aung San Suu Kyi: Liberty

The Runaway World

What We'll Never Know

Surviving the Century

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