Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
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.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Deep conversations • Cultural and political topics • Historical reflections • Social and environmental issues • Notable lectures and interviews • Global and Canadian perspectivesThis podcast, "Ideas," caters to an audience that values deep conversation and thought-provoking topics. Hosted by Nahlah Ayed, it provides immersive documentaries and interviews with influential thinkers. The diverse content spans various themes, including political, cultural, historical, and philosophical discussions.
Listeners can explore wide-ranging subjects, such as the roots and implications of political polarization, the resilience of democratic institutions, and challenges like the housing crisis. The podcast also delves into contemporary social issues, examining the role and struggles of public libraries, the experiences of women in trades, and the impact of modern technology on privacy and autonomy.
There is a notable emphasis on human rights, with episodes addressing refugees' rights, freedom of expression, and privacy concerns in the digital age. Additionally, the podcast hosts conversations on cultural and artistic topics, discussing architecture, poetry, and the significance of music.
Philosophical reflections are a key feature, with discussions on the nature of human intelligence, the art of conversation, and the cultivation of empathy and leisure in modern life. The podcast also often draws on the insights of past Massey Lecturers, connecting historical perspectives with current challenges.
Environmental concerns are highlighted through topics on climate change and the human-first mindset, with contributions from notable figures like David Suzuki. Overall, "Ideas" provides thoughtful and engaging discussions across a spectrum of significant cultural, social, and philosophical issues, aiming to stimulate and enrich the listener's understanding of the complex world we inhabit.
| Episodes: |
|
How our education system is far from its original ideals 2025-Sep-12 54 minutes |
|
Meet Alex Neve, the 2025 CBC Massey Lecturer 2025-Sep-11 19 minutes |
|
Public education was built on this key concept — now it's gone 2025-Sep-11 54 minutes |
|
How this 19th-century Indian feminist defied colonial customs 2025-Sep-10 54 minutes |
|
Why there's no place like Oz 2025-Sep-09 54 minutes |
|
Lessons from last century’s failed Mideast peace deal 2025-Sep-08 54 minutes |
|
How the principles of St. Augustine guide the Catholic Church 2025-Sep-06 54 minutes |
|
Are we 'born obsolete'? How technology makes us feel ashamed 2025-Sep-04 54 minutes |
|
What does it mean for a river to be ‘alive’? 2025-Sep-03 58 minutes |
|
What Chinese Science Fiction Has to Tell Us 2025-Sep-02 54 minutes |
|
# 1: What it took to end a 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland 2025-Sep-01 54 minutes |
The threat next door: How NATO’s newest members are preparing to defend against Russia (via The House)2025-Sep-01 47 minutes |
|
How Brutalist architecture goes beyond aesthetics 2025-Aug-29 54 minutes |
|
Libraries are fighting for their freedom — and our democracy 2025-Aug-28 54 minutes |
|
Why PEI cares more than any other province about voting 2025-Aug-27 54 minutes |
|
Has the housing crisis shaken your trust in democracy? 2025-Aug-26 54 minutes |
