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BBC's Reith Lectures: What Franklin Roosevelt's 'four freedoms' mean now
The BBC Reith Lectures return and the theme is The Four Freedoms. In the first lecture, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi-Aidichie analyzes the state of free speech today, including “cancel culture.” She argues that moral courage is required to resist threats to freedom of speech, be they political, legal or social.
IDEAS
Muhammad Iqbal: one of the greatest South Asian thinkers of the 20th century
Muhammad Iqbal was popularly known as the intellectual founder of Pakistan, but his greater fame is for his philosophical works in English and his poetry, both in Urdu and Persian. IDEAS looks at the life and work of the Indian poet-philosopher.
How Indigenous Americans discovered Europe in the late 15th century
Starting in 1493, tens of thousands of Indigenous people began arriving in Europe. British historian Caroline Dodds Pennock spent a decade collecting evidence of the widespread Indigenous presence in Portugal, Spain, France, and England in the hundred years before Britain attempted to establish its first North American colony.
Audio
Suzuki's Survival Guide | Life and Death
In this episode of Suzuki's Survival Guide: A Retrospective from 2010, David Suzuki takes an unflinching look at death and decomposition, at the way cells die to make way for new life within us, and at what happens to a carrot after we harvest it and eat it. All to unlock the cycle in which the things we are made of are never wasted.
IDEAS
David Suzuki's Survival Guide: A Retrospective
This summer IDEAS is featuring episodes from David Suzuki’s radio archive that will include episodes from this 1989 series, It's A Matter of Survival, as well as his 1999 series The Naked Ape and his 2010 series called The Bottom Line. New episodes will drop every Tuesday through the summer.
Why socialist Susan Neiman says 'woke-ism' is not leftist
The term “woke” started on the left. But now it’s used by the right to indicate someone who’s ultra-politically correct and morally aggressive. How did that happen? That’s what moral philosopher Susan Neiman explores in her book, Left Is Not Woke.
IDEAS AFTERNOON
'Liminal space' photography captures the eerieness and isolation of pandemic life
Early in the pandemic, an online community of photographers, artists and editors started creating and sharing pictures of what they described as “liminal spaces”: empty, dark hallways, old arcades and decrepit stairways, which echoed a sense of timelessness and eeriness that resonated in today's world.
IDEAS
'Keep fighting' to build strong communities: Naheed Nenshi
Democratic backsliding is rising. Is there a way to revive civic engagement and resilience and push back against public apathy? IDEAS host, Nahlah Ayed talks to former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi about the possibility of renewing civic purpose in Canada.
Change the system, not the students: Sociologist on Black lives in Canadian education
Carl E. James is the winner of the 2022 Killam Prize for Social Science. Professor James is Canada's leading expert on schools and universities, especially as viewed through the lives of racialized students. He insists we must notice the processes behind what can appear to be flaws in society.
Audio
Suzuki's Survival Guide | Wonders of Water
Water is essential for our survival; it's an integral part of our bodies. But it's also at the heart of some of the most profound mysteries of existence. How deep is the ocean, and what is it really like in the darkest reaches? And why do we have so much trouble taking care of this precious and crucial resource?
Exploring the joys and challenges of Indigenous sexuality, gender and identity
When Europeans colonized North America, they brought very specific ideas about gender and sexuality. Following the 2022 CBC Massey Lectures, Tomson Highway joined panellists to discuss Indigenous sexuality in the aftermath of colonialism — from Cree mythology to the Vancouver dating scene.
IDEAS AFTERNOON
Is human intelligence overrated?
Our brains tell us human intelligence is unique in understanding this complicated world — that our intellects make us superior to animals. But after years of studying dolphins and other marine creatures, Justin Gregg has come to the conclusion that the human brain isn’t as great as it thinks it is.
IDEAS
How pro-democracy 'persuaders' are shifting political views
The extremes are extreme in U.S. politics. But author Anand Giridharadas and some other progressives are convinced that there are uncompromising approaches that can move up to 60 per cent of voters to value democracy and human rights. He describes the methods proven effective in shifting views.
