Ideas - Harvard historian tells IDEAS host "I love you!"

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

That's not something you expect to hear in an interview. But the prize-winning author of All That She Carried, Tiya Miles did not hesitate to say these words to IDEAS host, Nahlah Ayed. What prompted the moment was this question Nahlah asked: "You have this term 'liberation theology.' Is your book a kind of liberation history?" Tiya replied: "Oh my goodness, Nahlah. I love you!" And went on to say that her approach to history is all about liberation. Their conversation resonated with many listeners, including a potter in Australia who shares how this story sustains him after the loss of his wife. We also hear from a listening club in Nova Scotia who gather to discuss IDEAS episodes, and we find out how this program inspires everything from sonnets, to art and to recreating historic feasts. *This is the second episode in our 60th anniversary week-long series.

This program is brought to you in part by Specsavers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot. Squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun, reading in dim light, even late-night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Specsavers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at Specsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan.

book at specksavers.cavers.caps are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit specksavers.cavers.cai to learn more. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. Ideas. Scientific ideas. Literary ideas. Ideas from the social sciences. Ideas from the fine arts. Good ideas. The best ideas you'll hear tonight. CBC Radio broadcast a new program called The Best Ideas You'll Hear Tonight. This is Cam Haslam, your host for Ideas from CBC. The name was soon shortened. This is Ideas.

I'm Mr. Sinclair, and this is Ideas. But our aim remained the same. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Paul Kennedy. Ideas was and Stillis, a program for people who like to think. Writing about photography turned out to be writing about the world. Susan Sontag On Photography Tonight on Ideas

I'm Rust Germain What we've discovered over these past six decades is that ideas is also for people who like to create My 9 to 5 job I am a motion graphics designer

but who I really am is an visual artist and that's what I try to do as often as I can I wrote this sonnet for CBC's ideas as a thank you and I'm currently focusing on writing and I do a little bit of bookbinding on the side.

For me, poetry is about listening. And I say listening in the broadest sense. We're listening when we're reading something. We're listening when we're looking at something. That is we're paying attention. In this episode, as we continue to celebrate our 60th anniversary, we feature stories from our listeners about how the show has inspired them

and touched third. lives. On a warm afternoon in October, a group of ten people, all retired, are seated in a meeting room at the Picto Library about two hours from Halifax, Nova Scotia, with notebooks and pens at the ready. They're gathering to talk about ideas, with a capital I, as in CBC ideas, our program. I want to take a minute to thank the person who had the inspiration for this group and did all the hard work for the last year and a bit to make it a great success. Today, I'd like you all to join me in a well-deserved round of applause for our favorite moderator, Joe Van Volpen.

About a year ago, former teacher Joe Van Volpen made a bold move. She booked the smallest room at the library. and hoped someone would show up. Her goal, to start a group, to discuss things they heard on ideas. Thank you very much. It's obviously a pleasure to be doing this, and it's been not at all what I was expecting,

because I didn't think anybody else was going to join. But people did show up. Initially, it was just a handful of people. Then once Ward got out, the ideas discussion group grew to 15. regulars. And then it became so popular that Jovan Volpen had to book

the biggest room at the library. And she even had to start a waiting list. Human nature is such that when you hear something really cool, you want to share it. The group meets every Wednesday to discuss a recent ideas episode. One week

it was the Oslo Accords. Another was called Are Rivers Alive? And then they wanted to change things up a bit. So we picked the rhythm section, how beats and grooves define us. I'm Nala Ayyed, welcome to ideas, and to a documentary called The Rhythm Section. We are surrounded by rhythms. They're inside of us. We have circadian rhythms, which are the daily rhythms.

So our processes in our body actually get synced up to the sunrise and sunset, the cycle of the sun. Rhythm is a fundamental part of music, maybe the fundamental part. I think when I was young, I thought pitch was the most important thing in music, and now I'm convinced it's rhythm. Everything is in the timing. Rhythm is really the essence of music. And it goes even deeper. You don't necessarily think that rhythm is also a huge part of language. Ask not what your country can do for you.

Ask what you can do for your country. Rhythm underpins the way we speak, the way we move, even the way we think. Rhythm is what makes us want to stay engaged with a conversation, a book, a movie, a play. It's so we won't think. We have that excuse. It's so we won't hear.

