Ideas

With a newly elected government in Quebec promising to turn the province into its own country, and another separatist party warning against ethno-nationalism, immigrants in the province are asked to consider their loyalties. IDEAS producer Tom Howell finds out why newcomers might want to join the movement to leave Canada and help forge Quebec's new national path.*Part two in a three-part series asking: what makes a nation?

Listen to another episode from this series:

A Map of Cascadia

Guests in this podcast:

Aisha Issa is a Parti Québécois candidate for the provincial riding of Maurice-Richard in Montreal, Quebec. She has been a supporter of Quebec sovereignty since the 1995 referendum.

Marie-Anne Alepin is the president of the Societé St-Jean Baptiste of Montreal. 

Gary Owen is a playwright and screenwriter from Cardiff, in Wales. His play, Owain & Henry is a historical epic about a Welsh military commander who rebelled against the English king, Henry IV, in the year 1400.

Michael Sheen is an actor who plays Owain Glyndŵr in the play Owain & Henry, which he also co-directed. 

There’s a place where people make hoppy beer, fresh sushi, and damn fine coffee. It's called Cascadia. The lifestyle is laid-back, the scenery is majestic, and they even have a flag. Where is it exactly? Think of it as an ecological region stretching from Alaska to B.C. through the Pacific Northwest to Northern California. Its national identity transcends borders, and is bound through culture, history, attitude and language. Welcome to Cascadia: the West Coast utopian dream. *Part one in a three-part series asking: what makes a nation?

Listen to another episode in this series:

What draws a new immigrant to Quebec separatism?

Guests in this podcast:

Fritz Götz is an associate professor in psychology at the University of British Columbia. He is also the director of the PANGEA lab, which stands for Personality and Geographical Ambiance Lab, studying geographical psychology.

Julia Swan has a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Chicago, and she is an associate professor at San Jose State University.

Alexander Baretich designed the Cascadian Bioregional Flag. Some people have nicknamed it “The Doug,” because of the Douglas Fir tree on the flag.

Bureaucracies were created to get the work done and get it done efficiently, according to 19th-century thinker Max Weber. So why are there more and more meaningless executive jobs that contribute nothing but soak up the pay?IDEASexamines the corporate tendency to "bureaumania.”*This episode originally aired on Sept. 18, 2024.

Imagine seeing an atrocity with eyes wide open and then returning to a life that doesn't ask much about it. This is the experience of five Canadian doctors who have been offering urgent medical aid in Gaza for almost three years. But in Gaza, the absence of resources means often all theycan do is bear witness. In this podcast, each doctor shares how what they experienced changed their lives.

Guests in this episode:

Mel Brecknell is a physician specializing in emergency medicine.

Rizwan Minhas is a board certified physician in family medicine in Canada and the U.S.

Ben Thomson is a Toronto physician working in nephrology, general internal medicine, and public health predominantly in humanitarian work zones.

Eman Lubani is a pediatric emergency physician in London, Ontario.

Noor Amin is a physician in Ontario practicing sports and exercise medicine.

In the mid-20th century, convenience was presented as 'the wave of the future,' where revolutionary home appliances would reduce work and save time. Today, convenience drives the success of tech and retail giants, our phones have become 'convenience machines,' and AI has taken the concept to terrifying heights. What happens when a culture positions convenience as a 'supreme value'? In this podcast, IDEAS contributing producer Olivia Trono explores the cult of convenience and considers what inconvenience may have to offer us.

Guests in this episode:

Luang Por Amaro is the abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery. His talk “Choose Life, Choose Inconvenience” is available on YouTube.

Rebecca Beausaert is a history professor at the University of Guelph, and co-curator of "Kitchens of the Future: Food, Technology, and Convenience Culture in Cold War Canada."

Joshua Neves is a professor of film and moving image studies at Concordia University, and co-author of In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a media studies professor at the University of Virginia, and author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.

Tim Wu is a law professor at Columbia University, and author of The Age of Extractionand The Attention Merchants.

The 21st century is witness to resurgent global authoritarianism, driven by leaders who answer to no law other than their own. Nahlah Ayed and panelists consider the rise of today’s authoritarians — Trump, Putin, Orban, Duterte and beyond — and what we can learn from history about how authoritarianism can be challenged, and ultimately defeated. This final episode in How to Defeat Authoritarianism examines our present moment, identifying the ways in which authoritarian politics has returned — and the tools to resist them.

Listen to other episodes in this series:

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Benito Mussolini's Italy

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's Uganda

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Bashar al-Assad's Syria

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Augusto Pinochet's Chile

Guests on this podcast:

Marie-Joelle Zahar is a professor of political science at the University de Montréal. She is a 2023-26 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow, and has served multiple terms as a mediation expert for the United Nations, including a senior expert in the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria in 2017.

Miriam Mufti is an associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. She’s the author of Pathways to Power, Recruitment and Regime Stability in Pakistan.

Lucan Ahmad-Way is the distinguished professor of democracy in the political science department at the University of Toronto, and is theco-author of Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism.

Hanif Abdurraqib lives his life heart-forward. His writing is informed by the many losses he's endured, but also by his commitment to "love deeply" and to not let machines do his thinking and feeling for him. Doing so, he says, risks atrophying our hearts and minds. "For me, the cost of a heart that's fraying at the edges is too high."

Abdurraqib is the 2026 Weston International Award winner, presented by the Writers Trust of Canada for a body of work by a nonfiction author. He is a poet, essayist, cultural critic, and author of eight books, including,There’s Always Next Year and A Little Devil in America.

Feeling despair over the threats to democracy coming out of The Billionaire Age? Let alone the predictions we'll see 10 trillionaires within three years. Well, there are concrete solutions. Relatively straightforward ones. Thinkers from Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, to Dutch philosopher Ingrid Robyens to self-described oligarch and American venture capitalist Nick Hanauer say democracy can win over oligarchy.

Listen to episodes in this five-part series, The Billionaire Age:

Listen to Part One: How did we get here?

Listen to Part Two: Disney heiress on the dangers of extreme wealth

Listen to Part Three: How oligarchs are taking over the world

Guests in this episode:

Ingrid Robeyns is a philosopher and economist. She is the chair in Ethics of Intuitions at Utrecht University, and the author ofLimitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth.

Gabriel Zucman is an economist and the co-director of The World Inequality Lab. He's also a professor at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley.

Nitin Bharti is an economist and lecturer at the University of Western Australia. He is also the South and South-East Asia coordinator at the World Inequality Lab.

Lars Osberg is an economics professor at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His latest book is The Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada.

Paul Krugman is an economist and the winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Tim Wu is a legal scholar and professor at Columbia Law School. He is also a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. His latest book is The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.

Nick Hanauer is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He co-authored the book, Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing The Lies and Half-Truths that Protect Profit, Power and Wealth in America, with Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen. He also hosts the podcast Pitchfork Economics.

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. *This episode is the first in a two-part series on language revitalization. It originally aired on March 24, 2025.

“Truth telling is profoundly visual. Art created by Indigenous peoples is not mere expression — it is cognitive, ceremonial, and political," writes Gerald McMaster in Art,Truth and Reconciliation. His book is the first of its kind, featuring Indigenous visual responses to Canada’s residential and day school system: from the drawings of children in the schools themselves, to the art of survivors, and to their descendants, who are carrying the story forward. McMaster says art does the work that words cannot — "bearing witness, restoring dignity, and refusing silence.”

Guest in this podcast:

Gerald McMaster is a curator, artist, scholar, and author, Art, Truth and Reconciliation.

Emma Hassencahl-Perley is an artist, and Curator of Indigenous Art at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, in Fredericton, NB.

Adrian Stimson is an artist and residential school survivor and thriver.

