The Royal Institution Courses

How Do Neural Networks Grow Smarter? - With Robin Hiesinger

A neurobiology and AI talk on how brains develop intelligence, comparing biological growth, learning algorithms, neural network history, and the limits of training.

• YouTube
• 54 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Is It Our Moral Duty to Explore Other Planets? - With Christopher Mason

A geneticist argues that humanity has a moral duty to explore other worlds and proposes reengineering human biology for sustainable life beyond Earth.

• YouTube
• 52 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

How Irrationality Created Modern Science - With Michael Strevens

How modern science’s power may depend on breaking rules of logical argument and cultivating an intellectual blind spot.

• YouTube
• 56 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Overloaded - How Your Brain Chemicals Influence Your Life - With Ginny Smith

Explore how neurotransmitters shape memory, emotions, sleep, decision-making, behavior, and survival drives.

• YouTube
• 38 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

How Do Crime Labs Translate Forensic Evidence into Proof? - With Beth Bechky

An ethnographic look at how forensic scientists translate laboratory findings into courtroom proof while navigating pressure and tensions between science and law.

• YouTube
• 57 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Effective Data Visualisation - With Valentina D'Efilippo

Explore how empathy, inspiration, and creative thinking can transform datasets into more effective data visualisations than standard charts.

• YouTube
• 1 hour 2 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Viruses, Pandemics and Immunity - With Arup K Chakraborty and Andrey S Shaw

An exploration of how viruses emerge into pandemics and how immunity, diagnostic tests, vaccines, and antiviral therapies respond.

• YouTube
• 52 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Our Quest to Understand the Cosmos - Brian Greene in Conversation with Jo Marchant

A conversation tracing humanity’s quest to understand the universe from its beginning and eventual end, through entropy, consciousness, quantum mechanics, and science.

• YouTube
• 1 hour 6 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Why Mental Health Goes Wrong and How to Make Sense of It - With Dean Burnett

Explores how modern life affects mental health and what happens in the brain during anxiety, depression, and addiction.

• YouTube
• 1 hour 14 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

How Can Machines Learn Human Values? - With Brian Christian

Explore how machine-learning systems go wrong, from biased data and unfair predictions to reward design and the AI alignment problem.

• YouTube
• 1 hour 2 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

How Can Climate Models Help Us Respond to Climate Change? - With Vicky Pope

Explore how climate models represent change, use observations and uncertainty, and inform adaptation, mitigation, and decarbonisation decisions.

• YouTube
• 54 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

A History of Nerve Agents - With Dan Kaszeta

Trace nerve agents from their 1930s invention through chemical warfare, global proliferation, arms races, and the 2018 Novichok attack.

• YouTube
• 56 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

What Is Reality? - With Frank Wilczek

A Nobel laureate explores how time, space, matter, energy, complexity, and complementarity shape our understanding of reality.

• YouTube
• 1 hour 18 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

A Series of Fortunate Events – With Sean B. Carroll

A scientific exploration of how chance, mutation, fertilization, and mass extinction shape life’s diversity and challenge the idea that everything happens for a reason.

• YouTube
• 32 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

The Hunt for New Batteries - with Serena Corr

Explore how batteries work, why new chemistries are needed, and how researchers are developing safer, more powerful, sustainable designs.

• YouTube
• 1 hour 11 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video