We have our reasons. All the dead voices. They make a noise like wing. Light leaves. Like sand. Light leaves. Rhythm is life. Because that's how we are.

start. I mean, fetal heartbeat begins so early. We breathe in a rhythm. So yeah, rhythm is the basic of life. But why is rhythm so fundamental to the way our brains work and the way we live our lives? And why did we evolve to be so rhythmic? Today's episode attempts to answer all of these questions. Or maybe interactive at a nice, nice, comfortable level. These are just the things that stuck out to me. I know we all are going to have had our own favorite parts of that episode. But in the interest of getting things going with our discussion, I'll just launch into my first question. And if we need to get to any more of my questions, that's great. But if it just rolls from there, that's even better. The group is seated around tables set up in a U-Formation.

One member, Gary Jensen, leads the discussion. And it goes listening to Dr. Levitin. I was reminded of a theory from several years ago that hominids, probably before modern humans, had the ability to make musical sounds set to rhythms before developing speech. So it may have evolved in humans to facilitate communication, hunting, to be able to move in time to instructions or to music.

We don't know. It's all speculative. Dr. Daniel Levitin is one of the experts featured in the documentary. He's a neuroscientist who specializes in connections between music and the brain. Thousands of years ago when the pyramids were being built and you had human labor moving these heavy stones, when you're doing the one-two heave hoe, you all want a hoe at the same time. Or somebody's going to end up putting out their back. Right. So, you know, it's likely that the ancient Egyptian,

or the Israelites who were doing the labor or whoever it was, were at any large-scale building project, were doing it to music. Yeah, but then when he started dancing with her, well, he pushed the walker away. The implication being that humans already had advanced understanding of music at least 40,000 years ago, and were probably making and playing simpler instruments like drums from much earlier. While there's a kind of sense to this, I have a hard time imagining what this would look and sound like

among, say, a group of Neanderthals around a Paleolithic campfire. No talk, just rhythmic humming, accompanied by knocking rocks together, maybe, sticks, things like that. So my question was, and this is really general, do you guys think it happened that way? What do you guys think about the idea of early humans, singing and making sounds with objects, long before they even talked about the weather. I will go along with the idea that Neanderthal, an early man, probably did something like that. Because if you take a six-month-old baby or an eight-month-old baby,

put it on the floor with a stick, that baby will start pounding away on something. Doesn't know language, but does know to pick something up and start banging. So they must have some wiring up there that tells them this is okay. And it'll drive mum absolutely mad, but to them they've created some kind of rhythm that they enjoy. So yes, I go along with it. I remember playing pots and pans. And yeah, you get pleasure from it partly because you're better at that than you are at communicating.

you know, and getting your idea across through language, right? So it gives you that little confidence bump. There's a difference between making music and rhythm. And I think rhythm is innate probably to every species. And music is not something that we need for survival in any way, but that would be a product of our, I would say that would be a byproduct. I'm Joanne Van Boulpen. I go by Joe.

I started CBC a discussion group on ideas about almost a year ago. I started that because I would listen to the episodes and then that was the end of it. And it didn't, I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to share it. So it took about a year before I thought I would set up a group where, you know, you learn something. But then you, by processing it through the discussion with others, it makes the learning a little bit more profound and a little bit more solid.

I'm very interested in what you're saying about the natural rhythm because the world has inanimate rhythms to it. It's all around us and has been forever. When you're running a ship across the ocean, there's a rhythm to the waves, and you feel it with the engines and the waves, they almost become one. That means that you're in sync,

with the rhythm of the ship. And the ship is in sync with the rhythm of the ocean. I've experienced those things over many years of being at sea. But at the same time, I never ever thought about it all. But when we started to listen to this program, I began to think of my own experiences because I can learn from what other people say and what they study and their research. But I try to couple that with the rhythms that I experience and can identify with. And so there is a rhythm there that comes with your experiences and your memory. Ideas is exactly what it's set out to be.

