Q: The Podcast From Cbc Radio

The award-winning Canadian writer and professor Ian Williams has been named this year’s Massey lecturer. Since 1961, the Massey Lectures have invited distinguished writers, thinkers and scholars to present their ideas in a five-part lecture series across Canada. Ian sits down with Tom to tell us why he’s chosen the topic of conversations for his cross-country lecture series, how listening can be a courageous act, and why he believes it’s important to have difficult conversations, even at the risk of offending people.Plus, the Kenyan British artist Magdalene Odundo is one of the world’s greatest living ceramicists. She joins Tom to talk about her life in clay, her new exhibit at the Gardiner Museum, and why the inside of her pieces are perhaps even more important than the outside.