|
Attacking our biggest fear — political polarization 2025-Aug-25 54 minutes |
|
#5: What makes a great conversation? 2025-Aug-22 54 minutes |
|
# 4: What it means to truly listen 2025-Aug-21 54 minutes |
|
#3: How a dispute can lead to unity 2025-Aug-20 54 minutes |
|
#2: What we can learn from our conversations with strangers 2025-Aug-19 54 minutes |
|
#1: Why we need to have a conversation about conversations 2025-Aug-18 54 minutes |
|
What a cultural genocide took from Indigenous people in Canada 2025-Aug-15 54 minutes |
|
How inequality is undermining liberal democracy 2025-Aug-14 54 minutes |
|
Why the power of technology relies on an adaptive mindset 2025-Aug-13 54 minutes |
|
How to think for ourselves — is it even possible? 2025-Aug-12 54 minutes |
|
A better world needs to be built on empathy: human rights scholar 2025-Aug-11 54 minutes |
|
Making space for moments of joy in dark times 2025-Aug-08 54 minutes |
|
Why is it so hard to embrace leisure time? 2025-Aug-07 54 minutes |
|
Why music — even sad music — is 'inherently joyful' 2025-Aug-06 54 minutes |
|
Why philosophy needs to ditch class, and go to a pub 2025-Aug-05 54 minutes |
|
How to flourish in a broken world 2025-Aug-04 54 minutes |
|
A lesson in hope and why we need to slow down 2025-Aug-01 54 minutes |
|
Who owns Outer Space? 2025-Jul-31 54 minutes |
|
Making the case for what a university could and should be 2025-Jul-30 54 minutes |
|
Why are women still outsiders in the trades? 2025-Jul-29 54 minutes |
|
Why doesn't our healthcare include the well-being of doctors? 2025-Jul-28 54 minutes |
|
How poetry offers insight into the meaning of life 2025-Jul-25 54 minutes |
|
How a novel saved the Inuktitut language from disappearing 2025-Jul-24 54 minutes |
Decades on, David Suzuki sees the same problem: human-first mindset (via Front Burner)2025-Jul-23 31 minutes |
|
We have a moral responsibility to this planet: David Suzuki 2025-Jul-23 54 minutes |
|
Championing the quiet power of listening 2025-Jul-22 54 minutes |
|
Autonomy is vital to MAID law and the right to die: ethicist 2025-Jul-21 54 minutes |
|
Will the real Martin Luther please stand up? 2025-Jul-18 54 minutes |
|
Meet the original 'Father of Economics' — it's not Adam Smith 2025-Jul-17 54 minutes |
|
How anxiety over today's democracy is political 2025-Jul-16 54 minutes |
|
Is human intelligence overrated? 2025-Jul-15 54 minutes |
|
A lesson on why NOT to engage in polarized discussions 2025-Jul-14 54 minutes |
|
What rights do we need for our future? 2025-Jul-11 54 minutes |
|
Is our right to freedom of expression limitless? 2025-Jul-10 54 minutes |
|
Why are refugee rights not protected equally? 2025-Jul-09 54 minutes |
|
Is our right to privacy meaningless in this tech age? 2025-Jul-08 54 minutes |
|
Who has a ‘right to life’? 2025-Jul-07 54 minutes |
|
How did the Taj Mahal turn into a bouncy castle? 2025-Jul-04 54 minutes |
|
What you may have missed in this famous painter's artwork 2025-Jul-03 54 minutes |
|
The mysterious death of a great Canadian painter 2025-Jul-02 54 minutes |
|
Why Canadian patriotism right now isn't blind nationalism 2025-Jul-01 54 minutes |
|
The heart of Canadian pride shines through Joyce Wieland's art 2025-Jun-30 54 minutes |
|
Voices of a silenced history: inside Bulgaria's Gulag 2025-Jun-27 54 minutes |
|
We’re drawn to the beauty of the ocean. An artist reveals why 2025-Jun-26 54 minutes |
|