It is philosophy, it is science, it is history, it is arts, it is technology, you name it, any topic will come up. Some of us are interested in technology. The rest of us don't know anything. We hear an episode and now we have additional insight from the person who has the experience. And I think rhythm would give a person. My name is Gary Jensen. I'm a retired aeronautical engineering technologist and moved to Picto three years ago. We're in a time when people connect with or think they connect with the world through the internet. This, coming out to a

discussion group like this sits me down with other people rather than looking at artifacts of people's lives online videos and so on right this is actual people in an immediate and interactive environment and it's something that we could do a lot more of for our mental health to communicate so I think it is deep in our DNA so we've done a bit of talking about the origin and whether it's genes, coated in genes. But our brains are, the communication is via brainwaves. You've got little electrical charges. Everything is the type of rhythm.

So I'm just going to read something from this book, The Electric Brain, by Douglas Fields, PhD. This is exactly what I meant when I mentioned that Joe would like to bring you an example. Hello, my name is Yvette Wazard. And I'm a retired teacher. I'm originally from Quebec and got interested in finding a group discussion that challenged you. And Joanne popped up in the library, and I've enjoyed it since. With such techniques as meditation, you don't talk about family, you don't talk about politics, you don't talk about religion, you discuss whatever the topic is. And that is stimulating in itself.

You're socializing, but on an intellectual or mental level, as opposed to friendly discussion about how your husband is doing or whatever. This is a whole new level of discussion, and it stimulates the brain. Remember a discussion a little while ago about how mutations can be good or bad? Well, maybe the mutations got better and better and better in the idea of the rhythm for the DNA. After a few hours of stimulating conversation, as Yvette puts it, group leader Joe Van Volpen reads a list of five upcoming ideas episodes so they can decide which one to pick for their next discussion. That's it. So we're looking at the 14th. 14th is the returning warriors of the 60s scoop.

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court of Canada awarded custody of an indigenous girl, Leticia Racine, to her father. The idea that the brain doesn't really die, but it needs a lot of practice. this holds true. So if you just sit at home and do nothing, then your brain will do nothing. That's the 14th. The 13th. An evening with chickens. But with this discussion, at least for an hour and a half, two hours, you know, your brain is snapping into place. Imprised Syrian wrote poetry, imagining the fall of the regime, and now it's come true. For 14 years, Syrian poet was imprisoned. decisions about whether you agree or disagree, like or dislike. October 9th, Eugene Ianesco's Theater of the Absurd.

Theater of the Absurd was born post- So I think the discussion is a really good thing for people our age to keep doing and staying mentally active. How a translation movement made Western philosophers famous. All right, so votes for the returning warriors of the 60s scoop. two, three. Gary, was that you, three? No, two. Okay. An evening with chickens. One, two, three, four, five, six. After a quick vote, an evening with chickens emerges as the winner. I get to vote. Many thanks to all the members of the Ideas Discussion Group at the Picto Library in Nova Scotia.

I'd like to thank Gary for moderating this. And to the CBC's Jane Sponigle for reporting their session. I didn't want to give you a 10. It might have went to your head. Later, we'll hear how a single ideas episode that aired 25 years ago inspired an annual dinner club that continues to meet and eat together to this day. But we're off to the middle of France

and to a garden on a sprawling estate in Burgundy. There is an Japanese expression that is called taking a bath in the woods, a bed in the bois. And that means you go walking alone, it's very important, in the wood, and you think of nothing. You just look around, and you try to get this perception that you have of the trees, the mysterious presence of the trees, which is not something that implies words. but implies things that you feel in all your body. In the spring of 2019, Ideas producer Mary Link met with the late astrophysicist Uber Reeves, who was nearly 87 at the time.

Reeves was born and raised in Quebec, then moved to France to become director of research at the renowned French National Center for Scientific Research. While he was best known as one of the world's foremost experts on the Big Bang theory, Ubert Reeves was also a lover of poetry and classical music and taking the time to simply feel. And this place here is surrounded by a large forest. I have written many things here, which just came like this when walking.

