IDEAS is a place for people who like to think. If you value deep conversation and unexpected reveals, this show is for you. From the roots and rise of authoritarianism to near-death experiences to the history of toilets, no topic is off-limits. Hosted by Nahlah Ayed, we’re home to immersive documentaries and fascinating interviews with some of the most consequential thinkers of our time.
With an award-winning team, our podcast has proud roots in its 60-year history with CBC Radio, exploring the IDEAS that make us who we are.
New episodes drop Monday through Friday at 3pm ET.
In recent years, the word "woke" has evolved from a catchphrase into a political ideology — and a catch-all pejorative routinely wielded on the right against its left-leaning adherents. But in her book, Left Is Not Woke , moral philosopher Susan Neiman argues that the "woke" ideology represents a fundamental break from traditional leftist ideals. *This episode originally aired on April 12, 2023.
The future we want has already existed — we just need to recover it, says Jesse Wente. In a talk, the Anishinaabe arts leader explains how the best of this past gives everyone a blueprint for a better future. "We are evidence that cultures can withstand global systems change: adapt, and rebuild." *This episode originally aired on June 21, 2024.
Educators are wired for hope, according to professor Jessica Riddell. In her lecture delivered at the University of Prince Edward Island, she underscores the importance of slowing down in urgent times, and urges educators to to teach hope, share it, and imagine a better future.
At a time of ever-growing polarization, where people are less and less likely to cross paths with those who don’t agree with them, what does it take to deliberate? IDEAS producer Naheed Mustafa explores whether there’s space for collective decision-making in an era marked by anger and disagreement.
It's been 60 years since French thinker Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space made its English-language debut. It’s a hard-to-define book — part architecture, philosophy, psychoanalysis, memoir. And it continues to feed our ongoing need for purposeful solitude and wide-open fields for our imagination. *This episode originally aired on March 7, 2022.
Eight composers, five instruments, and a world of metal. IDEAS explores a project by the University of British Columbia called The Heavy Metal Suite that conveys the challenges and opportunities of the mining industry, through music. Each composer draws inspiration from their country’s mineral resources in their original pieces. *This episode originally aired on May 28, 2024.
Experts in the field of child sex abuse prevention argue that we need to bring pedophilia out of the shadows if we ever want to end abuse. CBC producer John Chipman explores an innovative new program in Kitchener, Ontario that has sex offenders and abuse survivors working together to prevent future harm and promote healing.
IDEAS continues to explore Wilhelm von Humboldt’s public education system with guests, including acclaimed author Gabor Maté, who is a former English teacher. Is this 200-year-old system equipped to meet the challenging demands of the 21st century? And does it still reflect Humboldt’s ideals, especially at the university level? *This is part two of a two-part series.
Two hundred years ago, Wilhelm von Humboldt created the public education system as we know it today. At the heart of his philosophy of education was the concept of Bildung — reaching one's inner potential. Yet over the years, as his public education system was adopted, Bildung may well have been the critical piece left out. *This is part one of a two-part series.
Bureaucracies were created to get the work done and get it done efficiently, according to 19th-century thinker Max Weber. So why are there more and more meaningless executive jobs that contribute nothing but soak up the pay? IDEAS examines the corporate tendency to "bureaumania.”
The late Lois Wilson didn’t tell you what to believe — she just lived by example. And what an example. She was a minister, Senator, human rights advocate — and inspiration. She lived out her Christian faith in concrete terms, on the ground, in the community. Lois Wilson died on Friday at the age of 97.
A final experiment from a dying musician. A painter whose work finds its cultural moment, posthumously. An aged writer intent on ‘getting to know death.’ From David Bowie to little-known creatives, this documentary looks at the ways that an artist’s mortality gives their work new meaning.
New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin calls himself one-sixth Canadian. For 55 years, he and his family have spent their summers in Nova Scotia — what he calls: The Home Place. IDEAS producer Mary Lynk spoke to the 88-year-old author about everything from Trump to the layered Yiddish word: Meeskite.
