The event is co-sponsored by CBC Radio, House of Anansi Press and Massey College in the University of Toronto. Until 2002, the lectures were recorded for broadcast in a CBC Radio studio in Toronto, with a single public lecture given at the University of Toronto. In that year, however, the lectures were taken out of the studio and turned into a truly national event, with each of the five lectures being delivered and recorded for broadcast before an audience in a different Canadian city.
The lectures are broadcast each November on the CBC Radio One show Ideas and published in book form by House of Anansi Press. Many of the lectures are also available in CD audio that can be purchased through the CBC. Since 1997 the lectures have included some form of interaction through web forums.
Massey Lecturers
The lecturers are often, but not always, Canadian. Several Nobel laureates have given the lectures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., George Wald, Willy Brandt and Doris Lessing. Currently the oldest living lecturer is Claude Lévi-Strauss. There was no lecture in 1996, because the Ideas producers and the selected lecturer, Robert Theobald, could not agree on what constituted a sufficient manuscript for the lecture. The topic was to be on the broad theme of the future of work.
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