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Listen to Past Audio
Listen to selected audio files from the past season. This page will be updated each season with new files. Click on the links to visit the program's feature page.
Please note these are streaming files only.
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Tuesday, September 1
A NOVEL APPROACH
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Neuroscience and psychology explore why we think what we do. But how does what we read affect our minds? Hassan Santur delves into the works of Jane Austen and James Joyce to understand how novels work on our consciousness.
September 2
THE CURE WITHIN
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Alternative medicine and therapies are a huge business. They appeal to people who believe their emotions and their health are intertwined. Such beliefs have a long history. Harvard professor Anne Harrington walks us through the terrain of mind- body medicine.
September 7
TEN THOUSAND SPIRITS
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A religion going back to the Stone Age is enjoying a newfound popularity in modern-day Korea. Once reviled and driven underground, shamanism today is thriving in temples and cafes. Clients pay mostly female shamans hefty fees to call spirits from the dead, settle old scores, and foretell their future. Vancouver broadcaster Gloria Chang, who was born in Korea, returns to her native land to investigate the amazing powers of knife walking, fortune-telling shamans.
September 8
PUBLIC APOLOGY: GOOD PR OR POWERFUL HEALING?
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Public apologies are becoming more common. Many jurisdictions have passed legislation protecting governments, corporations and individuals, who offer sincere apologies, from legal liability. A Calgary community seminar examines public apologies, the strategies behind them and their consequences. Co-sponsored by IDEAS and the Calgary Institute of the Humanities at the University of Calgary.
September 9
TRUST
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Noah Richler talks to artists, bankers, philosophers, politicians and religious figures as he investigates the concept of ‘Trust’ and how we confuse this principle with honesty. As he moves through realms of finance, love and art, he discovers that rare occasion when the two ideas are one and the same.
September 10
SCIENCE AT THE SUMMIT
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Two leading Canadian medical researchers – Benjamin Neel, and John Wallace – discuss what it takes to rise through the ranks and ultimately arrive at the lofty pinnacle where true scientific advancements are made. Both received the $5 million 2009 Premier's Summit Awards. John Dirks, President of the Gairdner Foundation, moderates the discussion, recorded at the MaRS innovation centre in Toronto.
September 11, 18, 25, October 2 & 9
GILBERT REID'S FRANCE
(click on link for feature page, audio for all 5 episodes is posted here).
France is capricious and contradictory; she’s traditional and revolutionary; she’s archaic and ultra-modern. She exalts in joie-de-vivre and pops anti-depressants. She disdains the vulgar marketplace, but sells her aircraft, haute couture, wines, and nuclear plants around the world. She is not a nation - she is a civilization. In this 5-part series, broadcaster Gilbert Reid explores whether France - and her charms - can survive the 21st century.
Monday, September 14
WALKING AT THE EDGE OF REASON AND AWE CD
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Reason has been a blessing for humanity, but often at the cost of dulling our ability to appreciate the ineffable – that dimension of human experience that evokes wonder and awe. Frank Faulk seeks a balance between reason and the ineffable.
September 16
THE BIOLOGY OF MIND
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According to molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel, mental functions are the result of different brain processes. The task of neuroscience is to discover "which particular processes combine to provide the richness of human mental experience.” Eric Kandel talks to
Marilyn Powell about what he calls the "biology of mind".
September 21, 28
FROM HERE TO MATERNITY
Listen to Part 1
Listen to Part 2
For decades men have donated sperm for baby-making. But in recent years egg donation has become a growing business and concern. Moms-in-waiting can purchase tourism packages to the Czech Republic or pay a university student in Boston for her eggs. Science journalist and IDEAS contributor Alison Motluk deconstructs the new motherhood
September 22, 29
TALKING PHILOSOPHY: DEMOCRACY
Listen to Part 1
Listen to Part 2
Almost everyone thinks democracy is a good thing (though we all have different views of what it is, or what it ought to be). Philosophers Michael Blake, Simone Chambers, Arthur Ripstein and IDEAS host Paul Kennedy wrestle with ideas about democracy, as democratically as possible, of course.
September 23
MINDING MEMORY
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What's in a memory? An original in the field of memory research, Endel Tulving shares his insights. Mental time-travel through what he terms "episodic memory" may have been one of "the drivers of the evolution of culture". A free-wheeling conversation with Marilyn Powell about memory
and the mind.
