Symbolic Liberalism and Dialogical Sociology
Classical liberalism, in the tradition of the philosopher John Rawls, upholds the value of equal basic liberties and the fair exercise of po...
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10-Minute Talks
The world’s leading professors explain the latest thinking in the humanities and social sciences in just 10 minutes.
Episodes
20 of 103 episodesDisability as a driver of change: depathologising the university
What happens when we centre disabilities as a driving subject of intellectual, personal and political inquiry? Professor Dan Goodley FBA unp...
Why and how are machine learning algorithms are driving polarisation?
A common criticism of social media is that groups of people are creating echo chambers that exclude different perspectives, but these echo c...
Fake News and the Victorians: Literature in the First Information Age
The 19th century became the age of the first information revolution. Driven by colonial and imperial geopolitics, rapid technological innova...
Figuring Forth: Cervantes’ Don Quijote, Poet in Prose
Cervantes’ groundbreaking novel, Don Quixote, is a comic but profound meditation on dreams, disillusionment and the blurred line between ill...
What can ancient civilisations teach us about sustainability?
A cosmology or worldview is the framework of beliefs and attitudes through which we interpret and make sense of the world, including how we...
Why are cities an important part of climate change?
Cities are central to both the problems and solutions of the climate crisis. Climate change is often seen as a global issue that can only be...
Tutankhamun’s Table: Food & Drink for a King
In 1922, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings astounded archaeologists and the public alike. Beyond the ornate tre...
Judith Butler on Gender
“Gender studies as a discipline is by definition interdisciplinary, drawing from several paradigms, and it is defined by a set of debates an...
Who invented the potato? And why should we care?
"How did Sir Walter Raleigh invent the potato?” In this 10-Minute Talk, Rebecca Earle FBA takes up Philomena Cunk’s question to explore the...
The Man Who Shot Nelson: A French Take on Trafalgar
From a fake news report claiming a French victory to fictional memoirs and literary retellings, the Battle of Trafalgar’s legacy in France b...
Why Truth is Not Enough
In a post-truth world, can we always trust data? And what about our human biases? Walking us through ‘the ladder of misinference’, Alex Edma...
The 21st Century Resurgence of Eugenics
Eugenics is a coercive ideology with a destructive history over the course of the 19th and 20th Centuries. But did support for eugenics die...
The Dead Sea Scrolls and Beginnings of Western Mysticism
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? Who discovered them? And why are they important? Professor Philip Alexander FBA explores the history of the s...
The rise and fall of Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General
What really happened when a breakdown of the legal system in the English Civil War fuelled a series of witch-hunts? In this 10-Minute Talk,...
Schubert’s Die Forelle: how a classical music piece changes over time
Classical music is often wrongly considered to be unaffected by political and social change. Exploring Franz Schubert’s ‘Die Forelle’, Laura...
'Salvator Mundi': Leonardo da Vinci's missing masterpiece?
‘Salvator Mundi’ is a painting surrounded by mysteries. In this talk, Professor Martin Kemp FBA explores evidence that it is indeed a work o...
What does a neuropsychologist do?
What exactly is the work of a neuropsychologist? In this 10-Minute Talk, Professor Barbara Sahakian FBA unpacks some of her key work over th...
Traditional Japanese theatre and audience interaction
Japanese theatre has, from its beginnings, encouraged audience participation – from formal fan-clubs to lessons on dancing and chanting. Hea...
What are empires, nation states and colonialism?
How do we understand empire in the modern age? In this 10-Minute Talk, Professor Gurminder K Bhambra challenges the idea that modern nation-...