December 13, 2024

Watch Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, and Richard Dawkins in the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on YouTube

The Royal Institution of Great Britain was founded in 1799, and in 1825, began its annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for scientific education. Every year since then, a leading scientist has delivered a series of lectures. Since 1936, these Christmas Lectures have been broadcast on TV, making them the oldest science television series. The Royal Institution now has an archive of these lectures going back to the 1960s, with videos you can watch on their website of most of these Christmas Lectures:

Watch the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures Archive

To celebrate 200 years of these lectures, The Royal Institution YouTube Channel, has uploaded three of their most popular Christmas Lecture series onto YouTube from astronomer Carl Sagan, naturalist Sir David Attenborough, and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. We’ve added these three Christmas Lecture series to our site and have written up some reviews of them.

David Attenborough: Christmas Lectures on The Language of Animals (1973)

Sir David Attenborough is known for the nature documentaries he has written and narrated for the BBC from the 1950s to the present day (as of this writing he’s still alive at age 98!). In 1973, he gave this series of Christmas Lectures for the Royal Institution on The Language of Animals. Presented before an audience of children, Attenborough brings out many animals in his lectures to demonstrate the variety of ways in which these animals communicate. In the opening lecture, he conveys ways in which animals portray threats, usually to other creatures that want to eat them. Sometimes the animals communicate real threats, and sometimes they are “bluffing”, or communicating a threat even if they aren’t dangerous. In later lectures he explains how animals communicate attraction, young animals communicate with their parents, and then asks the question of if humans can effectively communicate with animals and vice versa. Lecture four called “Simple Signs and Complicated Communications” was lost from the archives, but the other five lectures are available to watch now on YouTube. These are enjoyable lectures on animal communication that are accessible to young and old alike.

Carl Sagan: Christmas Lectures on The Planets (1977)

Planetary scientist and science communicator Carl Sagan gave this series of six lectures on the planets in 1977, predating his popular 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by a few years. Using many visual aids, Sagan takes a look at the planets in our Solar System and their relation to the rest of the universe. He starts with a lecture on planet Earth, relating it to the other planets and analyzing it with photos from space. He emphasizes how close you have to get to really see evidence of life on Earth. In subsequent lectures, he explores the possibility of life in outer space, with a focus on the history of Mars and some of the discoveries that were being made there with unmanned space probes. In the final lecture, Sagan looks at the likelihood of billions of planets beyond our Solar System. While no extra-solar planets had been found by the late 1970s, in the past 20 years over 450 extra-solar planets have been discovered, while the possibility of life on them is yet to be known.

Richard Dawkins: Christmas Lectures on Growing Up in the Universe (1991)

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has written popular science books such as The Selfish Gene (1976), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), and The God Delusion (2006). In 1991, he delivered a series of Christmas Lectures for the Royal Institution on Growing Up in the Universe. His first lecture, entitled “Waking Up in the Universe”, gives us a sense of the vastness and complexity of life on Earth. He tries in many ways to convey the long expanses of time that evolution has taken to arrive at the present moment of life and how lucky we are to have been born as humans in this moment. He stresses the importance of science in conveying the wonder and meaning of life as greater than any supernatural explanation. In the next four lectures, he confronts the problem of design, the improbability of evolutionary success, whether life was made for our benefit, and how human brains have developed a sense of purpose in the Universe. In lecture four, author Douglas Adams shows up to read a relevant passage from his novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Enjoy these scientific Christmas Lectures and many more on the Royal Institution website:

Watch the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures Archive