Part Moon, Part Travelling Salesman: Conversations with Ivan Illich

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This series was first broadcast in 1989, following an epic eight days of interviews with Illich in State College, Pennsylvania where he was teaching during the fall semester at Penn State University.  Three years later in 1992, a transcription of the entire interview was published as Ivan Iliich in Conversation by House of Anansi.  It has remained in print to this day and continues to attract interest.  In 2000 I presented a second series of broadcasts with Illich called The Corruption of Christianity: Ivan Illich on Gospel, Church and Society.  The interviews on which this series were based were published in 2004 as The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich, also by House of Anansi.

Enlightened By Love: The LIfe and Thought of Simone Weil

This series was first  broadcast in 2002.  Inspired by the admiration Canadian philosopher George Grant felt for her, I began reading Simone Weil in the 1980's and have never really stopped since.   The first programme of the set gives an account of Weil's short life - she was only 34 when she died in England in 1943 - and the remaining four take up her ideas.  Because  I wanted listeners to be aware that they were listening to the thoughts of a young woman, I asked my daughter Kate, then 24, to read the selections I had made from Weil's works.   I was scolded afterwards for doing this and told that even her superb performance did not mitigate the appearance of nepotism.  I responded, in vain, that Felipe Alou who managed his son Moises with the Montreal Expos and the San Francisco Giants played the kid because he was a great outfielder, not because he was his son.  I like Kate's reading as much today as when she did it and think this series provides a good introduction to Weil's thought...