Ideas

For thousands of years, genetic inheritance was an observation in search of a theory. While some once thought of genetic code as fate, we now know that our genes are in a complex dance with each other and the world around us. Dr. Jehannine (J9) Austin, head of the department of medical genetics at the University of British Columbia, delivered the 2026 Boehm Lecture in Public Health and Healthcare,...

"What is good?" is at the heart of philosophy. Asking the question helps us move toward answers about inclusivity, equality, and who gets a voice at the table. Last year, The Munk School at the University of Toronto hosted philosophers and writers and put philosophy to the test. When it comes to the good, they asked, what good is philosophy? *This episode originally aired on Sept. 8, 2023.

In a world swirling with crisis upon crisis, historian Kevin Gannon contends that, even in our darkest days, hope persists. It might be far in the background sometimes, but it's always there. Gannon also argues that hope cannot exist without the oxymoronic twinning of love and rage.

Magician Harry Houdini crusaded against for-profit psychics and séances in the years before his death. He deplored the tools of his own art being used to exploit grief, says author David Jaher. Now those same tools are being used in politics, marketing, and scams, say psychologists Massimo Polidoro and Alice Pailhès.

"We are the monsters" — that's the premise for the genre of film known as body horror — movies that fixate on monstrous and grotesque changes to the body. There have been good body horror films and bad ones, but "The Fly" starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis was perhaps the most consequential. The movie captured anxieties around bodily autonomy and physical decay, just as the AIDS epidemic was b...

Math may be the language of the universe, and brilliant minds and technology may have unlocked many of the secrets of the universe. But the pursuit of knowledge and insight always starts with the same thing: curiosity. Asimina Arvanitaki, a groundbreaking researcher with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont., reprises a talk she recently gave in her native Greece about...

Erik Satie’s music is everywhere: in advertisements, coffee shops, and elevators. His iconic compositions like Gymnopédies have been streamed millions of times and become staples of background music worldwide. But Satie’s relationship to "background music" goes far deeper than simply having a knack for writing it. Over a century ago, he began composing what he called "furniture music" – pieces des...

For most of human history there was one problem with our food: there wasn’t enough of it. But the food system we built to solve that problem — the one capable of feeding eight billion people — is responsible for a third of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also made poor diet the leading cause of early death globally — ahead of smoking. Producer Mitchell Stuart spent a year asking: what should we be...

From the earliest days of cinema to our era of streaming, zooming, and scrolling, the screen has become a central part of our lives -- so central that it actually impedes our lives, erasing our bodies, and to hiding from one another. Kim Nelson, film professor and director of the Humanities Research Centre at the University of Windsor, argues in a public talk that remaining connected entails prote...

For more than a thousand years the Oracle of Delphi sat on a stool at the ‘navel of the universe.’ Under a mystical trance, she would offer cryptic predictions of the future. People would wait months, even years, for their chance to ask the Oracle for guidance on matters ranging from reproductive challenges, to family tiffs to when and how to wage war. While the ritual around her remains shrouded...

More than 2,000 years ago, someone sat down and wrote a travel bucket list for the ancient world — suggesting must-see places that we now call The Seven Wonders of the World. It was kind of a Lonely Planet guide of its time, and included the Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Temple of Artemis, among others. Historian Bettany Hughes brings monume...

Without the Moon, the Earth would be unrecognizable. Across the eons, it has shaped our seasons, our calendars — and even the evolution of life itself. Producer Annie Bender traces our nearest neighbour's powerful influence over humanity — and the planet we call home. Guests in this podcast: Charlie Duke is a retired NASA astronaut who walked on the Moon as part of the Apollo 16 mission. Rebecca B...

Authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor want to stop apocalyptic end-of-the-world thinking and its fantasies about colonizing other planets. “We love it here… we want to stay,” they say. They diagnose today's fascism as having an “Armageddon Industrial Complex,” whose main agents are apocalyptic fundamentalists, ethnonationalists, and tech billionaires fixated on creating a super-intelligence at any...

