Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
In this final lecture we will consider whether we can plot a more successful future than our recent history might suggest and what that implies for our economic and political institutions.
There are large disparities in economic performance at the regional level in the UK. We need to consider what kinds of policies might raise regional performance and the extent which directed industrial policies and infrastructure spending might be employed to iron out differences.
Asteroid impact could devastate the Earth, although preventive measures might detect and monitor orbits of potential killer asteroids. Longer term, the sun will evolve into a red giant and expand to a hundred times the orbit of the earth.
What are the implications of the Big Bang for our understanding of ourselves? Is the universe meaningless? or is there some way of developing a ‘big picture’ of reality that helps us decide our place and purpose in the universe.
There are green marketing scams, and dubious data being deployed to benefit shareholders. Are global businesses now leading politicians in moving towards more sustainable practice or is this an example of a ‘post-truth’ society?
The experience of inter-mediation in the UK does not encourage the thought that long term finance can easily be located. Do we need a Development Bank?
This talk and panel discussion will explore the fundamentals of trust, why companies lower standards at their peril, and what, other than pious words, can be done to restore confidence that society has appropriate levels of commercial trust.