Big Ideas (audio)

Can one planet survive the impact of a human population of close to 9 billion people? Environment writer, Andrew Revkin, interviews author and distinguished professor, Vaclav Smil, about the promise and perils of the next fifty years. This talk was part of the Q2C festival at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo in October 2009.

In his lecture entitled Reality and the Sacred, psychology professor, Jordan Peterson, explores the human search for meaning in a chaotic world and how our perceptions and beliefs shape our sense of reality.

Award-winning journalist Palagummi Sainath delivers a lecture at York University entitled Slumdogs versus Millionaires: India in the Age of Inequality.

Author, activist, journalist and blogger, Cory Doctorow, delivers a lecture on Copyright vs. Universal Access. Subtitled, The State of Play in the Global Copyfight, this lecture was part of the Q2C Festival at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo.

English professor Nick Mount analyzes T.S. Eliot's modernist masterpiece, The Waste Land.

Rupinder Brar from the Science and Physics Department at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology presents his competition winning lecture entitled Exoplanets: The Search for Other Earths.

David Gray from the Economics Department at the University of Ottawa presents his competition lecture entitled Open Economy Macroeconomics

Nadia Habib from the Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Department at York University presents her competition lecture entitled Reflections on Gender and Sexuality.

Bruce Meyer from the English Department at Laurentian University at Georgian College presents his competition lecture entitled The Four Phases of Yeats.

Monika Havelka from the Biology Department at the University of Toronto Mississauga presents her competition lecture entitled Why Sex? The Evolution of a Paradox.

Rupinder Brar from the Faculty of Science at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology presents his competition lecture entitled Exoplanets: The Search For Other Earths.

Virginia Walker lecture audio podcast

Sohail Rashid from the Psychology Department at Ryerson University presents his competition lecture entitled Birth Order and Personality.

Karolyn Smardz Frost from the History Department at York University presents her competition lecture entitled Fugitive Sources: Uncovering Toronto's Underground Railroad Connections.

Eleanor MacDonald from the Political Studies Department at Queen's University presents her competition lecture entitled Are We Postmodern?

Steve Joordens from the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto Scarborough presents his competition lecture entitled You Can Lead Students to Knowledge, But How Do You Make Them Think?

As part of his Literature for Our Time series, English professor Nick Mount discusses Virginia Woolf?s novel To the Lighthouse.

At the 2009 Darwin conference entitled Origin of Species at 150, philosophy professor Michael Ruse asks Is Darwinism Past its Sell-By Date?

Art historian, Francis Broun, delivers an informative and entertaining lecture on the sculptures of Michelangelo. Broun is a professor in the Faculty of Liberal Studies at the Ontario College of Art

In her best-selling book, Dead Aid, economist Dambisa Moyo, argues that aid to Africa breeds corruption and dependence and should be replaced with more innovative ways of financing, including capital markets and microfinance. Her lecture, Innovating Away from Aid, was delivered at the University of Waterloo.