If you ask security expert and author Peter Lennox the answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ He argues Alberta separatism is less about Western alienation and more about a global effort to destroy liberal democracy. In his book, On Treason , Lennox says what’s unfolding in Alberta is part of a nefarious — and treasonous playbook that’s been used worldwide. To survive the threat, he suggests Canada must ca...

With a newly elected government in Quebec promising to turn the province into its own country, and another separatist party warning against ethno-nationalism, immigrants in the province are asked to consider their loyalties. IDEAS producer Tom Howell finds out why newcomers might want to join the movement to leave Canada and help forge Quebec's new national path. *Part two in a three-part series a...

There’s a place where people make hoppy beer, fresh sushi, and damn fine coffee. It's called Cascadia. The lifestyle is laid-back, the scenery is majestic, and they even have a flag. Where is it exactly? Think of it as an ecological region stretching from Alaska to B.C. through the Pacific Northwest to Northern California. Its national identity transcends borders, and is bound through culture, his...

Bureaucracies were created to get the work done and get it done efficiently, according to 19th-century thinker Max Weber. So why are there more and more meaningless executive jobs that contribute nothing but soak up the pay? IDEAS examines the corporate tendency to "bureaumania.” *This episode originally aired on Sept. 18, 2024.

Imagine seeing an atrocity with eyes wide open and then returning to a life that doesn't ask much about it. This is the experience of five Canadian doctors who have been offering urgent medical aid in Gaza for almost three years. But in Gaza, the absence of resources means often all they can do is bear witness. In this podcast, each doctor shares how what they experienced changed their lives. Gues...

In the mid-20th century, convenience was presented as 'the wave of the future,' where revolutionary home appliances would reduce work and save time. Today, convenience drives the success of tech and retail giants, our phones have become 'convenience machines,' and AI has taken the concept to terrifying heights. What happens when a culture positions convenience as a 'supreme value'? In this podcast...

The 21st century is witness to resurgent global authoritarianism, driven by leaders who answer to no law other than their own. Nahlah Ayed and panelists consider the rise of today’s authoritarians — Trump, Putin, Orban, Duterte and beyond — and what we can learn from history about how authoritarianism can be challenged, and ultimately defeated. This final episode in How to Defeat Authoritarianism...

Hanif Abdurraqib lives his life heart-forward. His writing is informed by the many losses he's endured, but also by his commitment to "love deeply" and to not let machines do his thinking and feeling for him. Doing so, he says, risks atrophying our hearts and minds. "For me, the cost of a heart that's fraying at the edges is too high." Abdurraqib is the 2026 Weston International Award winner, pres...

Feeling despair over the threats to democracy coming out of The Billionaire Age? Let alone the predictions we'll see 10 trillionaires within three years. Well, there are concrete solutions. Relatively straightforward ones. Thinkers from Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, to Dutch philosopher Ingrid Robyens to self-described oligarch and American venture capitalist Nick Hanauer say democracy can win over...

Younger generations in Nunavut today are less likely to grow up immersed in Inuktut. At a language school in Iqaluit, Inuit adults who didn’t grow up speaking Inuktut now have the chance to learn it as a second language at the Pirurvik Centre. By learning the words for kinship terminology, they’re also discovering things about their families they never knew.  *This episode is the first in a t...

“Truth telling is profoundly visual. Art created by Indigenous peoples is not mere expression — it is cognitive, ceremonial, and political," writes Gerald McMaster in Art,Truth and Reconciliation . His book is the first of its kind, featuring Indigenous visual responses to Canada’s residential and day school system: from the drawings of children in the schools themselves, to the art of survivors,...

In 2000, Bashar al-Assad became president of Syria, also known as the authoritarian "Kingdom of Fear" that his father Hafez al-Assad had created three decades earlier. The younger Assad continued and intensified the use of imprisonment, torture and surveillance as tools of domination. His crackdown on a pro-democracy revolution turned into a 13-year civil war. Nahlah Ayed and panelists discuss wha...