Archives | CBC Massey Lectures
Since 1961, CBC Radio has been broadcasting the Massey Lectures, bringing Canadians some of the greatest minds of our time, exploring the ideas that make us who we are and asking the questions that make us better human beings.
On this page you'll find links to all the CBC Massey Lectures, including those which have online audio available.
2023 | Astra Taylor | The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart
2022 | Tomson Highway | Laughing with the Trickster: On Sex, Death, and Accordions
2021 | Esi Edugyan | Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling
2020 | Ron Deibert | Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society
2019 | Sally Armstrong | Power Shift: The Longest Revolution
2018 | Tanya Talaga | All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward
2017 | Payam Akhavan | In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey
2016 | Jennifer Welsh | The Return of History
2015 | Margaret MacMillan | History's People: Personalities and the Past
2014 | Adrienne Clarkson | Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship
2013 | Lawrence Hill | Blood: The Stuff of Life
2012 | Neil Turok | The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos
2011 | Adam Gopnik | Winter: Five Windows on the Season
2010 | Douglas Coupland | Player One: What is to Become of Us
2009 | Wade Davis | The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
2008 | Margaret Atwood | Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
2007 | Alberto Manguel| The City of Words
2006 | Margaret Somerville | The Ethical Imagination
2005 | Stephen Lewis | A Race Against Time
2004 | Ronald Wright | A Short History of Progress
2003 | Thomas King | The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative
2002 | Margaret Visser | Beyond Fate
2001 | Janice Gross Stein | The Cult of Efficiency
2000 |Michael Ignatieff | The Rights Revolution
1999 | Robert Fulford | The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture
1998 | Jean Vanier | Becoming Human
1997 | Hugh Kenner | The Elsewhere Community
1996 | * No Massey Lecture this year
1995 | John Ralston Saul | The Unconscious Civilization
1994 | Conor Cruise O'Brien| On The Eve of the Millennium
1993 | Jean Bethke Elshtain | Democracy on Trial
1992 | Robert Heilbroner | Twenty-First Century Capitalism
1991 | Charles Taylor | The Malaise of Modernity
1990 | Richard Lewontin | Biology As Ideology
1989 | Ursula M. Franklin | The Real World of Technology
1988 | Noam Chomsky | Necessary Illusions
1987 | Gregory Baum | Compassion and Solidarity
1986 | * No Massey Lecture this year
1985 | Doris Lessing | Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
1984 | Carlos Fuentes | Latin America: At War With The Past
1983 | Eric Kierans | Globalism and The Nation State
1982 | Robert Jay Lifton & Richard Falk | Indefensible Weapons
1981 | Willy Brandt | Dangers & Options: The Matter of World Survival
1980 | * No Massey Lecture this year
1979 | Jane Jacobs | Canadian Cities and Sovereignty Association
1978 | Leslie Fiedler | The Inadvertent Epic: From Uncle Tom to Roots
1977 | Claude Lévi Strauss| Myth and Meaning
1976 | * No Massey Lecture this year
1975 | J. Tuzo Wilson | Limits To Science
1974 | George Steiner | Nostalgia for the Absolute
1973 | Stafford Beer | Designing Freedom
1972 | Pierre Dansereau | Inscape and Landscape
1971 | James Corry | The Power of the Law
1970 | George Wald | Therefore Choose Life
1969 | George Grant | Time As History
1968 | R.D. Laing | The Politics of the Family
1967 | Martin Luther King, Jr. | Conscience for Change
1966 | Dr. Paul Goodman | The Moral Ambiguity of America
1965 | John Kenneth Galbraith | The Underdeveloped Country
1964 | C. B. Macpherson | The Real World of Democracy
1963 | Frank Underhill | The Image of Confederation