Mark Atleo is an elder, a fisherman, an artist, and a residential school survivor.

In 2000, Bashar al-Assad became president of Syria, also known as the authoritarian "Kingdom of Fear" that his father Hafez al-Assad had created three decades earlier. The younger Assad continued and intensified the use of imprisonment, torture and surveillance as tools of domination. His crackdown on a pro-democracy revolution turned into a 13-year civil war. Nahlah Ayed and panelists discuss what we can learn about the rise and collapse of authoritarianism from Assad’s rule and the 2024 collapse of his regime.  

Listen to other episodes in our series, How to Defeat Authoritarianism:

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Benito Mussolini's Italy

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's Uganda

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Augusto Pinochet's Chile

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Today's Authoritarians

Guests on this podcast:

Basilios Zeno is assistant professor in the Department of Political Studies at Trent University in Canada. His work combines research, advocacy, and policy work on forced migration and asylum, legal violence, social movement, and interpretive decolonizing methodologies. 

Marie-Joelle Zahar is a professor of political science at the University de Montréal. She has served multiple terms as a mediation expert, in fact, still serving in that role, for the United Nations, including as senior expert in the office of the Special Envoy for Syria in 2017. 

Abdulrahman Matar is a Syrian-Canadian writer and journalist, a novelist, poet, and a painter. He is the founder and director of the Seagull Cultural Forum and executive director of the Syrian Writers Association. He was arrested five times and spent nearly 10 years in prison as a result of his writing and his positions on issues of freedom and human rights.

Tareq Yousbasi is a journalist and a producer at the CBC of Syrian origin, who assisted with live translation.

After seizing power in a 1971 coup, Ugandan military commander Idi Amin promised a return to democracy — but he delivered a brutal dictatorship. Known for his erratic and sadistic behaviour, Amin’s reign was defined by ethnic purges, forced expulsions and total economic collapse. We continue our series, How to Defeat Authoritarianism, exploring the legacy of Idi Amin and the conflation of personality with totalitarian politics.

Listen to other episodes in this series:

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Benito Mussolini's Italy

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Augusto Pinochet's Chile

Guests on this podcast:

Nam Kiwanuka is a Ugandan-Canadian journalist, host and producer with TVO.

Nakanyike Musisi is a professor of African History at the University of Toronto, and internationally recognized scholar of African gender, political, and social history.

Derek Peterson is a professor of history and African studies at the University of Michigan, and author of A Popular History of Idi Amin’s Uganda.

French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is mostly remembered for being wrong. He published an early theory of evolution, before Charles Darwin. His claim was that animals were in charge of their own evolution. That didn’t hold up. But author Jessica Riskin

argues maybe it’s time to redeem Lamarck, a little bit. Riskin says that we should give animals — and humans — some credit for our own progress.

Guest in this episode:

Jessica Riskin is a historian of science at Stanford University, and author of The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

She’s famous for her caustic quips and her love of cocktails, but there was a lot more to Dorothy Parker than her time at the famed Algonquin Round Table. The icon of New York in the 1920s spent decades in Hollywood as a screenwriter, won awards for her short stories and was a committed social activist, who ended up being blacklisted because of her ties to communist causes. She was also a war correspondent.

Guests in this episode:

Kevin Fitzpatrick is the founder and president of the Dorothy Parker Society.

Michelle Dean is a screenwriter, critic and author of Sharp! The Women who made an Art of Having an Opinion.

Nina Miller is a former English professor at Iowa State University, and the author of Making Love Modern: The Intimate Public Worlds of New York's Literary Women.

Ellen Meister is a novelist and the author of Dorothy Parker Drank Here and Farewell, Dorothy Parker.

Gail Crowther is a researcher, writer and the author of Dorothy Parker in Hollywood.

Blind life is an individual experience. But from neighbourhood walks to international travel, blind people want momentum, adventure, and a sense of place, like everyone else. This podcast features an artist and a scientist imagining bolder ways forward.

Guest in this episode:

Alex Bulmer is a Blind writer and theatre artist. Her playPerceptual Archaeology or How to Travel Blind, is included in the collection Rebellious Bodies and Radical Acts. She is at work on a multimedia project called May I Take Your Arm.

Joshua Miele is a Blind scientist, inventor and a MacArthur Fellow who’s designing accessibility tech from inside the experience of disability. He's also the author ofConnecting Dots: A Blind Life.

After seizing power in a 1971 coup, Ugandan military commander Idi Amin promised a return to democracy — but he delivered a brutal dictatorship. Known for his erratic and sadistic behaviour, Amin’s reign was defined by ethnic purges, forced expulsions and total economic collapse. We continue our series, How to Defeat Authoritarianism, exploring the legacy of Idi Amin and the conflation of personality with totalitarian politics.

Listen to other episodes in this series:

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Benito Mussolini's Italy

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Augusto Pinochet's Chile

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Bashar al-Assad's Syria

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Today's Authoritarians

Guests on the podcast:

Nam Kiwanuka is an award-winning Ugandan-Canadian journalist, host and producer with TVO.

Nakanyike Musisi is a professor of African history at the University of Toronto, and an internationally recognized scholar of African gender, political, and social history.

Derek Peterson is a professor of history and African studies at the University of Michigan. He is also the author of A Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda.

How do authoritarian leaders use threats, illusions and force to seize and maintain power? And what does it take for truth and justice to prevail?IDEAS explores the rise and fall of pivotal authoritarians and their regimes from recent world history, and asks what we can learn from their eventual downfall. We start our series with the legacy of Italian fascism and its relevance today.

Listen to other episodes in this series:

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Augusto Pinochet's Chile

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's Uganda

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Bashar al-Assad's Syria

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Today's Authoritarians

Guests in this podcast:

Joshua Arthursis an associate professor in the Faculty of Information and the Department of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto.

Robert Ventrescais the president of King's University College at Western University and a historian of 20th century Europe.

Aitana Guia is the Mackenzie Papineau Memorial Chair in Modern Spanish History at York University, Toronto, Canada. 

Augusto Pinochet became Chile's leader after a bloody, U.S.-supported coup killed socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973. He defended the coup. But as he attempted to control the narrative, stories of violence were already casting a shadow over his new regime. We continue our series on authoritarianism exploring Pinochet’s popularity with centre-right Western leaders, the referendum that removed him from power, and the story of his eventual arrest and trial.

Listen to other episodes in this series:

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Benito Mussolini's Italy

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's Uganda

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Bashar al-Assad's Syria

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Today's Authoritarians

Guests on this podcast:

Carolina Echeverría is a Chilean-Canadian artist, author and cultural mediator whose work explores memory, migration and belonging.

Teresa Macías is a professor in the school of social work at York University. Her expertise is on the enduring legacies of human rights violations from the Pinochet dictatorship.

Kevin Coleman is an associate professor of history at the University of Toronto.

Authoritarian politics continue to intensify. But so do acts of resistance. This podcast focusses on the resisters who are pushing for accountability as they fight against state violence. They are from Argentina, South Africa and India. Some work alone or in groups trying to stave off ever-encroaching authoritarian rule.

Guests in this episode:

Maria del Carmen Verdu is an Argentine human rights activist fighting against state violence.

Fatima Hassanis a South African human rights lawyer and activist with the Health Justice Initiative.

Bill McKibbenis an American author, environmentalist, and educator. He is the founder of Third Act, which organizes seniors for action on climate and democracy.

Siddharth Varadarajan is a founding editor of The Wire, a news website in India.

Historian Marci Shore doesn't hesitate to use the word 'fascism' to describe the present moment. The former Yale professor left the U.S. after President Trump was re-elected. She now teaches at the University of Toronto and tells her students why "we shouldn't fetishize" the term. Shore argues concepts and terminologies born from history like fascism is how we process the world, but it's critical we allow for today's nuances and differences.

