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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.
With an award-winning team, our podcast has proud roots in its 60-year history with CBC Radio, exploring the IDEAS that make us who we are.
New episodes drop Monday through Friday at 5pm ET.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 his first CBC Massey Lecture, Alex Neve explores how to ensure the “lifeboat” of human rights is seaworthy for everyone. Visit cbc.ca/masseys for more details about this lecture series.
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. Ahead of his Massey Lectures next week, Neve shares the pivotal moments in his life that led to his human rights advocacy — and shines a light on the chorus of people he carries with him.
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 history, a story of control, power, freedom and oppression. From the podcast Media Objects, this episode traces the evolution of the button, and asks what happens when every command is reduced to a single press.
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 that would otherwise stay firmly shut. Michael Petrou, an historian with the Canadian War Museum, argues oral history is especially valuable because it allows us to hear from people "whose voices are quiet, downplayed, or ignored." Their untold stories provide a fuller picture of how war shapes people and societies.
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 have a conflicted relationship with Remembrance Day: sometimes their own acts of remembrance include official ceremonies, while others avoid them altogether.*This the second and last of a two-part series exploring the post-war experience, gathered by the Canadian War Museum’s In Their Own Voices oral history project.
Even when wars end, they go on — transforming the people who fought them, their families, and even society. A former war correspondent interviewed more than 200 veterans of all of Canada’s wars for an online oral history project by The Canadian War Museum. The focus is not so much on preserving memories of their combat experiences, but to reflect on what came after. *This is part one of a two-part series.
1Look 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 BCE, when Herodotus travelled the ancient world gathering stories, he became an expert in would-be tyrants. His tome, The History, shared vivid descriptions of autocratic and tyrannical rulers.Herodotus was a rule breaker himself. He ignored Greek literary tradition and captured history as accurately as possible from a wide range of sources. One of his many prescient observations was how, given the right circumstances, a political strongman can emerge and seize control — a forewarning for us today. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 9, 2024.
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 corrupt and destroy our thinking," says professor Lindsay Mahon Rathnam in this IDEAS episode. The ancient Greek writer observed different cultures first-hand, while capturing the stories they share in an attempt to better understand how they came into being, and why they came into conflict with each other. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 16, 2023.
Political analyst Rachel Maddow and author/activist Rebecca Solnit are sharp observers of Trump 2.0. They both share a common ground: opposition to anti-democratic actions taken by the second administration of U.S. President Trump, and where those actions are taking America, if not the world. The two American writers spoke with Nahlah Ayed about the existential issues of this American moment, a public conversation hosted by the International Festival of Authors and PEN Canada. The onstage event, in front of a Toronto audience, was part of the 5th annual Graeme Gibson Talk in Toronto.
Physics has been full of astonishing discoveries over the past century. But they open up even bigger mysteries that scientists are working feverishly to explain. What is dark energy? And why is the expansion of the universe accelerating? In public talks at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, two prominent physicists – Sarah Shandera of Penn State University and Stanford University’s Savas Dimopoulos – discuss the breakthroughs of recent decades and what it will take to solve the most nettlesome mysteries that have deepened in their wake.
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 Wilkerson. The author argues that it's key to recognize the roots of the U.S. caste "structure" as she calls it, to understand why conflicts relating to race and class persist. Wilkerson delivered the 2025 Beatty Lecture at McGill University in Montreal.
There’s a burgeoning genre of fiction coming from Mexico — stories that merge socio-political history and the impact of drug-related violence with fantastical stories of eerie ghosts, zombies, and monstrous cannibals. IDEAS explores dozens of gothic, horror and crime fiction novels. *This episode is part of our ongoing series, IDEAS from the Trenches, about outstanding PhD scholars across the country. It originally aired on June 5, 2023.We'd love to hear from you. Fill out our listener survey here.
Even in some of the world’s sturdiest democracies, leaders are deliberately undermining courts to weaken checks on their power. In many cases, the justice system is being sidelined. How much damage has already been done? And how worried should we be about the future of democracies around the world?We'd love to hear from you. Fill in our listener survey.
