More Lost Massey Lectures

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. This is the second volume of recovered lectures, a follow-on to The Lost Massey Lectures, and features: Nobel Peace Prize recipient Willy Brandt on the dangerous inequities between developing and industrialized nations in Dangers and Options: The Matter of World Survival; George Grant on the worsening predicament of the West through an examination of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche in Time as History; Claude Levi-Strauss on the nature and role of myth in human history in Myth and Meaning; Frank Underhill on the deficiencies of the Canadian constitution in The Image of Confederation; and Barbara Ward, in the very first Massey Lecture, on the origin and predicament of underdeveloped countries in The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations. More Lost Massey Lectures includes an introduction by Bernie Lucht, who has been the executive producer of CBC Radio's Ideas and the Massey Lectures since 1984.

A broadcasting fixture for more than 45 years and Canada’s preeminent public lecture series, the CBC's Massey Lectures feature provocative talks on pressing topics by major contemporary thinkers. Some of the series’ finest lectures have been lost for many years, unavailable to the public in any form — until now. More Lost Massey Lectures presents recently rediscovered talks: Nobel Prize-winner Willy Brandt discusses the dangerous inequities between developing and industrialized nations while Barbara Ward explains the origin and predicament of underdeveloped countries and Frank Underhill speaks on the deficiencies of the Canadian constitution. George Grant's talk on the worsening predicament of the West through an examination of Friedrich Nietzsche is joined by Claude Levi-Strauss on the nature of myth and its role in human history. Not only of considerable historical significance, these lectures remain hugely relevant in the 21st century. Also included is an introduction by veteran CBC producer Bernie Lucht.

A collection of five Massey lectures are reprinted in their entirety. The authors include: John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul Goodman, Jane Jacobs, Eric W. Kierans, and Martin Luther King Jr.

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.

Is democracy as we know it in danger? More and more we confront one another as aggrieved groups rather than as free citizens. Deepening cynicism, the growth of corrosive individualism, statism, and the loss of civil society are warning signs that democracy may be incapable of satisfying the yearnings it itself unleashes — yearnings for freedom, fairness, and equality.In her 1993 CBC Massey Lectures, political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain delves into these complex issues to evaluate democracy's chances for survival.

Many of us are alarmed by the accelerating rates of extinction of plants and animals. But how many of us know that human cultures are going extinct at an even more shocking rate? While biologists estimate that 18 percent of mammals and 11 percent of birds are threatened, and botanists anticipate the loss of 8 percent of flora, anthropologists predict that fully 50 percent of the 7,000 languages spoken around the world today will disappear within our lifetimes. And languages are merely the canaries in the coal mine: what of the knowledge, stories, songs, and ways of seeing encoded in these voices? In The Wayfinders, Wade Davis offers a gripping and enlightening account of this urgent crisis. He leads us on a fascinating tour through a handful of indigenous cultures, describing the worldviews they represent and reminding us of the encroaching danger to humankind's survival should they vanish.

Explores debt as a central historical component of religion, literature, and societal structure, while examining the idea of humanity's debt to the natural world.

Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.