This podcast includes Marci Shore in conversation with IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed and Shore's lecture “Thoughts From a Post Truth World," part of the series “Democracy in Peril: A Way Forward Against Authoritarianism," organized by the University of Manitoba, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.

Marci Shore is Chair of European Intellectual History at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

Seabird biologist Bill Montevecchi has been ranked in the world’s top two per cent of scientists. Montevecchi died at the age of 80 in July 2026. In his honour, we share this 2023 documentary by producer Mary Lynk that shines a light on the renowned scientist's humanity and brilliance. Lynk followed Montevecchi on a wild two-day adventure in Newfoundland, climbing steep cliffs to spy on famous seabird colonies, and venturing on a heart-pounding overnight rescue mission of young storm petrels along the coastline.

What has become of the America that has for so long been held up as a shining example of ideals? In conversation at the 2026 Aspen Ideas Festival, documentary maker Ken Burns and American scholar and author Eddie Glaude unpack the vexed contradictions at the heart of American democracy, from the founding of the Republic in 1776 until today.

Behind every great chatbot are many human workers making decisions on how those chatbots behave and evolve. Recent PhD graduate Noah Khan has been observing these workers and shares his findings on their emotions and motivations as they design and build AI entities that communicate with users — influencing our own emotions and outlooks.

When Rohingya poet Mayyu Ali saw his name in print for the first time, he thought: "I exist." "Even though my government doesn't recognize [me] I exist in my writing," he told IDEAS.The Myanmar government has targeted the Rohingyas for decades, and Ali grew up with no birth certificate, no citizenship, and no human rights. He fled genocide in 2017 to live in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, until he resettled to Canada in 2021. Ali speaks with Nahlah Ayed about survival, the power of poetry, and his long journey to become a citizen for the first time in his life.

Fascism has been called “the aestheti-cization of politics.” Nazis and Italian Fascists both made visual culture, art, even fashion part of their destructive programs. Now the far-right in the U.S. is taking lessons from history, selling its ideas through memes, and hate-filled videos.

Acclaimed author Gabor Maté joins the conversation in part two of our series exploring Wilhelm von Humboldt’s public education system. Maté is a former English teacher. In this episode we ask: Is Humboldt's 200-year-old system equipped to meet the challenging demands of the 21st century? And does it still reflect his ideals, especially at the university level? *This episode concludes our two-part series. It originally aired on April 16, 2024.

Two hundred years ago, Wilhelm von Humboldt created the 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 episode is part one of two-part series. It originally aired on April 15, 2024.

They were known as School Cars and Schools on Wheels. Trains that chugged along the railroads and brought schooling to children living in the isolated communities of Northern Ontario. It was a novel six-month experiment that lasted from 1926 to 1967. IDEASexplores the early project in remote education, homeschooling, and nation-building. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 9, 2023.

The Trump administration has been targeting higher education for some time now — freezing grants and filing lawsuits against leading universities. But these threats are not limited to the U.S. and there are growing concerns about a potential spillover effect on Canadian campuses. In this podcast, host Nahlah Ayed speaks with three panelists to explore what's at stake with the politicized attacks on universities — and why it matters to all of us. *This episode aired on April 13, 2026.

This podcast was recorded in front of an audience at the Isabel Theatre in Toronto.

Guests in this episode:

Malinda S. Smith is an associate vice president research and a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. She is the co-editor of Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy: Teaching, Learning, and Researching While Black.

Randy Boyagoda is a novelist and professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he also serves as the university’s advisor on civil discourse, the first position of its kind in Canada.

Davide Panagia is professor and chair of political science at UCLA, where his work bridges philosophy, media and democratic life. Before that, he held the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at Trent University.

A hundred years ago homework was described as a 'sin against childhood.' But the practice is still a staple of our education system. Some parents like Dawn Quelch took a stand and banned it from their home. IDEAS examines the ideological roots of homework and the shift in thinking about child psychology and development.

What happens when original artworks become endless copies? German philosopher Walter Benjamin called it the death of "aura," and his concept predicted our digital age. He describes "aura" as the energy that encases an object, and argued standing before the presence of a great artwork was transcendent. His ideas continue to flourish in university settings around the world.*This episode originally aired on Oct. 2, 2025.

Pope Leo XIV has been deeply influenced by St. Augustine, and so, the fourth-century titan of Western thought has re-entered the global conversation. IDEAS producer Seán Foley speaks to Canadian scholars who have read St. Augustine closely to determine how Augustine’s thought and character might shape the Catholic Church in these times.*This episode originally aired on Sept. 5, 2025.

In pre-independence India, activist B.R. Ambedkar said India would never be free unless caste was eradicated. Today, India is rife with an aggressive majoritarianism that sees India as a Hindu nation. Could Ambedkar have saved India from its fate? *This episode is part two in a two-part series. It originally aired on Oct. 6, 2020.

Gandhi envisioned a free India as a place of communal harmony where each person understood duty and sacrifice. Today, India is rife with an aggressive majoritarianism that sees India as a Hindu nation. IDEAS explores if Gandhi's vision was ever enough and asks if Gandhi and his values still have a place in today's idea of India?*This episode originally aired on Oct. 5, 2020.

You likely have never heard of Matilda Joslyn Gage. Gloria Steinem calls her “the woman ahead of the women who were ahead of their time.” Matilda worked side by side with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to get women the vote in the United States and co-wrote the history of the women’s movement with them. IDEASproducer Dawna Dingwall looks into why the towering figure was erased by her peers, and the work that is being done to write Matilda back into history. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 26, 2026.

"The Matilda Effect" was a term coined by a historian Margaret Rossiter to describe women whose work had been overlooked and erased from history, like Matilda Gage. Listen to this podcastto hear about the lost women of science and how Rossiter gave them the credit they deserved.

Guests in this episode:

Angelica Shirley Carpenter, author of Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist

Michael Patrick Hearn, author of the Annotated Wizard of Oz

Gita Dorothy Morena, great-great-granddaughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage

Ciarrai Eaton, executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation

The lateSally Roesch Wagner, former ED of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation appears courtesy of The Book Dreams Podcast, WCNY's Repeating History podcast, the International Wizard of Oz Club and filmmaker Jeremy Kagan.

The world is feeling darker and darker these days. So this podcast might be a much-needed balm. It's about hope — a practice that scholar Shannon Murray argues can't be passive. That's where the German term 'freudenfreude' comes in, when someone celebrates the good fortune of others as if it's their own. Murray explains the power of freudenfreude and offers a guide to hope, empathy, and patience through the lens of Shakespeare. Yes. The Bard's words tie into all of this. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 13, 2023.

Throughout his career, it wasn't unusual for David Bowie to sing about death. But the musician used his own mortality as a theme for a final album that he released just two days before he died, on his 69th birthday. In this podcast IDEASlooks into the meaning of Bowie's enigmatic last songs, and explores the many ways that an artist’s mortality gives their work new meaning. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 11, 2016.

Alain Deneault has a philosophical cure for eco-angst. He proposes turning the angst into actions in the face of unprecedented, unpredictable times. The most famous Acadian philosopher unknown to English-speaking Canadians suggests we brace for periods of severe crisis as nation-states and global networks become strained and fail. His prescription includes strengthening regional social ties and harmonizing human systems with natural ones.

The Wabanaki-Acadian old-growth forest is endangered — only one per cent of its old growth is left. The ancient forest, which stretches from parts of the Maritimes and Southern Quebec down into several New England states, is now comprised largely of newer forests, already cut down and logged, over and over. IDEAS explores the rare beauty of 300-year-old trees and astounding biodiversity before it's gone.*This episode originally aired on aired on June 11, 2024.

