Big Ideas (audio)

Big Ideas presents Christopher W. diCarlo, winner of the 2008 Best Lecturer Competition, on The New Ethics: A Synthetic Approach to Understanding Good and Evil.

Big Ideas preents Rod Carley, winner of the 2009 Best Lecturer Competition, on Theatre in the 21st Century: Touchstone to Humanity

Popular Welsh-born storyteller 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.

Big Ideas presents 2010 Best Lecturer Competition winner Rupinder Brar on The Impact of Astronomy on Humankind's Perception of the Universe

Big Ideas presents Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discussing Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds

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. This lecture was produced in collaboration with the Literary Review of Canada.

Big Ideas presents Hod Lipson of Cornell University exploring his work in such areas as evolutionary robotics and programmable self-assembly, Lipson delivers a lecture entitled The Robot Scientist: Mining Experimental Data for Scientific Laws, from Cognitive Robots to Computational Biology.

Winner of the prestigious Holberg International Memorial Prize, University of Toronto philosophy professor, Ian Hacking, presents a lecture entitled The Mathematical Animal.

Big Ideas presents University of Toronto English professor, Nick Mount, on the graphic novel It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken by Seth.

Professor David Sloan Wilson, author of Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, delivers the annual Wiegand Memorial Foundation lecture entitled Religion and Other Meaning Systems. He examines how the experience of the religious believer differs from the secular thinker and argues that both can be understood in terms their particular meaning systems.

Big Ideas presents author and book reviewer Robert Adams as he discusses the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

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 groundbreaking, international bestseller The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone.

Big Ideas presents Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology on Quantum Life, how organisms have evolved to make use of quantum effects.

English professor, Christian Campbell, interviews Caribbean poet and playwright, Derek Walcott, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. Walcott discusses issues of identity, culture, and language in this illuminating conversation, filmed at Hart House Theatre on November 23, 2010.

Big Ideas presents Brian Dalton on his Mr. Deity podcasts, the amorality of Christianity and the morality of atheism

Daniel C. Dennett, Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, on What Should Replace Religions?

Biology professor and well-known blogger, PZ Myers, on Science and Atheism: Natural Allies. This lecture was delivered at the Humanist Canada/Atheist Alliance International 2010 Convention in Montreal.

Journalist and author Chris Hedges delivers a lecture based on his book Death of the Liberal Class. Hedges argues that there are five pillars of the liberal establishment - the press, liberal religious institutions, labor unions, universities and the Democratic Party - but that these institutions have failed the constituents they purport to represent.

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.

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. Winchester 19s lecture on The Man Who Loved China was delivered at the Royal Ontario Museum on October 14, 2010.