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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.

Ideas

This podcast features an all-star, and bestselling, lineup of CBC Massey Lecturers from the past decade: Payam Akhavan (2017) and the police officer who pulled over to the side of the road to keep listening; Sally Armstrong (2019) and the women’s rights groups listening to her talks in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and China; Ron Deibert (2020) and his conviction that ‘philosophical’ radio is more crucial than ever; Esi Edugyan (2021), Tomson Highway (2022) feeling astonished when a stranger recognizes his voice after hearing him on the radio; Margaret MacMillan (2015); Tanya Talaga (2018) and her surprise when an older white man in the audience declares Indigenous activists should “go forth and conquer”; Astra Taylor (2023) and how her secret desire is to work at IDEAS; Jennifer Welsh (2016) comforting an audience member who’d served in Afghanistan; and Ian Williams (2024) on how his lectures have more meanings than he realized — so much so, that he’d like a “second date” with IDEAS.

*This is the third episode in our special programming marking our 60th anniversary.

CBC Massey Lecturers reveal how the talks changed them

That's not something you expect to hear in an interview. But the Harvard historian and author of All That She Carried, Tiya Miles did not hesitate to say these words to IDEAS host, Nahlah Ayed. What prompted the bold statement comes down to a question — seemingly for Miles the perfect one to ask.

Their conversation resonated with many listeners, including a potter in Australia who shares how this story sustains him after the loss of his wife. Also in this podcast, we find out how IDEAS inspires everything from sonnets, to art, and to recreating historic feasts. 

*This is the second episode in our 60th anniversary week-long series.

The time when a guest said, "I love you!"

Not many people like to think about traffic but Joanna Oda says this very topic on IDEAS in 2005 permanently changed the way she views medical care as a doctor. "It helped me understand how things that make sense for you as an individual contribute to a collective problem." She adds, the episode introduced her to the idea that one car has a big impact.

This episode is part of a week-long celebration to mark our 60th anniversary. IDEAS is giving the mic to listeners like Oda to share their stories on how our program led to life-altering moments.

How an IDEAS episode on traffic changed a doctor's practice

For Afghans, listening to a traditional song can bring them back "home." In 2021, when the Taliban seized power again in Afghanistan, orchestras disbanded and musicians fled for their lives. They brought with them their distinctive and storied music, embedded with notes hailing from classical music from Iran and India. IDEAS takes a journey to Afghanistan with members of the Afghan diaspora, and asks how the idea of home is encapsulated in music and how conflict has played a role in reshaping Afghan music.

*This is the final episode in a five-part series called The Idea of Home exploring the multiple and contested meanings of home. This episode originally aired on June 16, 2022.

Guests in this episode:

Mir Mahdavi is a poet, a writer, and a researcher in the area of art, literature and poetry, originally from Afghanistan. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and holds a Ph.D. in cultural studies from Trent University and a MA of cultural studies from McMaster University. He was the publisher and the editor in chief of Atab, a weekly newspaper published during 2002-2003 in Kabul.

Hangama is one of the most renowned female Afghan singers of her generation. Born in 1962 in Kabul, Hangama's stage name was chosen by her mother when she decided to pursue a career in music. She left Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and now lives in the Greater Toronto Area.

Sara Soroor is an Afghan-Canadian singer-songwriter and childhood educator in the Greater Toronto Area. She is Hangama's daughter and started singing and playing the piano at age four.

Wares Fazelyar was born and raised in Toronto, and plays the rubab. He is an advisory board member for the Afghan Youth Engagement and Development Initiative. He and his brother Haris perform Afghan folk music in the Greater Toronto Area.

Wolayat Tabasum Niroo is a researcher and Fulbright scholar currently based in the United States. She has a PhD in Education from Old Dominion University and a MPhil in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford. She grew up in Afghanistan and has studied how Afghan women's folk music creates an alternative space for political expression, grief and imagining other possibilities.

How music transports the Afghan diaspora to their homeland

In 2022, IDEAS explored how the brutal strategy called "urbicide" — the intentional killing of a city — is used in war to destroy residents' sense of home and belonging. This podcast revisits the original story and includes a brief update from architect Ammar Azzouz. Since the collapse of the Assad regime last year, he has returned to Homs, Syria, twice. He tells IDEAS he has mixed emotions being home again.

*This episode is part of our series, The Idea of Home.It originally aired on June 16, 2022.

Guests in this podcast:

Ammar Azzouz is an architectural critic and analyst at Arup, as well as a research associate at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria. 

Nasser Rabbat is a professor and the director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. He has published numerous articles and several books on topics ranging from Mamluk architecture to Antique Syria, 19th century Cairo, Orientalism, and urbicide.

Marwa Al-Sabouni is a Syrian architect based in Homs and the author of The Battle for Home: The Vision of a Young Architect in Syria and Building for Hope: Towards an Architecture of Belonging.

Hiba Bou Akar is an assistant professor in the Urban Planning program at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She is the author of For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut's Frontiers.

Nada Moumtaz is an assistant professor in the Department of Study of Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. She trained and worked as an architect in Beirut, Lebanon, and is the author of God's Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State.

Why cities are targeted in wartime (updated)

Hospitality — and hospitals. Two words that share a root, but whose meanings often seem at odds with each other. IDEAS 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 is the third episode in our series, The Idea of Home, which originally aired on June 15, 2022.

People you will hear in this podcast:

 

Rachel Kowalsky is a pediatric emergency physician at New York—Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. She co-created a website called Our Break Room to share poems and stories for healthcare workers. 

Joshna Maharaj is a Toronto-based chef and activist, and the author of Take Back the Tray: Revolutionizing Food in Hospitals, Schools and Other Institutions.

Kathy Loon is executive lead for Indigenous collaboration & relations at Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre (SLMHC) and a member of Slate Falls First Nation. 

Carole Rawcliffe is professor emerita of medieval history at the University of East Anglia. She specializes in the history of medieval medicine and early hospitals. 

Kevin Siena is a professor of history at Trent University. He specializes in the history of medicine and the history of hospitals in England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. 

David Goldstein is an associate professor of English at York University, where he is also the coordinator of the creative writing program. He is the co-editor of Early Modern Hospitality. 

This episode also includes a clip from a 2016 CBC Radio interview with Maureen Lux, professor of history at Brock University and the author of Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada. ﻿

Why hospitals stopped being hospitable

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 in this second episode of our five-part series, The Idea of Home. *This episode originally aired on June 14, 2022.

How guest-host power dynamics shape migration

At age 11, writer Andrew Lam fled Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon. Nearly 45 years later, he returned to a radically different city. He believes "you will be cursed with longing" if you continue to search for the feeling of home you had in the past.

At a time when more people have been forcibly displaced from their homes than at any other time in history, IDEAS explores what it means to return home years — or decades — later. *This is the first episode in our five-part series, The Idea of Home, which originally aired on June 13, 2022.

Can you ever truly return home again?

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.

Massey Lecture Part 5 | A human rights agenda for Canada

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.

Massey Lecture Part 4 | How people power makes human rights real

How do conversations happen differently in the north? What’s unique about Inuit approaches to silence — and to nation-to-nation conversations? IDEAS explores dialogue from Ian Williams' first Massey Lecture in Iqaluit with lawyer and activist Aaju Peter and actor and producer Simeonie Kisa-Knicklebein.

Inuit Approaches to Conversation and Conflict Resolution

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