Ideas

The direction of the Cold War depended on more than the strategies of two superpowers. It also depended on psychological motivations — in particular, a desire for greatness on the part of Soviet leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev. The desire could never be satisfied, resulting in frustration and explaining why U.S. presidents’ personal behaviour toward Soviet and Russian leaders has caused outsized consequences for history, as Sergey Radchenko argues in the book that won this year’s Lionel Gelber Prize.

When she began her line of work, Métis archeologist Kisha Supernant was sometimes called a 'grave robber.' With an eye to restorative justice, she was trying to help Indigenous communities locate the graves of children who died at residential schools. Now Supernant is called to find children's graves. She uses both traditional knowledge systems, as well as cutting-edge ground radar techniques to help families and communities begin to heal. It’s a science, she says, of the heart and head.

In the past decade, there has been one stable voting bloc: white evangelical Christians. Their support has been at a constant 80 per cent for Donald Trump, according to historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez. In her book, Jesus and John Wayne, she describes the Trump era as the latest chapter in a long story of exclusion, patriarchy, and Christian nationalism in the evangelical church. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 18, 2024.

We're not dealing with a future problem with AI systems, it's a now problem, warns MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini. Grave consequences of encoded discrimination are embedded in AI systems — racial bias, sex and gender bias and ableism — posing unprecedented threats to humankind. The founder of Algorithmic Justice League, a movement to prevent AI harms, has been at the forefront of AI research. She encourages experts and non-experts to join in the fight for "algorithmic justice." Her book, Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines, uncovers the existential risks produced by Big Tech. As she says, "AI should be for the people and by the people, not just the privileged few.”

International law is clear: warring parties cannot kill civilians. But there is one exception. An attacker can justify killing them if they’re being used as a human shield, involuntarily. IDEAS explores the long history of humans as shields and how this legal loophole has become a norm. Guests include Nicola Perugini, who teaches international relations at the University of Edinburgh. He is also co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire. And Dr. Mimi Syed, an American emergency medicine physician who served two medical missions in Gaza in 2024.

Considered a bucket list of the ancient world, someone more than 2,000 years ago sat down and suggested must-see places we now call, the Seven Wonders of the World. This list, a kind of Lonely Planet of its time, includes the Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Temple of Artemis, among others. Historian Bettany Hughes shares what she learned while writing her book, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

On May 5, 1945, Canadian soldiers played a key role in the liberation of the Netherlands from the German forces. Almost 80 years later, a large group of Canadians travelled to the Netherlands to pay tribute to their relatives who'd helped liberate the country in the Second World War. They walked on a nine-day pilgrimage through villages and towns, visiting old battlefields and the cemeteries where Canada's soldiers are buried. The group followed in the footsteps of the Canadian troops to honour their sacrifices. *This episode originally aired on May 1, 2023.

In the hour’s following her mother’s death, Martha Baillie undertook two rituals — preparing a death mask of her mother’s face, and washing her mother’s body. That intimacy shaped her grief. She had learned earlier to witness death and be present, living with regret after she left the room to get a nurse when her father died. For Baillie her mother's body was not a corpse that has no life. To her, it would "always be something alive." The novelist and writer explains what signified the difference in her book, There Is No Blue, the 2024 winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Sports journalist Brett Popplewell used to dread growing old. Until he befriended Dad Aabaye, an 83-year-old former stuntman and professional skier who lives alone on a mountain in the deep forest of B.C.’s Okanagan Valley. Their relationship led Popplewell to reframe his thoughts about life, death, and the limits placed on us as we age. Aabaye has run through blizzards, heat waves, and even 24 hours straight. For him, running is “life itself.” Popplewell chronicles the extreme athlete’s life from childhood to the silver screen in his book, Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past. The book won the 2024 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. Last month, Popplewell accepted his literary prize and delivered a public talk at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

A cowboy, a true independent American man who works hard, doesn't rely on the government and protects his family. Historian Heather Cox Richardson calls this rhetoric “cowboy individualism” and says this myth is the basis for 40-year-old Republican ideology. With President Trump in his second term in office, Cox Richardson says the U.S. administration has taken cowboy individualism to an extreme, gutting the government and centring power.