Guests in this podcast:

Peter Romkey is a naturalist, forest ranger and former executive director of the K.C. Irving Environmental Science Centre at Acadia University. He is retired and living on the south shore of Nova Scotia.

Joan Maloof is an ecologist and the founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network, which works to preserve, protect, and promote America's few remaining stands of old-growth forests. She is the author of several books, including:Nature's Temples: A Natural History of Old-Growth Forests. Maloof lives in Maryland.

Ursula Johnson is a renowned multidisciplinary artist. She won the 2017 Sobey Art Award. Johnson is a member of the Eskasoni Mi'kmaw Nation on Cape Breton Island (Unama'ki in Mi'kmaq). She also works for Parks Canada as the Mi'kmaq Relations Advisor for the mainland Nova Scotia field unit. She lives in southwestern Nova Scotia.

Our relationship with earth and water is changing in the Anthropocene, says renowned author Robert Macfarlane. Humanity has become a transformative force of planetary proportions, to the point where we are altering the composition and behaviour of the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. He tells IDEAS this has grave implications for the planet and us.*This episode originally aired on Oct. 9, 2024.

The summer of 2026 has been defined by the smoke — and the horror — of wildfires around the world. But what comes after one of these fires? "That isn't the end of the story. That's the beginning of a whole different kind of story," says Nlaka'pamux ecologist Jennifer Grenz. That's why we have decided to follow the long-term story of one 21st century megafire: the 2021 McKay Creek wildfire in interior B.C. Producer Pauline Holdsworth returned in September 2025 — four years after the fire — to find new life emerging from the ashes, and new questions about the road ahead.

This is the latest episode in our ongoing series Healing the Land. Listen to other episodes:

How brutal wildfires are 'killing' Indigenous ways of life (Pt 1)

How Indigenous ecology is reviving land destroyed by wildfires (Pt 2)

Guests in this episode:

Chief Justin Kane is the elected Chief of Ts'kw'aylaxw First Nation.

Michelle Edwards is the Tmicw Coordinator for the St'át'imc Chiefs Council and the former Chief of the communities of Sekw'el'was and Qu'iqten.

Dr. Jennifer Grenzis an Indigenous scholar and assistant professor in the department of forest resources management at UBC, and the principal investigator at the Indigenous Ecology Lab. She is a member of Lytton First Nation, where she sits on the lands committee. She is also the author of Medicine Wheel for the Planet: A Journey toward Personal and Ecological Healingand the forthcoming book Burned: Truth and Hope in the Fires.

Virginia Oeggerliis a PhD student in the Indigenous Ecology Lab in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC.

Dr. Sue Sengeris a biologist working with the Lillooet Tribal Council.

Gerald Michel is a council member and the lands resource liaison for Xwísten First Nation.

What happens to the land after a brutal wildfire?IDEASvisited St'át'imc territory near Lillooet, B.C., to follow land guardians and scientists from the Indigenous Ecology Lab at the University of British Columbia, as they document the effects of wildfires and chart a new future based on Indigenous approaches to healing and balancing an ecosystem.

*This podcast is part of our ongoing series, Healing the Land. Listen to other episodes:

How brutal wildfires are 'killing' Indigenous ways of life (Pt 1)

What emerges from the ashes after a wildfire? (Pt 3)

Guests in this series:

Chief Justin Kane, elected Chief of Ts'kw'aylaxw First Nation 

Michelle Edwards, Tmicw coordinator for the St'át'imc Chiefs Council and the former Chief of the communities of Sekw'el'was and Qu'iqten 

Sam Copeland, senior land guardian for the P'egp'ig'lha Council 

Luther Brigman, assistant land guardian for the P'egp'ig'lha Council 

Travis Peters, heritage supervisor and interim lands manager for Xwísten First Nation 

Gerald Michel, council member and the Lands Resource Liaison for Xwísten First Nation 

Denise Antoine, natural resource specialist for the P'egp'ig'lha Council

Dr. Jennifer Grenz, assistant professor in the department of forest resources management at the University of British Columbia. She leads the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC, which works entirely in service to Indigenous communities on land-healing and food systems revitalization projects that bring together western and Indigenous knowledge systems and centres culture and resiliency. 

Virginia Oeggerli, graduate student in the Indigenous Ecology Lab in the faculty of forestry at UBC

Dr. Sue Senger, biologist working with the Lillooet Tribal Council

Jackie Rasmussen, executive director of the Lillooet Regional Invasive Species Society

In 2021, a deadly heat dome produced a devastating wildfire season across British Columbia. While immediate media coverage often focuses on evacuations and the numbers of homes destroyed, many First Nations say what these fires do to the land in their territories — and the cultural lives of their communities — is often overlooked. "These fires are killing our way of life," says a Tmicw coordinator for the St'át'imc Chiefs Council. IDEASvisited St'át'imc territory around Lillooet, B.C. to learn how 21st-century wildfires are reshaping the landscape — and their consequences for plants, animals, and humans alike. 

*This podcast is part of our ongoing series, Healing the Land. Listen to other episodes:

How Indigenous ecology is reviving land destroyed by wildfires (Pt 2)

What emerges from the ashes after a wildfire? (Pt 3)

Guests in this series:

Chief Justin Kaneis theelected Chief of Ts'kw'aylaxw First Nation. 

Michelle Edwardsis a Tmicw coordinator for the St'át'imc Chiefs Council and the former Chief of the communities of Sekw'el'was and Qu'iqten. 

Sam Copelandis a senior land guardian for the P'egp'ig'lha Council. 

Luther Brigman is an assistant land guardian for the P'egp'ig'lha Council. 

Travis Peters is a heritage supervisor and interim lands manager for Xwísten First Nation. 

Gerald Michel is a council member and the Lands Resource Liaison for Xwísten First Nation. 

Denise Antoine is a natural resource specialist for the P'egp'ig'lha Council.

Dr. Jennifer Grenz is an assistant professor in the department of forest resources management at the University of British Columbia. She leads the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC, which works entirely in service to Indigenous communities on land-healing and food systems revitalization projects that bring together western and Indigenous knowledge systems and centres culture and resiliency. 

Virginia Oeggerli is a graduate student in the Indigenous Ecology Lab in the faculty of forestry at UBC.

Dr. Sue Sengeris a biologist working with the Lillooet Tribal Council.

Jackie Rasmussen is executive director of the Lillooet Regional Invasive Species Society.

On the surface, bibliotherapy might sound like another personal wellness trend, but it definitely isn’t. In fact, it’s an approved form of mental health treatment in Canada. And it’s been around for at least a century. In this podcast, researchers Sara Haslam and Edmund King discuss the First World War roots of this practice in the UK. Author Cody Delistraty considers its role in moving him forward in the grieving process. And psychiatrist Martina Scholtens explains why she created an evidence-based reading list online, tailored to a range of mental health diagnoses. *This episode originally aired on June 2, 2025.

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. *This episode originally aired March 27, 2025.

Eugenics is seen as a 19th-century idea put into horrific 20th-century practice. But the attraction to breeding “better” humans has a long and persistent history, says Adam Rutherford. The geneticist and science podcaster explains, in conversation with host Nahlah Ayed. *This episode originally aired on January 20, 2023.

That’s what Hanna Pickard argues. After analyzing the scientific research, and working with those who’ve stopped self-destructive drug and alcohol use, the Johns Hopkins philosopher sees addiction as a complex behavioural disorder. She argues it’s driven by individual psychology and social circumstances, and should be treated that way. Jowita Bydlowska and Michael Kaufmann, both memoirists of addiction, weigh in.*This episode originally aired on March 3, 2026.

Guests in this episode:

Hanna Pickard is the author of What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction(2026). She is a professor of philosophy and bioethics, as well as psychological & brain sciences, at Johns Hopkins University.

