Big Ideas from Ontario's Public Education Media Organisation

I have to thank Linda Naiman from Creativity at Work to turning me onto TVO, “Ontario's public educational media organization and a source of interactive educational content that informs, inspires, and stimulates curiosity and thought empowering people to be engaged citizens of Ontario through educational media.”

One of their most popular programmes now in its seventh season is Big Ideas, the antithesis of the prevailing sound-bite television norm. Engaging, articulate speakers stand behind lecterns across Ontario addressing audiences - a stark, on-air aesthetic running counter to fast edits and whizzy sound effects. Big Ideas offers a variety of thought-provoking topics which range across politics, culture, economics, art history, science and the array of speakers is astounding. Names such as Naomi Klein, Oliver Sachs,Deepak Chopra and Steven Pinker indicate the level of lecturer.

"BIG IDEAS is a showcase of ideas that shape our public debates. At their best the lectures featured on the program expose us to the differing ways of defining what matters and how that affects our understanding of the world as it is and as it is likely to be," adds Szemberg. "Each age has a set of questions by which it defines itself. If, 50 years from now, someone came across a list of BIG IDEAS shows, they would have a pretty good idea of what people thought about and debated in the early 2000s."

Here is a podcast featuring Howard Gardner, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of "Five Minds for the Future". In this lecture he discusses his latest theories on cognition and creativity and outlines why he is currently researching what place the "ethical mind" and the "respectful mind" hold in today's technologically sophisticated and interrelated world.

Click here to subscribe to the BIg Ideas programme.