IDEAS schedule for January 2023

* Please note this schedule is subject to change.
 

Monday, January 2

HOME SERIES WEEK
IDEAS explores the multiple and contested meanings of home, and what it means to find a safe harbour in a time of political instability, increased migration and sweeping disruptions to the way people live.

HOME: RETURN  
Can you ever truly go home again? At a time when more people have been forcibly displaced from their homes than at any other time, IDEAS explores what it means to return years — or decades — later. Nahlah Ayed speaks with writer Andrew Lam, who fled Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon at age 11 and moved back nearly 45 years later; Ashley Bach, who grew up in foster care in B.C. and visited her home First Nation in northwestern Ontario for the first time in her twenties; and Kamal Al-Solaylee, whose book Return: Why We Go Back Where We Come From is shaped by his longing to return to his homeland of Yemen. *This episode originally aired on June 13, 2022.

Tuesday, January 3

HOME: THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR 
What do you owe to a stranger who arrives at your door? In ancient Greece, hospitality (or xenia) was seen as a sacred moral imperative. Someone who defied the obligations placed on both host and guest risked the wrath of the gods, or even outright war. Today, the word xenia has largely fallen out of use, but its opposite, xenophobia, has been a driving factor in contemporary politics for years. IDEAS explores ancient traditions of hospitality — from Haudenosaunee treaties, Islamic teachings, Greek tragedies and Biblical warnings — and whether true hospitality is possible in a world of nation-states and borders. *This episode originally aired on June 14, 2022.

Wednesday, January 4 

HOME: A HOSPITABLE HOSPITAL  
You leave your house in a moment of crisis, seeking refuge. But instead of knocking on a stranger's door, you go to the front door of a hospital: an emergency room. IDEAS explores the notion of hospitality in hospitals — two words that share a root, but whose meanings often seem at odds with each other. This episode traces the historical roots of hospitals, the tension between hospitality and discipline that has defined hospitals throughout their history, and what it means to create a hospitable hospital in the 21st century. *This episode originally aired on June 15, 2022.

Thursday, January 5 

HOME: ARCHITECTURE AND WAR 
"Urbicide" — the intentional killing of a city — is a common and brutal strategy of war, from the levelling of Mariupol, Ukraine to the destruction of Syrian cities. Armies destroy apartment buildings, theatres and bridges to destroy residents' sense of home and belonging. But even in peacetime, urban planning can become part of a more subtle kind of war over who gets to call a city home. IDEAS explores how the "battle for home" shapes cities before, during, and after wartime. *This episode originally aired on June 16, 2022. 

Friday, January 6 

HOME: AFGHAN MUSIC — THE WAY HOME
In 2021, when the Taliban seized power again in Afghanistan, orchestras disbanded and musicians fled for their lives. But since the Soviet occupation decades earlier, Afghans have been fleeing the region, bringing their distinctive and storied musical tradition with notes hailing from the classical music of Iran and India. IDEAS takes a journey to Afghanistan with members of the Afghan diaspora, who find their way "home" through their music. We'll ask: how is the idea of home embedded in music? How have decades of conflict reshaped Afghan music? And how do you "compose" the latest tragedy in the story that is Afghanistan? *This episode originally aired on June 17, 2022. 
 

Monday, January 9

CANADA'S SCHOOL TRAINS
They were known as School Cars and Schools on Wheels. Trains that chugged and chuffed along the railroads and brought schooling to children living in the isolated communities of Northern Ontario. It was a novel six-month experiment that lasted 40 years, from 1926 to 1967. In this documentary, Alisa Siegel explores an early project in remote education, homeschooling, and nation-building. 

Tuesday, January 10

ALLIGATOR ODYSSEY 
A reptile with geopolitical resonance. That's what this episode is about. Saturn was an alligator supposedly Hitler's favourite animal which was "liberated" from the Berlin zoo when the Red Army invaded Germany towards the end of the Second World War, and relocated it in Moscow. The historical record doesn't really support any of the story, but it continued to linger, first with Soviet citizens hurling abuse, as well as debris, at the hapless alligator as a proxy for Hitler, and then later as a "re-educated" model of what Soviet resistance and perseverance means. The creature died in 2020, but Putin's invasion of Ukraine was to counterattack Nazi forces. Not neo-Nazis, not Nazi sympathizers, but Nazis. The old war against the old enemy, of which Saturn was once the four-legged embodiment. Contributors David Zane Mairowitz and Malgorzata Zerwe bring us this documentary with voices from Louisiana swamps, and zoos in Berlin and Moscow.

