About page

About

This free site features public lectures, teaching material, interviews with leading academics, information about applying to the University, and much more.

All the material is arranged within a series of related talks or lectures and may be in audio, video or document format. A full list of all series is available.

We recommend

Content is being added regularly to the site. All content is free for you to download and watch or listen to. This site currently contains over 12,000 episodes arranged into over 800 series. Over 11,500 academic contributors have released material.

Series highlights include:

Approaching Shakespeare: Each lecture in this series by Dr Emma Smith focuses on a single play by Shakespeare, and employs a range of different approaches to try to understand a central critical question about it.
General Philosophy: Peter Millican's lectures aim to provide a thorough introduction to many philosophical topics and to get first year undergraduate students and others interested in thinking about key areas of philosophy.
Back Garden Biology: In this fun and informative series Dr Lindsay Turnbull, Associate Professor and Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford University, looks at the biology found in the English back garden.
Stargazing: Find out more about our night sky, from new planets to far-off galaxies and the vastness of the Universe. A series of short talks and presentations for the general public from leading astronomy researchers at the Oxford University Physics Department.
TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities: TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities is a major new initiative supporting research that transcends disciplinary and institutional boundaries. The series features a dazzling array of event recordings; dip in to find treasures such as the true meaning of "carpe diem", AI and creativity, war poetry and million dollar maths equations.
The New Psychology of Depression: Dr Danny Penman and Professor Mark Williams discuss medical approaches to dealing with stress, anxiety and depression.
The Elements of Drawing: Stephen Farthing R.A. presents eight practical drawing classes using John Ruskin’s teaching collections to explain the basic principles of drawing.
A Romp Through Ethics for Complete Beginners: Marianne Talbot's lively introduction considers the underpinnings of ethical thought.
Shakespeare's entire First Folio, including original spelling, is available to download for free in ePub format.

Accessing the podcasts

Podcasts on the University Podcasts site can be streamed in a web browser or downloaded to your device for offline listening.

All podcast series are also available via Apple Podcasts; you will find a link on each episode or series. On Mac computers use the Podcasts app to listen, and on older Macs use iTunes (macOS 10.14 or earlier). Apple iPhone and iPad users can use the iOS Podcasts app. For Windows download iTunes here (link).

You can also subscribe to a series using an RSS reader by clicking the Subscribe button.

Background

In October 2008 the University of Oxford launched its podcast site on iTunes U and this parallel web site https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk.

As of June 2022, here are some key statistics on media published since launch:

13.389 podcast items processed
6,147 hours of material
11,546 academic speakers and contributors
29 million downloads/streams from Oxford on Apple Podcasts (iTunes U)
823 series published

This free web site features public lectures, teaching material, interviews with leading academics, information about applying to the University, and much more.
If you wish to use this material more widely in class or for teaching and learning then please visit our copyright page.