IDEAS schedule for November 2023
* Please note this schedule is subject to change.
Wednesday, November 1
MEXICO'S GOTHIC TURN
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, monstrous cannibals and vicious vampires. Recent PhD graduate Alejandro Soifer's thesis is aptly titled "Mexican Gothic: Narco Narratives, Necro Markets and Vampires with Machine Guns." He explores what monsters and fantastical fiction can do to help us understand real-world horror. *This episode originally aired on June 5, 2023.
Thursday, November 2
SHAKESPEARE IN TRANSLATION
Translation is a form of "resurrection," argues Canadian scholar Irena Makaryk. And in the 400 years since Shakespeare shuffled off this mortal coil, he has been resurrected too many times to count. In the final installment of this year's edition of Ideas at Stratford, we consider what's lost in translation, what's found, and how translation can shine a new light on the ideas in a familiar story. Nahlah Ayed speaks with Alexa Alice Joubin, who studies Shakespeare in East Asia; Argentine-Canadian translator and writer Alberto Manguel; and Irena Makaryk, who studies how different cultures and periods transform Shakespeare's work, especially in times of political upheaval such as the Russian Revolution, World War Two and the war in Afghanistan. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 3, 2021.
Friday, November 3
MAN UP! THE MASCULINITY CRISIS, PART TWO
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 ddiction 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. *This episode originally aired on June 1, 2023.
Monday, November 6
13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A CORMORANT
Who will speak for the cormorant? This gangly aquatic bird irritates communities across North America with its large colonies, enthusiastic fishing habits, and tree-killing excrement. Our animus may be fuelled by the cormorant's literary past, as a symbolic stand-in for dark forces, from corrupt politicians to, well, Satan. Contributor Ruth Jones speaks to the cormorant's fans and defenders, including a nature writer, an ecologist, and an artist. They point out how our human lens clouds our ability to see the beauty and worth of cormorants. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 6, 2021.
Tuesday, November 7
ALANIS OBOMSAWIN: THE ART OF LISTENING
At the age of 91, prolific Abenaki artist and filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin is not slowing down. For nearly 70 years, her storytelling and documentary work has served as a mirror for Canada, vividly capturing and reflecting Indigenous experiences, providing a space for all Canadians to witness perspectives that have otherwise been suppressed and ignored. Obomsawin talks about her life's influences and the quiet power of listening in her 2023 Beatty Lecture at McGill University.
Wednesday, November 8
TRUST TALKS: FUTURE OF JOURNALISM
Three Canadian media bosses face a live audience at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto to explain why their institutions appear to be losing the people's trust. Hear Toronto Star vice-president Irene Gentle, the CBC's Brodie Fenlon, and Global News' Sonia Verma take questions from Nahlah Ayed and audience members, on the impacts of Bill C-18, artificial intelligence, and growing polarization within liberal democracies.
Thursday, November 9
DUTCH LIBERATION: 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. *This episode originally aired on May 1, 2023.
Friday, November 10
MAN UP! THE MASCULINITY CRISIS, PART THREE
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. *This episode originally aired on June 15, 2023.
Monday, November 13
SHAKESPEARE'S GUIDE TO HOPE
For many, the world is feeling darker these days. So, a lecture on hope might be a much-needed balm. Shannon Murray is an award-winning English professor at the University of Prince Edward Island. An annual lecture on hope was established in her honour. For the inaugural lecture, Murray presents: Shakespeare's Guide to Teaching, Learning and Hope. She explores what Shakespeare can offer us in terms of lessons in patience, empathy, hope, freudenfreude, and even obsessions with metrics. And she talks about how The Bard's words have become the narrative soundtrack of her own life.
