Big Ideas (audio)

John Ralson Saul argues that Canada is a Metis nation, critically influenced and shaped by aboriginal ideas.

Journalist and historian, Gwynne Dyer, discusses his book Climate Wars, outlining the impact that climate change is likely to have on international relations. Dyer focuses particularly on the military conflicts that he sees resulting from global warming.

Leo Panitch delivers this year's Phyllis Clarke Memorial Lecture entitled "Still a Marxist After All: Lessons and Insights for our Time".

In her lecture, Belonging to Britain, Hazel Carby looks at the historic relationship between England and Jamaica, including the history of the slave trade in Bristol and the complex question of identity for those of mixed British and West Indian heritage. Carby is a professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University.

Philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Levy critiques present-day leftist politics for its anti-liberalism, anti-Americanism, and for being soft on radical Islamism.

Merv Mosher from the Kinesiology and Health Science department at York University in Toronto is profiled and delivers his lecture entitled, Statistics: What's the Point?

Top ten finalist, Professor Rod Carley, from the Communication Arts department at Canadore College in North Bay is profiled and delivers his competition lecture entitled, Adapting Shakespeare Within a Modern Canadian Context.

Clare Hasenkampf from the Biological Sciences department at the University of Toronto Scarborough delivers her competition lecture entitled "Chromosomes Dividing: How It Is Done and Why It Matters".

Darryl Davies from the Sociology and Anthropology department at Carleton University in Ottawa delivers his competition lecture entitled "Explaining Crime".

Shawn Lehman from the Anthropology department at the University of Toronto St. George delivers his competition lecture entitled "Primate Infanticide: Adaptation or Social Pathology?"

Paul Stevens from the English department at the University of Toronto St. George delivers his competition lecture entitled "Milton's Satan".

Doug Richards from the Physical Education and Health department at the University of Toronto St. George delivers his competition lecture entitled "Stretching: The Truth".

James Allard from the English Language and Literature department at Brock University in St. Catharines delivers his competition lecture entitled "Frankenstein: Five Ways".

Anton Allahar from the Sociology department at the University of Western Ontario in London delivers his competition lecture entitled "Why Isn't the Whole World Developed?"

Matthew Bellamy from the History department at Carleton University in Ottawa delivers his competition lecture entitled "A Watershed Moment: Canada and the Second World War".

Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Toby Miller, examines the environmental impact of our obsession with technology.

"Religion and Democracy: Antagonists or Allies?" is the topic of the 2008 Seymour Martin Lipset Memorial Lecture.

The author of "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder", David Weinberger, delivers a lecture entitled "Knowledge at the End of the Information Age". In this talk Weinberger argues that the internet is both profoundly weird, and deeply familiar. He claims that, by changing the way we receive information from the broadcast era's one-way monologue into a multi-directional conversation, the internet has humanized information.

Barlow argues that access to safe drinking water should be a basic human right and makes a compelling case for why the global water crisis will be the greatest environmental and human crisis of this century.

Lewis Lapham laments the state of the American education system.