Ideas: Brilliant Thinkers Speak Their Minds

by Bernie Lucht (Editor)

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 Brilliant Thinkers Speak Their Minds . Featuring some the best thinkers from North America and around the world that have appeared on the program since its beginnings in 1965, Brilliant Thinkers Speak Their Minds touches upon societal values, how we govern ourselves, and navigating in the international community. In this remarkable book, Bernie Lucht, winner of the John Drainie Award for broadcast journalism, introduces readers to the origins of the ground-breaking program and to "the best ideas you'll hear tonight." Since the beginning, geopolitics has been one of the significant concerns of the program, and issues such as democracy, dictatorships, the nature of the nation-state, the public good, ideology, religion, peace and violence keep returning to the fore. Although many of the topics have been around for decades, the questions remain startlingly topical today, even in a radically changed world. Exploring geopolitics writ large, Ideas features interviews, lectures and radio documentaries with such influential contemporary thinkers as Tariq Ali, Michael Bliss, Noam Chomsky, Ursula Franklin, Northrop Frye, Bernard Lewis, Margaret MacMillan, James Orbinski, and many, many others. While each thinker speaks from his or her specific experience in time, the themes and concerns resonate as much today as they did last week or forty years ago.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

376 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2005

Reviews

[Marin . · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the discussions/interviews were brilliant, others - just mediocre.
As I know the program's archive is extremely rich and the executive producer could have done a much better job selecting the best of the best - for forty years CBC Radio's IDEAS aired contemporary thought...

[TheIron Paw · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love the CBC radio show "Ideas" and thought this would be a good read. In the introduction the editors said that they adapted the radio text for the written version because the spoken word doesn't always come across well in written form. They were right - it didn't come across at all. I gave up on the book after struggling through 2 chapters. The ideas were good, but the prose was stilted.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly liked the interview with Nothrup Frye.

[Jimmy · Rating 1 out of 5]

These essays were rearranged transcripts of a Canadian Broadcasting Company radio show. The title of the book was the only good thing about it.

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learn from the best and brightest. Why should we re-learn the same lessons over and over. Others have been down these roads before - we should use their wisdom without reservation.