Chris Turner Speaker Profile at The Lavin Agency

In an age of unprecedented transformation—in everything from geopolitics to telecommunications to fundamental social norms —The Simpsons alone has had the depth, intelligence, and scope to chart the links between the new world order's scattered fragments. The book Planet Simpson is the first detailed and critical map of this universe and Chris Turner, its author, relates how this phenomenon concurrently describes and defines our culture.

The Simpsons has found the last word on seemingly every facet of our culture and every event of our time. Its wide cast of characters are a catalogue of our culture's archetypes, its settings and plots an encyclopedia of the shape of our age. Award-winning cultural journalist Chris Turner, in his funny and incredibly educating talks on The Simpsons, takes you beyond the surface like no other observer can to the center of one of the defining institutions of our times.

His essay "The Simpsons Generation" (the genesis of the book) appeared in September 2002 to widespread acclaim, and was reprinted in newspapers across North America. His feature writing—mostly for the late, lamented Shift Magazine—has earned him nine Canadian National Magazine Awards, including the 2001 President's Medal for General Excellence (the highest honour in Canadian magazine writing) for an essay on the pressing need for a revolutionary shift to sustainable living. His writing and reporting on culture and technology have also appeared in Time Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Independent, and The Times (UK).

Chris lives in Calgary, Alberta, with his wife, the photographer and writer Ashley Bristowe, and their daughter, Sloane. He is currently at work on a book about climate change and sustainability, to be published by Random House in 2007.

From the rise and fall of the Internet to the re-emergence of protest politics, from Main Street, USA, to the South Pacific, The Simpsons has found the last word on seemingly every facet of our culture and every event of our time. Chris Turner uses The Simpson as a window on popular culture at large. His presentations feature first-hand reportage and analysis of the Internet boom, the alternative-rock explosion, the triumph of ironic culture, the cultural origins of anti-globalization, and the impact of globetrotting (by dotcommers as well as backpackers) on the developing world. This is not a presentation about just a TV show—ather, it's a presentation about how a TV show documented and defined an entire era.

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