Ideas

St. John Passion — the complex masterpiece by Johann Sebastian Bach tells the story of Jesus during his final days. It's a work that speaks to the heart of the Christian narrative, which itself lies at the heart of Western culture. Tafelmusik Chamber Choir Director Ivars Taurins and music broadcaster Robert Harris zoom in on the work from the conductor's perspective to show how the notes translate into meaning — at a level of detail we listeners rarely discern.

The guided principles on this list are based on Jesuit Bernard Lonergan's philosophy. His thought will likely shape the world for centuries to come, according to John Dadosky who has studied and taught Lonergan’s work for decades. It’s a bold statement to make, but as he points out, Lonergan’s talking about YOU. The prolific thinker dedicated much of his life's work to understanding human consciousness. In this podcast, IDEAS explores how his insights can play a role in our every day lives.On our website: Five principles to lead a good life.

The face we give to our monsters says much about our anxieties as a culture. But birds? Two classic works of 20th-century horror featured a violent avian army. This podcast looks at why a Daphne du Maurier short story, and the Alfred Hitchcock thriller inspired by it, imagined “The Birds” as humanity’s mortal enemy. Seeded with fears of technological overreach and environmental disaster, and terror at the rise of the violent irrational, our reality was anticipated. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 6, 2023.Guests in this episode:Lynn Kozak is an associate professor in history and classical studies at McGill University and editor of Scapegoat Carnivale's Tragic Trilogy.W. Scott Poole is a professor in the department of history at the College of Charleston. He is the author of Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire.Catherine Wynne is a reader in English, and an associate dean for Research and Enterprise at the University of Hull. Her most recent book is on the war artist, Lady Butler. She wrote about The Birds for The Conversation.

There are 19 centibillionaires and a growing list of 3,000 billionaires worldwide. So it might not surprise you that the richest one per cent possesses nearly half of the world’s wealth. History has never seen such an extreme concentration of wealth. Some economists argue the battle of the 21st century is between oligarchy and democracy. How did we get here? IDEAS begins a four-part documentary series The Billionaire Age.Guests in this episode:Ingrid Robeyns is a philosopher and economist. She is the chair in Ethics of Instutions at Utrecht University and the author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth.Lucas Chancel is the co-director of The World Inequality Lab and a professor at the Paris School of Economics.Gabriel Zucman is also the co-director of The World Inequality Lab. He is 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 the South and South 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 American economist and the winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.Tim Wu is a Canadian/American legal scholar and a 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 American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He co-authored his latest book with Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen, Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing The Lies and Half-Truths that Protect Profit, Power and Wealth in America. And he hosts the podcast: Pitchfork Economics.Guido Alfani is a professor of economic history at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy. His latest book is As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West.

Earthworms are supposed to be a sign of healthy soil. But they're actually an invasive species that can even damage forests. So have we been sold a lie about worms and soil? Not exactly. The relationship between the two depends on the context. And the way we garden — or farm — can make all the difference. IDEAS producer Annie Bender unearths the complicated truth about the not-so lowly earthworm.Guests in this episode:Joshua Steckley is a political ecologist, postdoctoral fellow at Carleton University and the author of The Nightcrawlers: A Story of Worms, Cows, and Cash in the Underground Bait Industry.Peter Groffman is a professor at the City University of New York Advanced Science Research Center and Brooklyn College, with research interests in ecosystem, soil, landscape and microbial ecology, with a focus on carbon and nitrogen dynamics.Mike McTavish is a conservation scientist at a rare Charitable Research Reserve in Cambridge, Ontario.Janet Browne is a historian of science and Darwin biographer, author of a two-volume set called Darwin: A Biography.

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 the profound ways Canada has failed to uphold universal human rights, both at home and abroad. In his final Massey Lecture, he lays out his vision for a way forward.

The bombing of civilians has been called one of the "great scandals" of modern warfare. So why, despite nearly a century of drafting laws and signing conventions protecting the sanctity of human life, does bombing civilians remain a widespread military tactic? IDEAS producer Naheed Mustafa looks at a century of bombing civilians to try and answer that very question.Guests in this episode:Yuki Tanaka is a historian and emeritus research professor of history at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.Mark Selden is senior research associate in the East Asia program at Cornell University, and the founder of Asia-Pacific Journal.Azmat Khan is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and an investigative journalist with the New York Times.

"Our democracy is what’s at stake," says Karen Hao, an engineer who used to work in Silicon Valley. Now she’s an outspoken critic of its AI giants. The investigative journalist argues AI companies run their businesses like empires and it has to stop. In her 2025 bestseller, Empire of AI, Hao digs into the global impact of Big AI and explores how we need to rethink AI to build a better future. This podcast includes a lecture by Karen Hao and a discussion with host Nahlah Ayed.

Fact and fiction may seem poles apart but writers Esi Edugyan and Tiya Miles find the two intertwine perfectly in their award-winning storytelling. Both authors try to imagine past lives in their work, in part so that we may reimagine our own. They may operate in different realms but what they share is the telling of profoundly important stories that would otherwise go untold. It's been a longtime goal for IDEAS to bring these two accomplished authors together for a discussion — and it was worth the wait.This podcast was recorded in front of an audience in January 2026 at a Toronto Public Library event.

Poetry can find you when you need it most. It can be life-altering to read that poem just at the right moment. It was for six IDEAS producers who join Nahlah Ayed in studio to share poems they return to, year after year.This special episode is to mark UNESCO's World Poetry Day, March 21st.

