Blog Archive | Ideas with Paul Kennedy

The 2013 CBC Massey Lectures, "Blood: The Stuff of Life"

Monday, November 11, 2013 | Categories: Massey Lectures |

Blood runs red through all of us and carries the same life-giving energy to every human being. We've learned a lot about the science of...

The 2012 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos"

Monday, November 12, 2012 | Categories: Episodes, Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos will be rebroadcast August 5 - 9. Every technology we rely on today was created by the...

The 2011 CBC Massey Lectures, "Winter: Five Windows on the Season"

Monday, November 7, 2011 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

This year the CBC Massey Lectures celebrates fifty years with bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik.His subject is winter...

The 2010 CBC Massey Lectures, "Player One: What is to Become of Us"

Monday, November 8, 2010 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

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The 2009 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World"

Monday, November 2, 2009 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

The Wayfinders is a profound celebration of the wonder of human genius and spirit as brought into being by culture. Of the 7,000 languages spoken...

The 2008 CBC Massey Lectures, "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth"

Thursday, November 6, 2008 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Legendary novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood delivers a surprising look at the topic of debt. In her wide-ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the...

The 2007 CBC Massey Lectures, "The City of Words"

Wednesday, November 7, 2007 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

The end of ethnic nationalism, building societies around sets of common values, seems like a good idea. But something is going wrong. In the 2007...

The 2006 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Ethical Imagination"

Tuesday, November 7, 2006 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Science and technology confront us with some of the most challenging and unprecedented ethical questions in the world today. These issues encompass what it...

The 2005 CBC Massey Lectures, "Race Against Time"

Monday, November 7, 2005 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

"I have spent the last four years watching people die." With these wrenching words, diplomat and humanitarian Stephen Lewis opens his 2005 Massey Lectures. Lewis's...

The 2004 CBC Massey Lectures, "A Short History of Progress"

Sunday, November 7, 2004 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Each time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The 20th century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption,...

The 2003 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative"

Friday, November 7, 2003 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

In his 2003 Massey lecture, award-winning author and scholar Thomas King looks at the breadth and depth of Native experience and imagination. Beginning with Native...

The 2002 CBC Massey Lectures, "Beyond Fate"

Thursday, November 7, 2002 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

People today are often afflicted with a sense that they cannot change things for the better. They feel helpless, constrained, caught -- in a word,...

The 2001 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Cult of Efficiency"

Wednesday, November 7, 2001 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

"This is a time of excitement and innovation, but also contradiction, passion, and fierce polemics in our public conversations. As modern democratic societies begin to...

The 2000 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Rights Revolution"

Tuesday, November 7, 2000 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, rights have become the dominant language of the public good around the globe....

The 1999 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Triumph of Narrative - Storytelling in an Age of Mass Culture"

Monday, November 8, 1999 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Of all the ways that people have learned to communicate with each other, the story is the most human, the most flexible, and perhaps the...

The 1998 CBC Massey Lectures, "Becoming Human"

Monday, November 9, 1998 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

"These talks are about the liberation of the human heart from the tentacles of chaos and loneliness, and from those fears that provoke us to...

The 1997 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Elsewhere Community"

Monday, November 10, 1997 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Exile, identity and fantasy. In the 1997 Massey Lectures, Hugh Kenner writes about the idea that people have a constant need for stimulation from a...

The 1995 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Unconscious Civilization"

Monday, November 6, 1995 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Knowledge, the Enlightenment believed, could protect us from the follies of ideology. But John Ralston Saul maintains that "knowing" has not made us "conscious." Instead...

The 1994 CBC Massey Lectures, "On The Eve of the Millennium"

Monday, November 7, 1994 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Conor Cruise O'Brien, respected journalist, diplomat and statesman, considers threats to the Enlightenment tradition from which modern society derives threats he considers serious enough that...

The 1993 CBC Massey Lectures, "Democracy on Trial"

Monday, November 8, 1993 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Even as democracy triumphed over totalitarianism, our own democracy was faltering rather than flourishing. Famed political philosopher - Jean Bethke Elshtain - examines democracy's...

The 1992 CBC Massey Lectures, "Twenty-First Century Capitalism"

Monday, November 9, 1992 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Robert Heilbroner explores capitalism as both an economic system and a political order and demonstrates how these two inter-relate. He also describes and compares...

The 1991 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Malaise of Modernity"

Monday, November 11, 1991 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Charles Taylor focuses on the key modern concept of self-fulfillment, often attacked as the central support of what Christopher Lasch has called "the culture of...

The 1990 CBC Massey Lectures, "Biology As Ideology"

Wednesday, November 7, 1990 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Richard Lewontin is a prominent scientist -- a geneticist who teaches at Harvard -- yet he believes that we have placed science on a pedestal,...

The 1989 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Real World of Technology"

Tuesday, November 7, 1989 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Technology has always been a part of human existence. Today though, says the experimental physicist, Ursula M. Franklin, technology has large-scale effects on culture itself....

The 1988 CBC Massey Lectures, "Necessary Illusions"

Monday, November 7, 1988 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Noam Chomsky inquires into the nature of the media in a political system where the population cannot be disciplined by force and thus must be...

The 1987 CBC Massey Lectures, "Compassion and Solidarity"

Saturday, November 7, 1987 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

". . . the Christian message of salvation includes the liberation of people from oppression."In the forthright style that has earned him a reputation for...

