IDEAS is a deep-dive into contemporary thought and intellectual history. No topic is off-limits. In the age of clickbait and superficial headlines, it's for people who like to think.
331 episodes transcribedMontreal was a hotbed of spies and conspirators during the U.S. Civil War. IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed and investigative journalist Julian Sher, author of...
What do ghost stories capture about the experience of being stateless? IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed speaks with lawyer and scholar Jamie Chai Yun Liew on ho...
Pastedechouan was an Innu boy taken to France by Catholic clergymen in 1620. What happened to him 400 years ago may well be the template that would la...
"What is good?" is at the heart of philosophy. Asking the question helps us move toward answers about inclusivity, equality, and who gets a voice at t...
In 1876, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé published a poem entitled "The Afternoon of a Faun." He doubted anyone could set it to music successfully. But com...
Nearly a decade after Russia annexed Crimea, Russia’s war on Ukraine is entering its third year. As Putin is starting yet another term — Russian oppos...
“We face a continual tension between holding the government to account, and not wanting the enemy to undermine us by exploiting bad news," says Ukrain...
Insecurity has become a "defining feature of our time," says 2023 CBC Massey lecturer Astra Taylor. She explores how rising inequality, declining ment...
In conversation with IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed, the 2023 Massey lecturer Astra Taylor explains how her early years in the unschooling movement shaped her...
Philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain brought up an important question during the 1993 CBC Massey Lectures: is democracy as we know it in danger? Author an...
In a world where peace and justice can be hard to come by, The Hague in The Netherlands projects something special: the city is a base for several wor...
A conversation with Winnipeg Poet Laureate Chimwemwe Undi about home, belonging, racism, living downtown, and about poetry as a vehicle for life’s big...
Indigenous filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has witnessed nearly a century of change. At 91 years old she continues to produce documentaries featuring Indig...
For musician and radio producer, David Schulman, the violin can swing and sing like nothing else. Schulman recently travelled to the north of Italy to...
An Ontario trucking union predicts a shortage of 30,000 truckers in Canada as old hands retire faster than new ones take on the job. IDEAS producer To...
Herodotus was committed to understanding the human causes of conflict and war. He gathered stories — some believable, others not — to show how differe...
A century after the founding of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, the sounds of Black gospel — which from its very beginnings has been ste...
"In the dark times, will there also be singing?" Bertolt Brecht once asked. World literature scholar Sandeep Banerjee explores the power of art i...
In the thorny thickets of love and desire, how do Shakespeare’s characters talk to each other? And what’s changed in 400 years? From the Stratford Fes...
Fears of technological overreach, environmental decline, and the violent rise of the irrational: our 21st-century anxieties were anticipated in an unl...
