<p>Need a babysitter? Phone Cindy. That's just one of the ads in The Inverness Oran, a small town newspaper in Cape Breton with a circulation of 3,000. For almost 50 years, the paper has kept the community updated on local news, many opinions, and letters to the editor. <em>IDEAS</em> offers a snapshot of what people are talking about in Inverness County, what newspapers used to be, and why the family-owned paper is stronger than ever.</p>
Mar 26, 2025•54 min
<p>In 1997, the Mi’kmaq Nation took over on-reserve education in Nova Scotia. It was the first time in Canadian history that jurisdiction for education was transferred from the federal government to a First Nation. One year later, Eskasoni First Nation high school opened, and since then, the school has become an epicentre for Mi’kmaq language revitalization. <em>This episode is the second in a two-part series on language revitalization.&nbsp;&nbsp;</em></p>
Mar 25, 2025•54 min
<p>Younger generations in Nunavut today are less likely to grow up immersed in Inuktut. At a language school in Iqaluit, Inuit adults who didn’t grow up speaking Inuktut now have the chance to learn it as a second language at the Pirurvik Centre. By learning the words for kinship terminology, they’re also discovering things about their families they never knew.&nbsp;<em>*This episode is the first in a two-part series on language revitalization. </em></p>
Mar 24, 2025•54 min
<p>Ever felt that no one is really listening? In the first of his 2024 CBC Massey Lectures, novelist and poet Ian Williams explores why we need to have a conversation about conversations. His five-part lecture series confronts the deterioration of civic and civil discourse and asks us to reconsider the act of conversing as the sincere, open exchange of thoughts and feelings.<em> *The Massey Lectures originally aired in November of 2024.</em></p>
Mar 17, 2025•54 min
<p>In his second Massey Lecture, Ian Williams explores the power of conversation with strangers. He says humanity comes out when interacting with them. But how do we open ourselves up to connect with strangers while safeguarding our personal sovereignty? Williams believes we can learn a lot from our conversations with strangers and loved ones alike.<em>&nbsp;</em></p>
Mar 17, 2025•54 min
<p>Difficult conversations are almost always about something under the surface, and hidden. In his third Massey Lecture, Ian Williams illustrates what we’re listening for isn’t always obvious. He explains how personal conversations aren't about finding answers&nbsp;— it's for communion.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
Mar 17, 2025•54 min
<p>We’re in an era where many people feel an ownership over certain words, and how a community expresses itself; the term ‘appropriation’ has come to create guardrails around what can be said, and by whom. In his fourth Massey Lecture, Ian Williams considers the role of speech and silence in reallocating power, and what it means to truly listen.&nbsp;</p>
Mar 17, 2025•54 min
<p>What makes a great conversation? The subject? Not so much. It’s more that it’s filled with layers and that you never really know where it’ll end up — how it will change you by the time it ends. Ian Williams delivers the final 2024 CBC Massey Lecture on the art of good conversation.</p>
Mar 17, 2025•54 min
<p>2024 CBC Massey lecturer Ian Williams speaks with&nbsp;<em>IDEAS&nbsp;</em>host Nahlah Ayed about the forces that have shaped him as a thinker and writer, from the encyclopedias he read as a child in Trinidad to his years as a dancer to the poetry of Margaret Atwood. "I believe in multiplicity," he says. William's Massey Lectures, <em>What I Mean to Say: Remaking Conversation in Our Time, </em>will be available in our feed this coming Monday.</p>
Mar 14, 2025•54 min
<p>Is there a luxury you would never give up for your ideals? An all-purpose deal-breaker? <em>IDEAS </em>producer Tom Howell investigates how wanting a nice lunch in a restaurant intersects with morals and politics — with the help of a restaurateur, an economist, an anti-poverty campaigner, and a light golden Chablis.<em>&nbsp;*This episode originally aired on June 24, 2024.</em></p><p>&nbsp;</p>
Mar 13, 2025•54 min
<p>Hidden in the 1950 academic paper that launched the famous 'Turing Test' of machine intelligence, is a strange mystery. Cryptographer Alan Turing argued that humans might always be able to outsmart machines, because we have supernatural powers like ESP, telepathy, and telekinesis. His belief in the paranormal is just one part of the spooky side of artificial intelligence. Like hauntings or seances, AI is an exercise in self-deception; we imagine intelligence from computation and data, j...
