We're standing in a large, cluttered museum gallery, feeling a bit dwarfed by a massive Native American totem pole, which towers nearby. Only about eight of us have showed up for this brief weekday lunchtime talk, where one of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology curators is expected to talk for 20 minutes about a favorite object in the collection.

Carefully laid out on a tray in front of the curator are the objects of his affection: Bronze Age swords and daggers. Within minutes, he has us all slipping on soft white gloves (I have a flashback to my days in a junior high mime troupe) and passing around these ancient objects. Heck, he even encourages us to give the swords a little swing as they pass into our hands, swinging them quite enthusiastically himself to demonstrate. The swords, with narrow blades longer than my arm, are surprisingly light, but balanced beautifully so even I can feel the power of it between my hands as I lift the blade and then slice it downward in an arc. The daggers, which our zealous curator points out, are equally well-designed for the opposite motion - an upward thrust. I shudder to think of the damage these weapons would have been inflicting somewhere in western Europe a few thousand years ago, yet find myself enjoying the feel of metal through my soft white gloves.

The sword demonstration was one of more than 200 events that were organised for a two-week Festival of Ideas at the university, held at the end of October. Loosely themed around arts, humanities and social sciences, the festival was basically an excuse for the university to give geeks like me the opportunity to gorge ourselves on lectures. And gorge I did. I should disclose that friends of mine organized the festival, so volunteering and attending events was perhaps more of a priority for me than it might have been, but it was the perfect excuse to go to the kinds of events I wish I was motivated enough to go to more often, yet (and here's the ever present voice of guilt I can never quite silence) don't.

So, in less than 14 days, between volunteering as a steward and just going on my own volition, I attended lectures on: Conceptions of Press Freedom (should we really give the media unconditional free reign?); Dead hands: Jane Austen's Manuscripts and Other Puzzles (is it fair to read and critique deceased authors' unfinished works?); Minding your Manners (Roman, Tudor and Victorian table manners); Cracking Alchemical Codes (the beauty and symbolism of alchemical manuscripts); Mythology and Marketing in the Renaissance (how politicians used art to assert their power); Louise Rennison in Conversation (author of popular novels for teenage girls talking writing with a librarian); Political Hypocrisy (Guardian journalist and Cambridge prof chewing the fat about what we should and shouldn't expect from our political leaders); Facebook: Friendship and Social Interaction (are friends online truly friends forever?); Climb Every Mountain: The Ups and Downs of Summit Diplomacy (how things like personal chemistry and translation methods influenced the outcomes of summits for Chamberlain/Hitler, Reagan/Gorbachev and other 20th-century heads of state); Cambridge Ancient and Modern: the Architecture of the Colleges and University (fascinating slide show offering insights into Cambridge's eclectic collection of architectural styles); and Does it All Add Up? Do Oscar Winners Live Longer and Left-Handers Die Younger? (no and no, but statistics can be manipulated to tell us a lot of things that aren't necessarily true).

Still reading this? Then maybe you might have enjoyed the lectures, too. Perhaps you would have liked to inhale that musty, antiseptic aroma that clings to lecture halls the world over, settling your bum down onto a hard seat and craning your head to see someone at a lectern imparting a few ideas your way. A geeky pleasure or a guilty pleasure? Discuss.