Tuesday, November 14
PERIMETER INSTITUTE PUBLIC LECTURES
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario is a hothouse of scientific curiosity, inquiry, mystery and creativity. The speakers featured in its public lectures celebrate all of the above. Stephon Alexander is a professor of physics at Brown University and a jazz musician. He riffs on the connections between music, science and math in The Jazz of Physics, looking at the parallels between jazz improvisation and quantum physics and cosmology. And Katie Mack is the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at Perimeter and the author of The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking). She recently gave a talk about the latest in theories about dark matter — that mysterious stuff that science has never directly observed, but which apparently accounts for five times as much of the universe's mass than the matter we can see.
Wednesday, November 15
DEHUMANIZATION AND WAR
In war and conflict, killing is preceded by dehumanization of the other. Dehumanization begins with casting others as less human and less evolved than oneself. The process allows us to exploit and humiliate and, ultimately, annihilate those we no longer see as people. The phenomenon is remarkably similar across time and place whether the killing manifests as vast and sustained or as a flash of violence hidden away in a tiny corner. In this episode, experts and survivors discuss dehumanization and whether there's a way back when the killing is done.
Thursday, November 16
THIS CITY IS TRYING TO KILL ME: ROBIN MAZUMDER
Robin Mazumder once worked as an occupational therapist. In trying to help a depressed client find urban connection, in guiding another man with disabilities across a wide street in winter — he became convinced that urban environments often have a destructive effect on people's health and wellbeing. So Mazumder became an environmental neuroscientist, using technology to measure urban stress. That science helps him passionately advocate for cities to be more equitable, healthy, and human-scale, particularly for children and the vulnerable. He details his professional and personal motivations in a conversation with Nahlah Ayed, alongside excerpts from his 2023 Zeidler-Evans Lecture, called A City That Can Save Us.
Friday, November 17
ARCHAEOLOGY, ATLANTIS, AND THE APOCALYPSE
A Netflix series called Ancient Apocalypse shot to the top of the streaming service's rankings the week it was released. It claims that an advanced civilization which thrived during the Ice Age was wiped out by comets and floods, but left humanity with science and technology. In the world of archaeology, such claims aren't new, and are referred to by experts as "pseudo-archaeology." This episode of IDEAS unearths the long history of pseudo-archaeology, how it's been deployed to advance political and cultural ideas, and where it crosses over from pseudo-science to religious myth-making. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 7, 2023.
THE 2023 CBC MASSEY LECTURES BY ASTRA TAYLOR
Insecurity has become a "defining feature of our time," says 2023 CBC Massey lecturer Astra Taylor. The Winnipeg-born writer and filmmaker explores how rising inequality, declining mental health, the worsening climate crisis, and the increasing threat of authoritarianism originate from a social order built on insecurity. As she says in The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together As Things Fall Apart the institutions and systems that promise to make us more secure actually undermine us.
Monday, November 20
CBC MASSEY LECTURE #1: CURA'S GIFT
The human condition is one of existential insecurity. And the ancient Roman goddess Cura reminds us that in our vulnerability — both mental and physical — we're dependent on others for survival. But today we also live in an era of manufactured insecurity, imposed on us from above. Consumer society, Astra Taylor argues, capitalizes on the very insecurities it produces, making us all insecure by design. How we understand and respond to insecurity is one of the most urgent questions of our moment, for nothing less than the future security of our species hangs in the balance.
Tuesday, November 21
CBC MASSEY LECTURE #2: BARONS OR COMMONERS?|
In the second of this year's CBC Massey Lectures, Astra Taylor argues that we need the right to things, not just protection from threats. Our constitution tells us what we're protected from, but it doesn't tell us a lot about what we're entitled to. And it's not enough to be granted the right not to be abused without the right to receive assistance; not enough to possess civil and political rights without social and economic ones as well. What does real health security actually entail? What does the right to housing mean? The wealthy barons of the past and present have defined what security means — for themselves — but the rest of us, ordinary commoners, have fought for something else instead.