Theoretical physicist Claudia de Rham has spent her life captivated by gravity. She has taken up flying airplanes, scuba diving and was even an astronaut candidate. Her book, The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity , explores the mysteries of gravity and how it connects us to the universe.
Brutalist architecture has been celebrated as monumental and derided as ‘concrete monstrosity.' But the people who depend on these buildings are often caught in between. IDEAS explores the implications of Brutalism’s 21st-century hipster aesthetic in a world of housing challenges, environmental crisis, and economic polarization.
If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were rewritten today, what rights would we add to strive for a more just world? In the final episode of our five-part series, IDEAS looks beyond our fractured present and tries to imagine what new rights we need for our own millennium.
The right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression is especially resonant in our own time. In his novel 1984 , Orwell proposed a future of “thought-crime” and in many places that day has arrived. IDEAS continues our series about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in this episode explores the history and future of free expression.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." We also have a right to seek "asylum from persecution" in other countries. At a time when more people are forcibly displaced than at any other point in recorded history, Nahlah Ayed speaks with guests about where the rights to leave, return and seek refuge came from, and what they could mean today.
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation." It's a right with profound implications for our lives in the 21st century, from digital surveillance to sexuality and autonomy. How can we protect ourselves?
How do we create a better world? In a five-part series, IDEAS explores efforts to imagine new possibilities and make them real by focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the first episode, panelists examine what the right to "life, liberty, and security of person" could mean, and how it could transform our world.
For millennia, human beings along with their domesticated animals have travelled to bring sheep, goats, cattle, and other animals to better grazing areas. The ancient practice, known as transhumance, has been dismissed as an outdated mode of animal husbandry. Yet the practice holds promise for a sustainable future. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 25, 2022.
Robert Macfarlane says his writing is about the relationship between landscape and the human heart. His books share his encounters with treacherous mountain passages, mammoth glaciers flowing perceptibly into the sea, and harrowing descents into fissures inside the Earth. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 25, 2023.
The Arctic and the Amazon may be far apart geographically, but art connects them intimately. As part of a public art project bringing Indigenous artists from both regions together, Inuk artist Niap and the Shipibo artist Olinda Silvano worked on a mural that now graces the campus of Toronto Metropolitan University. They share their inspirations and their collaboration. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 23, 2023.
You can’t pay rent with experimental poetry, so Hilary Peach trained as a welder. Twenty-plus years on, she’s now a boiler inspector, poet, and author of an award-winning memoir, Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood . Peach talks about the joys and contradictions of being an outsider inside the trades. *This episode originally aired on May 1, 2024.
Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander muses about the interplay of jazz, physics, and math. And cosmologist Katie Mack unpacks the latest thinking about the mysteries of dark matter, as part of the Perimeter Institute Public Lecture series. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 14, 2023.
Unlike humans, cats aren't burdened with questions of love, death and the meaning of life. They have no need for philosophy at all. English philosopher John Gray explores this "unexamined" way of being in his book, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life . *This episode originally aired on May 6, 2021.
Research around social media was already hard to do. Now it’s even harder. Researchers describe how Big Tech and right-wing lawsuits block efforts to hold social media giants accountable. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 1, 2024.
More than two years after a devastating fire, IDEAS visited St'át'imc territory around Lillooet, B.C. to learn how 21st-century wildfires are reshaping the landscape. This two-part series follows the work of the northern St'át'imc Nations, land guardians, and scientists from the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC as they seek to document the effects of wildfires and chart a new future. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 27, 2024.
More than two years after a devastating fire, IDEAS visited St'át'imc territory around Lillooet, B.C. to learn how 21st-century wildfires are reshaping the landscape. This two-part series follows the work of the northern St'át'imc Nations, land guardians, and scientists from the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC as they seek to document the effects of wildfires and chart a new future. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 26, 2024.
Kate Beaton and her family have deep roots in hard-working, rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In her 2024 Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture, the popular cartoonist points out what is lost when working-class voices are shut out of opportunities in the worlds of arts, culture, and media. *This episode originally aired on March 26, 2024.
