Bees are remarkable among insects. They can count, remember human faces, and communicate through dance routines performed entirely in the dark. But are they intelligent? Even creative? Bee aficionado Stephen Humphrey, along with a hive of leading bee researchers and scientists, investigates the mental lives of bees.

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In 1994, Dutch novelist Arnon Grunberg won the prize for best first novel in Holland. Six years later, using a different name, he won the same prize once again. He talks about various literary shenanigans with IDEAS host Paul Kennedy. (Recorded at Montreal's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival.)

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Eleanor Wachtel talks to Robert Carsen, the Canadian who became the world's busiest director of operas. He's in Toronto with one of his most lauded productions, Dialogues des Carmelites, a story of nuns who decided to go to the guillotine rather than renounce their vows during the French Revolution. It's on stage now, performed by the Canadian Opera Company. Robert Carsen tells Eleanor about his early life growing up in a mansion with his art-loving philanthropist parents, and about his spectacular career, and his philosophy of directing, bringing fresh and surprising interpretations to classic operas.

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For centuries human beings have been modifying their bodies - tribal scarification, tattoos and cosmetic surgery are just a few.  Today, new technologies are enabling new body modifications like inserting magnets in your fingers. But when we change our bodies, do we change who we are? IDEAS contributor Sheetal Lodhia explores how changes to the body can effect changes to the sense of self.

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The World Health Organization says depression is set to become second only to heart disease as the world's leading disability by the year 2020. More recent research over the past decade tells us that antidepressants do not work very well, if at all, for mild or moderate depression. And in severe depression, antidepressants only work in a small number of cases.

So how can those who suffer from depression receive effective treatment and even possibly recover? In the third hour of Rethinking Depression, IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell brings us the stories of the depressed who are on the path to wellness and the methods that can be used to get them there.

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Over the years, the descriptions have varied: melancholia, the Black Dog, down in the dumps. The term most used today is "depression". The World Health Organization says depression is set to become second only to heart disease as the world's leading disability by the year 2020. An alarming conclusion when you consider the history. One hundred years ago depression was thought to be extremely rare, with 1% of the population suffering. Today it's often called the common cold of mental illness. But just how effective are antidepressants in treating depression?

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Depression. It has been called the mean reds. The blue devils. The black dog. And through history, treatments for depression have varied wildly. In the Middle Ages, depressives were caged in asylums. In Victorian England, wealthier patients were sent to seaside resorts for a change of air. In the 1930's, procedures like lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy were used. Psychiatry's tools were crude and limited.  No wonder then, when the Age of the Antidepressant arrived, it was considered psychiatry's triumph.  Prozac came onto the market in 1988, followed quickly by many similar drugs. But, since then, the number of people afflicted with depression has soared.  In this 3 part program, IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell explores the short and troubling history of the antidepressant.

Part 2 airs Thursday, May 16; Part 3 airs Friday, May 17.

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Libyan novelist Hisham Matar was still a boy when his family fled to Cairo in order to escape the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. In a public interview at Montreal's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival, he tells IDEAS host Paul Kennedy about his recent return to a country that his imagination never left.

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Our ideas about witches and witch hunts may come from an extraordinary manuscript found in the University of Alberta Library. It's one of only four known copies. Written in the 1400s and now being re-translated from medieval French, it created the framework for witch hunts. Dave Redel carefully opens its cover.

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Take a journey back in time when humans and animals spoke the same language, when humans survived because of lessons learned from the animals. From the shores of Lac St. Jean in Northern Quebec come these ancient stories of the Mashteuiatsh Ilnu. These dramatized versions cross the boundaries of time and are as powerful now as they were ten thousand years ago. CBC Radio's Legends Project compiles traditional oral stories, legends and histories of Canada's Inuit and First Nations, gathered in communities across the country. To find out more, go to the Legends Project website.

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