Why do people hate? 2025-Jun-25 54 minutes |
|
The most famous French-Canadian novel you've never heard of 2025-Jun-24 54 minutes |
|
How Jaws made us believe white sharks are real villains 2025-Jun-23 54 minutes |
|
Journalist Connie Walker on uncovering her family's dark history 2025-Jun-20 54 minutes |
|
How Latin translation made Western philosophers famous 2025-Jun-19 54 minutes |
|
Inside our loneliness epidemic 2025-Jun-18 54 minutes |
|
Perdita Felicien on how to navigate life’s biggest hurdles 2025-Jun-17 54 minutes |
|
The making of an ‘authoritarian personality’ 2025-Jun-16 54 minutes |
|
Canadian universities as safe havens for scholars-in-exile 2025-Jun-13 54 minutes |
|
Black history, vividly told through the colour blue 2025-Jun-12 56 minutes |
|
How Indigenous ecology is reviving land destroyed by wildfires 2025-Jun-11 54 minutes |
|
How brutal wildfires are 'killing' Indigenous ways of life 2025-Jun-10 54 minutes |
|
The movement that unlocked a new masculinity – Dandyism 2025-Jun-09 54 minutes |
|
How Canadian nationalism died 2025-Jun-06 54 minutes |
|
The famously polarizing father of capitalism 2025-Jun-05 54 minutes |
|
What it’s like to discover you have ADHD after 50 2025-Jun-04 54 minutes |
|
What it means to fully embrace neurodiversity 2025-Jun-03 54 minutes |
|
Do books have the power to heal us? 2025-Jun-02 54 minutes |
|
Hallelujah! The transformative power of Black gospel music 2025-May-30 54 minutes |
|
Why we can’t live without the universal feeling of disgust 2025-May-29 54 minutes |
|
The philosophy behind why humans are so self-conscious 2025-May-28 54 minutes |
|
How the fear of fire is taking control of us 2025-May-27 54 minutes |
|
The unforgivable crime of being queer in Africa 2025-May-26 54 minutes |
|
Bringing child sex abusers out of the shadows 2025-May-23 54 minutes |
|
Why our long term relationship with the U.S. is done 2025-May-22 54 minutes |
|
Where did modern news culture come from? Think Shakespeare 2025-May-21 54 minutes |
|
Champions of cormorants argue the water bird is unfairly vilified 2025-May-20 54 minutes |
|
The three ingredients in an autocrat's recipe for power 2025-May-16 54 minutes |
|
A pig was shot dead in 1859. It sparked a British-U.S. war 2025-May-15 54 minutes |
|
The trailblazing all-Black baseball team that made history 2025-May-14 54 minutes |
|
Russia’s constant craving for U.S. recognition 2025-May-13 54 minutes |
|
Her job is to find buried children at residential schools 2025-May-12 54 minutes |
|
The power of white evangelical Christians in MAGA politics 2025-May-09 54 minutes |
|
There's no potential danger of AI discrimination — 'it's here' 2025-May-08 54 minutes |
|
The one exception that makes killing civilians legal in war 2025-May-07 54 minutes |
|
The 2,000-year-old travel list to complete before you die 2025-May-06 54 minutes |
|
Canadian troops who freed the Netherlands from Nazis 2025-May-05 54 minutes |
|
What it means to call your loved one a ‘corpse’ 2025-May-02 54 minutes |
|
The limitless mind and body of an 83-year-old super-athlete 2025-May-01 54 minutes |
|
How the American cowboy ignited the Republican movement 2025-Apr-30 54 minutes |
|
How horses shaped humankind, from wearing pants to vaccines 2025-Apr-29 54 minutes |
Elections results are in. IDEAS recommends World Report2025-Apr-29 10 minutes |
|
Reality TV might be making you smarter 2025-Apr-28 54 minutes |
|