Wednesday, January 11

THE MEANING OF ICE  
The Arctic is being transformed by climate change more rapidly than most other places on the planet, and Inuit know that better than anyone. Their daily lives revolve around a close relationship with the land and the wildlife of the Arctic, and a deep, intimate knowledge of ice, water and weather. But Arctic ice researcher Dr. Shari Fox argues that a colonialist approach to Arctic research by academia has largely disrespected and sidelined traditional knowledge. She describes her collaborations with the hunters and dog teamers of Clyde River on Baffin Island, as well as photographer Robert Kautok, to bridge Inuit and academic systems of knowledge together to strengthen and enhance each other. 

Thursday, January 12

BOB RAE: ENGAGING IN A WORLD IN TURMOIL
The century is still young. But between the wars, and natural disasters, state violence and crackdowns, it's been one complicated crisis after another. As one year ends and another begins, the global crises continue to multiply, and the institutions put in place at the end of Second World War to solve such problems are beset by their own crises. The UN, for one, was created partly to prevent war, and yet war is the one thing it's consistently been unable to prevent. Despite its flaws, the UN remains a good starting point, according to Canada's ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae. In a speech delivered in the fall of 2022, Rae made an impassioned plea for engaging with a world in turmoil. You'll hear excerpts of that speech, along with his conversation afterwards with IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed.

Friday, January 13

IMAGINING EXTINCTION 
Religious and mythological visions of the end of the world are common in world history. But the scientific concept of extinction has a shorter — and more urgent — history. Scholar Thomas Moynihan argues that when human beings first started grappling with the threat of extinction, it was a crucial step towards taking responsibility for ourselves as a species. This episode explores the link between imagining extinction and acting to avert it — from Mary Shelley's 1826 pandemic novel, to visions of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, to climate fiction today. *This episode originally aired on March 4, 2021.
 

Monday, January 16

TRANSFORMING JUSTICE: AN EVENING WITH ANGELA DAVIS, FANIA DAVIS AND MARGARET BURNHAM
A remarkable gathering on stage of three extraordinary civil rights activists, sharing stories from the deeply personal to the political: growing up together in Birmingham, Alabama during the turbulence of the Jim Crow Era, to their work today as leaders in the restorative justice movement. An evening with Angela Davis, her sister Fania Davis, and Margaret Burnham. 

Tuesday, January 17

RETURN OF THE GUILLOTINE
The image of the guillotine is flourishing online as a symbol of protest against inequality, racism, and elitism. Mock guillotines regularly show up at protests, from both the political right and left. This documentary from Matthew Lazin-Ryder traces the history of the guillotine as a symbol, from its bloody history during the darkest days of the French Revolution to its reinvention as an emblem of equality.  *This episode originally aired on Nov. 2, 2021.

Wednesday, January 18

ODE TO FAILURE
Failure. It's the worst. Nobody wants to fail or be branded a failure. It stinks of ruin, regret, and other people's contempt. It imputes some sort of profound moral flaw. No mere mistake, or series of errors, failure is king in the realm of the wrong. It's an "F" grade in the school of life. Or is it? In the last decade or so, efforts to repurpose failure have pushed it to the surface of popular culture. Today you can find motivational speakers, and tech entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Oprah Winfrey all hawking failure as the secret to 21st century success. Was Samuel Beckett right: fail again, fail better? *This episode originally aired on Dec. 15, 2021.

Thursday, January 19

TOUCH DEPRIVATION
The pandemic upended much of our normal way of interacting with others. Intuitive activities like hugging loved ones and bonding over shared meals had to stop because of distancing protocols. And people for whom touch is a central part of their work — nurses, social workers, dancers — have become acutely aware of how the absence of touch affects their sense of wellbeing and connection. Contributor Johnny Spence explores both the emotional and neurological impact of touch deprivation. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 14, 2022.

Friday, January 20

SCIENTIST ADAM RUTHERFORD ON EUGENICS  
As a genetics student, Adam Rutherford conducted his research in the Galton Lab at University College London. It was named for Victorian polymath Sir Francis Galton — an influential scientific inventor, but one who also coined the term "eugenics" and was a proponent of the scientific racism that sought to breed out "undesirable" characteristics in human populations. Yet eugenic thinking didn't start with Galton, nor end with the Nazis. And it was compelling to an astonishing list of major Western thinkers, writers, and politicians of every stripe. Now a professor of genetics, Adam Rutherford sees such thinking in play even today, in everything from forced sterilizations, to the politics of gene editing. The author and BBC host talks with Nahlah Ayed about the scientific and ethical issues fuelling his latest book, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics.

