IDEAS schedule for May 2023
* Please note this schedule is subject to change.
Monday, May 1
A WALK OF REMEMBRANCE
More than 1.1 million Canadians served in the Second World War, among them Gilbert Hunter and Harry Bockner. In 1941, the two were in the same regiment. One died. One survived. Nearly 80 years later, their descendants were part of a group of Canadian pilgrims to the Netherlands who participated in a walk of remembrance. Following in the footsteps of the Canadian troops together, they walked, they sang, they prayed, and they remembered.
Tuesday, May 2
CITIZENSHIP: A RIGHT OR A PRIVILEGE?
Under international law, each person has the right to a nationality including not being arbitrarily deprived of it. Yet citizenship stripping — literally or effectively — is on the rise, sometimes even leading to statelessness. Citizenship was once treated as sacred. But western democracies are increasingly willing to declare that citizenship is not inviolable. The shift away from the language of citizenship as a right to citizenship as a privilege has some asking if we are seeing the return of exile as punishment.
Wednesday, May 3
THE LAST EPISTLE OF TIGHTROPE TIME: THE ENDURING WISDOM OF WALTER BORDEN
The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time is a one-man semi-biographical play that is also an epistle to the world. It's by the celebrated actor, poet and playwright, Walter Borden. "We all travel a tightrope to get from where we were to where we want to go… Even when life knocks you down there is this kernel in us that makes us get up and that's the human spirit. It wants to survive. It's about surviving — traversing that tightrope which we all must cross in order to embrace the fact that, in spite of everything:'we done made it over.'" It's an evolving play, with many incarnations over the years, but at 80, he says this will be the final version. A profile of Walter Borden and his delightful wisdom.
Thursday, May 4
FRENCH EVOLUTION: FRENCH HISTORY THROUGH MUSIC
The history of France is intimately connected with its music. Whenever there is revolution, resistance or riots, there are chansons, ballads, and marches. In this episode, Roxanne Panchasi, historian of French culture, spin records with Nahlah Ayed, as they listen to songs that reveal tensions, myths, and memories of France through the 20th and 21st centuries.
Friday, May 5
RECLAIMING SHAME
Shame is a powerful, shape-shifting feeling. It can be used as a tool to point out ethical wrongs, and demand justice. It can also be weaponized against individuals, and enforce dubious societal conventions. Culturally and politically, opponents frequently use shame to decry each other. There's been closer attention to the complexities of shame recently, including in How to Do Things with Emotions, a new book by Owen Flanagan. The professor of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience argues that our angry Western culture could use a little more shame, and points to societies that "do" shame in a more mature and positive way. *This episode originally aired on April 21, 2022.
Monday, May 8
DINNER ON MARS
Under the weight of the pandemic lockdowns, food security experts Lenore Newman and Evan Fraser embarked on a thought experiment to figure out what it would take to feed a human colony on Mars in the year 2080. From greenhouse technologies to nanotechnologies, they figure we could have a sensible, tasty and well-balanced diet on Mars — including fine cheeses, scotch and sashimi. But is that really what we want? *This episode originally aired on Oct. 4, 2022.
Tuesday, May 9
THE MANY AFTERLIVES OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
The Queen of Sheba is a holy figure to some; a demon in disguise to others. A wise woman with unparalleled diplomatic skills in certain accounts, and a vainglorious seductress in other retellings of her story. Her indelible presence has haunted religious scholars, and fuelled nationalist visions in East Africa and Southern Arabia. Author and University of British Columbia journalism professor Kamal Al-Solaylee explores the many afterlives of the Queen of Sheba — and how ideas about gender and power have shifted in each retelling of her life.
Wednesday, May 10
MARIA RESSA & RON DEIBERT ON DISINFORMATION WARS
Social media companies promised to change the world for the better by fostering connection. Instead, they are routinely weaponized to sow division, spreading disinformation that threatens the very fabric of our shared reality. For Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa and Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert, the fight against 'fake news' is a fight for democracy itself. They join us for a panel discussion about the dangers of online impunity — and the future of civic life in an age of exponential lies.
