Afleveringen
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It's tempting to think suffering should be avoided at all costs, but moral suffering has its own distinct standing. It signals a moral conscience. Every day people consume real time violence, grief, war and genocide through screens and experience moral upending. Without a moral compass there’s no motivation to address necessary issues.
Guests in this episode:
Cynda Rushton is a nurse and a professor of nursing and bioethics at Johns Hopkins University.
Robert Meagher is an emeritus professor at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Thea Lim is a novelist, culture writer, and creative writing teacher in Toronto.
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Former IDEAS writer-broadcaster David Cayley passed away at his home on Wednesday June 10, surrounded by family. To honour his legacy, we wanted to share part of a 2006 conversation David had with Irish philosopher Richard Kearney on the space for theism within atheism, and/or atheism within theism.
Richard Kearney is a philosophy professor at Boston College and University College, Dublin. He has written many books on modern philosophy and culture, including The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion and Anatheism: Returning to God After God.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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There may be no one alive who saw Houdini perform magic. Yet we still know his name and his legend. Dua Lipa namechecked the escape artist in a 2023 dance hit and she's not alone. Houdini is still a cultural reference point, despite having died 100 years ago. And that’s pretty much what he would have wanted. IDEAS explores why his name persists in our imaginations and how his magic helped his family escape poverty.
Guests in this episode:
Adam Begley is a biographer living in London, and author of Houdini: The Elusive American.
David Ben is a conjuror, writer, and consultant in Toronto. He’s writing a graphic novel featuring an imagined adventure for Houdini.
Katie Bender is a playwright and actor. Her interactive performance about Houdini is called Instructions for a Seance.
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Sujata Berry's brother, Sharad was 16 years old when he was killed. He was aboard Air India Flight 182 when it exploded off the coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985. It's considered the worst terror attack in Canadian history. For Sujata, the shock of his horrific death morphed into an unshakeable grief. The family's sorrow was augmented with the lack of justice for victims' families — a flawed investigation, evidence lost and what Sujata says was "an unsatisfactory verdict." It's taken Sujata 40 years to chip away at her grief and try to understand what happened to her and her family. She explores love, loss and the grief that binds them in her documentary, All that Remains. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 17, 2025.
Read Sujata's personal essay with pictures
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Homosexuality is illegal in more than half of African countries — a crime punishable by prison sentences. Or in some cases: death. In the past few years, six African countries have made it illegal just to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. These laws bring up questions of foreign influence, neo-colonialism, and the role the international community could play in nudging human rights on the continent. *This episode originally aired on May 26, 2025.
Want another podcast? Ghana and Uganda have some of the harshest laws against LGBTQ+ people in the world. Despite the threats, listen to how podcasters in both these countries are fighting back and reclaiming sexuality.
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Uganda and Ghana have the harshest laws against LGBTQ+ people in the world. Despite the threats, podcasters in both countries are fighting back by creating a space where people can have sex-positive conversations and gender inclusivity. IDEAS contributor Nana aba Duncan was in Uganda and Ghana to find out how the safety, privacy, and independence of the medium offer a path to understanding, validation and community.
In the past few years, six African countries have made it illegal to just advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. What role should the international community play in nudging human rights on the continent? Listen to The unforgivable crime of being queer in Africa.
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When Jay Pitter was eight years old and out shopping with her mother, she began swaying to the music at the mall. Her mother scolded her for it — signalling that it was undignified for a Black person to act that way in public. That incident was the genesis for Black Public Joy: No Permit Or Permission Required. In her book, she addresses the self-policing Black people can internalise, and reveals how culture, urban planning, and memory shape the way people can access joy in parks, streets, transit, and neighbourhoods.
Guest in this episode:
Jay Pitter is an award-winning placemaker focused on creating joyful public spaces that foster belonging, prosperity, and cultural memory. She advances this work through cultural planning, policy frameworks, and storytelling. Pitter is also an adjunct urban planning professor and has engaged students at Cornell, Princeton, and MIT, advancing new theories of public joy that connect practice, policy, and pedagogy.
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Mae West shocked audiences and infuriated censors for more than 70 years. She was pop culture’s original blonde bombshell sex-symbol comedienne provocateur. But she was more than just a corseted sex pot with an affinity for word play. She was a trailblazer, transgressive, funny, smart, sassy, lively, a genius. And she got away with all of it. IDEAS contributor Lynda Shorten explores the legacy of the eccentric Mae West.
Guests in this episode:
Linda Hutcheon is a professor emerita of English and comparative literature at The University of Toronto.
Ramona Curry is an associate professor emerita of English at The University of Illinois.