Monday, January 23

TRANSFORMING JUSTICE, PART TWO: AN EVENING WITH ANGELA DAVIS, FANIA DAVIS AND MARGARET BURNHAM
A remarkable gathering on stage of three extraordinary civil rights activists, sharing stories from the deeply personal to the political: growing up together in Birmingham, Alabama during the turbulence of the Jim Crow Era, to their work today as leaders in the restorative justice movement. An evening with Angela Davis, her sister Fania Davis, and Margaret Burnham. 

Tuesday, January 24

GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE: WALLACE STEGNER AND THE DISAPPEARING WEST
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Wallace Stegner fought hard in his lifetime, to protect the land and resources in the Wild West. He warned against drought, and damming the rivers. He was opposed to mining and the large-scale agriculture that turned acre after acre of grassland into factory farms. For Stegner, the American Dream was a death sentence for the West. But he had crucial blind spots too, especially about the history of Indigenous people: he wrote as if they barely existed. So where did his ideas, for better or worse, come from? From his boyhood, in an unlikely place: the southernmost corner of rural Saskatcehwan, where his family had a homestead. IDEAS goes to Eastend, Saskatchewan in search of Wallace Stegner, and what his writings on conservation mean today, in a place where the natural grasslands are still under threat.

Wednesday, January 25

MUHAMMAD IQBAL
At the start of the 20th century, Britain had been in India for nearly 300 years — with almost half that time ruling the country. It would stay for five decades more. The alienating force of colonialism had upended the way Indians thought about themselves and their relationships to each other. But change was coming. It would require reconciling the inheritances of British colonialism and modernity with the long histories of India's peoples. The poet-philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal, would spend decades on this reconciliation project. While he's popularly known as the intellectual founder of Pakistan, his greater fame is for his philosophical works in English and his poetry, both Urdu and Persian. In this episode, IDEAS looks at the Indian poet-philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal, one of the greatest South Asian thinkers of the 20th century. 

Thursday, January 26 

WHAT MONEY CAN'T BUY: MICHAEL SANDEL
Well, we know it can't buy happiness, but what else is there that money can't buy? And what should it not buy? Like naming rights to a building? Ok. Or paying people to test drugs? Hmm. Or selling admission to a university? In his 2012 book, What Money Can't Buy, American political philosopher Michael Sandel explores what he called the "moral limits of markets." He fears we've transitioned from having a market economy to being a market society. On the tenth anniversary of his book's publication, he's joined by Michael Ignatieff and Astra Taylor to discuss what he got right, and what he got wrong.

Friday, January 27

THE OLD STONE AGE IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Algoma University professor Paulette Steeves guides us through the mounting evidence suggesting the standard history of human presence in North and South America must be wrong. Drawing from archaeological studies and oral sources, Steeves attempts to reclaim the story of the Pleistocene Epoch from colonial scholars, who have traditionally dated human settlement on this continent to approximately 12,000 years ago. In her book, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, Steeves argues that human migration may have occurred closer to 130,000 years ago. She also recommends more humility on the part of the archaeology profession. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 13, 2022.
 

Monday, January 30

MYTH OF NORMAL, PART ONE 
"Neurodiversity" captures the idea that variations in our brains are part of the natural human spectrum, part of a normal range of our cognitive capacities. There's increasing evidence that what we know today as Autism, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Dyslexia may not be the result of disease, but may actually have been a way for us to extend our species chances of survival. Some experts believe these brain variations have been around as far back as we can measure. But today, brain variations that once may have been advantages are seen as burdens and disorders that beg for remedies. In this two-part series, IDEAS traces the social and cultural response to brain variation and whether there's a way back to seeing them as advantages. *This episode originally aired on April 29, 2022.

Tuesday, January 31 

MYTH OF NORMAL, PART TWO
"Neurodiversity" captures the idea that variations in our brains are part of the natural human spectrum, part of a normal range of our cognitive capacities. There's increasing evidence that what we know today as Autism, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Dyslexia may not be the result of disease, but may actually have been a way for us to extend our species chances of survival. Some experts believe these brain variations have been around as far back as we can measure. But today, brain variations that once may have been advantages are seen as burdens and disorders that beg for remedies. In this two-part series, IDEAS traces the social and cultural response to brain variation and whether there's a way back to seeing them as advantages. *This episode originally aired on May 9, 2022.