Gresham provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on the Gresham website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
In this lecture, I look at what people from the late eighteenth century to the present thought they knew about toes, arches, heels, and ankles. What makes a beautiful foot? How have ideas of foot-beauty changed over time?
This lecture looks at nineteenth-century fads involving stomachs, including the medical prescription of tapeworms that were supposed to live in a person’s stomach and “eat” food on their behalf.
Is the clitoris simply a female version of the male penis? Many scientists and biologists in the past thought so. It is only in recent decades that the physiology of the clitoris has become understood.
Narrative, the way a tale is told, is less straightforward than we might suppose. Austen handled irony brilliantly and systematically exploited new ways of narrating, including free indirect discourse. This lecture explores why Austen's way of narrating are so compelling.
What happens when doctors and parents cannot agree on whether a child should be given experimental medical treatment? Why is there any question mark over a parent’s right to decide if medical treatment for their child continues?
This lecture starts by looking at early-modern understandings of the nature of ‘animal’ and ‘human’ life, before turning to the rise of ‘rights of animals’.