Thursday, May 11
VIU LECTURE: CONNIE WALKER
Connie Walker, award-winning investigative journalist and host of CBC's Missing and Murdered podcast, delivered the seventh annual Indigenous Speakers Series Lecture at Vancouver Island University in late November 2021. Her talk was called Exposing the Truth: Journalism's Role in Reconciliation, in which she shares her observations and experiences, both professional and personal, on the evolution of journalistic coverage of Indigenous stories. It is at once shocking to listen to the history of racism in Canadian reporting over the years but also hopeful to hear her insights into the progress being made in newsrooms, particularly in the hiring of Indigenous journalists to tell stories informed by lived experiences. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 7, 2022.
Friday, May 12
THE MARROW OF NATURE: A CASE FOR WETLANDS
Our relationship with wetlands is nothing if not troubled. Throughout history, wetlands have been dammed, drained and dug up to make way for agriculture and human settlements, while wetlands themselves have been cast as toxic wastelands, from the dead marshes in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to the vegetal monster from the D.C. comic Swamp Thing. Yet not every perspective on wetlands is negative; Henry David Thoreau called them 'the marrow of nature' and cultures around the world have used wetlands as sites of sanctuary and sustenance. That squelchy history — and the reasons experts say saving wetlands is crucial to our future — is the subject of a documentary by IDEAS contributor Moira Donovan, The Marrow of Nature: A Case for Wetlands. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 17, 2022.
Monday, May 15
A HAREM OF COMPUTERS
Digital assistants, in your home or on your phone, are usually presented as women. While you can choose a male voice for your personal assistant, the default is usually female. In this documentary, Jill Fellows, philosophy instructor at Douglas College in British Columbia, traces the history of the feminized, non-threatening machine, from Siri and Alexa, to a chatbot invented in the 1960s named ELIZA, to the "women computers" of 19th century. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 26, 2022.
Tuesday, May 16
VOICES OF INTERNMENT
It's a hidden chapter of Canadian history that's now slowly emerging. For decades leading up to the outbreak of World War One, Canada actively courted immigrants from Eastern Europe — thousands upon thousands, including 150,000 from what is now Ukraine. They travelled across the ocean to farm and fill a growing demand for manual labourers. But as World War One broke out, those migrants, including some who were Canadian citizens, were labelled as 'aliens of enemy origin' and targeted by the state. Descendants of those imprisoned in forced labour camps share their stories with documentary producers James Motluk and Jeff Preyra.
Wednesday, May 17
JUDGE ROSIE ABELLA
If the term "employment equity" means something obvious to you — that we all, men, women, people of colour, the disabled — have the right to be treated in an equitable manner in the workplace, then thank Judge Rosalie Abella. She came up with the concept when she chaired a Royal Commission. A couple of years ago Rosie (as many people call her) retired from the Supreme Court of Canada, honoured both here and around the world for her groundbreaking work in so many areas, particularly in human rights law. Judge Rosie, in conversation with David Goldbloom at the Stratford Festival. And she's funny too.
Thursday, May 18
MAN UP! THE MASCULINITY CRISIS, PART ONE
Recent books, articles and films point in a similar disturbing direction: "what's wrong with men?," "boys adrift," "patriarchy blues." Social scientists have over the decades noticed this trend: that men are dropping out of the workforce, and their addiction rates are climbing. Men are also three times more likely to commit suicide than women. In Canada, female undergraduates are outperforming males. In Sweden, researchers say there's a pojkkristen or "boy crisis." While scholars agree there is indeed a problem, they don't necessarily agree on the cause. But if we trace the history of conceptions about masculinity, the evidence suggests that masculinity itself has always been in crisis.
Friday, May 19
ENGLISH: FRIEND OF FRENEMY?
Over the course of 400 years, English went from being a small language spoken in the British Isles to becoming the most dominant language in the world. But is English Britain's "greatest gift" to the world as some say it is, or is it, as critics contend, "a behemoth, bully, loudmouth, thief"? As English gains ground and pushes local languages aside and acting like a "linguistic imperialist", is there a way to rethink English not as a language with a universal standard upheld in a faraway place, but rather as a global language with multiple versions existing on equal footing?
Monday, May 22
WORST MARRIAGE EVER: JASON AND MEDEA
The ancient Greek story of Jason and the Argonauts is that of a quest – and one of the first ever told: a man, a ship and a team of sailors, all in search of a miracle. Jason also shows up centuries later in Dante's Divine Comedy, and centuries after that in the 1800s, in a poem by William Morris, and a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and still later in a cult classic 1960s movie. Jason's turbulent relationship with Medea is at the centre of this documentary by contributor, Tom Jokinen. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 19, 2022.