Jowita Bydlowskais a writer of fiction, as well as two memoirs of addiction: Drunk Mom, and Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse, and What Comes After (2026).

Dr. I. Michael Kaufmann is emeritus medical director of the Physician Health Program of the Ontario Medical Association. He is a retired family doctor, a retired addiction doctor, and the author ofDrugs, Lies, and Docs: A Doctor's Memoir of Addiction (2024).

Thanks to Dexter and Hannibal Lecter you may think you know what a psychopath is. But a critical review of the science suggests that 'psychopath' as a diagnosis is flawed. Author of Psychopathy Unmasked Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen argues it’s time to end the misuse of controversial science in our criminal justice system — and to rethink psychopathy as a whole.

"We need to separate AI from empire," says tech journalist Karen Hao who used to work in Silicon Valley as an engineer. Now she’s an outspoken critic of its AI giants. She argues AI companies run their businesses like empires and it has to stop. In her book, Empire of AI, Hao digs into the global impact of Big AI and explores how we need to rethink AI to build a better future. This podcast includes a lecture by Karen Hao and a discussion with host Nahlah Ayed.*This episode originally aired on March 25, 2026.

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, just like we imagine ghosts from strange lights and bumps in the night. *This episode originally aired on March 12, 2025.

Thanks to AI, it's easier than ever to avoid reading books — but that convenience may come with a cost. IDEAS explores how our digital landscape, coupled with the decline of reading, is changing the way we think.*This episode originally aired on Feb. 19, 2026.

If you like this episode, listen to our podcast with Geoffrey Hinton, the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' who says AI must develop empathy and 'maternal instincts' or we risk human extinction.

Guests in this episode:

Adriaan Van der Weelis a professor emeritus by special appointment at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. He's also the co-author of The Ljubljana Manifesto on Higher-Level Reading.

Maryanne Wolf is director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and the author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (2018).

Naomi Baron is a professor emerita of World Languages and Cultures at American University and the author of Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters (2026).

Leah Sargeant is an author and senior policy analyst at the Niskanen Center.

Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) at the University of Edinburgh, where she is also appointed in Philosophy. She is the author ofThe AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (2024).

If AI continues to develop without appropriate guardrails, a worst-case scenario could lead to human extinction, warns the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' Geoffrey Hinton. But the Nobel Prize winner has a solution: AI must foster 'maternal' instincts, empathy and kindness. Hinton tells host Nahlah Ayed that it's fairly inevitable AI will become smarter than humans, but if we could make it care more for us than it did about itself, good things could happen. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 18, 2026.

Like this episode? Listen to: How can we prevent AI from becoming a menace?

Millions of people are using AI to “talk” to the dead. The phenomenon has left cyberpsychologist Elaine Kasket asking what happens when we rely on for-profit AI companies to help us manage something as deeply human as grief? And where’s the line between comfort and self-destruction?IDEAS features two episodes from the CBC Podcasts series Artificial Intimacy, exploring the promise and peril of our emotional entanglements with AI chatbots.

Enjoyed this episode? Listen to the full series of Understood: Artificial Intimacyhere.

Jeans are a quintessential fashion staple for the Canadian tuxedo — and a symbol of rebellion. But the world's most popular garment comes at an environmental cost. It takes around 7,500 litres of water to make a single pair of jeans. And that's not all. Fashion expert Pedro Mendes explores the 150-year history of jeans and the 'authenticity' they are supposed to represent. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 13, 2019.

Read: How jeans became one of the most polluting garments in the world

"Geometry is the cilantro of math. People are not neutral about it," says Jordan Ellenberg. The mathematician is aware not everyone loves math like he does. But his book is not about the kind of geometry some people feel intimidated by. It's about geometry as a way of thinking. As a method of reasoning and argument. And as a system for making sense of the world.*This episode originally aired on May 11, 2022.

Guest in this episode:

Jordan Ellenbergis a mathematician is a child prodigy. He scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of his college entrance exams — the SAT's — at the age of 12. He's a Guggenheim Fellow, a Harvard graduate, and a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He's also the author of Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else.

If the house always wins, why do we play? This documentary asks experts and observers to reflect on the casino as reality and metaphor. Skill versus luck, attention and distraction, fortune paired with loss: the casino reflects us, individually and culturally, back to ourselves. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 21, 2019.

Read:Machines of Chance: How casino culture plays with us

Brutalism has become the subject of architecture tours, a coffee-table art book darling, and a highly sought-after living environment. But concrete is a complicated material, both appreciated and demonized.IDEAS explores the implications of Brutalism’s 21st century hipster aesthetic in a world of housing challenges, environmental crisis, and economic polarization. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 11, 2024.

Guests in this episode:

Joseph Bogdan is principal emeritus at BNKC Architects, Urban Design Consultants.

Elisabeth Bogdan is subject lead at Sotheby's Institute of Art London.

Stasia Bogdan is a senior leader for healthcare capital planning and design at Unity Health Toronto.

Nick Thoburn is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Manchester. He's also the author of Brutalism as Found: Housing, Form and Crisis at Robin Hood Gardens (Goldsmiths Press, 2022).

Zahireen Tarefdar is a Toronto-based creative and enthusiast of the Ontario Science Centre.

Bogs, marshes, and swamps have long been cast as toxic wastelands, from the dead marshes in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to the vegetal monster from the DC comic. But in fact wetlands store more carbon than forests. Experts argue wetlands are crucial to our future. It's time to rewrite this squelchy story. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 17, 2022.

Humans used fire as a tool. Now we fear its destruction. But we're responsible for changing the climate, argues John Vailliant, "in a way that favours fire way more than it favours us." The author unpacks how fire made humans who we are — and how humans are changing fire in his book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast.

*This episode originally aired on May 29, 2024.

In 1989 the Canadian government was set to spring into action to address climate change. “If we don’t move now, it will be a disaster,” said then-Conservative environment minister Lucien Bouchard. “We are dealing with the survival of the species.” This podcast features David Suzuki’s prescient radio series, It’s a Matter of Survival from nearly four decades ago. It includes conversations with notable politicians and environmental experts of the day.

Listen to the first episode in this series:Suzuki's Survival Guide | A Warning

For other episodes from David Suzuki's radio days, stream audio here.

In 1989 David Suzuki hosted a radio series called “It’s A Matter of Survival,” which addressed the climate crisis head-on. He and other scientists look ahead 50 years into the future to paint a picture of what the world could be like if nothing is done to curb the human impact on climate change. The series galvanized the environmental movement in Canada, with more than 14,000 listeners writing letters of support. Nearly 40 years later, it's clear how shockingly prescient it was.

Listen to the next episode in this series: Suzuki's Survival Guide | How We Got To This Point

For other episodes from David Suzuki's radio days, stream audio here.

Oil has delivered warmth, mobility, freedom and ruin all at the same time. "It's a very hard religion to ditch," says Don Gillmor, author of On Oil. Yes, religion. Gillmor argues oil is not just a substance — but an idea … one that has come to constitute its own potent system of belief. He joins Nahlah Ayed to discuss how oil became the one true global religion.

Want to listen to moreIDEAS? Here' So... who wants a pipeline?

When Sir John Franklin set out to find the Northwest Passage in 1845, he never returned. From that mystery, began the stories. But why do we keep coming back to these Franklin stories? What do they say about us? And what does it mean today to seek a Northwest Passage? *This episode originally aired on April 19, 2022.

At the surface, Bear is about a woman who develops a sexual relationship with a bear. And though the 1976 novel earned Marian Engel a Governor General's award, it's been largely forgotten. Contributor Melissa Gismondi explores its mystery, meaning and relevance today. *This episode originally aired on January 4, 2021.

