The BBC's prestigious Reith Lectures for 2014 will feature renowned surgeon and writer Atul Gawande. The series, which examines The Future of Medicine with Gawande takes a look at the nature of modern medicine: Both it's progress and it's failures. Medicine is defined he says by "the messy intersection of science and human fallibility.' The lectures will take place in India, the USA and UK.

The very first Reith lecturer was the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke on Authority and the Individual. Previous Reith lecturers from the world of medicine include Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, who in 2003 lectured on new insights into the human brain's workings; Professor of genetics and broadcaster Steve Jones who delivered the 1991 Reith Lectures examining what we know and have still to discover about genetics;  and English zoologist and neurophysiologist John Zachary Young in 1950 who explored the function of the brain, and the current scientific methods used to increase our understanding of it.