War criminals, Nazi fugitives, and a viable threat to American democracy — sounds like a classic page-turner but author and lawyer Philippe Sands isn't making this up. His book, 38 Londres Street is a retelling of legal history that probes the connections between former Nazi leaders and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The payoff isn’t just an intriguing read. For Sands, broad public engagement is key to the survival of hard-won systems of international justice.Philippe Sands delivered the 3rd Annual Irving Abella Lecture at Massey College in October 2025.We'd love to hear from you. Fill out our listener survey here.
Indigenous Americans on European soil can be found throughout historical records, but historian Caroline Dodds Pennock says they have largely been ignored. In her book, On Savage Shores, she traces the history of Indigenous lives in Europe during the 1500s. The author told IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed about her research collecting evidence of the widespread Indigenous presence in Portugal, Spain, France, and England in the 100 years before Britain attempted to establish its first North American colony. *This episode originally aired on April 5, 2023.We'd love to hear from you. Fill out our listener survey here.
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 language was different, but the controversies of today were just beginning. In a 1992 episode of IDEAS, journalist Linda Frum took on the issue of free speech on campus. With notable guests like Dinesh D’Souza and Alan Borovoy, the episode tackled the issue of speech codes, tokenization, victimhood, and a culture of victimhood on Canadian campuses. We revisit this documentary, to see what’s changed, what’s the same, and whether the pendulum is swinging again. We'd love your feedback. Please fill out our listener survey.
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United States
brilliant.
The unfilled promise of leisure? More like the unfilled promise of shared wealth!
an amazing podcast!!
The archbishop fails to inspire. As usual the solutions of a church are concerned about the church first and foremost. And notably he is tone deaf when he invokes the removal of first nations children from their families in Canada that his Catholic Church was instrumental in promoting.
Brian Mulroney was a sell out for Canada.
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The wrongs shouldn't be forgotten, but it would be nice if you 1. acknowledged and celebrated the good parts of Canada's history even if it means saying something nice about a white dude and 2. where willing to openly talk about the wrongs committed by your own community.
The Romans collected taxes & slaves from the people they conquered. American colonists exploited slave labor. The US & Europe still exploit Africa & all other non-European people. They do not tax but instead lend, use cheap labor & exploit natural resources. These conquered countries become indebted, pay interest, and give up ownership of their land, mineral wealth, and send cheap laborers to the US. All residents of the US benefit from this system, some much more than others.All of us.
Empires are won and lost by militarism and exploitation. The first thing the colonists did on the way to founding the US was to fight a war against England over taxes. They realized they were being exploited. They in turn became the exploiters. First over the native population. They were enslaved and their lands were confiscated. Then Mexico. Then expansion into the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Pacific. This is what Rome did. The party ends when the costs of exploitation exceed the gains.
(23:47) “The Greeks were very important because they had their own notion, by the way, of Bildung. In Greek, the word is paideia. You can see the root, ‘ped’: children.”
The German word Bildung is used to describe Humboldt’s ideal for the education system he devised. The CBC Ideas episode refers to Bildung as (3:00) “a mystical concept from the Middle Ages that Humboldt reinterpreted and secularized, originally based on the Christian notion of holding the image of God within oneself in order to strive to be a better human. But Humboldt believed that it was education, not God, that could make one realize their full potential.”
35:29 “What is pathbreaking here is a new vision of humanity.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau “styled himself as a historian of the human heart. What he asserted was that there was this awful gap between what a person is and what he or she can imagine himself or herself to be. Children are inherently good, but society corrupts them. So, the job of education is to allow the child to freely develop his full multi-faceted capacities in accordance with his nature.”
The use of terms such as metaphor and mediation
sigh. Nothing but propaganda in this series. The creators haven't bothered to understand their subject instead feeding themselves and the audience a pre canned narrative that reaffirms existing beliefs
thank you for this validating episode.
3 or 12 different genders? oh please. can't listen no more bye
when you say reduce consumption and extraction, why isn't China and India part of those we point to reduce their emissions too?
Not to say Islamophobia isn't real either, but according to the guests here, it's *completely baseless* and there are no issues with Islam or the Muslim world that isn't the result of "Western colonialism."
I swear to god, CBC Ideas just invites the furthest left loonies on here. Abolishing the POLICE and ALL NATIONAl SECURITY agencies? No integration into a burning house? Give me a break lol
I hope that everyone who needs this episode finds it. I will be sharing this with all my loved ones and those I serve. Thank you.