In the second term of each academic year, since 1986, Darwin College has organised a series of eight public lectures, built around a single theme, with a mul…
48:301K views · 7mo ago · 48:30
Guest: Richard Morrison
From Renaissance princes and popes to modern-day democrats and dictators, those who rule countries, religious communities and empires have often kept a close watch on singers, songs and those who compose them. Equally, song has often been used as a subversive weapon, a tool of protest and a call to arms, as well as to bolster communal or national pride and morale.
1:03:25312 views · 8mo ago · 1:03:25
Guest: Dr Issa Boulos
Between 1936 and 1948, Palestinian music experienced a transformative period shaped by the establishment of the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Near East Broadcasting Station (NEBS). These radio stations became influential cultural platforms that enabled Palestinian musicians to explore, refine, and project a national identity through music.
1:00:05586 views · 8mo ago · 1:00:05
Guest: Professor Conny Aerts
For the past two decades it has been possible to measure the seismic activity of stars with high precision. This is thanks to dedicated telescopes operating from space. Using these recorded ‘songs of the stars’, asteroseismologists can gaze into stellar interiors. By doing this, it is possible to probe the physical conditions and chemical composition of these hot balls of gas millions of light years away.
Topics: Master's introduction · Professor Conny Aerts · Master's Summary
59:31344 views · 8mo ago · 59:31
Guest: Carola Darwin
The early 20th century in Vienna saw an extraordinary flowering of talent and creativity in music, literature and visual art, as well as in philosophy and psychology. This period is particularly known for the networks of personal and professional relationships that linked creative people in different fields, such as the painter Gustav Klimt, the composer Arnold Schoenberg and the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Topics: Master's Introduction · Dr Carola Darwin · "Warum so Traurig?" · Four musicians · Ringstrasse: 1867-1897 · "Ein Neuer Frühling"
53:40429 views · 8mo ago · 53:40
Guest: Matthew Gordley
We have no shortage of evidence about the importance of song in the ancient world, including written descriptions of music in literature, songs embedded in narratives, standalone hymnic texts, and collections of psalms and hymns. While we can only imagine the melodies and modes of performance, the surviving texts reveal an imaginal world in which the divine and the human were inextricably interwoven.
Topics: Master's Introduction · Professor Matthew Gordley · Master's Summary
57:28548 views · 9mo ago · 57:28
Guest: Ibrahim Baltagi
From the first lullabies that soothe an infant to the anthems of adolescence, song traces the map of our becoming. More than entertainment, it is a medium through which children learn to attend, remember, speak, and feel with others.
Topics: Master's Introduction · Dr Ibrahim Baltagi · Before there was language, there were songs... · Cycle 1: Regulation & Bonding | Ages 0-2 · Cycle 2: Organizing the World | Ages 3-6 · Cycle 3: Memory & Form | Ages 6-8
59:46451 views · 9mo ago · 59:46
Guests: Carole Pegg, Throat Singing
“Throat-singing” is timbre-centred vocal music typified by the simultaneous separate sounding of a musical drone and its overtones or undertones by a solo vocalist. Here I also include the timbral vocal technique of heroic epic performers. Often perceived as otherworldly, these vocal sounds have entranced global listeners and inspired many to attempt the technically difficult styles and substyles.
Topics: Master's Introduction · Dr Carole Pegg · Master's Summary
59:06623 views · 9mo ago · 59:06
Guest: Hans Slabbekoorn
The first video in the 2026 Lecture Series on the theme of Song. Nature is full of music, from tiny birds with melodious songs and elaborate repertoires to majestic whales with inaudibly low voices propagating around the globe. As far as we can tell, however, the music is not often just for pleasure and has evolved serving a purpose. Animals are almost continuously busy with their sonic flirts and fights, whether we hear them or not, in air and water, day and night.
Topics: Master's Introduction · Professor Hans Slabbekoorn · Master's Summary
58:264.3K views · 1y ago · 58:26
Guest: Professor Shannon Vallor
A code is a tool for hiding things of value. Yet codes also grant access to what has been hidden and locked away. This lecture explores the role of code, and coding, in both hiding and granting access to our humanity, in multiple senses of the word.
Topics: Decoding our Humanity by Prof. Shannon Vallor · The Master's Reflection
57:2717K views · 1y ago · 57:27
Guest: Professor Paul Baker
Polari was a form of language, developing across the 19th and 20th centuries among a queer subculture that newspapers of the time referred to as the “twilight world of the homosexual”. It acted as a secret code, allowing speakers to converse in public spaces, to identify one another and to form identities.
Topics: Polari, a lecture by Professor Paul Baker · A Fellow's Reflection, by Professor Alan Blackwell
56:201.5K views · 1y ago · 56:20
Guest: Dr Keolu Fox
In this special lecture to honour the legacy of Charles Darwin at the University of Cambridge, Dr Keolu Fox, the first Native Hawaiian PhD. in genomic sciences and a National Geographic Explorer and Wayfinder Award winner, presents a pioneering perspective that blends Indigenous knowledge with modern genomic research.
Topics: Giving of gifts by Dr Keolu Fox · Lecture starts · The Master's Reflection
1:02:38114K views · 1y ago · 1:02:38
Guest: Sandi Toksvig
In “Eve’s Byte of the Apple”, Sandi Toksvig will be taking an alternative look at the evolution of information, at how the knowledge of women and about women is encoded, and what comes from those codes. Since 2023 Sandi has been a Bye-Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge working on The Mappa Mundi Project, creating a global interactive digital platform telling women’s stories worldwide.
Topics: The Master's Introduction · Sandi Toksvig · The Master's Reflection
1:07:3318K views · 1y ago · 1:07:33
Guest: Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith
On top of the heritable genetic code that is our DNA, sits another layer of information that influences our genes. Studying the properties and functions of this ‘epi-genetic’ information has revealed a whole new aspect of genome biology with implications for health and disease, providing compelling explanations for how we might respond to our environment, and making us consider whether DNA is the only code we transmit from one generation to the next.
Topics: Beginning of the lecture by Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith · The Master's Reflection
1:01:074.2K views · 1y ago · 1:01:07
Guest: Dr Tom Crawford
Mathematical modelling is one of the most powerful tools available in our quest to understand the universe. From the work of Einstein and the theory of relativity, to disease modelling during the COVID -19 pandemic, by using the language of mathematics and reducing the world to equations, we are able to increase our understanding of what is happening around us. In a sense, mathematics is the key that unlocks the secret code of the universe.
Topics: Beginning of the lecture by Dr Tom Crawford · The Master's Reflection
1:00:169.8K views · 1y ago · 1:00:16
Guest: Maya Youssef
In this talk, I will explore how music holds a unique power to connect us to an essence of “home” – not just as a place, but as a feeling, a memory, or even a piece of ourselves we may have lost along the way. I’ll share my personal creative process, illustrating how I found music to be a profound tool for healing, for self-expression, and as a bridge to the deeper layers of my identity.
Topics: Beginning of the lecture by Maya Youssef · Early experience hearing the sound of the Qanun · What is a Qanun and how is it played? · Syrian Dreams · Samira Abbassy, Unravelling · Soul Fever
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