Original Minds

Eleanor Wachtel's award-winning CBC Radio programme Writers & Company has set the gold standard for intelligent, insightful, riveting interviews. To mark the dawn of the new millennium, Wachtel talked to some of the most inspiring and influential thinkers of our time — people who have forever changed their area of specialty and influenced the world around them. As she writes in her introduction, "I wanted to interview people who had shaped the last century and whose influence would continue into the next…I hoped to have wide-ranging conversations with some of the most inspiring men and women of our time, people who've made a difference."

And what an outstanding list of people she met:

• Jonathan Miller — internationally acclaimed theatre and opera director, writer, member of Beyond the Fringe comedy troupe
• Jane Goodall — primatologist and scientist best known for her work with chimpanzees
• Bernardo Bertolucci — director…