Pamela Wojeck is a professor of film studies at The University of Notre Dame
Scott C. Miller is a make-up artist and retired undertaker
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Rachel Jedinak will never forget the day that changed her life in July 16, 1942. She was eight years old, living in Nazi-occupied France at a time known as les années noires — The Dark Years. Police rounded up Jewish men, women, and children for deportation. Rachel, her older sister and mother were among them. That morning two police offers did something that Rachel considers an act of resistance. The girls were saved. But their mother was not. IDEAS contributor Neil Sandell, based in Nice, France, explores the complicated moral territory of resistance, what it actually meant during the occupation, and maybe means now.
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Right now Elon Musk's wealth is currently around $825 billion US — more than double what it was a year earlier. Only 22 countries currently boast economies larger than Musk’s net worth, but he’s catching up. In the third episode of our series The Billionaire Age we investigate how Musk and his fellow billionaires are trying to take over the world. And if they succeed, what will this mean for the rest of us?
Listen to more episodes in this series:
Listen to Part One: How did we get here?
Listen to Part Two: Disney heiress on the dangers of extreme wealth
Guests in this episode:
Ingrid Robeyns is a philosopher and economist. She is the chair in Ethics of Intuitions at Utrecht University, and the author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth.
Lucas Chancel is an economist and the co-director of The World Inequality Lab. He's also a professor at the Paris School of Economics.
Gabriel Zucman is an economist and the co-director of The World Inequality Lab. He's also a professor at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley.
Nitin Bharti is an economist and lecturer at the University of Western Australia. He is also the South and South-East Asia coordinator at the World Inequality Lab.
Lars Osberg is an economics professor at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His latest book is The Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada.
Abigail Disney is an American film producer, philanthropist and social activist. She is a member of Patriotic Millionaires which advocates for higher taxes on the wealthy.
Paul Krugman is an economist and the winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Tim Wu is a legal scholar and professor at Columbia Law School. He is also a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. His latest book is The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.
Nick Hanauer is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He co-authored the book, Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing The Lies and Half-Truths that Protect Profit, Power and Wealth in America, with Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen. He also hosts the podcast Pitchfork Economics.
Guido Alfani is a professor of economic history at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. His latest book is As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West.
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Our homes have been stripped of their essential humanity, says Leilani Farha, this year's CBC Massey Lecturer. Today housing has become a commodity — one fuelling the biggest industry in the world. In her lectures, Housing Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home, Farha calls on all of us to envision a new ideology for home — one rooted in dignity, humanity and law. “Home is required for human existence," says Farha, who served as a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing from 2014 to 2020 and is now the global director of The Shift. She speaks with Nahlah Ayed about her 25 years fighting for housing as a human right, the conversation she hopes her Massey lectures will spark and why "home is really everything."
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What happens when a human becomes intimately enmeshed with a chatbot? From people who’ve married their bots or who grieve their loved ones with the help of AI, host Victoria Hetherington (author of The Friend Machine) dives into the stories of the people who have invited these digital avatars into their hearts, minds, and even beds. And asks what do we gain and what do we stand to lose? Our intimacy, our resilience, even our grasp on reality? This latest season of Understood looks at who made the decisions that allowed chatbots to move way beyond digital assistants and into the most intimate parts of our lives.
Understood takes you deep inside the seismic shifts reshaping our world right now. From online porn and crypto chaos to the rise of tech oligarchs, deepfake AI, and the broken promises of the internet.
More episodes of Understood are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/AIxIdeas
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Sometimes the universe hands us a gift. Over the past year, our podcast listeners spent a total of 526,915 hours listening to our program. That's 21,954.8 days and that translates to 60 years of listening to us. So what better way to mark IDEAS' 60th year then to look back on the highlights and lowlights of the past six decades. To give you a hint on some of the picks, on the bad list: online identity management. Trickle down economics. On the good: Free Trade. Girl Bosses. Apparently open borders is still an open question.
Panelists Jamie Liew, a University of Ottawa law professor and novelist; University of Toronto philosopher, Joseph Heath; and the Canadian Shield Institute’s, Vass Bednar, joined IDEAS producer Mary Lynk on stage, in front of a live audience at the Isabel Bader Theatre for this episode — the last in our special series celebrating our 60th anniversary.
Listen to more episodes:
The time when a guest said, "I love you!"
How an IDEAS episode on traffic changed a doctor's practice
CBC Massey Lecturers reveal how the talks changed them
How IDEAS saved a listener from sending a regrettable email
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"IDEAS is often a surprise" says Cathy Pike. It's why she's been a longtime listener. To our delight, IDEAS was there for her just at the right time. After listening to an episode about Friedrich Nietzsche and his philosophy about "the art of passing by," Cathy says she decided not to send an email that she realized she would have regretted. "The program gave me pause and I’m grateful for that.”