September 30, October 7 & October 14
IT’S A TEEN’S WORLD: WIRED FOR SEX, LIES AND POWERTRIPS
(click on link for feature page, audio for all 3 episodes is posted here).
Kids today are active players in a sexually charged popular culture, fuelled by media and personal technology. But at what cost? Whether it’s posting sexy photos on the internet, raunchy comments and grabbing in the school hallway or spreading explicit gossip that shatters high school lives, harassment is commonplace, even acceptable. Lynn Glazier exposes what it’s like for three diverse groups of Toronto teens to navigate a tangled web of sex, lies and power trips in their social relationships.
October 5
THE ENRIGHT FILES - The Thinking Catholic
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Michael Enright, host of The Sunday Edition, in conversation with James Carroll: novelist, playwright, critic, historian and devout Catholic about what's wrong with his Church and why he stands by her.
October 6
NEURON THERAPY
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York University philosopher Stuart Shanker is one of the world’s leading thinkers on “kids with disorders.” The author of twenty books on philosophy and human development, he incorporates the latest knowledge we have about the brain to improve the lives of struggling children. He talks with IDEAS producer Mary O’Connell.
October 12, 19
LOOKING UP
Listen to Part 1
Listen to Part 2
Four hundred years ago, a novel optical device from Holland made its way to Italy and into the hands of a free-thinking mathematician named Galileo Galilei. He soon aimed the instrument skyward – and our universe changed forever. Since that time, astronomers have been building bigger and better telescopes – and their discoveries continue to challenge us. Science journalist Dan Falk tells the remarkable story of Galileo and the revolution he began.
October 20
THE MUSIC OF MATTER
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The world is a mess of molecules and muck. Within the chaos, a cosmic harmony plays: the secret song of nature and the mystery of the music of matter. Ian Wilkinson unravels the universal chords.
October 21
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE WOLF
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Philosophy professor Mark Rowlands had two loves: philosophy and Brenin, a wolf he would bring along to his university classes. But Brenin was more than just an exotic pet. Their relationship led Rowlands to deeply examine his work and life.
Thursday, October 22
LANDS OF CRYSTAL
Montreal writer George Tombs boards the Canadian research ship Amundsen for a scientific odyssey in the Arctic Archipelago. Top researchers from 10 countries are trying to understand climate change by studying everything from the muddy bottom of the Beaufort Sea to the upper atmosphere, and everything in between.
October 23
THE 2009 LAFONTAINE BALDWIN LECTURE
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What kind of leadership will Canada need to help us deal with such issues as the economy and the environment? Sheila Watt-Cloutier discusses how we can look to the Arctic for solutions and to Inuit culture for its wisdom and sustainability. The annual LaFontaine Baldwin Lecture is organized and supported by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the Dominion Institute.
October 26
STORIES FROM THE ANCESTORS: THE LEGENDS OF THE GWICH'IN
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The foundational stories of the Gwich'in are a window into the lives of a people who tamed the harsh Arctic climate and landscape from Alaska to the Mackenzie delta. They are tales of medicine power and heroic characters. A new episode from CBC Radio’s ongoing Legends Project, compilations of traditional oral stories, legends and histories of Canada’s Inuit and First Nations, gathered in communities across the country. To find out more, visit the CBC Aboriginal: Legends Project website.
November 10
IN PRAISE OF PLAGIARISM
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Plagiarsm is a dirty word. Cut and paste someone's work, and you're a thief. But charges of plagiarism get murky when it comes to artistic creation. Is “appropriation” — borrowing or higher cribbing — really stealing? Either we need a new word to talk about literary and artistic creativity, or we need more
plagiarism. Kim Kierans explores the issue.
November 11, 18, 25, December 2
THE EVOLUTION OF CHARLES DARWIN
(click on link for feature page, audio for all 45 episodes is posted here)
IDEAS celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s transformational and contentious book, On the Origin of Species. Darwin’s theory of evolution through Natural Selection forever changed how we think about the living world. In this 4-part series, Seth Feldman guides us through the life and ideas of Charles Darwin, a creative genius.
November 12
HOLD ME TIGHT
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The independent, autonomous self is lionized in our culture. But recognizing the hold that attachment has on us, is the secret of lasting relationships. So says Sue Johnson, a leading couples’ therapist and a Canadian with an international following.
November 19
THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM
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As a political philosophy, liberalism has been on the defensive for a long time, especially in the United States. Now it is in the ascendance. Political scientist Alan Wolfe explains what is at the heart of this tolerant and open-minded vision.
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