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IDEAS is a place for people who like to think. If you value deep conversation and unexpected reveals, this show is for you. From the roots and rise of authoritarianism to near-death experiences to the history of toilets, no topic is off-limits. Hosted by Nahlah Ayed, we’re home to immersive documentaries and fascinating interviews with some of the most consequential thinkers of our time.

With an award-winning team, our podcast has proud roots in its 60-year history with CBC Radio, exploring the IDEAS that make us who we are. 

New episodes drop Monday through Friday at 5pm ET.

Ideas

Payam Akhavan has witnessed appalling episodes of human cruelty and suffering. And that’s helped forge his commitment to pursuing justice for the victims of human rights abuses. The human rights lawyer and former UN prosecutor at The Hague argues that our salvation as a species will come ultimately through realizing that we're all one people and must live that way. In 2017, he delivered the Massey Lectures titled In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey. He explains how the themes explored in his lectures have taken on even more relevance in today's divided and conflict-ridden world. *This episode originally aired on June 26, 2024.

A better world needs to be built on empathy: human rights scholar

For award-winning poet and bestselling author Ross Gay, joy and delight aren’t frivolous or a privilege. He argues they’re absolutely essential to a meaningful life — especially in the face of grief, sadness and suffering. "I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival," writes Gay. *This episode originally aired on April 2, 2024.

Making space for moments of joy in dark times

With a to-do list that requires 30 hours in a day to complete, leisure time often gets erased. IDEAS producer Naheed Mustafa explores a better time, when there was space for ourselves to pursue activities we value. What it comes down to is reconfiguring our relationship to the time we have and opening it up so we can pursue the good life. *Originally aired on February 20, 2020.

Why is it so hard to embrace leisure time?

We tend to view philosophy as a formal endeavour. Not so, says Lewis Gordon. Yes, he's an academic but he argues that confining thinking to the academy has resulted in people forgetting that philosophy “has something important to say.” The thinker and musician sees pubs and kitchens as great places to spur thinking and philosophical conversation. At a well-known pub in St. John’s, Newfoundland called the Ship's Inn, Gordon 

makes the case for the everyday relevance of thinking, and reflected on the vital place of food, drink, and conversation in the making of thought. *This episode originally aired on May 26, 2023.

Why philosophy needs to ditch class, and go to a pub

Educators are wired for hope, according to English professor Jessica Riddell. She believes in the importance of slowing down in urgent times and urges educators to teach hope, share it, and to imagine a better future. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 27, 2024.

A lesson in hope and why we need to slow down

Universities have always been places of protest and dissent, but University of Toronto English professor Randy Boyagoda argues that it should be something more — a place for productive discourse. He says we must check the assumption that our lived experience, well-formed arguments, or even knee-jerk responses are all there is to any given matter. That means staying open to the possibility of being wrong.

In January 2024, he became the university’s Advisor on Civil Discourse, the first position of its kind in Canada, prompted in part by campus convulsions since October 7th. Boyagoda explores the question: what are universities for? *This episode originally aired on Oct. 7, 2024.

Making the case for what a university could and should be

In 2023, about 1 in 10 Canadian doctors considered attempting suicide in 2023. That's why Winnipeg doctor Jillian Horton is advocating for the emotional well-being of doctors in our healthcare system. She's helping doctors understand that in order to care better for their patients, they must care better for themselves

In her book, We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine, and Healing, Dr. Horton shares her personal story of burnout and calls for the development of a compassionate healthcare system, one that fosters a balanced understanding of what it means to heal and be healed. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 18, 2024.

Why doesn't our healthcare include the well-being of doctors?

Canadian scholar and philosopher Charles Taylor insists poetry persuades us through the experience of connection. His book, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment, traces how poets, beginning in the Romantic period, found a new avenue to pursue meaning in life. He argues that while poetry can often be incomplete and enigmatic, its insight is too moving — and true — to be ignored. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 7, 2025.

How poetry offers insight into the meaning of life

When Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk wrote Sanaaq in 1984, it was the first novel written in Inuktitut in Canada. She wanted to prevent the language from no longer existing. Nappaaluk who died in 2007, helped develop the Inuktitut language curriculum in Nunavik and wrote more than 20 books — most of them designed to teach Inuktitut to children. She was also a teacher, an artist and a thinker with profound ideas about justice and community. *This is the third episode in our four-part series called Another Country: Change and Resilience in Nunavik. It originally aired on June 28, 2023.

How a novel saved the Inuktitut language from disappearing

After more than four decades of activism and advocacy, David Suzuki is one of the most renowned and respected voices in the environmental movement. So when he says it's too late to stop climate change, people take notice. And that's now exactly what he's saying.

He's delivering this message as Prime Minister Mark Carney's government focuses on fast-tracking major projects it deems to be of national interest, which could include a new pipeline for fossil fuels from Alberta. Suzuki says that, despite his understanding of the climate crisis, Carney — like all of us — is trapped by the economic and political systems we've created. And for Suzuki, our only hope for survival is to scrap those systems entirely.

In this special episode from our colleagues at Front Burner, David Suzuki joins host Jayme Poisson on the podcast for a wide-ranging discussion from what a world of irreversible climate change looks like to what he describes as the "madness" of continued investment in fossil fuels to the lessons environmentalists of the future can take from the past. More episodes of Front Burner can be found here: https://link.mgln.ai/fb-ideas

Decades on, David Suzuki sees the same problem: human-first mindset (via Front Burner)

Tom Thomson is one of the most mythologized Canadian painters of his time — and ours. Over 100 years ago, the artist died suddenly on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park, when he was at the peak of his powers. IDEAS producer Sean Foley delves into what we think we know about Tom Thomson and examines the tales that have evolved over the past century. *This episode originally aired Nov. 9, 2018.

Guests in this episode:

Gregory Klages, historian and author of The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact from Fiction.

Sherrill Grace, Professor Emerita at the University of British Columbia and the author of Inventing Tom Thomson 

Ian Dejardin, art historian and the former executive director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

Pete Telford, chairman of the Friends of Leith Church, Leith, Ontario.

The mysterious death of a great Canadian painter

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