Ideas

These are anxious times for journalism and democracy. As part of an event hosted by the Samara Centre for Democracy, former news anchor Lisa LaFlamme tells IDEAS what can and must be done to bolster journalism so it can better safeguard democracy. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 15, 2024.

Civility is under threat, authoritarianism and autocrats are on the rise and there's an erosion of institutional trust. Three pre-eminent speakers join IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed to discuss how Canada and other countries can promote respect and protect liberal democracy.

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.

Salman Rushdie sees reality through the lens of time. There are the months after the nearly-fatal attack of August 2022 that he details in his memoir Knife. And the decade following the Iranian state’s February 1989 fatwa against him. In this conversation with Nahlah Ayed, he describes hinge moments in his uncannily storied life.

Canadian PhD graduate Kritika Vashishtha invented a new colour of light and combined it with artificial intelligence to fool the body into shifting time zones faster — creating a possible cure for jet lag. She tells IDEAS how this method could also help astronauts on Mars. *This episode is part of our series Ideas from the Trenches, which showcases fascinating new work by Canadian PhD students.

In 2020, CBC Massey lecturer and tech expert Ron Deibert asked us to consider how to mitigate the harms of social media and construct a viable communications ecosystem that supports civil society. We revisit his final Massey lecture that explores the kinds of restraints we need to place on government and corporations — and on our own endless appetite for data.

Citizen Lab founder and director Ron Deibert reflects on what’s changed in the world of spyware, surveillance, and social media since he delivered his 2020 CBC Massey Lectures, Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society. *This episode is part of an ongoing series of episodes marking the 60th anniversary of Massey College, a partner in the Massey Lectures.

What shapes the perpetrators of violence against women? And why haven’t efforts to achieve political and economic equality been enough to stop the violence? As part of our series, IDEAS at Crow’s Theatre, professor Miglena Todorova explores violence against women — and why efforts to enshrine political and economic gender equality have failed.

Considered one of the first writers of mysteries and the father of detective fiction, Wilkie Collins used the genres to investigate the rapidly changing world around him. UBC Journalism professor Kamal Al-Solaylee explores his work and its enduring power to make us look twice at the world we think we know.

Once, there were half a million salmon in the Yukon River, but now they're almost gone. For the Little Salmon Carmacks River Nation, these salmon are an essential part of their culture — and now their livelihood is in peril. IDEAS shares their story as they struggle to keep their identity after the loss of the salmon migration.

Indigenous activist Riley Yesno addresses the hopes, disappointments, accomplishments and misuses of ‘reconciliation’ in post-TRC Canada. The Anishnaabe scholar says Indigenous youth who came of age at this time are "meant to be responsible for seeing it through to its next stage."

The bombing of civilians has been called one of the "great scandals" of modern warfare. So why, despite nearly a century of drafting laws and signing conventions protecting the sanctity of human life, does bombing civilians remain a widespread military tactic?

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.

In his 2000 Massey Lectures on The Rights Revolution, Michael Ignatieff confronted the conflicted rise of human rights language in Canadian and global politics. "Has the rights revolution brought us closer together as a nation, or driven us further apart?" he asks in his final Massey lecture. We revisit this talk, as part of our series marking the 60th anniversary of Massey College.

Twenty-four years ago, Massey lecturer Michael Ignatieff delivered five talks that explored the powerful rise of the language of 'rights' in Canada and other industrialized nations. Michael Ignatieff speaks with former IDEAS host Paul Kennedy to reflect on his talks — and how the rights revolution continues to shape politics today, often in unexpected ways. *This episode is part of an ongoing series of episodes marking the 60th anniversary of Massey College, a partner in the Massey Lectures.

We've dropped this bonus podcast into the feed to announce that Canadian writer Ian Williams is this year’s Massey lecturer. He spoke with Q host Tom Power to tell us why he’s chosen the topic of 'conversations' for his lecture series, how listening can be a courageous act, and why he believes it’s important to have difficult conversations, even at the risk of offending people.

Harvard historian Tiya Miles believes the more girls and women are outdoors, the more fulfilling their lives will be. In her book, Wild Girls, Miles shows how girls who found self-understanding in the natural world became women who changed America.

A groundbreaking study conducted in the wake of the Second World War by a group of scholars rocked the academic world when it was published in 1950 — but fell out of favour. Now a new generation of scholars is reviving the lessons of The Authoritarian Personality to understand the politics of our time. *This episode originally aired on April 4, 2022.

Montreal was a hotbed of spies and conspirators during the U.S. Civil War. IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed and investigative journalist Julian Sher, author of The North Star: Canada and the Civil War Plots Against Lincoln, tour Montreal’s past and present, tracing the city’s hidden Confederate past.