The Reith Lectures
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The Reith Lectures
Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series
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247 EpisodenCan we change violent minds?
In her final lecture, the forensic psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead, assesses how we deal with violent offenders and asks is it time for a re-think?
Does Trauma Cause Violence?
How best do we understand how to manage powerful emotions such as rage, fear and shame? With very rare access, Forensic Psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead...
Aren't they all evil?
In her second Reith Lecture, Dr Gwen Adshead asks if there’s such a thing as “evil.”?
In a career spanning nearly 40 years the forensic psychia...
Is Violence Normal?
In her 2024 Reith Lectures, Dr Gwen Adshead, addresses four questions that she has most commonly faced in her work as a therapist with violent perpetr...
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 “...
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 o...
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 delive...
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 delive...
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 L...
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 argue...
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 Acto...
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 ci...
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 f...
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 “sta...
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...
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...
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...
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 sugg...
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 oppo...
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 ba...
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 mark...
Shifting the Foundations
Jonathan Sumption argues against Britain adopting a written constitution as a response to political alienation. The former UK Supreme Court Justice h...
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 Con...
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...
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 year...
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 Supre...
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,...
Managing the Unmanageable
Historian Margaret MacMillan assesses how the law and international agreements have attempted to address conflict. Speaking to an audience at the Nort...
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 v...
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 thi...
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...
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...
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 Gr...
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 b...
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 A...
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...
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 argue...
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...
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 M...
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...