Myself, Coding, Ranting, and Madness

Reith Lectures

Artist Grayson Perry presents the 2013 BBC Reith Lectures, titled “Playing to the Gallery”. The first programme will be available to download on Tuesday 15 October 2013.

The fours lectures are billed to be looking at the role and place of art in the landscape of the 21^st century, talking about topics such as the role or art in society, the limits of contemporary art, and the idea of how we judge quality1. The last of these has the potential to make for a most interesting lecture, perhaps electing to build on Pirsig's Metahpysics of Quality2.

Also worth being aware of are the historical Reith lectures. Bundled between 1948–1975 and 1976–2012, they contain a number of very interesting talks. For ease of (mainly my own) reference, I compiled a list of all the series:

• Niall Ferguson — The Rule of Law and its Enemies (2012)
• Eliza Manningham-Buller — Securing Freedom (2011)
• Aung San Suu Kyi — Liberty (2011)
• Aung San Suu Kyi — Dissent (2011)
• Martin Rees — Scientific Horizons (2010)
• Scientific Horizons — Martin Rees (2010)
• Michael Sandel — A New Citizenship (2009)
• Jonathan Spence — Chinese Vistas (2008)
• Patricia Williams — The Genealogy of Race (2007)
• Jeffrey Sachs — Bursting at the Seams (2007)
• Daniel Barenboim — In the Beginning was Sound (2006)
• Alec Broers — The Triumph of Technology (2005)
• Wole Soyinka — The Climate of Fear (2004)
• VS Ramachandran — The Emerging Mind (2003)
• Onora O'Neill — A Question of Trust (2002)
• Tom Kirkwood — The End of Age (2001)
• Chris Patten, Gro Harlem Brundtland, John Browne, Tom Lovejoy, Vandana Shiva — Respect for the Earth (2000)
• Anthony Giddens — Runaway World (1999)
• John Keegan — War in Our World (1998)
• Patricia Williams — The Genealogy of Race (1997)
• Jean Aitchison — The Language Web (1996)
• Richard Rogers — Sustainable City (1995)
• Marina Warner — Managing Monsters (1994)
• Edward Said — Representations of the Intellectual (1993)
• Steve Jones — The Language of the Genes (1991)
• Jonathan Sacks — The Persistence of Faith (1990)
• Jacques Darras — Beyond the Tunnel of History (1989)
• Geoffrey Hosking — The Rediscovery of Politics (1988)
• Alexander Goehr — The Survival of the Symphony (1987)
• Lord McCluskey — Lions Under the Throne (1986)
• Lord McCluskey — Law, Justice and Democracy (1986)
• David Henderson — Innocence and Design (1985)
• John Searle — Minds, Brains and Science (1984)
• Douglas Wass — Government and the Governed (1983)
• Denis Donoghue — The Arts Without Mystery (1982)
• Laurence Martin — The Two-Edged Sword (1981)
• Ian Kennedy — Unmasking Medicine (1980)
• Ali Mazrui — The African Condition (1979)
• Edward Norman — Christianity and the World Order (1978)
• A H Halsey — Change in British Society (1978)
• Colin Blakemore — Mechanics of the Mind (1976)

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• Daniel J Boorstin — America and the World Experience (1975)
• Ralf Dahrendorf — The New Liberty (1974)
• Alastair Buchan — Change Without War (1973)
• Andrew Shonfield — Europe - Journey to an Unknown Destination (1972)
• Richard Hoggart — Only Connect (1971)
• Donald Schön — Change and Industrial Society (1970)
• Frank Fraser Darling — Wilderness and Plenty (1969)
• Lester Pearson — Peace in the Family of Man (1968)
• Edmund Leach — A Runaway World (1967)
• John K Galbraith — The New Industrial State (1966)
• Robert Gardiner — World of Peoples (1965)
• Leon Bagrit — The Age of Automation (1964)
• Albert Sloman — A University in the Making (1963)
• George Carstairs — This Island Now (1962)
• Margery Perham — The Colonial Reckoning (1961)
• Edgar Wind — Art and Anarchy (1960)
• Peter Medawar — The Future of Man (1959)
• Bernard Lovell — The Individual and the Universe (1958)
• George F Kennan — Russia, the Atom and the West (1957)
• Edward Appleton — Science and the Nation (1956)
• Nikolaus Pevsner — The Englishness of English Art (1955)
• Oliver Franks — Britain and the Tide of World Affairs (1954)
• Robert Oppenheimer — Science and the Common Understanding (1953)
• Arnold Toynbee — The World and the West (1952)
• Lord Radcliffe — Power and the State (1951)
• Bertrand Russell — Authority and the Individual (1948)

Happy Listening.

1. 1 ↑ Podcast: Reith Lectures 2013: Welcome http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/reith/reith_20131008-1556a.mp3
2. 2 ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics_of_Quality