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 map of the world.” In his fourth Massey Lecture, Alex Neve reflects on moments when people power won the day.*Read this article to learn about the "most powerful" moment in Alex Neve's 40-year-career.

A case before the Supreme Court of Canada is challenging Quebec’s law on secularism. Legal scholar Benjamin Berger is a prominent voice in the study of constitutional and criminal law in Canada. He argues secularism "is a concept that hides more than it shows." In this podcast, Berger examines how secularism obscures the impact of religion on our legal and political systems. "We end up speaking abstractly about what secularism is, what it demands, instead of whether our government is treating people equally and fairly."Benjamin Berger is professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. He delivered Memorial University’s 2026 Henrietta Harvey Distinguished Lecture.

If journalist Vince Beiser had his way the term 'clean energy' wouldn't exist — it's a misnomer. He argues green energy comes with cost. Sure, solar power or wind power are both better than power from fossil fuels but Beiser points out they are still harmful to the planet and people. "There's no magic solution." Beiser tells IDEAS we need to shift to renewable energy but we also need to recognize it's not a "magic solution" — there is a downside with consequences.Vince Beiser's book is called Power Metal: The Race for the Resources that Will Shape the Future.

Port cities are where worlds collide. They are a place of cultural, economic, political and religious contact. They've existed for millennia and facilitated the birth of empires and the rise of a globalized economy. Without port cities, our world would look very different. In the first episode of our series on how port cities shaped the world as we know it, UBC journalism professor Kamal Al-Solaylee visits Singapore — a constantly-evolving port city whose maritime roots go back to the 13th century. 

“One of your tribe is enough.” That’s what Margaret Rossiter was told when she said she wanted to study female scientists. Nevertheless, Rossiter persisted. She found and documented hundreds of women whose contributions to science had been overlooked, under-credited and misappropriated. Then she made history herself by coining the term “The Matilda Effect” to describe why those women failed to get the credit they deserved.Who is Matilda? Matilda Joslyn Gage was a suffragist erased from history. She was known as being too radical for Susan B. Anthony. This podcast shares her story.Guests in this episode:Katie Hafner is a former NYT reporter, host and co-executive producer of Lost Women of Science podcast.Sophie McNulty is the producer of the Lost Women of Science podcast.Ellen Abrams is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. She was a graduate student at Cornell University, who shared an office with Margaret Rossiter and was influenced by her work.Sally Gregory Kohlstedt is a professor emerita of history of science and technology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and a close friend and colleague of Margaret Rosstier, fellow science historian.Ailsa Holland is a historian and a co-author of On This Day She Putting Women Back into History One Day at a Time.Margaret Rossiter (deceased Aug 3, 2025) was the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History of Science Emerita and Graduate School Professor. She coined “The Matilda Effect” and wrote a three-volume series, Women Scientists in America.

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 until the day we die. But in his third Massey Lecture, Alex Neve argues the powerful have made human rights a ‘club.’ Visit cbc.ca/masseys for more on this lecture series.

One of the strongest ties between the diaspora and home is music. In Iran, music can be politically contentious. In Canada, it connects a community to its past and to its future. Days after the bombings began in Iran, Nahlah Ayed spoke to three Iranian-Canadian musicians and composers about the role of music in a time of uncertainty."Music can be an escape, can be a consolation... Like if we are the stars and galaxies on the planets of the universe, music is like the dark matter of that universe. It's that gravitational force that we know is there but we can't quite put our finger on it." — composer and pianist Iman HabibiGuests in this episode:Tahare Falahati is a Persian traditional singerKaveh Mirhosseini is an Iranian composer and conductorIman Habibi is a composer and pianist

Anxiety is an inescapable, fundamental human reaction to an unpredictable future. This is the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, a curmudgeon of the 17th century who believed that without a powerful, sovereign government life would be "nasty, brutish and short." Politics and uncertainty go hand in hand. In this podcast, IDEAS explores how a new take on Hobbes on the topic of anxiety offers a surprising perspective on American politics and democracy. For worried politicos today his way of thinking offers valuable lessons.*This episode originally aired on Jan. 13, 2025.Guests in this podcast:Vertika is a political science PhD student at McGill University.Kinch Hoekstra is a professor of political science and law at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes.Bethany Albertson is an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin, and the co-author of Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World.Shana Gadarian is a professor of political science and associate dean for research at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

Mathematics is everywhere: a common refrain from high school math teachers. But did you ever think math could be linked to literature? And not just in works from the literary greats of the past but for example Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. The relationship between math and literature are fundamentally creative, says Sarah Hart, a mathematician and author who speaks to Nahlah Ayed about how these two things that seem so polar opposite are deeply intertwined.Sarah Hart's book is called Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature.

It is possible. Flavours have been lost to the past, as culinary physicist Lenore Newman explains. She points to the extinction of the passenger pigeon — a species numbering in the billions throughout North America — as an example. In 1914, Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died at the Cincinnati zoo — and in place of the pigeon, came the industrialized farming of chicken. Newman says we're now transitioning to lab-raised food — a technology capable of pushing a global history of scarcity into one of abundance, all the while easing land usage. She calls it the "food singularity."

The ideals behind the concept of human rights — such as the sacredness of life, reciprocity, justice and fairness — have millennia-old histories. After the carnage of the Second World War and the Holocaust, these ideas took a new legal form. In his second Massey Lecture, Alex Neve considers six dizzying years that laid out a blueprint for a new world. Visit cbc.ca/masseys for more on the series.