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.
Our gut is permanently full of large numbers of bacteria but serious infections rarely occur due to its extraordinary immune system. Public health has reduced but not eliminated transmission of these potentially dangerous infections.
Control measures including vaccination have reduced the risk of some, but not all, of these very serious infections. This lecture will cover how infections get into the brain, their effect and how we can prevent and treat them.
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.
Productivity growth in the UK economy has lagged behind that of our major trading partners. We will examine a number of possible explanations ranging from the role of finance to the employment of physical and human capital.