Canada produces legendary comedians and comic actors who excel on the world stage. So why is Canada not known for comedy? Does it have something to do with our proximity to the U.S., the way there are so many Scottish comedians performing in England? Three comics discuss Canadian comedy and what Canada's profile would be on a dating app — as part of the Provocations-IDEAS festival.

Comedians in this episode:

Debra McGrath is a comedian, writer, and director whose comedy began with Second City Improv. She is best-known for roles in Little Mosque on the Prairie, Seven Little Monsters and Paradise Falls.

Stewart Reynolds (aka Brittlestar) is a Stratford, Ontario-based comedian. His work has brought him to the White House, and to meeting the Prime Minister. He's the author of The Subtle Art of Resistance: Lessons From Cats For Surviving Fascism.

Martha Chaves has made many TV appearances including Just for Laughs, We’re Funny That Way Festival, and the Winnipeg Comedy Festival — and she’s often been heard on CBC's Laugh Out Loud, The Debaters, Because News — and now IDEAS.

From the medicine wheel to the building blocks of DNA, the number four has represented structure and stability. But four is also a troublemaker: a portal to realms like the fourth dimension. Our series, The Greatest Numbers of All Time explores how four helps us understand the world — by making the rules, and by breaking them. 

More in the series:

Listen to The Curse of 13

Listen to 12 is Sublime

Listen to 27 Club Lore

Listen to The 33,000 Horsepower Gamechanger

Guests in this episode:

Joyce Perreault is an Ojibway Anishinaabe children's book author and elementary school teacher at Donald Ahmo School in Crane River, MB.

Brian Katz is a composer, instrumentalist, improviser, and guitar instructor at University of Toronto and York University.

Lauren Fink is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at McMaster University.

Alex Fisher is a professor of musicology and area coordinator for early music at the University of British Columbia.

Tyrone Ghaswala is an assistant professor teaching stream with the Centre for Education and Computing (CEMC) and an adjunct professor in the Pure Mathematics department at the University of Waterloo.

Wenran Jiang is the founding director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta.

Stephan Reuter is an associate professor for plasma physics and spectroscopy at the Engineering Physics Department of Polytechnique Montréal

Sarah Hart is professor emerita of mathematics at Birkbeck College and author of "Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections between Mathematics and Literature."

There is nothing random about featuring 33,000 in our number series. It's very powerful. So much so, that the number put millions of horses out of work. Inventor James Watt used “33,000 foot-pounds a minute" to measure the capabilities of a horse when trying to market his new and improved steam engine. The engine was a big success, saving horses from the drudgery of manual labour. Now, a similar process is underway with artificial intelligence — but are we the horses, or the steam engine?*This episode is part of our series, The Greatest Numbers of All Time.

For more in the series:

Listen to The Curse of 13

Listen to 12 is Sublime

Listen to 27 Club Lore

Listen to How 4 Makes and Breaks Rules

Guest in this episode:

Stephanie Dick is a historian of mathematics, technology, computing, and AI, and an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University.

Twenty-seven can be a pivotal and tumultuous age. It’s held up as the year of peak performance in many sports and it's also seen as a cursed age for pop and rock stars, exemplified by the so-called 27 Club. Artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, all died at 27. As part of our series, The Greatest Numbers of All Time, IDEAS producer Chris Wodskou makes the case for a number that may not stick out in your mind but is more significant than you think.

More episodes in this series:

Listen to 12 is Sublime

Listen to The Curse of 13

Listen to The 33,000 Horsepower Gamechanger

Listen to How 4 Makes and Breaks Rules

Guests in this podcast:

David Awosoga is a PhD student in Statistics at University of Waterloo and sports performance data analyst.

Alan Cross is a music historian, broadcaster, and host of The Ongoing History of New Music podcast

Dianna Kenny is a professor emerita of psychology and music at University of Sydney and psychotherapist in private practice.

Michael Owen is a retired clinical psychologist and author of The 27 Club.

Maria Westerstahl is senior lecturer at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Complete. Whole. Divine order. That's just the start of what makes the humble dozen extraordinary. It's one of only two numbers ever discovered in mathematics to be “sublime.” Twelve makes a number of appearances in pop culture, in religion, in non-fiction, everything from the 12 days of Christmas to the 12 people it takes to form a criminal jury. Still need convincing of 12’s perfection and indispensability? Check your watch.

More episodes in our series, The Greatest Numbers of All Time:

Listen to The Curse of 13

Listen to 27 Club Lore

Listen to The 33,000 Horsepower Gamechanger

Listen to How 4 Makes and Breaks Rules

Guests in this episode:

Glen Van Brummelen is a professor of mathematical sciences at Trinity Western University.

Ainsley Hawthorn is a cultural historian and nonfiction writer. She has a PhD in Near Eastern Civilizations from Yale University.

Has there ever been a number more maligned in western culture than 13? So feared, it's got its own horror-film franchise. So infamously unlucky, a good many of us avoid it en masse. We've just blindly accepted its bad reputation. As part of our series, The Greatest Numbers of All Time,IDEAS explores where our irrational fear and uncomfortable feelings about 13 began. *All five episodes in our number series will be available daily in our feed this week.*

Listen to 12 is Sublime

Listen to 27 Club Lore

Listen to The 33,000 Horsepower Gamechanger

Listen to How 4 Makes and Breaks Rules

Guests in this episode:

Stephen Winick is a folk life specialist at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.

Barry Markovsky is distinguished professor emeritus of sociology at University of South Carolina. His latest book is Everyday Extraordinary: A Scientist Ponders a Lifetime of Magical, Bizarre, and Paranormal Experiences.

Claire Potter is an author of parenting books, including Getting the Little Blighters to Behave and the creator of the online programme Tiny Bites for parents of picky eaters.

Rabbi Heschel Greenberg is the founder and director of the Jewish Discovery Center in Buffalo, New York. He has written many books including Tefillin: Judaism's Crown.

It's tempting to think suffering should be avoided at all costs, but moral suffering has its own distinct standing. It signals a moral conscience. Every day people consume real time violence, grief, war and genocide through screens and experience moral upending. Without a moral compass there’s no motivation to address necessary issues.

Guests in this episode:

Cynda Rushton is a nurse and a professor of nursing and bioethics at Johns Hopkins University.

Robert Meagher is an emeritus professor at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Thea Lim is a novelist, culture writer, and creative writing teacher in Toronto.

Former IDEASwriter-broadcaster David Cayley passed away at his home on Wednesday June 10, surrounded by family. To honour his legacy, we wanted to share part of a 2006 conversation David had with Irish philosopher Richard Kearney on the space for theism within atheism, and/or atheism within theism.

Richard Kearney is a philosophy professor at Boston College and University College, Dublin. He has written many books on modern philosophy and culture, includingThe God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religionand Anatheism: Returning to God After God.

There may be no one alive who saw Houdini perform magic. Yet we still know his name and his legend. Dua Lipa namechecked the escape artist in a 2023 dance hit and she's not alone. Houdini is still a cultural reference point, despite having died 100 years ago. And that’s pretty much what he would have wanted.IDEAS explores why his name persists in our imaginations and how his magic helped his family escape poverty.

Guests in this episode:

Adam Begley is a biographer living in London, and author of Houdini: The Elusive American.

David Ben is a conjuror, writer, and consultant in Toronto. He’s writing a graphic novel featuring an imagined adventure for Houdini.

Katie Bender is a playwright and actor. Her interactive performance about Houdini is called Instructions for a Seance.

Homosexuality is illegal in more than half of African countries — a crime punishable by prison sentences. Or in some cases: death. In the past few years, six African countries have made it illegal just to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. These laws bring up questions of foreign influence, neo-colonialism, and the role the international community could play in nudging human rights on the continent. *This episode originally aired on May 26, 2025.

