The Reith Lectures

By BBC Radio 4

What's The Reith Lectures about?

In this year's lectures, Professor Ben Ansell asks how we can make politics work for all of us as we face the challenges of the 21st century, from climate change to AI.

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The Reith Lectures episodes:

01.09.2024
The Global Story: How artificial intelligence could upend 2024’s many elections
Deepfakes, distrust and democracy: Billions of people will have the chance to vote this year in elections around the world. There will be campaigns in eight of the 10 most populous countries, including India and the Biden/Trump race for the...
12.20.2023
4. The Future of Prosperity
This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University and author of “Why Politics Fails.” In four lectures called “Our Democratic Future,” he asks how we can build a...
12.13.2023
3. The Future of Solidarity
This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University and the author of "Why Politics Fails." He will deliver four lectures in a series called “Our Democratic Future.” The...
12.06.2023
2. The Future of Security
This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He will deliver four lectures called “Our Democratic Future.” In his series Professor Ansell asks how we can build a politics...
12.01.2023
1. The Future of Democracy
This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He will deliver four lectures called “Our Democratic Future,” asking how we can build a politics that works for all...
12.21.2022
4. Freedom from Fear
In the last in a series of four lectures examining what freedom means, the foreign affairs and intelligence expert Dr Fiona Hill gives her BBC Reith Lecture on Freedom from Fear. Dr Hill is one of the world’s leading experts...
12.14.2022
3. Freedom from Want
Author and musician Darren McGarvey gives the third of four BBC Reith Lectures on the theme of liberty, addressing "Freedom from Want." McGarvey argues that the present system isn't working for many but that it is incumbent on citizens to...
12.07.2022
2. Rhyddid i Addoli
Rowan Williams cyn Archesgob Cymru a Chaergaint yn traddodi ei ddarlith Reith i'r BBC yn y Gymraeg gan drafod ffydd a rhyddid. Yn ôl yr Arglwydd Acton, yr awdur ar ryddid o'r 19 ganrif a ddyfynnir yn y...
12.07.2022
2. Freedom of Worship
Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, gives the second of the 2022 Reith Lectures, discussing faith and liberty. In his lecture, he cites Lord Acton, the 19th Century thinker on freedom, who said that religious freedom is the...
11.30.2022
1. Freedom of Speech
Best-selling Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives the first of four 2022 Reith Lectures, discussing freedom of speech. She argues that it feels like freedom of speech is under attack. Cancel culture, arguments about “wokeness" and the assault on...
12.22.2021
AI: A Future for Humans
Stuart Russell suggests a way forward for human control over super-powerful artificial intelligence. He argues for the abandonment of the current “standard model” of AI, proposing instead a new model based on three principles - chief among them the idea...
12.15.2021
AI in the economy
Professor Stuart Russell explores the future of work and one of the most concerning issues raised by Artificial Intelligence: the threat to jobs. How will the economy adapt as work is increasingly done by machines? Economists’ forecasts range from...
12.08.2021
AI in warfare
Stuart Russell warns of the dangers of developing autonomous weapon systems - arguing for a system of global control. Weapons that locate, select, and engage human targets without human supervision are already available for use in warfare,. Some argue that...
12.01.2021
The Biggest Event in Human History
Stuart Russell explores the future of Artificial Intelligence and asks; how can we get our relationship with it right? Professor Russell is founder of the Centre for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley. In this lecture he...
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...
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...
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
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...
06.11.2019
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
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
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
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
Reith Revisited: Angela Stent on George Kennan
Professor Angela Stent examines the lessons to be learnt from the 1957 Reith Lectures by the legendary American diplomat George Kennan, titled "Russia, the Atom and the West". Kennan, the architect of the American post-war policy of containment of the...
09.28.2017
Reith Revisited: Grayson Perry on Nikolaus Pevsner
'The Englishness of English Art' was the theme of the 1955 BBC Reith lectures by art historian Nikolaus Pevsner. Sarah Montague discusses them with Grayson Perry, the artist who himself was a Reith Lecturer in 2013. In Reith Revisited, Radio...
09.27.2017
Reith Revisited: Brian Cox on Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, gave the BBC's Reith lectures in 1953. Sarah Montague and Professor Brian Cox consider the lessons to be learnt from them today. The Reith Lectures began in 1948 on the Home Service, subsequently...
09.27.2017
Reith Revisited: Anand Menon on Robert Birley
Robert Birley's 1949 Reith Lectures series, "Britain in Europe", remain urgently topical today. Sarah Montague discusses the lectures with Professor Anand Menon. The Reith Lectures began in 1948 on the Home Service, subsequently moving to Radio 4 and becoming a...
09.27.2017
Reith Revisited: Michael Sandel on Bertrand Russell
Sarah Montague and Michael Sandel look back at the inaugural Reith Lectures given in 1948 and 1949 by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. In Reith Revisited, Radio 4 assesses the contributions of great minds of the past to public debate, in...
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 late 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...
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....
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...
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...

What's The Reith Lectures about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Reith Lectures episodes:

The Global Story: How artificial intelligence could upend 2024’s many elections

4. The Future of Prosperity

3. The Future of Solidarity

2. The Future of Security

1. The Future of Democracy

4. Freedom from Fear

3. Freedom from Want

2. Rhyddid i Addoli

2. Freedom of Worship

1. Freedom of Speech

AI: A Future for Humans

AI in the economy

AI in warfare

The Biggest Event in Human History

From Climate Crisis to Real Prosperity

From Covid Crisis to Renaissance

From Credit Crisis to Resilience

From Moral to Market Sentiments

Shifting the Foundations

Rights and the Ideal Constitution

Human Rights and Wrongs

In Praise of Politics

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

Reith Revisited: Angela Stent on George Kennan

Reith Revisited: Grayson Perry on Nikolaus Pevsner

Reith Revisited: Brian Cox on Robert Oppenheimer

Reith Revisited: Anand Menon on Robert Birley

Reith Revisited: 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!