Reith Lectures

Speaking to an audience at the India International Centre in Delhi, Atul Gawande, describes the story of medicine over the last century through the prism of his own family. From a grandmother who died in rural India from malaria - a preventable disease - to the high-tech medicine of today. He argues that despite its scientific advances, medicine has failed to exploit its knowledge successfully. The Reith Lectures are introduced and chaired by Sue Lawley and produced by Jim Frank.

In this episode Atul Gawande calls for a new approach to the two great unfixable problems in life and healthcare - ageing and death. He tells the story of how his daughter's piano teacher faced up to terminal cancer and the crucial choices she made about how to spend her final days. Dr. Gawande argues that the common reluctance of society and medical institutions to recognise the limits of what professionals can do can end up increasing the suffering of patients towards the end of life. He proposes that both doctors and individuals ask a series of simple but penetrating questions to decide what kind of treatment is appropriate - or whether treatment is appropriate at all. The programme was recorded at The Royal Society in Edinburgh in front of an audience.

The surgeon and writer Atul Gawande argues that better systems can transform global healthcare by radically reducing the chance of mistakes and increasing the chance of successful outcomes. e programme was recorded at The Wellcome Collection in London before an audience. The Reith Lectures are chaired and introduced by Sue Lawley and produced by Jim Frank.

In the first of four BBC 2104 Reith Lectures, surgeon and writer, Dr Atul Gawande, explores the nature of fallibility and suggests that preventing avoidable mistakes is a key challenge for the future of medicine: Why Do Doctors Fail?

4/4. Grayson Perry discusses his life in the art world and assesses the role of the artist in society.

Can art still shock us or have we seen it all before? Speaking to an audience at The Guildhall in Londonderry, the artist Grayson Perry asks if revolution is a defining idea in art, or has it met its end?

Can anything be considered as art? Grayson Perry questions the often-heard assertion in his second Reith Lecture, recorded at St. George's Hall in Liverpool.

In his first Reith Lecture the British artist Grayson Perry explains the process of assessing quality in contemporary art. Recorded in front of an audience at Tate Modern in London, Perry argues that there is no empirical way to judge quality in art. Instead the validation of quality rests in the hands of a tightknit group of people at the heart of the art world including curators, dealers, collectors and critics who decide in the end what ends up in galleries and museums. Often the last to have a say is the general public.

Are we living through a time of creeping legal degeneration in the English-speaking world, asks the economic historian Niall Ferguson in the third of his 2012 Reith Lectures. Speaking at Gresham College in the heart of London's legal district, he examines the relationship between the nature of law and economic success, and asks just how credible the common law's claim to superiority over other systems really is.

Is financial regulation the disease of which it purports to be the cure, asks economic historian Prof Niall Ferguson in his second Reith Lecture. He argues that overly complex financial regulation is to blame for the 2007 financial crisis - not deregulation, as many others claim. The solution to getting the banks to behave, he says, is not more regulation but scaled back, simplified regulation and, importantly, full enforcement of the law.

Institutions determine the success or failure of nations and a society governed by abstract, impersonal rules will become richer than one ruled by personal relationships, says the economic historian Prof Niall Ferguson. But, he asks, are the institutions of the West now degenerating, as young people confront the fact that they must live with the huge financial debt generated by the baby boomers? And is there a way of restoring the compact between the different generations?