But it's mostly before the idea of doing something is the idea of feeling something. And it takes time to do it. be in that mood. What I keep coming back to with Hubert Reeves is his love for everything, love for humanity, love for the planet, and his longing to kind of learn more,

even though he probably knows more than most of us, and admitting, like, maybe he doesn't know everything. Hello, I am Christopher Cull. I live in New Jersey here in the States. And in my 9-to-5 job, I am a motion graphics designer, but who I really am is an visual artist. And that's what I try to do as often as I can. Christopher Cull is one of many ideas listeners from outside of Canada. When he heard we were celebrating our 60th anniversary, he wrote in to explain why he listens.

So I first came across CBC when I was listening to WNYC and ideas. It was one of the other fantastic programs I came across. The programming that is offered is really insightful. And it's programming I feel like I'm not hearing too often. And it's just like, how do you improve humanity? How do you deal with anxiety or whatever it is? It's just really thoughtful programming. As the father of two young sons, Christopher often

puts on our podcast for a little respite as he heads downstairs to think and to paint. My studio space is in the basement of our house. It's not a finished basement. So I kind of have a carved spot out where my easel and my paints. The thing I probably, I shouldn't admit, but the thing I love the most are my seat and my little speaker where I get my whatever I'm listening to set up. That's like the first I turn on the lights. And then the second thing, is get my music going. And I'll kind of sit down and think about what I want to do,

which direction I want to go in. It is a presence, and even if it's 200 years, he's still there. Schubert is still here, isn't he? There's a lovely quote from one of your books, and it's from the French writer, Louis Aragon, and he's writing about the death of his friend

the acclaimed poet, Guillaume Pollenier, and he wrote, quote, The Earth reclaims this mortal flesh, but not the poetry. Yes, that's beautiful. That is really, I think, one of the aim of the universe is to produce such thinking,

such beauty, yes. And the fact that actually death is not death in the sense that we still have Aragon telling us things like this. During COVID, one advantage, but it wasn't many, is that we were home all the time, and so I had more time to paint. But then also, there was protest, there was the police brutality cases, there was, my name was being knocked down. It was just chaos all over.

and I wasn't shying away from how that really made be felt, and it showed up in my art. It was then, at the height of the pandemic, when Christopher discovered our program with Uber Reeves. He bookmarked the two-part series called Finding Meaning in the Universe and continues to replay it whenever he needs to be reminded of something Reeves calls the beauty of chance. Because of chance, let me give you an idea.

Imagine a number. of snowflakes. What you notice is that there is structure there. All often have six points. There is no exception to that. We think we know so many different things. We have knowledge about so many different things, so many different facts and information. But the beauty of chance is incredible, that anything can happen. There is law in the world, and this law is what make the word structure. But you can look at as many crystals of snow, they will all be different. None of them will have the same shape. You can have them thousands or billions.

Why? Because there is also chance. And the chance is the way this crystal move before it comes on the earth, the temperature, humidity, and so on. Chance is what permits the world not to be always the same. If you have only law,

you have monotony, you have only one crystal, you have only one butterfly, you have only one person. We think we know, but maybe we don't quite know. There's still a possibility anything that happened. I love bringing that into my art. I love bringing that into my life. You have some structure, and then it's nice to just kind of let things go as they go. Don't get too concerned about it. My idea is that law brings structure and chance brings diversity, variety, creativity. You could have no art. If there was only one way to make a cantata by Johann Sebastian back, you would have only one cantata and you would not listen to them anymore. When I have Hugh Reeves interviews playing and I'm sitting in front of my easel.

There would be no Mozart. There would be no nothing. There would be monotony. It really helps remind me that life is beautiful. So is Chanson play the same thing, that there's play in nature, that it has the ability to go in different routes that we don't expect.

Exactly, and to create new things. I think one thing that helps, may get out of focusing on the negativity of what's going on in the world is back to that beautiful idea of there's beauty and chance and everything's changing and even though there's a lot of negativity in the world right now that will change and hopefully something more beautiful will come out in the end the beauty of chance itself a beautiful idea it's one of many we're really visiting on ideas during our series of special programs to mark our 60th anniversary. I'm Nala Ayyhead.

This program is brought to you in part by Speck Savers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot, squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun, reading in dim light, even late. night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Specsavers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at at Spexsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at Spexsavers.cavers.cai. Eye exams are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit specksavers.cavers.ca to learn more. With the Morale app, you can sharpen your French skills in no time.

