Gresham College

How to Play a Planet Space and Music II - Milton Mermikides:

634 views · today · 38:04

Following on from last year’s lecture at the Festival of Musical Ideas, Professors Lintott and Mermikides will present, demonstrate and critique the idea of ‘astro sonification’, using sound and music to represent the astronomical patterns seen in the sky. A particular focus will be on representations of the diverse exoplanet systems now found around other stars, and on musical representations (historical and contemporary) of the worlds of our Solar System.

Topics: // Space and Music: An Ancient Connection · // Pythagoras, Harmony and What Is Sonification? · // Everyday Sonification: Kettles, Earthquakes and Mountains · // Turning Spider Webs, Auroras and Starry Night into Sound · // Astro-Sonification: Why Astronomy Data Suits Music · // Playing the Solar System on a Theremin

📖 Mentioned book: The Crowd and the Cosmos

Lift Off - Chris Lintott

1K views · today · 11:52

Guests: Chris Lintott, Lift Off

Professor Lintott explains how we connect the many different ways of observing the sky with attempts to understand the nature of what is seen. This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on September 25th 2026 at Barnards Inn, London.

Topics: // Welcome to Gresham’s Festival of Astronomical Ideas · // Christopher Wren and Practical Astronomy for Mariners · // Wren’s “Handles” of Saturn vs Huygens’ Rings · // Hooke, the Monument and the Hunt for Stellar Parallax · // Measuring Star Distances with New Horizons · // Lost in a Vast Universe: Gaia and the Rubin Observatory

📖 Mentioned book: The Crowd and the Cosmos

The Strange Story of Astroarcheology - Ronald Hutton

2K views · today · 41:42

Guest: Ronald Hutton

Of all the components of the environment around British prehistoric monuments, the sky is the one that has changed least across the millennia. This, and the fact that some of the most famous of these monuments were clearly aligned on heavenly bodies, should make the study of the relationship between those structures and celestial features a central concern to the archaeologists investigating them.

Topics: // Why Do Archaeologists Ignore the Sky? Archaeoastronomy in Britain · // Big Science, Professional Archaeology & Victorian Ideas of Progress · // The Lost Wisdom Myth: Primal Religion & Ancient Knowledge · // Stonehenge Solstice Alignments, Maeshowe & Norman Lockyer · // Stonehenge Decoded: Gerald Hawkins’ Computer Theory (1965) · // Alexander Thom & the Megalithic Observatory Theory

Santa, Elon, and the Interplanetary Internet - Victoria Baines

514 views · today · 36:48

Guest: Victoria Baines

Unless it’s Christmas Eve, that chain of lights moving across the sky is probably not Santa’s sleigh but Starlink’s low earth orbit satellites (LEOs). To meet demand for ubiquitous, instantaneous, and uninterrupted communication, our internet infrastructure now extends into outer space. This talk explores who owns it, who has to clean up after it, and its impact on terrestrial politics.

Topics: // Intro: ’Twas the Night Before Starlink · // Starlink Trains: 10,500 Satellites Overhead · // How SpaceX Made Low Earth Orbit Cheap · // Starlink and the War in Ukraine · // Musk, Putin and Taiwan: Satellites as Foreign Policy · // The Outer Space Treaty: Who Makes the Rules?

📖 Mentioned book: The Crowd and the Cosmos

What searching for life tells us about Earth - Helen Czerski

1K views · today · 34:33

Guest: Helen Czerski

Professors Czerski and Lintott investigate how ocean Earth compares and differs from the other planets we’ve found, and how water worlds in many forms may be more common than expected. Using Lovelock’s framing of a biosphere, we consider life on these worlds, and explain what this thinking about the Universe can tell us about our own planet.

Topics: // Welcome: Helen Czerski at the Astronomy Festival · // Myth Busted: Do We Really Know More About the Moon Than the Ocean? · // Why We Can’t See the Deep Sea: Light vs Sound · // Earth as an Ocean Planet: How Water Stores and Moves Energy · // Follow the Water: Ocean Stability and the Search for Life · // James Lovelock, Entropy and the Gaia Hypothesis

📖 Mentioned book: The Crowd and the Cosmos

Why Natural History Museums Had to Change

224 views · 1d ago · 1:34

This lecture was recorded by Professor Kate Hill on 14th of October 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London. Kate is Professor of History at the University of Lincoln, UK, where she teaches modern British history and heritage.

Rosetta Stone: How Britain Turned Antiquities Into Prestige

362 views · 2d ago · 1:27

Guest: Rosetta Stone

This lecture was recorded by Professor Kate Hill on 14th of October 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London. Kate is Professor of History at the University of Lincoln, UK, where she teaches modern British history and heritage.

Bethnal Green Museum: The V&A’s Unexpected Crowd Puller

315 views · 3d ago · 1:18

Guest: Bethnal Green Museum

This lecture was recorded by Professor Kate Hill on 14th of October 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London. Kate is Professor of History at the University of Lincoln, UK, where she teaches modern British history and heritage.

Rather Trivial Things? Finding the Precious in an Alternative Museum History - Kate Hill

6K views · 3d ago · 44:21

Guest: Kate Hill

000:00 Introducing Professor Kate Hill Watch the Q&A session here Societies and individuals keep things which are precious to them in museums – and have done for centuries now. Yet over the last two centuries, the things which are kept, the people who put them in museums, and the precise purposes for which they are kept, have varied enormously.

Topics: Museums as “value engines” · The V&A’s price tags and the South Kensington Museum · National rivalry and the Rosetta Stone · Top-down vs. bottom-up value · Three case studies: an overview · Case study 1: Bethnal Green Museum opens, built from leftovers

▶️ Mentioned videos: Watch the Q&A session

What Do You Need a Mathematician For? Perspectives from the 17th Century - Volker Remmert

7K views · 7d ago · 50:22

Guest: Volker Remmert

In the early modern period, it was common practice to praise the mathematical sciences, a typical example being Martinus Hortensius’ Inauguration Speech on the Dignity and the Usefulness of the Mathematical Sciences (Amsterdam 1634).

Topics: // Introduction — AI and the question facing mathematicians · // The declaration on AI and mathematics · // Navier-Stokes and a “Kasparov moment” · // The 17th-century answer — what were the mathematical sciences? · // Martinus Hortensius and his Amsterdam oration · // Certainty, antiquity and Archimedes

▶️ Mentioned videos: Watch the Q&A session

📄 Mentioned papers: doi:10.14760/978-3-00-082798-3

What is the Purpose of Yoga: Transcendence or Transformation? - Jim Mallinson

22K views · 10d ago · 53:50

Guest: Jim Mallinson

In this lecture, Jim Mallinson draws on texts, art history and fieldwork to trace the history of the role of the body in yoga over its 2,500-year history. For its first 1,500 years the body is to be transcended; yoga’s aim is an almost death-like mental stillness equated with liberation. Then the body starts to be cultivated to attain power and immortality. While charting this transformation, Prof.

Topics: Framing the question: from fakir to yogi · A scholar's life among India's ascetics · From Sanskrit student to Oxford PhD · What yoga isn't: the "5,000 years old" myth · Rethinking the Indus Valley "proto-Shiva" seal · The earliest evidence of yoga, c. 500 BCE

▶️ Mentioned videos: Watch the Q&A session