And we're grateful to hear from Cathy and other listeners who share their personal encounters on how IDEAS shows up for them, as we continue our 60th anniversary series.
*This is the fourth episode in our special programming. It originally aired on Dec. 4, 2025.
Listen to other episodes in this series:
The time when a guest said, "I love you!"
The best — and worst — ideas of the last six decades
How an IDEAS episode on traffic changed a doctor's practice
CBC Massey Lecturers reveal how the talks changed them
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This podcast features an all-star, and bestselling, lineup of CBC Massey Lecturers from the past decade:
Payam Akhavan (2017) and the police officer who pulled over to the side of the road to keep listening; Sally Armstrong (2019) and the women’s rights groups listening to her talks in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and China; Ron Deibert (2020) and his conviction that ‘philosophical’ radio is more crucial than ever; Esi Edugyan (2021), Tomson Highway (2022) feeling astonished when a stranger recognizes his voice after hearing him on the radio; Margaret MacMillan (2015); Tanya Talaga (2018) and her surprise when an older white man in the audience declares Indigenous activists should “go forth and conquer”; Astra Taylor (2023) and how her secret desire is to work at IDEAS; Jennifer Welsh (2016) comforting an audience member who’d served in Afghanistan; and Ian Williams (2024) on how his lectures have more meanings than he realized — so much so, that he’d like a “second date” with IDEAS.
*This is the third episode in our special programming marking our 60th anniversary. It originally aired on Dec. 3, 2025.
Listen to other episodes in this series:
The time when a guest said, "I love you!"
How an IDEAS episode on traffic changed a doctor's practice
How IDEAS saved a listener from sending a regrettable email
The best — and worst — ideas of the last six decades
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That's not something you expect to hear in an interview. But the Harvard historian and author of All That She Carried, Tiya Miles did not hesitate to say these words to IDEAS host, Nahlah Ayed. What prompted the bold statement comes down to a question — seemingly for Miles the perfect one to ask.
Their conversation resonated with many listeners, including a potter in Australia who shares how this story sustains him after the loss of his wife. Also in this podcast, we find out how IDEAS inspires everything from sonnets, to art, and to recreating historic feasts.
*This is the second episode in our 60th anniversary series. It originally aired on Dec. 2, 2025.There's more to listen to here:
How an IDEAS episode on traffic changed a doctor's practice
CBC Massey Lecturers reveal how the talks changed them
How IDEAS saved a listener from sending a regrettable email
The best — and worst — ideas of the last six decades
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Not many people like to think about traffic but Joanna Oda says this very topic on IDEAS in 2005 permanently changed the way she views medical care as a doctor. "It helped me understand how things that make sense for you as an individual contribute to a collective problem." She adds, the episode introduced her to the idea that one car has a big impact.
This episode is the first episode in our special week-long series to mark our 60th anniversary. It originally aired on Dec. 1, 2025.
Listen to other episodes in this series:
The time when a guest said, "I love you!"
CBC Massey Lecturers reveal how the talks changed them
How IDEAS saved a listener from sending a regrettable email
The best — and worst — ideas of the last six decades
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Numbers get their due credit in this podcast. Even if we're not aware of them, numbers are essential to how we experience the world. IDEAS explores the most bizarre, surprising, mind-blowing and fundamental numbers in the universe.
This panel discussion was recorded live at The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.
Guests in this episode:
Asimina Arvanitaki is a particle physicist and the aristarchus chair in theoretical physics at the Perimeter Institute.
Ben Webster is an associate professor in the pure mathematics department at the University of Waterloo, and he’s also an associate faculty member at the Perimeter Institute.
Matthew Johnson is a professor of physics and astronomy at York University, and he's also an associate faculty member at the Perimeter Institute.
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For the past decade, Canadians have been split 50/50 on new pipelines — that's changed. Two recent opinion polls found roughly three quarters of eligible voters in Canada want at least one new pipeline built to export more fossil fuels. Yet, 70 per cent of people consider climate change a serious threat. IDEAS producer Tom Howell explores the incompatibilities and future scenarios. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 7, 2025.
If you liked this episode, you may want to listen to this podcast: A machine that could save us from war — and global warming
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Alexandria has been the source of invention, innovation, and beauty for millennia — capturing the imagination of Napoleon, the Prophet Muhammad and, of course, Alexander the Great. He envisioned a place that thrived on cultural, intellectual, economic, political and religious exchange. IDEAS examines the big ideas of this port city in Egypt with Islam Issa, author of Alexandria: The City That Changed the World.
Part three in our ongoing series about how port cities shaped the world as we know it.
Listen to Part Two: How port cities of Elmina shaped the world
Listen to Part One: How port cities like Singapore shaped the world
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