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Journalist, broadcaster and bestselling author Simon Winchester tells the remarkable story of Joseph Needham, an eccentric English chemist who wrote a vast book on Chinese science which remains the longest book about China ever written in the English language
Author, professor and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson delivers the 2010 Hancock Lecture. He discusses virtue from a contemporary perspective that both encompasses and extends beyond moral and religious contexts.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Chris Hedges delivers a lecture on his latest book The Death of the Liberal Class. He argues that American liberalism, a once proud political tradition, is dead, having sold out to corporate interests and abandoned its original principles. The result is a breakdown of the very fabric of democracy.
Noted atheist and secularist Daniel Dennett delivers his lecture "What Should Replace Religions?" Dennett is co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a University Professor at Tufts University.
Biology professor and well-known blogger PZ Myers on Science and Atheism: Natural Allies.
University of Toronto professor Christian Campbell talks to Nobel laureate poet Derek Walcott about his remarkable life and work.
Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology on Quantum Life, how organisms have evolved to make use of quantum effects.
One of Britain's leading social epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson, looks at what it means to live in a new age of inequality. Wilkinson is the co-author of the ground-breaking international bestseller, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone.
Author and book reviewer Robert Adams discusses the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.
Professor David Sloan Wilson examines how the experience of the religious believer differs from the secular thinker and argues that both can be understood in terms of their particular meaning systems. His lecture is entitled, Religion and Other Meaning Systems.
University of Toronto English professor Nick Mount on the graphic novel It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken by Seth.
University of Toronto philosophy professor Ian Hacking presents a lecture on The Mathematical Animal.
Hod Lipson discusses mining experimental data for scientific laws at a Perimeter Institute lecture
Environics co-founder, leading pollster and author Michael Adams delivers a lecture on the Boomer Impact, drawing on the insights and research in his latest book "Stayin' Alive: How Canadian Boomers Will Work, Play and Find Meaning in the Second Half of Their Adult Lives".
Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology delivers a lecture on Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds.
2010 Best Lecturer Competition winner Rupinder Brar delivers a new lecture entitled, The Impact of Astronomy on Humankind's Perception of the Universe,
Robert Adams reviews Elie Wiesel's novel, "The Forgotten", the profoundly moving story of an ailing Holocaust survivor who lives with disturbing memories and entrusts his son with a mysterious mission. Adams' talk was delivered at the Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue on November 2nd, 2010, as part of Holocaust Education Week.
Rod Carley, winner of the 2009 Best Lecturer Competition, delivers a new lecture entitled, Theatre in the 21st Century: Touchstone to Humanity.
In an illustrated talk, Italian mathematician Dr. Piergiorgio Odifreddi examines the deep and close relationships between the objects of mathematics and of the arts.
Christopher diCarlo, winner of the 2008 Best Lecturer Competition, delivers a new lecture entitled The New Ethics: A Synthetic Approach to Understanding Good and Evil.
Science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist Cory Doctorow delivers a lecture entitled Why it's a Bad Idea to Regulate Computers the Way We Regulate Radios, Guns, Uranium and Other Special-Purpose Tools.
2007 Best Lecturer winner Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Sudbury delivers a lecture entitled "Just Suppose You Could Know What Others are Thinking: No More Secrets".
The senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives discusses how too much power in too few hands is having an impact on our democracy.
Arne Kislenko, winner of the 2005 Best Lecturer Competition, on Triumph and Tragedy: Southeast Asia and the Cold War.
Novelist and critic Charles Foran recently won the 2011 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction for his book "Mordecai: The Life & Times".
Noam Chomsky, one of America's leading scholars and intellectuals, delivers a lecture on academic freedom and the corporatization of universities.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson and philosopher Ronald de Sousa go head-to-head in a lively debate over the question: Can we live without the sacred?
David Keith, speaking at the Equinox Summit, discusses Technology, Energy and Nature - Human Values and Open Choices. Professor Keith holds the Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment at the University of Calgary.
Jeff Melanson is the executive director of Canada's National Ballet School and recently accepted the position of President and CEO of The Banff Centre. This lecture was recorded at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto on May 24, 2011.
Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University delivers a lecture entitled, Living Through Four Revolutions. Dyson discusses Space Technology, Nuclear Energy, the Genome and the Computer Revolution.
In the late nineteenth century and as a consequence of Darwinism, many thinkers turned to science to solve the riddle of death. Philosopher and author John Gray explores humankind's dangerous striving toward a scientific version of immortality.
Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the CIGI Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo. This lecture, entitled Civilization Far From Equilibrium: Energy, Complexity and Human Survival was delivered at the Equinox Summit: Energy 2030.
Human societies use complexity – within their institutions and technologies – to address their various problems, and they need high-quality energy to create and sustain this complexity. But now greater complexity is producing diminishing returns in wellbeing, while the energetic cost of key sources of energy is rising fast. Simultaneously, humankind’s problems are becoming vastly harder, which requires societies to deliver yet more complexity and thus consume yet more energy. Resolving this paradox is the central challenge of the 21st century.
Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the CIGI Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, and is a Professor at the University of Waterloo. His research areas include the links between environmental stress and violence in developing nations, global security in the 21st century, and how societies adapt to economic, ecological, and technological change. Presented on June 7, 2011
Originally broadcast on October 22, 2011
Academic, author and political activist Noam Chomsky on the State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival. Chomsky's lecture was delivered at the Hart House Great Hall on April 7, 2011.
Leonard Susskind of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics discusses the indestructability of information and the nature of black holes in a lecture entitled The World As Hologram.
How Did Taxes Become a Bad Word? The Former Clerk of the Privy Council, Alex Himelfarb, discusses why we should be investing more, not less, in our future. While today's political leaders exalt the benefits of increased tax-cutting, Himelfarb argues that further tax cuts will come with serious consequences, including cuts to services and deeper inequality. According to Himelfarb, what we need is nothing less than a re-think about what our future is worth. His lecture was produced in collaboration with the Literary Review of Canada.
Hod Lipson of Cornell University discusses the future of 3-D printing in his lecture entitled, Programmable Matter: The Shape of Things to Come. Lipson is an Associate Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and of Computing & Information Science at Cornell. He is also the director of Cornell University's Creative Machines Lab (CCML).
Hungarian philosopher, Gaspar Tamas, on The Failure of Liberal Democracy in Eastern Europe and Everywhere Else. His lecture was delivered at the Munk School of Global Affairs on September 20, 2011. Tamas is a prolific writer of essays with a wide-ranging and distinguished career in academics and government. He was also a leading figure in the East European dissident movements.
Senior resident at Massey College, Michael Ignatieff, and University of Toronto political science professor Ramin Jahanbegloo discuss Liberty and the Arab Spring: Exploring Isaiah Berlin's Ideas in a Changing World. Mark Kingwell is the moderator.
Senior economist Armine Yalnizyan and economics professor and columnist William Watson debate "Inequality: A Threat to Democracy?" at the 2011 Keith Davey Forum on Public Affairs. Jeffrey Kopstein moderates.
John Ibbitson, Ottawa bureau chief for the Globe and Mail, delivers a lecture on The Collapse of the Laurentian Consensus and the Rise of Ontario as a Pacific Province. This lecture was produced in collaboration with the Literary Review of Canada.
Keith Devlin, Executive Director of the H-STAR Institute at Stanford University, discusses Leonardo and Steve: How Fibonacci Beat Apple to Market by 800 Years.
University of Toronto professor and clinical psychologist, Jordan Peterson, delivers the 2010 Hancock Lecture entitled The Necessity of Virtue. He discusses virtue from a contemporary perspective that both encompasses and extends beyond moral and religious contexts. Through compelling stories and research, Dr. Peterson illustrates the necessity of virtue both for the individual and for society at large.
Ivan Semeniuk, Chief of Corespondents for Nature leads a discussion centered on the ideas and thoughts of Stephen Hawking. Neil Turok, Julie Payette, Rebecca Saxe and S. James Gates, Jr. cover topics including unified theory, cosmology and colonization of space.
