Treehouse Talks

3 PEOPLE x 3 TOPICS = 1,000 IDEAS

Since 2010 we've been giving some of Toronto's most curious and creative people a chance to connect over great conversations. Attendees have been inspired by a range of dynamic speakers, first at the MaRS Discovery District (2010) and then at the Toronto Reference Library (2011, 2012).

All Treehouse Talks are free for anyone who would like to come.

Would you like to keep up with what’s happening at the Toronto Reference Library? You can sign up for their enewsletter, which comes out every two weeks.

May 3, 2013

The next Treehouse Talks are fast approaching! Join us from 6:30-8:00 on Friday, May 3 at the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street, just North of Bloor.)

Maydianne Andrade: Everything I need to know about evolution, I learned from a cannibalistic spider
William Thorsell: Three Helpful Ideas for Toronto
Tim Hurson: Why We All Go to the Same Different Meeting Together

Questions? Email Nicolas Rouleau at nicolas@treehousegroup.org.

Save the Date! The next Treehouse Talks will take place on Friday, June 14.

Maydianne Andrade

A powerful way to test an idea, or your understanding of an idea, is to look for apparent exceptions, then ask whether they fit. Maydianne will discusse her research on sexual cannibalism in black widow spiders, with a focus on species with a strange twist -- males that are complicit victims in their own demise on the jaws of their mates. She will invite you to join her in exploring the question: How can self-sacrifice evolve?

Maydianne Andrade is a Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Maydianne's interest in invertebrates and sexual selection developed during her BSc (Honours) work in the department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University, and continued with her MSc in Zoology from the University of Toronto and PhD in Neurobiology & Behaviour from Cornell University. She is the recipient of New Investigator Awards from the Animal Behaviour Society and the International Society for Behavioural Ecology, and is considered an international expert in the biology and behaviour of black widow spiders. She is fascinated by how social and ecological conditions affect the evolution of mating behaviours and other traits related to reproductive success.

Maydianne Recommends:

Olivia E. Butler's The parable of the sower. It is not for everyone, but I like this type of post-apocalyptic science fiction, and find the author's approach and voice unusual relative to others I have read. Olivia E. Butler was an award-winning black science fiction writer.
Everyone should take at least one Implicit Association test. It is a clever way of probing your unconscious biases. The results are often uncomfortable and thought-provoking.

William Thorsell

Once and forever student, teacher, journalist, developer, composer, biker, forest-keeper.

William Recommends:

Reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, because you need to know your place. Or most anything by Christopher Hitchens, for the same reason.
Learning to play Debussy on the piano, because he teaches you how to appreciate Beethoven.

Tim Hurson

This Talk proposes (and demonstrates) that although we always talk about having five senses (or sometimes 6), we actually probably have more than 40 — and that simple math explains why we all have different perceptions of the same things.

Tim Hurson has keynoted in more than 25 countries on six continents about how to use the principles of productive thinking and creative leadership to manage change rather than be swamped by it.

He has written numerous articles on enhancing creative intelligence in the workplace, and is a periodic contributor to Creativity in Action, the journal of the Creative Education Foundation. He’s a founding director of Facilitators Without Borders, and one of the founders of Mindcamp — Canada's premier Creativity Conference. Tim’s book Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking (McGraw Hill, NY) has been translated into eight languages and is used by over 100 international business schools.

You can find him at mindcamp.org, thinkxic.com, and fwb.ca.

Tim Recommends:

Think Better. Because I wrote it (because I was dissatisfied with most of the other creativity books out there).
Mindcamp — One of Canada's Best Kept Secrets!