Last learning with content from Radio Canada, it's easy as arinder three. Learn French, have fun, repeat. Download the free Morial app now. For our 60th anniversary series, we asked listeners, you, to tell us about an episode that inspired you in some life-altering way. And we heard from so many, from across Canada and around the world, including a poet in Vancouver, who told us that one of our shows. on the right to privacy, actually inspired him to write a sonnet. I remember having a number of things that I was juggling on my to-do list that afternoon. I was at home, and I was moving from prep for the college semester in September,

correspondence with various people. And what I love about ideas is it really helps me focus on one thing. And this particular episode really answered questions that I'd had for quite some time about privacy in North America. In September 2024, Ideas presented a five-part series recorded at the Stratford Festival called Brave New Worlds. The series focused on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and set out to articulate the kind of future in which we want to live. Born out of the devastation of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration was intended to set the world on a new course. Some of the questions we'll be asking here,

what new world were these rights supposed to create? What's the relationship between rights and realities, between calling for a more just world, and actually bringing it into being? Today's panel is the second in the series, and we're looking at Article 12, the right to privacy. I'm joined by three very qualified guests and I'm a Vancouver author, principally a poet. I teach poetry at Simon Fraser University's The Writer's Studio. I'm also one of

Ellie Kralgey Gardner's poetry ambassadors. I'll start just as a refresher with what the article says. Quote, no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law. An episode on the right to privacy was playing in the background while Kevin Spence was at home. Very far back in the liberal tradition, we understand this idea that for freedom of expression to be really actualized, for people to be really free to express their minds, to think novel thoughts, to make interesting art to innovate politically. You need private space.

to experiment with ideas. You need spaces of dissent. You need spaces of critique. You need spaces that are dangerous. You need spaces free from scrutiny. We know that when we're watched, or even when we think we're being watched, we behave differently. We self-censor. Montreal lawyer Lex Gill was one of the guest speakers to articulate free ideas. But the reality is that the data collected by these private entities is precisely the data that the state wants access to. That government, surveillance, policing, it piggybacks off of the market that's created by advertising. The episode involves two or three lawyers who talk about the history of the legal definition of privacy. And I found it so fascinating to know that privacy had this legal history that dated back to the 1800s.

The starting point was in 1890. When Louis Brandeis, who later on had a very distinguished career in the United States Supreme Court, it co-authored an article called The Right to Privacy, and this is the very first time Michael Link is Professor Emeritus of Law at Western University in London, Ontario, and one of the other speakers on our panel on the Right to Privacy. What they were upset about was the use of photography and the use of this newfangled thing called a phone and yellow journalism about intruding into middle-class morality. And that's what basically they were arguing, we need to have this right to privacy.

Listening to it really got me thinking, and I don't think I even finished the episode. I sat down and I started writing a poem. This sonnet has no IP address. I wrote this sonnet for CBC's ideas as a thank you. I'm so grateful for bringing so much into my life, so many ideas. and, well, I've been writing poems and giving them to people for the last 10 to maybe 20 years. And this is the first time that I thought to email a poem. Shall I compare privacy to a summer's day?

Tis far more inward and temperature controlled. Outside, surveillance heats up from selfie seekers and CCTV. as a flame leaps of yore, when Kodak first flashed the 1880s, and newspaperization, the biggest lamp which, quote, shines all over the place, unquote, illumined two lawyers to pen the right to privacy. We keep our cool listening to CBC's ideas in the unglamorous glare of home. Our inner thermostat set by decisions unknown to anyone else, even as heatwaves, rise to tsunamis. And we know those butterfly wings on our planet's other side are not

calling it in or posing as anything else. Anchored, dark, and chill, still we let silence sing its unseen strains. This sonnet borrows from Shakespeare's, shall I compare thee to a summer's day, but mine is, shall I compare privacy to a summer's day? And also incorporating some of that legal definition of privacy. It's history, which begins in the 1880s, with two lawyers from Boston who wrote The Right to Privacy, which emerged in response to newspapers, a quote-unquote new technology, the telephone, and also photography. All of these seemed like really interesting specifics to put into this poem. We keep our cool listening to CBC's ideas in the unglamorous glare of home. Our inner thermostat set by decisions unknown to anyone

else, even as heat waves rise to tsunamis. We also have a very big concern about climate change, and I put that in with heat waves rise to tsunamis. But I wanted to contrast all these big external concerns with what we have inside, which is that privacy to feel, to grieve, to celebrate whatever we want, and however we want it. Anchored, dark, and chill, still we let silence sing its unseen strains. This poem came out of listening to CBC's ideas for which I'm so grateful, not only grateful for this particular poem, but so many moments that have, let's say, sung a certain silence in my home.

