2008 CBC - Massey Lectures - Payback: Debt & the Shadow Side of Wealth - Margaret Atwood

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Massey Lectures 2008 by Margaret Atwood


Payback: Debt and Shadow Side of Wealth
Legendary novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood delivers a surprising look at the topic of debt. In her wide-ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the subject, Atwood proposes that debt is like air - something we take for granted until things go wrong. And then, while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it.

Payback is not about practical debt management or high finance. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies.

Margaret Atwood writes “These are not lectures about how to get out of debt; rather, they’re about the debtor/creditor twinship in the broadest sense – from human sacrifice to pawnshops to revenge. In this light, what we owe and how we pay is a feature of all human societies, and profoundly shapes our shared values and our cultures.”


Margaret Atwood is one of the world’s pre-eminent writers - winner of the Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Governor General’s Literary Award, among many other honours. She is the bestselling author of more than thirty-five books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake. She is an International Vice President of PEN, which assists writers around the world in the peaceful expression of their ideas. Most recently, she is the 2008 recipient of the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for Letters.

Part 1 - Ancient Balances [runs: 54:00]
Part 2 - Debt and Sin [runs: 54:00]
Part 3 - Debt As Plot [runs: 54:00]
Part 4 - The Shadow Side [runs: 54:00]
Part 5 - Payback [runs: 54:00]

The Massey Lectures are a prestigious annual event in Canada, in which a noted Canadian or international scholar gives a week-long series of lectures on a political, cultural or philosophical topic. They were created in 1961 to honour Vincent Massey, Governor General of Canada. The event is co-sponsored by CBC Radio, House of Anansi Press and Massey College in the University of Toronto. Some of the most famous Massey Lecturers have included Northrop Frye, Michael Ignatieff, Noam Chomsky, Jane Jacobs, John Ralston Saul and Martin Luther King, Jr, While Margaret Atwood with her lecture entitled Payback - Debt and Shadow Side of Wealth is the most recent Lecturer.