IDEAS listeners think deeply about the state of the world and how to improve it. To do that, you need to know what's going on. That's why we're recommending World Report. It's a daily news podcast that brings you the biggest stories happening in Canada and around the world, in just 10 minutes. Today you can get the latest Canadian election results and reaction from political leaders. It's the perfect update for IDEAS listeners who have been reimagining a better Canada. Make World Report your daily quick hit of news here: https://link.mgln.ai/fEUb9e

Canadians’ biggest fear for the country’s future is “growing political and ideological polarization,” according to a 2023 EKOS poll. As part of our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada, host Nahlah Ayed headed to the fast-growing city of Edmonton to talk about the creative ways local residents are working to find common ground. From video games to an engagement technique called “deep canvassing” used to bridge gaps across differences, we can learn a lot from Edmontonians on how to build a better democracy for Canada.

Like many cities in Canada, Nanaimo has a housing crisis. As rent prices have surged, so has homelessness. According to the city's last official count, there are 515 unhoused people in Nanaimo at any given time. By population, that is a higher homelessness rate than the city of Vancouver. The second episode in our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada, explores how homelessness affects the health of our democracy and why long-term solutions are so hard to achieve.

PEI has the highest voter turnout of any other province in Canada. Voting is fundamental to this community. Residents see firsthand how their vote matters — several elections were decided by 25 votes or less. In this small province, people have a personal and intimate connection with politicians. MLAs know voters on an individual basis and they feel a duty to their job. In the third episode of our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada, Nahlah Ayed visits the birthplace of Confederation to hear how Prince Edward Islanders sustain the strong democracy they built.

Public libraries are the forum for intellectual freedom, a core value that librarians protect for the sake of democracy. Yet libraries have now become a target in the culture wars of the U.S. – and in Canada, too. It’s an urgent conversation to have, no matter where one sits on the political spectrum. Libraries exist to give everyone access to a wide variety of content, even when books may offend others. Librarians are increasingly having to persuade skeptics that all ideas belong on their shelves. In our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada (in partnership with the Samara Centre for Democracy) we ask: What do we have if the freedom to read isn’t ours anymore?

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. New episodes drop Monday through Friday at 3 pm ET.

It’s been a few months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, with the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, overseeing government operations. The U.S. has been a platform for him, a source of money, resources and leverage, says historian and author Quinn Slobodian who has studied Musk's global history. Slobodian points out that Musk is “the symptom of a society which empowered him.” When we wanted technical solutions to social problems, Musk responded. He may not be what we wanted, “but as the saying goes, he’s the one we deserve.”

We are all vulnerable to digital surveillance, as there’s little protection to prevent our phones from getting hacked. Mercenary spyware products like Pegasus are powerful and sophisticated, marketed to government clients around the world. Cybersecurity expert Ron Deibert tells IDEAS, "the latest versions can be implanted on anyone's device anywhere in the world and as we speak, there is literally no defence against it.” Deibert is the founder of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a group of tech-savvy researchers who dig into the internet, looking for the bad actors in the marketplace for high-tech surveillance and disinformation. In his new book, Chasing Shadows, he shares notorious cases he and his colleagues have worked on and reveals the dark underworld of digital espionage and subversion.

There's no universal definition for the word freedom, according to American historian Timothy Snyder. He divides the word into two categories for people — the 'freedom from' and the 'freedom to' various things. In the U.S., Snyder calls oligarchs like Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump "heroes of negative freedom,” focused on being against things. But the author of On Freedom says it's a trap, because once you’re against one thing, it builds into an endless loop of the next thing. True freedom, he says, is to thrive for the sake of our common future.

The Gulf of America/Gulf of Mexico controversy reminds us that maps may appear authoritative, but are a version of reality. At the same time, they can be rich, beautiful and informative, as Vancouver’s Kathleen Flaherty explains, in this 2005 documentary made before Google Maps changed mapmaking forever.