The Reith Lectures

This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University and author of “Why Politics Fails.” In four lectures called “Our Democratic Future,” he asks how we can build a politics that works for all of us with political systems which are robust to the challenges of the twenty first century, from climate change to artificial intelligence.

In this fourth a...

This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University and the author of "Why Politics Fails." He will deliver four lectures in a series called “Our Democratic Future.” The series asks how we can build a politics that works for all of us with systems which are robust to the challenges of the twenty first century, from climate change to artificial intel...

This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He will deliver four lectures called “Our Democratic Future.”

In his series Professor Ansell asks how we can build a politics that works for all of us with systems which are robust to the challenges of the twenty first century, from climate change to artificial intelligence. The lectures build on h...

This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He will deliver four lectures called “Our Democratic Future,” asking how we can build a politics that works for all of us with systems which are robust to the challenges of the twenty first century, from climate change to artificial intelligence.

In this first lecture, recorded at New Broadcasting...

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 Lecture on Freedom from Fear. Dr Hill is one of the world’s leading experts on Russia, and served as director for European and Russian affairs on President Trump’s National Security Council, and in senior intelligence roles for both Presidents Bush and Obama. She will talk about the fe...

Author and musician Darren McGarvey gives the third of four BBC Reith Lectures on the theme of liberty, addressing "Freedom from Want." McGarvey argues that the present system isn't working for many but that it is incumbent on citizens to confront that and rise to the challenge of what inequality means. Individuals, he says, need to take personal responsibility and reject the apathy which many working-class communities experience.

T...

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 Acton, yr awdur ar ryddid o'r 19 ganrif a ddyfynnir yn y ddarlith, rhyddid crefyddol yw sail pob rhyddid gwleidyddol. Mae Rowan Williams yn cymhwyso hyn yng nghyd destun De Affrica, y gwrthdaro yn y ddadl gyfoes am erthylu ac amryw bynciau eraill. Dadleuir fod rhyddid i addoli yn gorfo...

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, gives the second of the 2022 Reith Lectures, discussing faith and liberty. In his lecture, he cites Lord Acton, the 19th Century thinker on freedom, who said that religious freedom is the basis of all political freedom. Williams addresses this with reference to South Africa and today's controversies around the abortion debate. He argues that for religious believers, freedom of ...

Best-selling Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives the first of four 2022 Reith Lectures, discussing freedom of speech. She argues that it feels like freedom of speech is under attack. Cancel culture, arguments about “wokeness" and the assault on Salman Rushdie have produced a febrile atmosphere. Meanwhile autocrats and populists have undermined the very notion of an accepted fact-based truth which lives above politics. S...

Stuart Russell suggests a way forward for human control over super-powerful artificial intelligence. He argues for the abandonment of the current “standard model” of AI, proposing instead a new model based on three principles - chief among them the idea that machines should know that they don’t know what humans’ true objectives are. Echoes of the new model are already found in phenomena as diverse as menus, market research, and dem...

Professor Stuart Russell explores the future of work and one of the most concerning issues raised by Artificial Intelligence: the threat to jobs. How will the economy adapt as work is increasingly done by machines? Economists’ forecasts range from rosy scenarios of human-AI teamwork, to dystopian visions in which most people are excluded from the economy altogether. Was the economist Keynes correct when he said that we were born ...

Stuart Russell warns of the dangers of developing autonomous weapon systems - arguing for a system of global control. Weapons that locate, select, and engage human targets without human supervision are already available for use in warfare,. Some argue that AI will reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties. Others believe it could kill on a scale not seen since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Will future wars be fought entirely by ma...

Stuart Russell explores the future of Artificial Intelligence and asks; how can we get our relationship with it right? Professor Russell is founder of the Centre for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley. In this lecture he reflects on the birth of AI, tracing our thinking about it back to Aristotle. He outlines the definition of AI, its successes and failures, and the risks it poses for...

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 suggests that we can create an ecosystem in which society’s values broaden the market’s conceptions of value. In this way, individual creativity and market dynamism can be channelled to achieve broader social goals including, inclusive growth and environmental sustainability.

Presenter: ...

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 opportunity. During the first few months of the crisis, most states chose to value human life more than the economic well-being of the nation-state. But if that seems to be changing how do we assess value in this sense?

Dr Carney elucidates surprising differences in the financial value pu...

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 bankers saw themselves as unassailable Masters of the Universe. More than a decade on, how much have the bankers changed their ways? How far has the financial sector changed? Dr Carney says that we must remain vigilant and resist the “three lies of finance.” If we don’t, he warns, we w...

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 market societies. He argues that this has contributed to a trio of crises: of credit, Covid and climate. And the former Bank of England Governor will outline how we can turn this around.

In this lecture, recorded with a virtual audience, he reflects that whenever he could step back from wh...

Jonathan Sumption argues against Britain adopting a written constitution as a response to political alienation. The former UK Supreme Court Justice has argued that politics is in decline partly, at least, because the courts and the law is increasingly doing what politicians used to do. This has indirectly contributed to the electorate’s increasing rejection of the political process. There is growing resentment against the politic...

Jonathan Sumption assesses the US and UK’s constitutional models. He describes Britain's unwritten constitution as a political institution. The US Constitution is by contrast essentially a legal document. This has led Americans to address what should be political questions – such as the right to abortion – via the courts, rather than through politics. Britain, Lord Sumption argues, should learn from the United States be careful ab...