<p>On May 5, 1945, Canadian soldiers played a key role in the liberation of the Netherlands from the German forces. Almost 80 years later, a large group of Canadians travelled to the Netherlands to pay tribute to their relatives who'd helped liberate the country in the Second World War. They walked on a nine-day pilgrimage through villages and towns, visiting old battlefields and the cemeteries where Canada's soldiers are buried. The group followed in the footsteps of the Canadian troops t...
May 05, 2025•55 min
<p>In the hour’s following her mother’s death, Martha Baillie undertook two rituals — preparing a death mask of her mother’s face, and washing her mother’s body. That intimacy shaped her grief. She had learned earlier to witness death and be present, living with regret after she left the room to get a nurse when her father died. For Baillie her mother's body was not a corpse that has no life. To her, it would "always be something alive." The novelist and writer explains what signified the ...
May 02, 2025•54 min
<p>"Never let anyone tell you that you're old," says Dag Aabaye, an 83-year-old super athlete who defies age. He runs two to six hours daily in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley, where he lives alone on a mountain. For him, running is “life itself." Blizzards, heat waves, even running 24 hours straight </p><p><br></p><p>Until he met Aabaye, Brett Popplewell used to dread growing old. But now the sports journalist says he has reframed his thoughts about life, death, and t...
May 01, 2025•54 min
<p>The cowboy — a symbol of the true American man who is anti-government, works independently and protects his family.&nbsp;Historian Heather Cox Richardson calls this rhetoric “cowboy individualism”, and says this myth is the basis for 40-year-old Republican ideology. In this public lecture, Cox Richardson argues that the current Trump administration has taken cowboy individualism to an extreme by gutting the government and centring power.</p>
Apr 30, 2025•54 min
<p>We have a lot to thank horses for in our everyday lives, from the Hollywood motion picture, to life-saving vaccines for diphtheria and tetanus, to a staple in our closets: pants. "Prior to riding horses, no one wore pants," says historian Timothy Winegard. He argues that horses are intertwined in our own history to the point that we overlook their importance. His research explains how they shaped societies, economies and cultures. Without us, horses would be nowhere, and vice versa. It ...
Apr 29, 2025•54 min
<p>IDEAS listeners think deeply about the state of the world and how to improve it. To do that, you need to know what's going on. That's why we're recommending World Report.</p><p><br></p><p>It's a daily news podcast that brings you the biggest stories happening in Canada and around the world, in just 10 minutes. Today you can get the latest Canadian election results and reaction from political leaders. It's the perfect update for IDEAS listeners who have been...
Apr 29, 2025•11 min
<p>When reality TV first exploded in the early 2000s, the media panicked about the effect "unscripted" content would have on viewers. They found it difficult to distinguish between what was real and fake. But these days, people generally know better. Viewers now lean on the assumption that most of it is artfully manufactured. And according to experts, watching reality TV gives viewers analytical skills, media literacy — they are perceptive, which gets to the heart of deciphering when reali...
Apr 28, 2025•54 min
<p>Looking back about 3,000 years, the playbook on authoritarianism remains pretty much the same as it is today. Back in the 5th century BCE, when Herodotus travelled the ancient world gathering stories, he became an expert in would-be tyrants. His groundbreaking tome, simply called <em>The History</em>, shared vivid descriptions of autocratic and tyrannical rulers. Herodotus was a rule breaker himself. He ignored Greek literary tradition and captured history as accurately as p...
Apr 25, 2025•54 min
<p>Canadians’ biggest fear for the country’s future is “growing political and ideological polarization,” according to a 2023 EKOS poll. As part of our series, <em>IDEAS for a Better Canada (produced in partnership with the Samara Centre for Democracy)</em>, host Nahlah Ayed headed to the fast-growing city of Edmonton to talk about the creative ways local residents are working to find common ground. From video games to an engagement technique called “deep canvassing” used to bri...
