National Network for Equitable Library Service

In his 1968 CBC Massey Lectures R. D. Laing discusses how and why we value society's notions of family over our own. 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 occur within the family. A psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Laing worked at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. His books include The Self and Others and The Politics of Experience.

For more than fifteen years, iconoclastic thinker Ivan Illich refused to be interviewed. Finally, in 1988, CBC's David Cayley persuaded Illich to record a conversation. This first interview led to additional sessoins that continued until 1992 and are now gathered in Ivan Illich in Conversation. In these fascinating conversations, which range over a wide selection of the celebrated thinker's published work and public career, Illich's brilliant mind alights on topics of great contemporary interest, including education, history, language, politics, and the church.

In his 1964 CBC 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 suggests that the West need not fear any challenge to liberal democracy if it is prepared to re-examine and alter its own values.

The CBC Massey Lectures, Canada's preeminent public lecture series, are for many of us a highly anticipated annual feast of ideas. However, some of the finest lectures, by some of the greatest minds of modern times, have been lost for many years -- unavailable to the public in any form.

The Munk Debates is Canada's premier international debate series, a highly anticipated cultural event and feast of ideas. Launched in 2008 by philanthropists Peter and Melanie Munk, these debates bring together some of the world's greatest thinkers to discuss the most pressing political, social, and cultural issues that are shaping the course of world events.

The Last of the Ice Hunters is a history of the seal hunt, an industry now in decline, but one which provided the few opportunities for employment to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians during the 1930s. Written in the words of the sealers themselves, the book is a compilation of interviews conducted by students who trained under Professor Shannon Ryan of Memorial University of Newfoundland. This study of the seal hunt begins with a chapter on the introduction, background, and overall development of the seal hunt up to 1950.

If science is neither cookery, nor angelic virtuosity, then what is it? Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering, and controlling the world, where everything was subject to science, but science itself has largely escaped scrutiny. In this fascinating collection of interviews, CBC Radio's Ideas producer David Cayley talks to some of the world's most provocative thinkers about how the ideas of science have directed human thought and shaped human society.

An electrifying collection of thought-provoking interviews from recent broadcasts of CBC Radio’s Ideas. In these remarkable dialogues— most of them in the company of Ideas host Paul Kennedy — some of the great intellectuals of our time reflect, interject, and project on the course of human civilization, addressing topics such as social engineering and human rights, the directions of science and technology, the influence of art, music, and literature, and the quest for truth.

For four decades, Ideas has presented more than 400,000 CBC Radio listeners in Canada and the United States with the most challenging contemporary thought of the day. Now, to mark the program’s 40th anniversary, executive producer Bernie Lucht has selected the most striking interviews and lectures for Ideas: Brilliant Thinker Speak Their Minds.

A great conversation can offer insight into the hearts and minds of its participants. In this intimate, wide-ranging collection of conversations (and some correspondence), writer-broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel and her friend, author Carol Shields, touch on both the personal and the professional. Eleanor Wachtel first met Carol Shields in 1980; her first interview with Carol occurred in 1987, following the publication of Swann: A Mystery. They soon became friends, embarking on a correspnodence and conversations that would last her almost two decades.