Enjoy The Vast Rays Of Knowledge That Shine From The Centuries Old Gresham College

15/5/2023

When I started Alternative Fruit, I wanted to find a way of bringing academic humanities to the public for free. With a media format, it follows a typical model with unusual content to make it stand out. Although there isn’t as much humanities-based academia available to the public for free as there is science or mathematics, people like me have identified the need for it. A mission to dig a well and produce a fountain where people of all walks of life can learn about what it means to be who they are is not as unusual as it might seem.

Gresham College was founded in 1597 and has been putting on free lectures for over four hundred years. A whole range of topics have been taught from within the walls, however the humanities are an important element in their continual output. Now in the modern age, Gresham College has a YouTube channel that displays professional standard lectures on a plethora of subjects.

Whether you’re interested in Women Leaders of Early Christianity or the Gods of Pagan Britain, you can be submerged in mindful and academically sourced information on the topic. Sit back and indulge yourself in nearly two hours of seminar on Sir Christopher Wren, the British mathematician, taught by Katherine Blundell and Sarah Hart. If art is more your thing, then why not investigate the Portraiture and Power series in which the iconic images of some of history’s most famous faces are explored.

There are literally thousands of videos on hundreds of subjects sitting there waiting for us to watch. We can get a daily fix of university level in-depth thought about art, history, science, mathematics, politics, and much more with no real end in sight. For as long as it takes to catch up on everything so far, there will be many more fresh ones to discover after that. When combining a regular routine of watching these lectures and filling half an hour or so with free learning on Futurelearn, the result will be a formidable mindset few would find the need to contradict.

Here are some Alternative Fruit picks from Gresham College to get you started. Visit the channel for the whole selection.