Apr 21, 2025•54 min
<p>PEI has the highest voter turnout of any other province in Canada. Voting is fundamental to this community. Residents see firsthand how their vote matters — several elections were decided by 25 votes or less. In this small province, people have a personal and intimate connection with politicians. MLAs know voters on an individual basis and they feel a duty to their job. In our series, <em>IDEAS for a Better Canada </em><strong><em> </em></strong><e...
Apr 21, 2025•54 min
<p>Like many cities in Canada, Nanaimo has a housing crisis. As rent prices have surged, so has homelessness. According to the city's last official count, there are 515 unhoused people in Nanaimo at any given time. By population, that is a higher homelessness rate than the city of Vancouver. Our series,<em> IDEAS for a Better Canada (produced in partnership with the Samara Centre for Democracy)</em>, explores how homelessness affects the health of our democracy and why long-ter...
Apr 21, 2025•59 min
<p>Public libraries are the forum for intellectual freedom, a core value that librarians protect for the sake of democracy. Yet libraries have now become a target in the culture wars of the U.S. – and in Canada, too. It’s an urgent conversation to have, no matter where one sits on the political spectrum. Libraries exist to give everyone access to a wide variety of content, even when books may offend others. Librarians are increasingly having to persuade skeptics that all ideas belong on th...
Apr 21, 2025•54 min
<p>The Sermon on the Mount is one of the greatest gifts of scripture to humanity; just ask Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Leo Tolstoy. But who's making any use of it today? In a time when an eye for an eye still seems to hold sway, <em>IDEAS</em> producer Sean Foley explores the logic of Christian non-violence, beginning with Jesus' counsel to 'turn the other cheek.' <em>*This episode won a Wilbur Award for excellence in communicating spiritual themes. It ori...
Apr 18, 2025•54 min
<p>IDEAS is a place for people who like to think. We value curiosity&nbsp;and deep conversation. And we work hard to bring you the ideas that shape and re-shape our world. No topic is off-limits. New episodes drop Monday through Friday at 3 pm ET.</p>
Apr 18, 2025•2 min
<p>Saturn, an alligator that was supposedly Hitler’s favourite animal was 'liberated' from the Berlin zoo when the Red Army invaded Germany at the end of the Second World War. The reptile was relocated to Moscow where it died in 2020. But with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Saturn’s story has become once again a symbol in wartime geopolitics. <em>*This episode originally aired on Jan. 10, 2023.</em></p>
Apr 17, 2025•54 min
<p>It’s been a few months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, with the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, overseeing government operations. The U.S. has been a platform for him, a source of money, resources and leverage, says historian and author Quinn Slobodian who has studied Musk's global history. Slobodian points out that Musk is “the symptom of a society which empowered him.” When we wanted technical solutions to social problems, Musk responded. He may not be what we wanted, “...
Apr 16, 2025•54 min
<p>We are all vulnerable to digital surveillance, as there’s little protection to prevent our phones from getting hacked. Mercenary spyware products like Pegasus are powerful and sophisticated, marketed to government clients around the world. Cybersecurity expert Ron Deibert tells<em> IDEAS</em>, "the latest versions can be implanted on anyone's device anywhere in the world and as we speak, there is literally no defence against it.” Deibert is the founder of the Citizen Lab at ...
Apr 15, 2025•54 min
<p>There's no universal definition for the word freedom, according to American historian Timothy Snyder. He divides the word into two categories for people — the freedom "from" and the freedom "to" various things. In the U.S., Snyder calls oligarchs like Elon Musk and President Donald Trump "heroes of negative freedom,” focused on being against things. But the author of <em>On Freedom</em> says it's a trap, because once you’re against one thing, it builds into an endless loop o...
