Dr Peter Wothers unpicks the chemistry of the world around us, looking at air, water and earth - three of the original ancient Greek 'elements' that tantalised alchemists for centuries.

Professor Sophie Scott will take us on a fascinating journey through one of the fundamentals of human and animal life: the unstoppable urge to communicate, in the 2017 CHRISTMAS LECTURES on communication. Lecture One looks at how we gained the remarkable instrument that is the human voice. Sophie will explore how laughter provides a link to our animal past, how our voice box has changed the shape of our faces and why we sound the way we do. In Lecture Two Sophie will explore the hidden code of communication, the more secret and sometimes more sinister side of human interaction – everything we say without opening our mouths – from contagious behaviours to the emotional clues in smell, and whether information wired directly into our brains is really a future we want. And in Lecture Three, Sophie will examine one of the biggest puzzles in science – how and when humans first evolved language – revealing the huge amount of raw brain power and sensory skill needed to understand even a simple sentence and how we convey as much meaning through our tone, pace and pitch of voice as we say with our words. Along the way we’ll feature a modern-day return to classic television moments from past Lectures such as Sir David Attenborough’s ‘The Language of Animals’ from 1973, and may even attempt a world record.

Saiful Islam investigates how to generate energy, without destroying the planet in the process.

Professor Mike Wooldridge tackled the big questions and unravelled the myths of AI research in the 2023 CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution, supported by CGI.

Renowned experimental psychologist Professor Bruce Hood delivers three demonstration-packed lectures entitled Meet Your Brain

In the first of this year's Christmas lectures, Dr Mark Miodownik investigates why size matters in animal behaviour. He reveals how the science of materials - the stuff from which everything is made - can explain some of the most extraordinary and surprising feats in the animal kingdom. Dr Mark Miodownik zooms into the microscopic world beneath our fingertips. In this unfamiliar landscape, strange forces dominate the world and common sense goes out of the window. He reveals how this tiny hidden world can make objects behave like magic, and discovers the secrets of the extraordinary metals that make jet engines possible. In the last of this year's Christmas Lectures, Dr Mark Miodownik investigates the world of the very big and very tall. He reveals that, at this scale, everything is governed by a battle with one of the strangest forces in the universe - gravity.

Inspired by the Royal Institution’s very own Michael Faraday, Prof Danielle George attempts to use simple motors to construct the world’s greatest robot orchestra. When Michael Faraday demonstrated the first electric motor in 1822, he could never have dreamed that in 2014 we’d be surrounded by mechanical devices capable of performing nearly every human task. In this lecture, Danielle will explain how these robotic and motor-driven appliances work and show how they can adapted to help you kick start a technological revolution. She’ll show you how to turn a washing machine into a wind turbine, how Lego can solve a Rubik’s Cube and how the next Mars rover will traverse an alien world.