Publishing house Open Agenda Publishing (OAP) was founded in 2012 by Howard and Irena Burton. Ideas Roadshow is OAP’s imprint dedicated to realizing their passion to use the power of film to explore ideas across the arts and sciences in uniquely engaging narrative formats.
Howard is a filmmaker, author of six books and creator of Ideas Roadshow’s award-winning digital resource platforms and Conversations and Collections series (120 books). He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and an MA in philosophy and was the Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Irena is publisher at OAP and senior editor of all content. She has a background in law, translation and teaching.
We started by filming intimate conversations between Howard and more than 100 world-leading researchers, including 3 Nobel Laureates, across a wide spectrum of disciplines. The filmed conversations were on average between 1 1/2 and 3 hours long.
From this large bank of raw content we’ve produced more than 1,000 carefully-edited videos in different innovative formats which provide a unique window into frontline academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research. In addition, we’ve published an accompanying book series (120 books) plus four separate digital resource platforms which have been awarded with the London Book Fair International Excellence Award and the Highly Commended BETT Award.
“… top experts in their fields talking in a relaxed and informal way about a remarkable range of scholarly subjects, but is not the sort of thing usually put in print in more formal settings...” — Anthony Leggett, Nobel Laureate in Physics
NEW: Documentary Films
Since 2020 most of our creative efforts are directed towards producing narrative documentary films within a strong contextual and visually-rich setting. By adding an engaging contextual setting our goal is to create a richer audience experience by presenting helpful background details, different intriguing perspectives and fresh and often surprising insights to pique interest and stimulate curiosity. All films are fully accessible to a broad general audience.
Early 2022 our feature-length documentary Pandemic Perspectives was released and the 4-part documentary series Through The Mirror Of Chess: A Cultural Exploration was released in February 2023.
Visit the Films section for more information and details about films that are now in pre-production, including Notable Lives, an extensive series about the lives and accomplishments of leading Renaissance artists, and a series about the Foundations of Mathematics, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Archimedes and more.
Ideas That Travel Well
Following a strong review in The Economist’s business travel blog, Ideas Roadshow has long been established as a major force of “edutainment” in the world of inflight entertainment. Our programs have been flying with British Airways, Emirates, Virgin Australia, Alaska Airlines, Delta, Garuda Indonesia, Cathay Pacific and many more. Visit the IFE section for details about our existing catalogue and upcoming features.