Tuesday, May 23
THE GREAT RESET
The Great Reset — it came down from the mountains of Davos Switzerland. To conspiracy theorists, it's a plot by global elites at the World Economic Forum to control every aspect of our lives. To its supporters, it represents a kinder, gentler, more humane form of capitalism, one that's desperately needed if we are to avoid a future global catastrophe. But what exactly is the Great Reset and why is it so controversial? IDEAS contributor Ira Basen untangles the twisted threads and competing views, and lays out its origins, its aims and its potential for both good and ill.
Wednesday, May 24
TRANSHUMANCE: AN ANCIENT PRACTICE AT RISK
For thousands of years, each spring and fall, human beings along with their domesticated animals have traveled for days, sometimes weeks, to bring the sheep, goats, cattle, reindeer and other animals to better grazing areas. The ancient practice, known as transhumance, has been dismissed as a "primitive," outdated mode of animal husbandry. Yet the practice holds both secrets to the past — from trade routes to the shape of cities, and promise for the future, as an efficient, sustainable and cruelty-free way of tending the animals that humans have depended on for millennia. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 25, 2022.
Thursday, May 25
CYMBELINE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
At first glance, Shakespeare's play Cymbeline — which features a runaway princess, an evil step-mother, a broken treaty, a war between Britain and Rome, and the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy — doesn't seem like an obvious choice for confronting the climate crisis. But Canadian scholars Randall Martin and Rebecca Salazar argue that Cymbeline contains important lessons for us in the Anthropocene: about interdependence, the consequences of retreating from political coalitions, our relationship with the natural world, how to turn dark despair into hopeful action, and the hard work of making amends. They've partnered with seven theatre companies around the world — from Argentina to Australia — each of which has adapted Cymbeline to respond to the climate crisis in their local environments. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 7, 2022.
Friday, May 26
PHILOSOPHY IN THE KITCHEN AND PUB: A TALK BY LEWIS GORDON
We tend to view philosophy as a formal endeavour. Not so, says Lewis Gordon. At the invitation of Newfoundland's Memorial University, the Afro-Jewish philosopher talked about some of his ideas from the music stage at the Ship Pub in St. John's last March. He explains why the setting is a fitting one for philosophy, historically… and for this philosopher, specifically. Gordon is a Jamaica-born, Bronx-raised, world-traveled academic, political thinker, and musician, and the author of Fear of Black Consciousness. Arguing that philosophy has important things to offer everyone, he riffs on Greek and Africana philosophy, touching on topics such as how food preparation connects to philosophical conversation, and how different ways of drumming seven beats makes a "transcendental argument."
Monday, May 29
A TALE OF TWO METLAKATLAS: MY MATRIARCHS, THE MISSIONARIES AND ME
In this documentary, journalist Pamela Post traces the history of her Ts'msyen matriarchs, back over a century, to one moment that changed her family's destiny: an exodus of over 800 Ts'msyen people from Metlakatla BC, so start a "New" Metlakatla in Alaska. Through the stories of the women in her family, she documents over 100 years of upheaval and the devastating impacts of colonialism.
Tuesday, May 30
EXTRACTING JUSTICE: THE HUMAN RIGHTS IMPACT OF CANADIAN MINING
Canada is home to an estimated 60 per cent of the world's mining companies. They operate in all corners of the globe, including countries where mining activities have been linked to human rights violations. Up till now, making offending companies accountable in Canada is difficult. However, international human rights lawyer James Yap has fought to change that. He and his colleagues successfully pursued a lawsuit on behalf of dozens of Eritrean plaintiffs who claimed they were forced to work at the Bisha gold mine in Eritrea owned by a Canadian mining company, Nevsun Resources. James Yap delivers the 2023 Sir Graham Day Lecture in Ethics, Morality and Law.
Wednesday, May 31
IF SCIENCE IS TO SAVE US: MARTIN REES
Science has transformed our world in ways that even the world's most brilliant thinkers could hardly have imagined even just a century ago. It has the power to save us, through medical breakthroughs, vaccines or low-carbon technology, and it has the power to wreak untold havoc on our lives through the potential unintended consequences of biotechnology and AI, among other frontiers of science. Sir Martin Rees, the former President of the Royal Society and one of Britain's most eminent scientists, argues that it's essential for the future of humanity that the public and science engage with each other more closely and collaboratively.
