Ideas
Kanal Təfərrüatları
Ideas
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 immersiv...
Son Epizodlar
309 epizod
Open your gift: a podcast of nonfiction recommendations
This isn't a wrap or best of 2025 kind of list. This IDEAS podcast is packed full of all kinds of recommendations from our smart, insightful contribut...
Your tomatoes have a backstory and it’s not always pretty
In fact, author and journalist Marcello Di Cintio argues Canadians are complicit. After four years investigating the lives of migrant workers, he foun...
Bringing a farm — and its philosophy — back to life
Growing up with food insecurity, Julian Napoleon yearned to be a farmer. His great-grandparents once farmed on the Saulteau First Nations reserve in n...
Pt 2 | Architect Frank Gehry on how to exit life
There’s a constant mantra Frank Gehry would always hear from his mentors who have since died – “Don’t you dare ever stop working.” It’s a sentiment he...
The architecture that brought Frank Gehry to tears
Rebel architect Frank Gehry believed architecture IS art. He strived to evoke emotion in every design. Last Friday, Gehry died at 96 but he never stop...
The best — and worst — ideas of the last six decades
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 21,9...
How IDEAS saved a listener from sending a regrettable email
"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....
CBC Massey Lecturers reveal how the talks changed them
This podcast features an all-star, and bestselling, lineup of CBC Massey Lecturers from the past decade:
Payam Akhavan (2017) and...
Harvard historian tells IDEAS host "I love you!"
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...
How an IDEAS episode on traffic changed a doctor's practice
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...
How music transports the Afghan diaspora to their homeland
For Afghans, listening to a traditional song can bring them back "home." In 2021, when the Taliban seized power again in Afghanistan, orchestras disba...
Why cities are targeted in wartime (updated)
In 2022, IDEAS explored how the brutal strategy called "urbicide" — the intentional killing of a city — is used in war to destroy residents' sense of...
Why hospitals stopped being hospitable
Hospitality — and hospitals. Two words that share a root, but whose meanings often seem at odds with each other. IDEAS traces the historical roots of...
How guest-host power dynamics shape migration
In ancient Greece, hospitality (or xenia) was seen as a sacred moral imperative. Someone who defied the obligations placed on both host and guest risk...
Can you ever truly return home again?
At age 11, writer Andrew Lam fled Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon. Nearly 45 years later, he returned to a radically different city. He believes "yo...
Massey Lecture Part 5 | A human rights agenda for Canada
In more than 40 years on the front lines of international human rights Alex Neve has heard Canada described as ‘the land of human rights’ — and seen t...
Massey Lecture 4 | How people power makes human rights real
Eleanor Roosevelt once said that universal human rights begin in “small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any...
Massey Lecture Part 3 | Human rights don’t have to be earned
Our inherent human rights belong to us from the moment we are born. There is nothing we need to do to earn them, and they are supposed to apply to us...
Massey Lecture 2: The six years that remade human rights
The ideals behind the concept of human rights — such as the sacredness of life, reciprocity, justice and fairness — have millennia-old histories. Afte...
Massey Lecture 1: Renewing the promise of human rights
Universality is the core promise of human rights: these rights extend to everyone, everywhere. But above all else, this is where we have failed. In hi...
Buttons give the illusion of power but hide the consequences
Whether mechanical or digital, a button delivers the promise of power — but it's far from simple. The small and mighty technology has a riveting histo...
The people who inspire Alex Neve to fight for human rights
When he was eight, 2025 CBC Massey Lecturer Alex Neve watched his mother fight for daycare in Alberta. It’s shaped how he thinks about human rights. A...
How overlooked veterans make history in their own words
There’s history, and then there’s oral history. And when it comes to the impacts of war on those who fight them — oral history opens doors to the past...
Why Canadian veterans are conflicted about Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day. Every year we are called on to remember, to reflect on the sacrifices of those who fought in Canada’s wars. Veterans of those wars ha...
Why Canadian veterans are ambivalent about Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day. Every year we are called on to remember, to reflect on the sacrifices of those who fought in Canada’s wars. Veterans of those wars ha...
Not a war story. This is about what comes after for veterans
Even when wars end, they go on — transforming the people who fought them, their families, and even society. A former war correspondent interviewed mor...
What it takes to become a ruthless tyrant
Look back about 3,000 years and you will find the playbook on authoritarianism remains pretty much the same as it is today. Back in the 5th century BC...
First historian Herodotus knew the power of story
For someone who died more than 2,400 years ago, Herodotus's voice is still very much alive. "He knows the way [a good story] can elevate but also corr...
Hope lies in knowing that "we've changed the world before”
Political analyst Rachel Maddow and author/activist Rebecca Solnit are sharp observers of Trump 2.0. They both share a common ground: opposition to an...
How mind-bending theories could solve mysteries in physics
Physics has been full of astonishing discoveries over the past century. But they open up even bigger mysteries that scientists are working feverishly...
To fix America's caste system, acknowledge it exists: author
The true story of America is that it was built on a caste system comparable to India’s, says Pulitzer-prize-winning American journalist Isabel Wilkers...
Mexican fiction turns drug kingpins into vicious vampires
There’s a burgeoning genre of fiction coming from Mexico — stories that merge socio-political history and the impact of drug-related violence with fan...
Can democracies survive the attacks on the rule of law?
Even in some of the world’s sturdiest democracies, leaders are deliberately undermining courts to weaken checks on their power. In many cases, the jus...
This lawyer turns real legal cases into page-turners
War criminals, Nazi fugitives, and a viable threat to American democracy — sounds like a classic page-turner but author and lawyer Philippe Sands isn'...
How Indigenous Americans discovered Europe
Indigenous Americans on European soil can be found throughout historical records, but historian Caroline Dodds Pennock says they have largely been ign...
33 years of the campus free speech controversy
In the early 1990s, “woke” was "politically correct," "DEI" was known as "affirmative action,” and the term “cancel culture” had yet to be coined. The...
Can you have compassion for someone you never agree with?
Ask yourself: can you? It is a question that George Eliot asks over and over through her characters in Middlemarch, a 19th-century novel that speaks t...
George Eliot's invaluable lessons on how we treat others
Virginia Woolf called George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch “one of the few English books written for grownups.” It’s a book full of characters asking: is...
The real reasons why more young women freeze their eggs
Egg freezing is one of today’s fastest-growing reproductive technologies. It's seen as a kind of 'fertility insurance' for the future, but that doesn’...
New details on Canada's first documented 'demon possession'
A demonic possession, a do-it-yourself exorcism, and the execution of an accused witch — welcome to daily life in Quebec City, circa 1660. IDEAS digs...