Overheard at ideacity: Day One

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Quotes from day one of ideacity.

Ideacity, Canada’s “Premier Meeting of the Minds,” kicked off its Sweet 16 year today with a roster of distinguished guests talking everything from health and well being to faith and the creation of a “knowledge democracy.”

We’ve collected some of our favourite quotes from the stage and one-on-one interviews with guests and included them below:

Jack Andraka

Jack Andraka, who at age 15 invented an affordable test for early detection of some of the deadliest cancers, spoke on the social imbalance of access to scientific research, where the richest schools have access to the most scientific data while 5.5 billion people around the world live in “knowledge poverty”:

“Imagine, instead, if we could live in a knowledge democracy, where what you look like, age, or gender doesn’t apply. Whether you’re from China to Cambodia, Malaysia to Mexico, whether you’re a billionaire or living on less than a dollar a day, you’d have the exact same access to scientific information. Because science shouldn’t be a luxury and knowledge shouldn’t be a commodity. It should be a basic human right. The minds of the people must be free and that means the minds of everyone, not the minds of a select few who can afford these articles. Talent is universal but opportunity isn’t and we have to shift this paradigm.”

J.T. Carter

We were lucky enough to sit down with the founder of the 1950s classic doo-wop/R&B group The Crests for a one-on-one interview. He shared a number of memories and even more laughs as he reminisced about performing with everyone from Chuck Berry to Elvis, meeting Marilyn Monroe and JFK and his former bandmates. When I asked Carter, 74, what advice he would give his 16-year-old self, he replied: “Have plenty of babies, drink less Jack and be happily married because you can be.”

Simcha Jacobovici

The award-winning documentarian, author and host of The Naked Archeologist on VisionTV (a ZoomerMedia property) talked about the work that went into his most recent book, The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene: “It’s a detective story, 1,500 years after the act of censorship…we got to it and I think we solved the crime. We had it translated and decoded.”

Miranda Esmonde-White

The TV personality and healthy aging advocate told those in attendance that “Really, the causes of aging are changes within ourselves.” She also declared that “Fitness needs the ‘Goldilocks Effect’ – just right to keep everything alive.” And to illustrate her point, she led the audience in an exercise that works 650 muscles at once.

Aubrey de Grey  

The British-born biomedical gerontologist was supposed to appear on the ideacity stage, but his travel plans hit a snag as he awaited his red-eye flight from San Francisco to Toronto. The snag: he accidentally fell asleep at the gate and woke up 20 minutes after the plane had left. He still appeared via video chat and explained the whole mix-up to the ideacity crowd.

Stay tuned for our coverage of ideacity 2015!

This year’s ideacity conference will be held at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on June 17-19, 2015. For more information or tickets visit the ideacity website – or if you can’t make it in person, check out the webcast here.