What it takes to become a ruthless tyrant 2025-Apr-25 54 minutes |
|
In the face of violence, do you radically 'turn the other cheek'? 2025-Apr-18 54 minutes |
|
New to IDEAS? Start here 2025-Apr-18 2 minutes |
|
How Hitler's 'favourite' reptile became a geopolitical symbol 2025-Apr-17 54 minutes |
|
Love or hate Elon Musk, 'we empowered him' 2025-Apr-16 54 minutes |
|
Spyware abusers can easily hack your phone and surveil you 2025-Apr-15 54 minutes |
|
Do you truly live in a ‘free’ society? It’s complicated 2025-Apr-14 54 minutes |
|
Why world maps illustrate an artificial reality 2025-Apr-11 54 minutes |
|
Need some Stompin' Tom right now to celebrate being Canadian? We thought so. 2025-Apr-10 54 minutes |
|
Democracies 'stay true to your values' tackling borders, says U.S. expert 2025-Apr-09 54 minutes |
|
How a network of journalists uncovered billions and toppled world leaders 2025-Apr-08 54 minutes |
|
Can you return home? This author says revision offers radical possibilities 2025-Apr-07 54 minutes |
|
How a conspiracy theory becomes 'real' 2025-Apr-04 54 minutes |
|
Loving Your Country in the 21st Century (Step Three) 2025-Apr-03 54 minutes |
|
Walk with us through a rare old-growth forest in peril 2025-Apr-02 54 minutes |
|
How Galileo revolutionized science to make way for modernity 2025-Apr-01 54 minutes |
|
Montreal's Confederate past revealed, from sympathizers to raids 2025-Mar-28 54 minutes |
|
Protecting childhood innocence is a disservice to kids, argues expert 2025-Mar-27 54 minutes |
|
Why a small town newspaper is thriving in a declining industry 2025-Mar-26 54 minutes |
|
A School that Feels like Home: Revitalizing Mi’kmaq Language in Cape Breton 2025-Mar-25 54 minutes |
|
How Iqaluit's learning institute gave a generation of Inuit adults a path back to Inuktut 2025-Mar-24 54 minutes |
|
Why Massey Lecturer Ian Williams Stays Open to All Perspectives 2025-Mar-14 54 minutes |
|
Wine with lunch? What's a reasonable amount of luxury? 2025-Mar-13 54 minutes |
|
We believe in artificial intelligence the same way we believe in ghosts 2025-Mar-12 54 minutes |
|
A rallying cry to extend human rights to our data-generating digital selves 2025-Mar-11 54 minutes |
|
How To Build An Empire: The Aeneid Guide to Understanding U.S. Politics 2025-Mar-10 54 minutes |
|
Believe in ghosts? Why people see spirits and sense visitations 2025-Mar-07 54 minutes |
|
Smell: Why This Invisible Superpower Deserves More Attention 2025-Mar-06 54 minutes |
|
How Inuit Storytelling and Modern Horror Fiction Come Together 2025-Mar-05 54 minutes |
|
Be Reasonable: Scholars Define Who Is and Who Is Not 2025-Mar-04 54 minutes |
|
How Christian ethics can inform a peaceful resolution to Russia’s war in Ukraine 2025-Mar-03 54 minutes |
|
Puro Cubano: The Meaning of Tobacco in Cuba 2025-Feb-28 54 minutes |
|
Our Bodies, Our Cells: An Audio Exploration of Life's Building Blocks 2025-Feb-27 54 minutes |
|
The UN at 80: Successes, Hopes, Failures, and Challenges 2025-Feb-26 54 minutes |
|
Remember the Last Time Canada Feared the U.S. Would Swallow It Up? 2025-Feb-25 54 minutes |
|
Why learn improv? Your unscripted mind can surprise even you 2025-Feb-24 54 minutes |
|
How the Outdoors Inspired Women to Become Trailblazers 2025-Feb-21 54 minutes |
|
The Passion of Émile Nelligan: Canada's Saddest Poet 2025-Feb-20 54 minutes |
|
Naming Life: The Race to Classify Millions of Unidentified Species 2025-Feb-19 54 minutes |
