About The Show
Ideas is CBC Radio's premier program of contemporary thought, with an audience of approximately 400,000 listeners.
Ideas is broadcast Monday through Friday from 9 to 10 pm and is heard throughout Canada and the northern United States on the 402 radio stations and transmitters of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada's public broadcaster.
Ideas is eclectic in form and content. We cover social issues, culture and the arts, geopolitics, history, biography, science and technology, and the humanities. Most of our programs are documentaries in which thoughts are gathered, contexts explored, and connections made.
The 1965 premiere broadcast of Ideas (at first called The Best Ideas You'll Hear Tonight) was on the CBC-FM network, amalgamating two former series titled University of the Air and The Learning Stage. The first three programs featured a discussion of Darwin's theory of evolution and an interview with members of the CBC Galapagos Expedition, a series called Peace on Earth, the music of Villa-Lobos, and a talk by Earle Birney about poetry and creativity. Back in 1965 The CBC Times announced that "full-attention programming is what CBC-FM radio offers its listeners. IDEAS is a series prepared for people who just enjoy thinking."
Ideas also plays host to The Massey Lectures, sponsored by CBC Radio in cooperation with Massey College at the University of Toronto, and created to honour Vincent Massey, former Governor-General of Canada and an energetic advocate for the humanities in Canada. Inaugurated in 1961, and heard on IDEAS since the program's creation in 1965, the Massey Lectures "enable distinguished authorities to communicate the results of original study on important subjects of contemporary interest".
The 2009 Massey Lectures are entitled The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Cultures Matter in the Modern World. Anthropologist Wade Davis argues that the myriad of cultures that make up our world are “humanity’s greatest legacy…the product of our dreams, the embodiment of our hopes, the symbol of all we are and all that we have created as a wildly inquisitive and astonishingly adaptive species.” Wade Davis takes us on an astonishing journey through some of the great cultures and civilizations on earth, fragile and endangered, yet essential to our survival as a species.
Over the years, dozens of books have evolved from Ideas broadcasts, and since 1986 we have published transcripts of most Ideas programs. Audio cassettes and CDs of many shows are also available.
We welcome your ideas. To find out how to submit a proposal, go to our submissions page.
Host: Paul Kennedy
Executive Producer: Bernie Lucht
Producers: David Cayley, Richard Handler, Susan Mahoney, Mary O'Connell, Sara Wolch.
Associate Producer and Web Master: Liz Nagy
Resident Technician: David Field
Our Regional Producers are:
CBC Vancouver (British Columbia) - Kathleen Flaherty
CBC Edmonton & The Prairies - Dave Redel
CBC Halifax - Mary Lynk
CBC Montreal - Jane Lewis
CBC St. John's - Marie Wadden
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