Audio
The Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath
A group of pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales tell stories to each other. One of them — the bawdy, smart, confident Wife of Bath — tells us exactly what she thinks about marriage — and men. She’s been called the first fully-formed woman in English literature, and 700 years later, the Wife of Bath remains an inspiration to writers today.
Audio
Suzuki's Survival Guide | The 'Love' Economy
The field of economics is limited by how it measures success. It doesn't take into account the things that sustain life that can't clearly be measured. The earth and its atmosphere provide infinite services free of charge. It also doesn't include the impact of community bonds, relationships, and love. This episode explores new ways to think of growth and society's holistic well-being.
Audio
Massey Lecture # 5: When we die, we stay right here on Earth, says Tomson Highway
Tomson Highway's final Massey lecture is an uplifting and joyous conclusion to his series — a message that the worldview of Indigenous people suggests ways of seeing ad believing that make our journey on Earth joyous, hilariously funny and rich in diversity.
Massey Lectures
CBC Massey Lectures 2022: Tomson Highway
In the 2022 CBC Massey Lecture, acclaimed Cree writer Tomson Highway uses storytelling, biography, and Cree mythology to explore five central pillars of our existence: creation, death, language, humour, and sex & gender.
IDEAS AFTERNOON
Meet the winners of the 2023 Killam Prize
Five Canadian minds changing the world with their contributions have won the 2023 Killam Prize, a $100,000 award. Each scholar has significantly impacted their respective fields of engineering, health sciences, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.
Ideas
The New World Disorder: IDEAS series asks where democracy is going now
It all feels overwhelming: the escalating climate crisis and geopolitical volatility; the continuing rise of ultra-nationalism — all entwined with a toxic information landscape. But what does it all point to? To help answer that question, IDEAS presents a series called The New World Disorder.
IDEAS
On the front lines of the fight against strongman politics
Democracy is shrivelling and illiberalism is on the rise. We've been watching this unfold for more than three decades but the sense of urgency has, perhaps, never been so great. IDEAS hears from people on the frontline of the fight against rising authoritarianism — how they understand the struggle and what they're doing to survive it.
IDEAS
'Hinge moments' in history: how change happens
Salman Rushdie proposed that there seem to be 'hinge moments' in history, when many crucial changes take place at much the same time. But what are the forces that create change? Recorded at the 2022 Stratford Festival, The Shock of the New is a series of panel discussions about five years that have profoundly shaped the modern world.
Audio
The Shock of the New | The Year 1947: Fractures and Tectonic Shifts
The Partition of India creates the largest mass migration in human history. The newly-created United Nations votes to partition British Palestine. The Cold War divides the world into opposing camps, and empires collapse and retreat. This is the final episode in our series, The Shock of the New, exploring how change happens.
How Hitler's 'favourite' reptile became a symbol of international intrigue
Saturn, an alligator that was supposedly Hitler’s favourite animal was 'liberated' from the Berlin zoo when the Red Army invaded Germany at the end of the Second World War. The reptile was relocated to Moscow where it died in 2020. But with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Saturn’s story has become once again a symbol in wartime geopolitics.
Audio
Suzuki's Survival Guide | Naked Ape to Superspecies
Never before in the four billion-year history of life on Earth has a single species been able to alter the geological, biological and physical features of the planet. As David Suzuki puts it, "We have evolved from naked ape to superspecies." This first episode from his 1999 IDEAS series, The Naked Ape, explores the impact of human culture on the natural world.
Ideas
David Suzuki's Survival Guide: A Retrospective
This summer IDEAS is featuring episodes from David Suzuki’s radio archive that will include episodes from this 1989 series, It's A Matter of Survival, as well as his 1999 series The Naked Ape and his 2010 series called The Bottom Line. New episodes will drop every Tuesday through the summer.