|
Writer Adam Gopnik on the Evolution of Antisemitism Into Anti-urbanism 2025-Feb-18 54 minutes |
|
Swinging and Singing: The Violin 2025-Feb-17 54 minutes |
|
Marriage and the Modern Woman: What It Takes To Say "I Do" 2025-Feb-14 54 minutes |
|
IDEAS Introduces On Drugs | A Troubled Relationship With Alcohol 2025-Feb-13 54 minutes |
|
Rights vs Deservingness: How We Decide Who Belongs 2025-Feb-12 54 minutes |
|
Dreaming of Better: Living With Bipolar Disorder 2025-Feb-11 54 minutes |
|
North on North: Stories from the Only Independent Publisher in the Canadian Arctic 2025-Feb-10 54 minutes |
|
From Grit to Glory: Canada’s First Black Woman Publisher 2025-Feb-07 54 minutes |
|
Indigenous Journalist Calls for a Revolution of Genuine Action 2025-Feb-06 54 minutes |
|
'Here lived Chava Rosenfarb' : A Profile of the Canadian Yiddish writer 2025-Feb-05 54 minutes |
|
The Amazing Henry Box Brown: From Fugitive Slave to Ingenious Entertainer 2025-Feb-03 54 minutes |
|
The Value of Group Therapy 2025-Jan-31 54 minutes |
|
Loving Your Country in the 21st Century (Step Two) 2025-Jan-30 54 minutes |
|
Becoming Aaju Peter: A Guardian of Inuk Language and Culture 2025-Jan-29 54 minutes |
|
PT 2: What Lies Beneath the Surface: Anthropologist Wade Davis 2025-Jan-28 54 minutes |
|
Inuit Approaches to Conversation and Conflict Resolution 2025-Jan-27 54 minutes |
|
Reith Lectures #4: Can we change violent minds? 2025-Jan-24 54 minutes |
|
Reith Lectures #3: Does trauma cause violence? 2025-Jan-23 54 minutes |
|
Techno-Utopia or The Billionaires’ Wet Dream 2025-Jan-22 54 minutes |
|
Searching for Truth: The Honourable Louise Arbour 2025-Jan-17 54 minutes |
|
Reith Lectures #2: Is there such a thing as evil? 2025-Jan-16 54 minutes |
|
The Never-Ending Fall of Rome 2025-Jan-15 54 minutes |
|
A Minor Revolution: Prioritizing Kids' Rights Benefits Us All 2025-Jan-14 54 minutes |
|
ARC Ensemble: The Forgotten Music of Exiled Composers 2025-Jan-10 54 minutes |
|
Reith Lectures #1: Is violence normal? 2025-Jan-09 54 minutes |
|
Woke Racism and the Language Police | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie & John McWhorter 2025-Jan-08 54 minutes |
|
What Lies Beneath the Surface: Anthropologist Wade Davis 2025-Jan-06 54 minutes |
|
Nine: A Number of Synchronicity 2025-Jan-03 54 minutes |
|
We Give You Five: Odd in More Ways Than One 2025-Jan-02 54 minutes |
|
The Story and Magic of Three 2025-Jan-01 54 minutes |
|
Join IDEAS for our annual New Year's Levee 2024-Dec-31 45 minutes |
|
Echoes of an Empty Sound: The Story of Zero 2024-Dec-30 54 minutes |
|
Fireside & Icicles — Poems for Winter 2024-Dec-27 54 minutes |
|
A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Musical Genius of Jerry Granelli 2024-Dec-26 54 minutes |
|
Christmas Philosophy 101 2024-Dec-24 54 minutes |
|
Apocalypse for Christmas: Thomas Merton and the Inn 2024-Dec-23 54 minutes |
|
What the Next 50 Years of Investigative Journalism Might Look Like 2024-Dec-20 54 minutes |
|
Imprisoned Syrian Wrote Poetry Imagining the Fall of the Regime. Now it's Come True 2024-Dec-19 54 minutes |
|
Manuscript Used to Eradicate Andean Thought is Now Key to Revitalizing it 2024-Dec-18 54 minutes |
|
The 2024 Killam Prize Honours Canada’s University Researchers (Part 2) 2024-Dec-17 54 minutes |
|
There's No Place Like Home: Humanity and the Housing Crisis 2024-Dec-16 54 minutes |
|