Previous Treehouse Talks

2012 Sessions

Andrea Hamilton: Social Networking Meets Crowdsourcing Offline
Andrew Westoll: Releasing Your Inner Ape
Assaf Weisz: Changing the Future
Camilla Gryski: The Labyrinth: Path, symbol, and metaphor
Darryl Gwynne: Why Are Males Masculine, Females Feminine and Occasionally Vice Versa? (Darwinian Sexual Selection as an Exercise in Critical Thinking)
Denise Balkissoon: Why Can’t I Quit Facebook?
Erin Bury: Tapping into Interest Graphs to Curate Online News
George Elliott Clarke: Harper’s Tea-Party Government
Ilana Ben-Ari: Toys as Tools for Change
Jeff Warren: The Elements of Experience
Dr. Jody Culham: How many brains do you have?
Dr. John Godfrey: Is Global Citizenship possible?
John Sobol: Know Your Media, Know Your Self
Jon Duschinsky: The (New) Power of People
Jorge Ulloa: The Global Water Cooler — Multiculturalism in the Workplace
Karl Schroeder: Tomorrow’s Toronto: A Foresight Exercise on the Future of our City
Katerina Cizek & Graeme Stewart: Re-imagining our Vertical City
Laurence Packer: Bees
Marcius Extavour: Science and politics don’t mix… or do they?
Mariella Bertelli: “Happily ever after?” An exploration of the fairy tale, its past, its future and its place in today’s culture
Mandy Wintink: The Sweet Smell of Failure
Stan Chu Ilo: Do We Still Need Religion Today? A new look at Islam, Christianity, and the Secular West
Stephen Morris: A physicist in the sandbox
Tom Heintzman: The Role of the Individual in Transforming Energy Systems

2011 Sessions

Andrea Dana Eisen: Being a Teacher to the Stars
Aruna Handa: Eating Our Words: Making good on the promise of a better life
Craig D. Adams: Input Output Cinema & Other Nonsense Buzzwords
Eric Boyd: DYI Transhumanism
Gabrielle McLaughlin: The Boulevard of Baroquen Dreams
Harvey Weingarten: The Future of Canada’s Public University System
Dr. James Robert Brown: Thought Experiments, Or How to Learn Cool Stuff Just by Thinking
Jessa Gamble: Daily Rhythms Around the World
John Beebe: More than diverse: Faces Of Complexity: A Photographic Exploration
John Paul Morgan: Invention Is As Often About Decision As It Is About Discovery
Dr. Jordan Peterson: Planning the Ideal Future, Rationale, & Strategy
Father Joseph Ogbonnaya: The Challenges of Integral Development
Lee Smolin: Is Time Real or an Illusion?
Miroslav Lovric: What if we could touch infinity?
Dr. Monika Havelka: How to Build a Whale: Mechanisms of Macroevolutionary Change
Nathalie Desrosiers: Liberty and Twitter: Civil Liberties in the XXIst Century
Justice Robert Sharpe: The Canadian Constitution as a Living Tree
Ryan North: A Brief History of Comics, And How Comics On The Internet Will Save The World (Or At Least Save Comics, But That’s Still Pretty Good)
Salima Syera Virani: “The Personal Brand” and its Importance for Entrepreneurs
Sheila McCook: Newspapers: A Physical Check-Up
Simon Cole: Collecting Contemporary in Toronto

2010 Sessions

Abigale Miller: Mealworms: Food or Not Food?
Amie Sergas: The Social Value of Roller Derby
Ana Serrano: No, Interactive Storytelling is Not an Oxymoron
Bob McDonald: What if everything you know is wrong?
Dan Falk: The Enigma of Time
Darren O’Donnell and The Torontonians: You, Too, Can Be 14
Donna Francis: Knitting Science and Art Together
Jeff Woodrow: Thinking of Someone Else for a Change
Leehe Lev: The Seven Dimensions of Wellness
Loreen Barbour: Life in Northern Russia
Micah Toub: The Jungian Shadow: How to turn your enemy into a role model
Mike Paduada: Careers from Math to the Moon
Mirella Amato: The Challenges of Beerology
Nadja Sayej: Fear and Loathing in the Art World
Nicolas Rouleau: Law and International Development
Nogah Kornberg: Teaching the G-Word to 9-Year-Olds
Russell Zeid: Nexialism
Sasha Grujicic: Technology and Change: How it’s happened, how it’s accelerating, and how we need to deal with it
Sasha Van Bon Bon: Decriminalizing the Sex Trade in Canada and Beyond
Shawn Micallef: Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto
Shirley Khalil: Empowerment and healing using music
Steve Ferrara: Street Art in Toronto
Susan G. Cole: The Age of Queer: Does the word ‘lesbian’ still mean anything?
Zahra Ebrahim: Design and Social Change