Want another podcast?Ghana and Uganda have some of the harshest laws against LGBTQ+ people in the world. Despite the threats, listen to how podcasters in both these countries are fighting back and reclaiming sexuality.

Uganda and Ghana have the harshest laws against LGBTQ+ people in the world. Despite the threats, podcasters in both countries are fighting back by creating a space where people can have sex-positive conversations and gender inclusivity.IDEAS contributor Nana aba Duncan was in Uganda and Ghana to find out how the safety, privacy, and independence of the medium offer a path to understanding, validation and community.

In the past few years, six African countries have made it illegal to just advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. What role should the international community play in nudging human rights on the continent? Listen to The unforgivable crime of being queer in Africa.

When Jay Pitter was eight years old and out shopping with her mother, she began swaying to the music at the mall. Her mother scolded her for it — signalling that it was undignified for a Black person to act that way in public. That incident was the genesis for Black Public Joy: No Permit Or Permission Required. In her book, she addresses the self-policing Black people can internalise, and reveals how culture, urban planning, and memory shape the way people can access joy in parks, streets, transit, and neighbourhoods.

Guest in this episode:

Jay Pitter is an award-winning placemaker focused on creating joyful public spaces that foster belonging, prosperity, and cultural memory. She advances this work through cultural planning, policy frameworks, and storytelling. Pitter is also an adjunct urban planning professor and has engaged students at Cornell, Princeton, and MIT, advancing new theories of public joy that connect practice, policy, and pedagogy.

Mae West shocked audiences and infuriated censors for more than 70 years. She was pop culture’s original blonde bombshell sex-symbol comedienne provocateur. But she was more than just a corseted sex pot with an affinity for word play. She was a trailblazer, transgressive, funny, smart, sassy, lively, a genius. And she got away with all of it. IDEAS contributor Lynda Shorten explores the legacy of the eccentric Mae West.

Guests in this episode:

Linda Hutcheon is a professor emerita of English and comparative literature at The University of Toronto.

Ramona Curry is an associate professor emerita of English at The University of Illinois.

Pamela Wojeck is a professor of film studies at The University of Notre Dame

Scott C. Miller is a make-up artist and retired undertaker

Rachel Jedinak will never forget the day that changed her life in July 16, 1942. She was eight years old, living in Nazi-occupied France at a time known as les années noires— The Dark Years. Police rounded up Jewish men, women, and children for deportation. Rachel, her older sister and mother were among them. That morning two police offers did something that Rachel considers an act of resistance. The girls were saved. But their mother was not. IDEAS contributor Neil Sandell, based in Nice, France, explores the complicated moral territory of resistance, what it actually meant during the occupation, and maybe means now.

Right now Elon Musk's wealth is currently around $825 billion US — more than double what it was a year earlier. Only 22 countries currently boast economies larger than Musk’s net worth, but he’s catching up. In the third episode of our series The Billionaire Agewe investigate how Musk and his fellow billionaires are trying to take over the world. And if they succeed, what will this mean for the rest of us?

Listen to more episodes in this series:

Listen to Part One: How did we get here?

Listen to Part Two: Disney heiress on the dangers of extreme wealth

Listen to Part Four: How democracy can beat back the oligarchs

Guests in this episode:

Ingrid Robeyns is a philosopher and economist. She is the chair in Ethics of Intuitions at Utrecht University, and the author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth.

Lucas Chancel is an economist and the co-director of The World Inequality Lab. He's also a professor at the Paris School of Economics.

Gabriel Zucman is an economist and the co-director of The World Inequality Lab. He's also a professor at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley.

Nitin Bharti is an economist and lecturer at the University of Western Australia. He is also the South and South-East Asia coordinator at the World Inequality Lab.

Lars Osberg is an economics professor at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His latest book is The Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada.

Abigail Disney is an American film producer, philanthropist and social activist. She is a member of Patriotic Millionaires which advocates for higher taxes on the wealthy.

Paul Krugman is an economist and the winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Tim Wu is a legal scholar and professor at Columbia Law School. He is also a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. His latest book is The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.

Nick Hanauer is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He co-authored the book, Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing The Lies and Half-Truths that Protect Profit, Power and Wealth in America, with Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen. He also hosts the podcast Pitchfork Economics.

Guido Alfani is a professor of economic history at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. His latest book is As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West.

Our homes have been stripped of their essential humanity, says Leilani Farha, this year's CBC Massey Lecturer. Today housing has become a commodity — one fuelling the biggest industry in the world. In her lectures, Housing Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home, Farha calls on all of us to envision a new ideology for home — one rooted in dignity, humanity and law. “Home is required for human existence," says Farha, who served as a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing from 2014 to 2020 and is now the global director of The Shift. She speaks with Nahlah Ayed about her 25 years fighting for housing as a human right, the conversation she hopes her Massey lectures will spark and why "home is really everything."

What happens when a human becomes intimately enmeshed with a chatbot? From people who’ve married their bots or who grieve their loved ones with the help of AI, host Victoria Hetherington (author of The Friend Machine) dives into the stories of the people who have invited these digital avatars into their hearts, minds, and even beds. And asks what do we gain and what do we stand to lose? Our intimacy, our resilience, even our grasp on reality? This latest season of Understood looks at who made the decisions that allowed chatbots to move way beyond digital assistants and into the most intimate parts of our lives.

Understood takes you deep inside the seismic shifts reshaping our world right now. From online porn and crypto chaos to the rise of tech oligarchs, deepfake AI, and the broken promises of the internet.

More episodes of Understood are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/AIxIdeas

Numbers get their due credit in this podcast. Even if we're not aware of them, numbers are essential to how we experience the world. IDEAS explores the most bizarre, surprising, mind-blowing and fundamental numbers in the universe.

This panel discussion was recorded live at The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.

Guests in this episode:

Asimina Arvanitaki is a particle physicist and the aristarchus chair in theoretical physics at the Perimeter Institute.

Ben Webster is an associate professor in the pure mathematics department at the University of Waterloo, and he’s also an associate faculty member at the Perimeter Institute.

Matthew Johnson is a professor of physics and astronomy at York University, and he's also an associate faculty member at the Perimeter Institute.

Alexandria has been the source of invention, innovation, and beauty for millennia — capturing the imagination of Napoleon, the Prophet Muhammad and, of course, Alexander the Great. He envisioned a place that thrived on cultural, intellectual, economic, political and religious exchange. IDEAS examines the big ideas of this port city in Egypt with Islam Issa, author ofAlexandria: The City That Changed the World.

Part three in our ongoing series about how port cities shaped the world as we know it.

Listen to Part Two: How port cities of Elmina shaped the world

Listen to Part One: How port cities like Singapore shaped the world

Even if you aren't a fan of Frank L. Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, you know about the Tin man, the ruby red shoes and that the dog is named Toto. The classic story was an instant bestseller in 1900 and its popularity is still going strong with not one but a two-part prequel. For over 125 years, there have been derivative works of Oz, from Broadway musicals, films, comic books and more. IDEAS follows the proverbial yellow brick road to uncover how this seemingly simple story of friendship, self reliance and longing for home continues to speak to us. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 9, 2025.

If this episode has left you curious about Matilda Joslyn Gage, the suffragist who was a big influence on Frank L. Baum's feminism, listen to this podcast.There's a reason you likely have never heard of her.

Ancient history just got an upgrade. Forget the ruins, empires and great thinkers of the Classical period and make way for escaped slaves, subversive pirates, and freethinking religious sects. These nonconformist communities rejected hierarchy and political order in favour of creating a more equitable society.

Author, religious scholar and historian Christopher Zeichmann offers an alternative lens on the Greco-Roman era in his book called Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings.