The 1985 CBC Massey Lectures, "Prisons We Choose to Live Inside"

Thursday, November 7, 1985 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Doris Lessing, one of the century's greatest writers, addresses the question of personal freedom and individual responsibility in a world increasingly prone to political rhetoric,...

The 1984 CBC Massey Lectures, "Latin America: At War With The Past"

Wednesday, November 7, 1984 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

A passionate argument for the geopolitical autonomy of Latin America, Carlos Fuentes' lectures trace the region's unique historical and cultural tensions and call upon foreign...

The 1983 CBC Massey Lectures, "Globalism and The Nation State"

Monday, November 7, 1983 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Canadian economist and former Liberal cabinet minister Eric Kierans examines the uncertain future facing constitutionally governed nation states whose sovereignty and independence is being threatened...

The 1982 CBC Massey Lectures, "Indefensible Weapons"

Sunday, November 7, 1982 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Our dependence on nuclear weapons, the disease of "nuclearism," undermines national security, destroys political legitimacy, and psychologically impairs a future. Robert Jay Lifton and Richard...

The 1981 CBC Massey Lectures, "Dangers & Options: The Matter of World Survival"

Saturday, November 7, 1981 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Willy Brandt, former West German Chancellor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, offers necessary solutions to the most important problem of our time -...

The 1979 CBC Massey Lectures, "Canadian Cities and Sovereignty Association"

Wednesday, November 7, 1979 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Jane Jacobs sees the main preoccupation of Canadian public life - the issue of national unity versus separation - reflected in the workings of major...

The 1978 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Inadvertent Epic: From Uncle Tom to Roots"

Tuesday, November 7, 1978 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Leslie Fiedler, 1978 Massey Lecturer writes: "I want to discuss the treatment of what seems to me now to be a kind of communal or...

The 1977 CBC Massey Lectures, "Myth and Meaning"

Monday, November 7, 1977 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Ever since the rise of science and the science and the scientific method in the 17th century, we have rejected mythology as the product of...

The 1975 CBC Massey Lectures - "Limits To Science"

Friday, November 7, 1975 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

J. Tuzo Wilson has been a chief exponent of the theory of continental drift, a subject of vigourous scientific controversy. Two decades ago, the theory...

The 1974 CBC Massey Lectures, "Nostalgia for the Absolute"

Thursday, November 7, 1974 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

The decline of formal religious systems has left a moral and emotional emptiness in Western culture. George Steiner, internationally renowned thinker and scholar, examines the...

The 1973 CBC Massey Lectures, "Designing Freedom"

Wednesday, November 7, 1973 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Distinguished cyberneticist Stafford Beer states the case for a new science of systems theory and cybernetics. His essays examine such issues as "The Real Threat...

The 1972 CBC Massey Lectures, "Inscape and Landscape"

Tuesday, November 7, 1972 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

By renowned Canadian Ecologist Pierre Dansereau. "The science of ecology", writes Dansereau, "has much to contribute to the development of a new consciousness of our...

The 1971 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Power of the Law"

Sunday, November 7, 1971 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

James Corry explores the case for law and order. Civil order is threatened if the law is not respected. But why should we respect it?...

The 1970 CBC Massey Lectures - "Therefore, Choose Life"

Saturday, November 7, 1970 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Harvard University biology professor Dr. George Wald discusses the need to build community amidst technological change, the "entirely secular religion" of science and says "know...

The 1969 CBC Massey Lectures, "Time As History"

Friday, November 7, 1969 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

George Grant, philosopher, member of the Department of Religion at McMaster University, gives this year's Massey Lectures on the conception of time as history. He...

The 1968 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Politics of Family"

Sunday, July 7, 1968 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Using concepts of schizophrenia, R.D. Laing demonstrates that we tend to invalidate the subjective and experiential and accept the proper societal view of what should...

The 1967 CBC Massey Lectures, "Conscience for Change"

Thursday, November 9, 1967 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

In the 1967 Massey Lectures, Martin Luther King writes:"Canada is not merely a neighbor to Negroes. Deep in our history of struggle for freedom Canada...

The 1966 CBC Massey Lecture, "The Moral Ambiguity of America"

Wednesday, November 9, 1966 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

Dr. Paul Goodman, social critic, talks about the problems of contemporary America. Pt. 1: The Empty Society Pt. 2: Counter Forces for a Decent Society...

The 1965 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Underdeveloped Country"

Tuesday, November 9, 1965 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

John Kenneth Galbraith focuses on the economics and politics of the developing countries. Galbraith believes the really important split in the world is not between...

The 1964 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Real World of Democracy"

Monday, November 9, 1964 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

C. B. Macpherson examines the rival ideas of democracy - the communist, Third World, and Western-liberal variants - and their impact on one another. He...

The 1963 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Image of Confederation"

Saturday, November 9, 1963 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

In the 1963 Massey Lectures Frank Underhill writes:"Our experiment of the new Canadian nationality has now been going on for almost a hundred years. It...

The 1962 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Educated Imagination"

Friday, November 9, 1962 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

In the 1962 Massey Lectures, Northrop Frye writes: "What good is the study of literature? Does it help us to think more clearly or feel...

The 1961 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Rich Nations and The Poor Nations"

Thursday, November 9, 1961 | Categories: Massey Lecture Archives, Massey Lectures |

In these lectures Barbara Ward analyzes the origins and nature of the present predicament of underdeveloped countries that are facing a double challenge - they...

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