I might be listening to CBC through my earbuds, and if someone were to step into my place and see me, I think they'd see a particular look, a smile. I attribute to all the amazing work that goes into CBC's ideas. Oh, thank you, Kevin. I hope you can see me smiling right now. What a thoughtful and creative gift for our 60th birthday. Now, as you know, it's tradition to celebrate a birthday or anniversary with a cake.

Where and how that started, that's better left for another ideas episode. But the topic of traditions centered on food does lead us to our next group of listeners. This whole group was a group of adventures. Champlain and Lescarboe were only two. They were inspired by a documentary from 25 years ago on the Order of Good Cheer, featuring explorer Samuel de Champlain. Former Ideas host Paul Kennedy told the story, of the feasts that Champlain held in the early 1600s, aiming to boost morale and fend off scurvy.

It's a feast of survival in a new land. It was a feast about surviving the winter, and it was also more than that. It brought together the French and the McMak, and it created a friendship that lasted for years and years and years. During the difficult winter of 1606-607, in a tiny wooden palisade at Port Royal in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Samuel Champlain created what was arguably the first cooking club or food fraternity on Canadian soil. He called it the Order of Good Cheer,

and it lasted only that one winter. In tonight's program, we'll argue that the order ought to be revived because it's almost impossible to imagine a more perfect idea. The first winter that had been in a cage yet, it started snowing on the 6th of October that year, and December people started getting scurrying. All was onto something, because as it turns, out, a civil servant in Ottawa happened to be listening that night.

Ross McLeod said to himself, I like food, and our winters are cold, so why don't I try recreating that meal with some of my friends? Champlain was a mapmaker who couldn't have understood that scurvy was caused by vitamin deficiencies. As a student in Nova Scotia, we actually learned about the Order of Good Chair in history class. And as soon as I heard that first episode of ideas on it, started a train in motion that's been going for 25 years now. He instituted the Order of Good Cheer.

The idea behind this really is one that, you know, nutrition and companionship are really important human needs. And as we've done this over time, we've been able to develop that among ourselves and with our guests and how people did that century. years ago as a way of coping with living in a new world in difficult times. One of the experts featured in the original documentary was Joe Marie Powers, a former professor from the School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management at the University of Guelph.

Well, you see, the French had had two disastrous winters in New France, and many of their men had died. And they thought that if they put everybody in good spirits by having these parties throughout the winter, that it would prevent scurvy. And they, not surprisingly, the feasting did help. It got men out hunting every day. It enlarges their food supply. My name is Ross McLeod. I'm originally from Cape Breton down in Nova Scotia. I'm retired public servant and a very amateur cook. The very first meal included dishes, something called the Le Clad de Mule, which is actually a rack of muscles that are cooked under a fire of pine needles,

legougeser, cheese puffs made by Etienne, a paté de Chavroix, which is a... My name is Etienne Grail. I am retired from the financial industry, including about 25 years in a financial Crown Corporation in downtown Ottawa. And I was born in Paris, France, of a Parisian. dad, but who had Breton and Corsican background, and a Catalan mom, born in Barcelona and exiled in France during the Spanish Civil War, moved to Canada 28 years ago because I married a Canadian from Calgary.

