Big Ideas

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

Author, professor and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson delivers the 2010 Hancock Lecture. He discusses virtue from a contemporary perspective that both encompasses and extends beyond moral and religious contexts.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Chris Hedges delivers a lecture on his latest book The Death of the Liberal Class. He argues that American liberalism, a once proud political tradition, is dead, having sold out to corporate interests and abandoned its original principles. The result is a breakdown of the very fabric of democracy.

Noted atheist and secularist Daniel Dennett delivers his lecture "What Should Replace Religions?" Dennett is co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a University Professor at Tufts University.

Biology professor and well-known blogger PZ Myers on Science and Atheism: Natural Allies.

University of Toronto professor Christian Campbell talks to Nobel laureate poet Derek Walcott about his remarkable life and work.