Mar 12, 2025•54 min
<p>In this digital age, we must think of ourselves&nbsp;as stakeholders, playing a vital role in the creation of data, says Wendy H. Wong. She is a political scientist and winner of the 2024 Balsillie Prize for Public Policy for her book, <em>We, the Data. </em>Wong argues for a human rights approach when it comes to how our data should be collected, and how it can be used.</p>
Mar 11, 2025•54 min
<p>For leaders who built empires throughout history, Virgil's <em>Aeneid </em>has been a blueprint for how to take over land that belongs to someone else. Now when empires are making a comeback, it's worth asking if the epic poem is propaganda, or does it carry a message about the horrors of empire, too?</p>
Mar 10, 2025•54 min
<p>Sometimes, ghosts 'appear' for very human reasons. Loss, change, and grief can alter our perceptions of reality. In this episode, the reasons why ghosts are seen everywhere from new high-rises in Mumbai, to urban food courts, to a gay gym in San Francisco. <em>*This episode originally aired on Oct. 25, 2022.</em></p>
Mar 07, 2025•54 min
<p>Smell has been called the 'Cinderella sense,' capable of inspiring profound admiration if we stop turning our noses at it. Producer Annie Bender examines what we lose when we take our powerful — but often misunderstood — sense of smell for granted.<em> *This episode originally aired on June 3, 2024.</em></p>
Mar 06, 2025•54 min
<p>Examining the parallels between Inuit storytelling and modern horror narratives, writer Jamesie Fournier explores the importance of being afraid and how the other side comes back to haunt us for our own good. This episode is part of our on-going series called<em> IDEAS at Crow's Theatre</em>.</p>
Mar 05, 2025•54 min
<p>From the interpersonal to the societal: what is reasonableness? And in a democracy, how reasonable can we reasonably demand that others be? Five Canadian thinkers try to define what “reasonableness” means and what it is to behave and think reasonably.<em> *This episode originally aired on Feb. 6, 2024.</em></p>
Mar 04, 2025•54 min
<p>How can religion help decode the motives for Russia's aggression against Ukraine? And how can Judeo-Christian ethics inform a way forward for peace? Ukrainian Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, and historian of Central European politics Timothy Snyder explore these questions.</p>
Mar 03, 2025•54 min
<p>For many people around the world, Cuban cigars are a luxury. But for Cubans, they’ve symbolized the country’s rich history and culture. Now as an economic crisis is gripping the country and people are leaving, the cigar is a bellwether of Cuba's uncertain future. <em>*This episode originally aired on Feb. 5, 2024.</em></p>
Feb 28, 2025•54 min
<p>Our bodies are a great paradox. We are made up of trillions of cells that are both independent and interconnected units of life.<em> IDEAS</em> travels into the microscopic complexity of the human body to explore sophisticated nanomachines — and probe the deep mysteries of a subatomic world. <em>*This episode originally aired on Jan. 31, 2024.</em></p>
Feb 27, 2025•54 min
<p>In 1945, as the Second World War ended, the United Nations brought together 50 nations of the world. Their historic charter aimed to uphold international peace, security, and human rights. Today, the UN faces a lot of criticism, but Canada’s UN Ambassador, Bob Rae, still believes in it.</p>
Feb 26, 2025•54 min
<p>Four decades ago, trade negotiations in North America prompted great trepidation in Canada. <em>IDEAS</em> revisits a 1986 documentary by the CBC's Carol Off exploring a flurry of Canadian nationalism and patriotism brought on by fears that the U.S. was about to absorb Canada — a threat, once again, on many Canadians' minds.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
Feb 25, 2025•54 min
<p>Even Martin Luther King Jr. didn't know he had a dream — at least not until he improvised the most famous part of his 1963 speech. For many people, public speaking or standup comedy is horrifying. Even more so without a script. <em>IDEAS </em>explores the art of improv — a skill that isn't just for entertainment. It's tapping into a vast well of human potential, and maybe even making the world a tiny bit better.</p>
Feb 24, 2025•54 min
<p>Harvard historian Tiya Miles believes the more girls and women are outdoors, the more fulfilling their lives will be. In her book, <em>Wild Girls</em>, Miles shows how girls who found self-understanding in the natural world became women who changed America. <em>*This episode originally aired on April 10, 2024.</em></p>
Feb 21, 2025•54 min
<p>Broken violins, cruel love and absent fathers... At the end of the 19th century, Émile Nelligan wrote hundreds of tragic, passionate, sonnets and rondels on these subjects and more. And yet, most English-speaking Canadians seem never to have heard of the Quebec poet. <em>*This episode originally aired on Jan. 9, 2024.</em></p>
Feb 20, 2025•54 min
<p>In 2023, scientists discovered thousands of unknown life forms in the Pacific Ocean. The discovery highlighted an unsettling fact: 86 per cent of land species and 91 per cent of marine species remain undiscovered. Are we running out of time to classify the life around us?</p>
Feb 19, 2025•54 min
<p>The current wave of anti-elitism, and anti-urbanism we’re seeing from authoritarian leaders and their followers may seem to have erupted out of nowhere. But for New Yorker writer and former CBC Massey Lecturer, Adam Gopnik, what we see now stems from historic antisemitism.</p>
Feb 18, 2025•54 min
<p>For musician David Schulman, the violin can swing and sing like nothing else. Schulman travelled to the north of Italy to try and discover the original trees from which Antonio Stradivari made his masterpieces. It’s a journey of surprise and delight.<em> *This episode originally aired on Nov. 28, 2023.</em></p>
Feb 17, 2025•54 min
<p>Marriage is on the decline in Canada. And in heterosexual unions, it’s women who more often initiate divorce, and wait longer to remarry. Why is marriage not working for women? And what fundamentally has to change for women to continue saying "I do”? <em>*This episode originally aired on Feb. 21, 2024. </em></p>
Feb 14, 2025•54 min
<p>For years as host of the CBC podcast <a href="https://link.mgln.ai/TKNpBc " rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>On Drugs</em></a>, Geoff Turner has examined the history, culture, science and religion of drugs, from ancient Berzerkers and their mushroom rituals, to the German army’s use of amphetamines, to the caffeine in millions of people’s morning coffee. In this episode, Turner gets personal. For more episodes: https://link.mgln.ai/TKNpBc&nbsp;&a...
Feb 13, 2025•54 min