It's a venison pie and a number of vegetable dishes and finishing with a prune and marcipan tart, which were probably the type of food that was actually eaten at that time for people who had the resources to produce them. And of course, you know, as a Frenchman who grew up in their house, we're food mattered a lot. And with a lot of different regional influences in my background, I immediately was a willing partner and an explorer with Ross to try and roll up our sleeves and see what we could do with this idea of not that we were starving. We were not, you know, we didn't have to fend off the elements that Samuel de Champlain and his crew did. But, you know, early winter in Canada

is a good time to plan a good, cheerful menu and experiment with food. I'm born in Toronto, moved out to Calgary. My heritage is Japanese-Canadian, and it kind of features into my background and also into my food. I was not at the original dinner, and it was at a dinner subsequent to that at 8-10s that you described it,

and it sounded so fabulous. And I think, so the reason why it became permanent, I believe, is because I missed the first one, and I wanted to be part of this. And so it was that this episode, episode of ideas inspired a new tradition in Ottawa that continues to this day. After a couple of episodes where we tried to really exploit the 17th century cooking, we realized that we were running out of runway there.

So we started thinking, how do we change this? How do we inject some innovation in what we're doing here? We wanted to continue doing it because it was a fun happening. So that's where we started looking at what other kind of culinary influences can we embrace. to build new menus. From their first meal of mussels cooked over a bed of pine needles to a savory sushi-style Nanaimo bar made with salmon and rice, no two suppers have been the same.

The order of good cheer draws inspiration from a variety of sources, everything from old family recipes to world events. and each year there's a new menu to create and celebrate. So it's now 24 years since we heard that first broadcast and we are continuing to work on these meals year after year after year. And, you know, it's been an amazing full circle for us. Food is an idea and the needs that people have for, you know, good companionship and good nutrition at the same time.

What the program did is really give us the trigger and the framing for this culinary adventure. Had we not heard this program, we probably would have continued cooking, but without necessarily the same license to innovate and license to be creative. And in that, it was really kind of a reference point, a beacon that we've been following ever since. And it gave definitely shelf life to this initiative. And of course we do, I think, embrace the whole spirit of the order of good cheer. We have it every year in November as we're moving into the winter season. Now, for us, the winter season is not a hardship because we love to ski and get in the outdoors, but the camaraderie of the group, the common love of good food and good cheer is central to that. And 25 years, I think,

is just the beginning. From Breaking Bread to Composing a Sonnet to one more or listener story. This one from the land down under. My name is Patrick Foreman. I live in Grafton, New South Wales, Australia. I have a special interest in attaching myself to my inner life as I age. I'm currently focusing on writing and I do a little bit of bookbinding on the side. Patrick Foreman and his wife Ollie used to love making things with their hands. She sadly passed away suddenly five years ago.

But back when they were just starting their life together in the central tablelands of Australia, they built their own small house from clay. Not surprisingly, Patrick was also a potter, so it makes sense that the ideas episode, which has touched him the most, features an item also made by hand. We begin this episode with a cotton sack. It's old, from the mid-1800s, and embroidered onto it in just ten short lines is a heartening and heart-wrenching story. My great-grandmother Rose, mother of Ashley, gave her the sack when she was sold at age nine in South Carolina.

Those spare lines tell us that Rose and Ashley were enslaved. The next two reveal what was in the sack. It held a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans, a braid of Rose's hair. In the next line, the words are much larger. This was Rose's last message for her daughter, Ashley. Told her, it'd be filled with my love always. She never saw her again. Then near the bottom of the sack,

the final two lines, a kind of author's note. Ashley is my grandmother, Ruth Middleton, 1921. Finding out who Ruth, Ashley, and Rose were, and unraveling the stories contained in that sack, that's what inspired Harvard historian Taya Miles to write her celebrated book, all that she carried. I first saw the sack in the sack, the winter of 2016, and I had been waiting to see it and longing to see it in person for several months.

All that she carried has won a raft of awards, including the National Book Award and the Kundle History Prize. There are so many episodes that I have thoroughly enjoyed over the years, but the one episode that immediately stuck in my mind was that, the episode about a slave woman who was making a carrying case, sort of like a shoulder bag, or her daughter, a young nine-year-old daughter, to be sold as an individual away from her mother. And the thing that really struck me about that show was the love that was involved. There was the love in making of this carrying case. And the presenter, Naila, she was full of love for this expression too. And it just was so moving and so effective to my feelings of life.

