In 1948, philosopher Bertrand Russell sat in front of a microphone at the BBC. Listeners didn’t realize how cool he looked.
Russell, a Nobel laureate, gave the inaugural Reith Lectures, a series of radio transmissions aimed at connecting experts in various fields with the general public. The lectures focused on topics of significance for their time, by the likes of J Robert Oppenheimer and George Kennan. If you don’t know who those folks are, then look ’em up, cause they’re kinda important.
Yup, big names and their ideas were made accessible to people listening to their radios. Now, the lectures are all available in an online archive, which can be found below.
Give a listen to the unwritten.
BBC Article: “BBC Radio 4 unveils 60 years of Reith Lectures Archive”