Apr 14, 2025•54 min
<p>The Gulf of America/Gulf of Mexico controversy reminds us that maps may appear authoritative, but are a version of reality. At the same time, they can be rich, beautiful and informative, as Vancouver’s Kathleen Flaherty explains, in this 2005 documentary made before Google Maps changed mapmaking forever.</p>
Apr 11, 2025•54 min
<p>At a time when Canadians are rallying around the flag, IDEAS thought we could all use a little Stompin’ Tom Connors to keep us going. Famous for his black cowboy hat, he was an original, writing hundreds of songs about what it means to be Canadian. He may have died 12 years ago, but his songs live on, and resonate today.</p>
Apr 10, 2025•54 min
<p>A German, a Canadian, and an American meet to discuss national borders — crossing them, defending them, and reimagining what they could become before the century is out. Our three experts dig into what’s happening to the concept of borders, how they work, and how border policies have changed in the past 10 years.</p>
Apr 09, 2025•54 min
<p>Between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden in offshore accounts. These secret stashes have been uncovered by the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) — a network of almost 300 investigative journalists. Their findings&nbsp;have led to multiple arrests and official inquiries in more than 70 countries, and the resignations of the leaders of Pakistan, Iceland, and Malta.</p>
Apr 08, 2025•54 min
<p>"The first kind of return before language or story is a return to one another," says novelist Janika Oza. She looks at the ways in which the narrative arcs of ordinary lives are shaped by ruptures like colonialism, war, and the Partition of India — and what it means to continually seek to return through stories, memories and objects. <em>This episode is the fourth in a series collaboration with Crow’s Theatre in Toronto.</em></p>
Apr 07, 2025•54 min
<p>Growing up, PhD student Sarah believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible. She predicted that non-believers faced doom in hell upon Judgment Day. Born into a devout evangelical Christian community, she draws on her religious past to understand the visceral belief people acquire in conspiracy theories — from PizzaGate to the 'stolen' 2020 U.S. election. <em>*This episode originally aired on Sept. 21, 2022.</em></p>
Apr 04, 2025•54 min
<p>Patriotism’s back in style. Along with it comes reasonable questions about when a love of your country is a good thing, and when it can lead you astray. Our series on the art of national pride continues with<em> IDEAS </em>producer Tom Howell gathering insights from Afghans, Israelis, and Americans in hopes of finding the key to doing patriotism right.</p>
Apr 03, 2025•54 min
<p>The World Wildlife Fund lists the Wabanaki-Acadian old-growth forest as endangered — with only one per cent remaining. The Wabanaki-Acadian forest stretches from parts of the Maritimes and Southern Quebec down into New England states. <em>IDEAS </em>explores the beauty and complexity of this ancient forest with 300-year-old trees. <em>*This episode originally aired on June 11, 2024.</em></p>
Apr 02, 2025•54 min
<p>Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum physics, and finding evidence of black holes — trace the chain of discoveries that led to these breakthroughs and you'll end up with the Italian astronomer and inventor, Galileo Galilei. Renowned Italian theoretical physicist and author Carlo Rovelli says we can learn a lot from Galileo today. He explains how 400 years ago, this renaissance man of science was discovering new facts about the Universe to understand ourselves better — and so are we....
Apr 01, 2025•54 min
<p>In 1971, artist Joyce Wieland said: "Canada can either now lose complete control — which it almost has, economically, spiritually and a few other things — or it can get itself together."&nbsp;In the 60s and 70s, the artist painted, sculpted and stitched the Canadian flag and our sense of national identity. Her art called on the need to preserve its distinctness from the United States. Now, a quarter century after her death, the artist's work and words form a clarion call. <em>...
Mar 31, 2025•54 min
<p>Montreal was a hotbed of spies and conspirators during the U.S. Civil War. <em>IDEAS</em> host Nahlah Ayed and investigative journalist Julian Sher, author of <em>The North Star: Canada and the Civil War Plots Against Lincoln</em>, tour Montreal’s past and present, tracing the city’s hidden Confederate past.</p>
Mar 28, 2025•54 min
<p>We should move away from this idea that childhood should be filled with innocence, safe from the knowledge of difficult things argues Critical Cultural Theorist of Childhood Julie Garlen. Kids do experience difficulty, even in the best of circumstances, and she suggests they need the tools and language to navigate the lives they are living. Constructing childhood as a time of innocence limits children's opportunities for growth and learning.</p>
Mar 27, 2025•54 min
