Music of the Wilderness

In this archival interview, musician Emily Doolittle says she devoted her doctorate in composition at Princeton University to the songs of blackbirds and humpback whales. She also composed a chamber piece incorporating some blackbird themes. And then George experiments with other kinds of music based on Nature sounds...

The Arrow of Time – 3

In this final episode of a three-part series, George concludes his exploration of The Arrow of Time. It may sound like a contradiction in terms, but the future has a history – this episode focuses on projections since the Renaissance of human longing for the perfect society into the future. This episode creates sound pictures of secular prophecies, from Thomas More’s Utopia, to Francis Bacon’s Utopia, and Condorcet’s failed dream of progress to Karl Marx’s ideal but cruel working-class state. The episode wraps up with Samuel Butler’s satirical Erewhon and the technocratic fantasies ... and nightmares ... of H.G. Wells

The Arrow of Time – 2

In this second episode of a three-part series, George continues presenting The Arrow of Time. This episode examines the importance of chronology. Does the world have a beginning and an end? Basing themselves on the Bible, Early Church Fathers sought to date the divine Creation of the world (in 4004 BC), as well as to anticipate the Second Coming (perhaps in 800 AD). They tried to reconcile their hope for a better future with the disasters of their own day. After the Renaissance and Reformation, chronologies began to fan out – the world no longer seemed thousands of years old, but stretched back millions of years. Recent discoveries put the origin of life on Earth some 4 billion years ago.

The Arrow of Time – 1

In this first episode of a three-part series, George explores In this first episode of a three-part series, George presents the history of an idea – The Arrow of Time. He starts off showing humans have not always seen time as a unique past pointing to a unique present and then to a unique future. There have been several competing models of time, from the cosmic wheel of time to the cyclical model of time, and from the regressive to the flux and Nemesis models of time.

The Secret World of Whales

Whale biologist Richard Sears has devoted his career to understanding the blue whales, humpbacks, fin whales and belugas of the Gulf of St. Lawrence of Eastern Canada. In this archival interview, he tells George what he has discovered, how humans tend to project their own emotions and way of thinking onto whales, and what new knowledge we may gain in the future.

The Meaning of Compassion

In this archival interview, sociologist Nechama Tec tells George about her personal journey – the way she survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland, and how the generosity, courage and feistiness of some people, and the cruelty and utter indifference of others, inspired her, to devote her life to investigating the meaning of compassion and altruism.

The Shadow of H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells is known the world over for his science fiction, which has often been adapted for the radio and the silver screen. Wells had an uncanny ability to extrapolate from trends current in his day, and project them into the future – which involved creating secular prophecies. But he also had an authoritarian strand in his personality, and wished, as a frustrated intellectual, that people like him – technocrats – would one day wield tremendous power in the world.

Beyond the Ends

In this sound poem, George brings together poetry, original music and sound effects to recount a sea voyage by cargo ship from Montreal up the Labrador coast to Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay. In the unique Arctic world of icebergs, illusions and mind-bending storms, he finds inspiration. And he questions what happens when you are taken out of your comfort zone, and thrust into the lands of crystal of the Far North.

Freedom in the Wilderness

Brian Keenan, the author of An Evil Cradling, was not broken by years of captivity at the hands of Shi’ite militias in Lebanon. On the contrary, he carved out a private space of the mind, as a hostage. And he fantasized with fellow hostage John McCarthy about traveling one day to Patagonia in southern Chile. In this archival interview, Brian tells George what it meant to be held hostage, and how it felt for the two cellmates to visit the land of their dreams, once they were released.

Welcome To My Time Machine

In this episode, George creates a time machine, the Hyperspace Voyage, and invites you along to relive his first years as a journalist, reporting on Quebec politics, the fate of aboriginal people in Canada, the cycles of wildlife in the Arctic, the scientific revolution of the Renaissance, and 4000-year-old cave paintings in the Sahara desert of Mauritania.