In February 2023, I spoke with award-winning Harvard professor and historian Taya Miles. She detailed the painstaking process of tracking down the origins of this one cotton sack. It was sown by Rose, a mother who was enslaved in the American South in the mid-1800s. She gave the sack to her nine-year-old daughter, Ashley, who was about to be sold. It felt like a gut punch, but it also felt like inspiration. It felt like a clutching of the chest, and I think that was love. I felt very much like the love that Rose said, would fill the sack was still present in it.

And I almost felt as if there was a softening of time as I stood there in front of the sack, that there was a way in which the present was moving into the past and that I, as a viewer, as a reader, was entering into the sack and the space of the sack, the emotional and psychological and historical room that the sack created. In Australia we didn't have slavery but we had Aboriginal people and the children were taken into more or less slavery

and that was a great ache in the heart of Indigenous people and more and more non-Indigenous people saw this as a great wrong and an act of Parliament came about where basically the Prime Minister at the Times said we are sorry By assembling the bag and its contents, Rose turned fear into love, committing herself to a fight for life. In toting the sack and its story, Ashley realized Rose's radical vision of black persistence. In embellishing the cloth with her foremother's tale, Ruth committed this episode to family history and to American history. And now that the sack is in our hands, we cannot forget its life.

layered lessons. Horrible things take place. Nevertheless, survival is possible. Hope can gain ground, and generations can be sustained. When we bear into the future the full knowledge of our past, we walk with hearts unfolded. We recognize the brutality of our species, and as well, the light in our spirits. We see that nothing is preserved. and no child or grandchild is saved without brash acts of love and wild visions of continuance.

This bag was something that was handmade with great love and care attached to me because both my wife and I were very much interested in handmade things. For many years I was a potter and I was a great love in my life. I have given bowls, jugs, cups, platters, all sorts of various items that I made. And it's a real thrill to me when I go to their places and I see that they still care for that object. And it's part of their lives that they use on a daily basis. Australian potter, letter writer and ideas listener Patrick Foreman is one of many who were deeply touched by our episode with Taya Miles about her book all that she carried. The history of this one simple cloth sack

is both an indictment of the past and an eloquent symbol of the resilience of love. You have this term liberation theology. Is your book a kind of liberation history? Oh my goodness, Mama. I love you. Well, you know what? I love you too. That sounds sweet. You don't know to say that. That's not great. I mean, you wouldn't, okay. In a few years, maybe, perhaps, if things go well, my next book comes out, you will see how prescient your statement was. Your question was. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, listening to the show about the sack, it just made me realize how precious shows like ideas can be, how they can mold different textures into our lives. And so that sort of carries on into my life now. And having listened to it again recently, it still reinforced my love of that actual story. And I think I've been blessed by that. I'm not sure how much any one method can do or any one book or anyone discipline can even do

to move us toward real liberation and all the meetings that that word might hold. But I do think we have to try. And I did try in this book to be a witness for Rose and for Ashley, for Ruth, to see them, to hear them, and to feel them. And I do think that in some way that there is a liberatory quality to that. Because we're lifting up who they were. were. We're lifting up their spirits. We're lifting up their, their persons. I'm 79 now, and I still ride a bicycle every day, nearly every day, except Saturday.

I naturally think of my evolution of life. and what will be left for others to think about when I die. And it's just the way life is. It's just moves, always moving. When one person dies, it doesn't mean their memory dies with them. What a fitting way to end this episode. Thank you, Patrick Foreman. This series celebrating the 60th anniversary of ideas is produced by Karen Chichaluck.

Special thanks to Patrick Mooney, John Scaife, and Kate Zeman from CBC Library Services, as well as the teams at CBC, Ottawa and Vancouver. Special thanks to Jane Sponagall of CBC Halifax. And of course, a huge thank you to our listener contributors. Joe Van Vulpan, Gary Jensen, Yvette Wozard, and the other members of the Ideas Discussion Group at Picto Library in Nova Scotia. Christopher Cull of New Jersey,

poet Kevin Spence of Vancouver and Ross MacLeod, Vic Nishi, Etienne Graal, and Malcolm Imre of the Order of Good Cheer dinner club in Ottawa. Technical production by Emily Kiervasio and Sam McNulty. The web producer of ideas is Lisa Ayuso. Our senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas. And I'm Nala Ayyad.