North Korea is no place for evangelical Christians today. But when journalist Jonathan Cheng peeled back decades he found out Christianity is at the heart of the Kim family’s rise to power and continuing dynasty. Cheng has spent 15 years and two trips to North Korea to piece this all together. His book is called Korean Messiah.

Jonathan Cheng is the China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, and was previously the Korea bureau chief, running coverage of the Korean peninsula, including politics and society in both North and South Korea.

If you want to hear what a laughing rat sounds like this podcast is for you. From why the sound of laughter triggers us to join in, to how a laughing yoga class starts, to the difference between AHA and HAHA in science, IDEAScontributor Peter Brown takes us on a joyride to reveal the mystery of laugher. Will this podcast make you laugh? Most likely. But it's better than catching a cold. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 4, 2020.

Africa is a centre of world history — a fact that's been deliberately obscured, says journalist Howard W. French. In this talk based on his book, The Second Emancipation, he explores the surprisingly early seeds of 20th century Pan-African thought, and how Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana went from reluctant student to influential leader of a free Ghana.

Howard W. French delivered the Black History Month lecture at University of Toronto's New College. French was is a former New York Times bureau chief based in Shanghai. He now teaches journalism at Columbia University and is also the author of Born in Blackness.

From Joan of Arc to Kim Kardashian, and Davy Crockett to Donald Trump, celebrity culture has deep and wide roots. Famous people who elicited Kardashian-level feelings of love and hate in the public were present centuries ago — long before screens and social media. Though, as we find out in this podcast, they all share similar qualities. *This episode originally aired on June 30, 2022.

Irina Dumitrescu is a writer, co-host of the LRB podcast Encounters with Medieval Women, and a professor of Medieval English at the University of Bonn.

Sharon Marcus is author of The Drama of Celebrityand the Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Heated Rivalry, Love is Blind or Boyfriend on Demand all underline the global appetite for passionate swooning. But let’s not forget the source for all of it: the romance novel. It may have a reputation problem but sales in 2023 reached 39 million copies or romance fiction globally — ringing in at $1.5 billion dollars. The books and readership continue to evolve as popularity increases. What is it about romance novels that women are drawn to? Is it unhealthy escapism, harmless fun or a kind of opiate?IDEAS looks back to a 1992 episode called Paperback Love to understand the enduring acclaim of romance novels.

In the days before her medically-assisted death, journalist Elaine Dewar made it her mission to finish writing her book revealing ignored history. For more than three years, the author investigated how Canada's health care system cruelly mistreated Indigenous people — including forcing them to use segregated hospitals. Dewar's extensive research uncovers not only a shameful past, but that our collective obliviousness to it all was deliberately manufactured.

For thousands of years, estuaries were central to Indigenous agriculture on the West Coast. Then, when colonists arrived, they diked many of these ecosystems to create western farmland. Now, Cowichan Tribes is working with a group of scientists and conservationists to restore an estuary as an ecosystem and a food system — and the project has sparked an unexpected controversy. At the heart of the debate are two questions. What does agriculture really mean? And when the waters start to rise, do we work with them, or against them?

This is the second and final part of this series, What the River Wants to Be. Listen to Part One.

Guests in this podcast:

Tom Reid is the West Coast Conservation Manager for the Nature Trust of BC.

Jared Qwustenuxun Williams is a passionate traditional foods chef who works with elders and knowledge holders to keep traditional food practices alive. 

Dr. Jennifer Grenz is a Nlaka’pamux scholar and a member of the Siil'na'mut Ken Elliott is a Cowichan elder and plant knowledge keeper who has worked in habitat restoration for decades. With his wife, he runs Ken Elliott's Native Plant Nursery.

Nava Sachs is a graduate student at UBC conducting research with the Indigenous Ecology Lab.

Kim Lagimodiere is the acting Marine Projects Manager at the Lulumexun Lands and Natural Resources department of Cowichan Tribes. She is also the coordinator of the S-hwuhwa'us Thi'lut Kw'atl'kwa (Thunderbird Protecting the Ocean) program.

Dr. Bethany Coulthard is the acting director at the Lulumexun Lands and Natural Resources department of Cowichan Tribes.

Dr. Lenore Newman is the Director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley. 

Erica Gies is the author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge and an independent journalist who covers water, climate change, critters, and more from Victoria, British Columbia, and San Francisco, California. 

It's safe to say right now the majority of us are feeling the pinch. Grocery and fuel prices are on the rise and the income gap between the wealthy, and everyone else, continues to grow. And yet, aside from the U.S., Canada is the strongest economy of the G7. A prosperous country doesn't necessarily translate to a fuller wallet for its citizens. Host Nahlah Ayed and panelists discuss how 'prosperity' should be defined and how that can be achieved.

Guests in this episode:

Hon. Lisa Raitt is a former Conservative cabinet minister, who now co-chairs the Canadian Coalition for a Better Future.

Zita Cobb is a Fogo Island entrepreneur, founder of Shorefast which supports local economies and community development.

Kaylie Tiessen is the chief economist at the Shield Institute.

A young generation of thinkers is trading in the bread and butter of social media branding — lifestyle, beauty, and consumption — for intellectual content. They focus on the big questions to help followers think about a world where they can't find jobs, are overloaded with debt, and see violence everywhere. It's the kind of education money can't buy.

Guests in this episode:

Isabella Segalovich (@interstellar_isabellar)

Ahmad Sanhouri (@conflictechoes)

Louisa Munch (@louisamunchtheory)

The Dirty Thirties might seem like the distant past but according to IDEAS contributor and professor Evan Fraser now is the time to heed the lessons about what worked to save farmers and agriculture. He argues the Dust Bowl should serve as a warning of compounding crises that lie ahead. But Fraser adds it also serves as a guide to solutions that could help us muddle through as the world lurches into another chapter of environmental, political and economic upheaval.

Guests in this episode:

Evan Fraser is a geography professor and director of Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg is a distinguished professor of history at Iowa State University.

Robert McLeman is a professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

What does anIDEAS producer do when he notices that shipwreck stories keep appearing in his life? He embarks on a journey to try and figure out what’s going on, why shipwrecks might be on people's minds. Matthew Lazin-Ryder dives into the history of shipwrecks — and how they are a constant metaphor in our lives. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 24, 2025.

If you like this podcast, you might be interested in Matthew Lazin-Ryder's documentary The Never-ending Fall of Rome — a hole in time where he finds out politicians, activists, and intellectuals can dump any modern anxiety they wish.

Rome fell, because of... divorce. Or was it immigration? Maybe moral decay. IDEASproducer Matthew Lazin-Ryder explores the political history of 'the fall of Rome' — a hole in time where politicians, activists, and intellectuals can dump any modern anxiety they wish. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 11, 2024.

Marsha Lederman is a child of Holocaust survivors. She lives with the fear that one day someone will take her and her son like the Nazis did with her parents and their parents. "This is ludicrous," she told herself many times. But then she saw how people celebrated the October 7th attacks and watched how antisemitism showed up in the circles she felt most at home.

This spring to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Lederman and child Holocaust survivor Jeanette Goldman shared their stories on Zoom at the University of Toronto's Regis College — an online event due to security reasons. They spoke about what true solidarity means today as antisemitism continues to rise in Canada. Lederman says: "We cannot allow antisemitism to stop us from speaking about antisemitism of all things."

Guests in this episode:

Jeanette Goldman is a retired federal judge and a child Holocaust survivor.

Marsha Lederman is a journalist, daughter of Holocaust survivors, and author of Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust Once Removed, and October 7th: Finding the Humanitarian Middle.

Mary Jo Leddy is a Catholic theologian, author, activist, and founder of Romero House in Toronto.

Bertha Yetman is a Regis College Alumnus, and organizer of “Remembering the Holocaust.”

IDEAS is a place for people who like to think. We value curiosity 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 5 pm ET.