IDEAS OF THE WEEK
1. LEADING UNDER FIRE
What are the components of military leadership? That's the question Dr. Joe MacInnis asks soldiers, sailors, and airmen on a Canadian warship and at the Canadian Forces base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. In the cockpits of their aircraft, the front seats of their armored vehicles, and the bridge of HMCS Toronto, they describe leadership-critical moments and share stories about leadership's essential components and how they are acquired. He considers how the synergy of courage, competence, compassion and other leadership traits can help us address social and environmental problems
2. CULTURE WITHOUT A COUNTRY
Once the cradle of civilization, Iraq today is a broken society. It teems with poverty, blood-shed and economic instability. These factors make it unlikely that Iraq will follow in the steps of other Arab countries whose citizens have been pressing for freedom. It wasn't always this way. IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell presents the lives of intellectuals and activists who've spent years trying to fight authoritarianism.
3. NEURON THERAPY
York University philosopher Stuart Shanker is one of the world's leading thinkers on "kids with disorders." The author of twenty books on philosophy and human development, he incorporates the latest knowledge we have about the brain to improve the lives of struggling children. He talks with IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell.
4. THE IDEA OF GENIUS, Part 2
We live in awe of genius, of those few individuals capable of producing Hamlet, the Fifth Symphony, or the Theory of Relativity. Genius is more than talent, but what exactly is it? A gift? The result of extreme perseverance? Can anyone become a genius just by putting in enough hours? And why does genius so often border on madness? In this two-part series, science journalist Dan Falk explores our obsession with those who achieve greatness
5. MINDING MEMORY
What's in a memory? An original in the field of memory research, Endel Tulving shares his insights. Mental time-travel through what he terms "episodic memory" may have been one of "the drivers of the evolution of culture". A free-wheeling conversation with Marilyn Powell about memory
and the mind.