Wednesday, November 22
CBC MASSEY LECTURE #3: CONSUMED BY CURIOSITY
It's a paradox — we live in the most prosperous era in human history, but it's also an era of profound insecurity. In the third Massey Lecture, Astra Taylor suggests that history shows that increased material security helps people be more open-minded, tolerant, and curious. But rising insecurity does the reverse — it drives us apart, and it also drives the rise of reactionary politics. We're in the middle of an attack on our essential nature, she says, an attack on our economic and emotional well-being.
Thursday, November 23
CBC MASSEY LECTURE # 4: BEYOND HUMAN SECURITY
The burning of fossil fuels causes the past, present and future to collide in disorienting and destructive ways. As we incinerate our energy inheritance, nature's timekeeping methods become increasingly confused. In the fourth Massey Lecture, Astra Taylor tells us that as the climate alters, delicately evolved biological clocks erratically speed up or slow down, causing plants and animals to fall out of sync. In a world this out of joint, how could we possibly feel secure? No wonder there's anger worldwide about our warming planet. And meantime, we're all insecure — no one knows what will happen next.
Friday, November 24
CBC MASSEY LECTURES # 5: ESCAPING THE BURROW
Human beings will never be totally secure, especially not on a planet that has been destabilized. In the fifth of her Massey lectures, Astra Taylor offers hope and solutions. We need to cultivate an ethic of insecurity — one that acknowledges and embraces our existential insecurity, while resisting manufactured forms of insecurity imposed upon us. The experience of insecurity, she says, can offer us a path to wisdom — a wisdom that can guide not only our personal lives but also our collective endeavours.
Monday, November 27
CBC MASSEY LECTURES : Q&A
Insecurity has become a "defining feature of our time," says 2023 CBC Massey lecturer Astra Taylor. The Winnipeg-born writer and filmmaker explores how rising inequality, declining mental health, the climate crisis, and the threat of authoritarianism originate from a social order built on insecurity. In this episode, Astra Taylor answers audience questions about insecurity from the cross-Canada tour.
Tuesday, November 28
SWINGING AND SINGING: THE VIOLIN
The violin may be one of the most difficult instruments to master. And its associations with high-brow music are longstanding. But for musician and radio producer, David Schulman, the violin can swing and sing like nothing else. David is based in Washington, DC, but recently traveled to the north of Italy to try and discover the original trees from which Antonio Stradivari made his masterpieces. It's a journey of surprise and delight — as is David's second documentary featured in this episode: a journey that began with a bootlegged live album of jazz violinist, Stuff Smith. That documentary was nominated for a Prix Italia.
Wednesday, November 29
FOOD SECURITY: ROOT CAUSES AND PATHWAYS TO CHANGE
Food security is one of the most pressing issues of our time. With inflation and the cost of food on the rise, more and more Canadians are having a hard time knowing if they can afford their next meal. In the month of March 2023 alone, nearly two million Canadians had to make use of a food bank. And the number of people facing food insecurity around the world has doubled since 2019. Nahlah Ayed hears from four leading experts in the field to explore how our food systems can evolve to support us all. The conversation was recorded at the 2023 Arrell Food Summit.
Thursday, November 30
SONG OF ZONG!
The book-length poem Zong by M. NourbeSe Philip is one of the most widely-studied and written-about literary works produced in Canada this century. It uses the letters, words, and word-pieces of an English legal judgment to revive the story of a massacre aboard the slave ship Zong that began on November 29, 1781. NourbeSe Philip joined historians, writers, and artists to read from the poem and discuss its meaning today. *This episode originally aired on November 29, 2021.
Friday, December 1
MERCURY'S IN RETROGRADE: THE RISE OF ASTROLOGY
Belief in astrology is on the upswing, especially among younger people. That's maybe not surprising given that astrology's popularity rises in times of crisis and uncertainty. But since it has no predictive value, what meanings can be gleaned from a belief that the stars reveal all about us? This documentary examines the rise of popular astrology in the 1930s and how it fits into the consumer capitalism world we now inhabit. *This episode originally aired on March 29, 2023.