Hawkeye's Army: The War Metaphor in Medicine 2024-Dec-13 54 minutes |
|
What Should Cities of the Future Look Like? 2024-Dec-12 54 minutes |
|
Fighting for Climate Justice in The Hague: Payam Akhavan 2024-Dec-11 54 minutes |
|
Non-Aligned News: The Future of Non-Western Media, Part Two 2024-Dec-10 54 minutes |
|
Non-Aligned News: A Journalistic Experiment to Decolonize Global News 2024-Dec-09 54 minutes |
|
Fate Is the Hunter: Ernest K. Gann's Great Fortune 2024-Dec-06 54 minutes |
|
School Cars: How Trains Brought Classrooms to Children in Remote Communities 2024-Dec-04 54 minutes |
|
What It Means To Belong In The World: Writer M.G. Vassanji 2024-Dec-03 54 minutes |
|
The 2024 Killam Prize Honours Canada’s University Researchers (Part 1) 2024-Nov-29 54 minutes |
|
The 2024 Beatty Lecture Pairs Two Great Minds That Don’t Think Alike 2024-Nov-28 54 minutes |
|
Otherworld: Astonishing Tales of Romance in Medieval Ireland 2024-Nov-26 54 minutes |
|
A Harem of Computers: The History of the Feminized Machine 2024-Nov-14 54 minutes |
|
How Canadians Can Help Lead the Global Fight for Health Equity 2024-Nov-13 54 minutes |
|
Pt 2: Acts of Remembrance: Canadian Veterans Share Postwar Experiences 2024-Nov-11 54 minutes |
|
Pt 1: What Came After: Canadian Veterans Share Postwar Experiences 2024-Nov-08 54 minutes |
|
Do Dogs Feel Guilt? Animal Cognition Discoveries 2024-Nov-05 54 minutes |
|
Experts Say American Democracy is at a Precipice, and Time is Ticking 2024-Nov-04 54 minutes |
|
Can a New Conservatism Offer Solutions to Modern Social Problems? 2024-Nov-01 54 minutes |
|
The Role of Nonfiction in a World of Contested Truths: Writer Pankaj Mishra 2024-Oct-31 54 minutes |
|
Is Fascism Coming Back? 2024-Oct-30 54 minutes |
|
PT 2: How Journalism is Fighting Against Polarization 2024-Oct-29 54 minutes |
|
PT 1: How Journalism is Fighting Against Polarization 2024-Oct-28 54 minutes |
|
Indigenous Archaeologist Reclaims Pleistocene Epoch Story from Colonial Scholars 2024-Oct-25 54 minutes |
|
The Marrow of Nature: A Case for Wetlands 2024-Oct-23 54 minutes |
|
The History and Mystery of Left-Handers 2024-Oct-23 54 minutes |
|
The Living Dead: Art and Human Remains 2024-Oct-21 54 minutes |
|
Turning the Climate Crisis into Motivation, and Hope into Action 2024-Oct-17 54 minutes |
|
Dinner on Mars: How to Grow Food When Humans Colonize the Red Planet 2024-Oct-14 54 minutes |
|
The Invisible Shoes of Stutthof Concentration Camp 2024-Oct-11 54 minutes |
|
Loving Your Country in the 21st Century (Step One) 2024-Oct-10 54 minutes |
|
How the Anthropocene is Changing the Elements — and Us 2024-Oct-09 54 minutes |
|
October 8,1970: The FLQ Manifesto 2024-Oct-08 54 minutes |
|
Making Justice Imaginable: Lawyer Lex Gill 2024-Oct-02 54 minutes |
|
Left Is Not Woke: Susan Neiman 2024-Oct-01 54 minutes |
|
How Indigenous survival offers a blueprint for everyone’s future: Jesse Wente 2024-Sep-30 54 minutes |
|
Deliberation in a Time of Anger: Making Space for Collective Decision-Making 2024-Sep-26 54 minutes |
|
Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space: A Place to Dream 2024-Sep-25 54 minutes |
|
The Heavy Metal Suite: Music and the Future of Mining 2024-Sep-24 54 minutes |
|
Bureaumania: A 'Granular' Look at Corporate Red Tape 2024-Sep-18 54 minutes |
|
For the Sake of the Common Good: Honouring Lois Wilson 2024-Sep-17 54 minutes |
|
Death and the Artist: Four Stories 2024-Sep-16 54 minutes |