Ideas

Canadians’ biggest fear for the country’s future is “growing political and ideological polarization,” according to a 2023 EKOS poll. As part of our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada, host Nahlah Ayed headed to the fast-growing city of Edmonton to talk about the creative ways local residents are working to find common ground. From video games to an engagement technique called “deep canvassing” used to bridge gaps across differences, we can learn a lot from Edmontonians on how to build a better democracy for Canada.

Like many cities in Canada, Nanaimo has a housing crisis. As rent prices have surged, so has homelessness. According to the city's last official count, there are 515 unhoused people in Nanaimo at any given time. By population, that is a higher homelessness rate than the city of Vancouver. The second episode in our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada, explores how homelessness affects the health of our democracy and why long-term solutions are so hard to achieve.

PEI has the highest voter turnout of any other province in Canada. Voting is fundamental to this community. Residents see firsthand how their vote matters — several elections were decided by 25 votes or less. In this small province, people have a personal and intimate connection with politicians. MLAs know voters on an individual basis and they feel a duty to their job. In the third episode of our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada, Nahlah Ayed visits the birthplace of Confederation to hear how Prince Edward Islanders sustain the strong democracy they built.

Public libraries are the forum for intellectual freedom, a core value that librarians protect for the sake of democracy. Yet libraries have now become a target in the culture wars of the U.S. – and in Canada, too. It’s an urgent conversation to have, no matter where one sits on the political spectrum. Libraries exist to give everyone access to a wide variety of content, even when books may offend others. Librarians are increasingly having to persuade skeptics that all ideas belong on their shelves. In our series, IDEAS for a Better Canada (in partnership with the Samara Centre for Democracy) we ask: What do we have if the freedom to read isn’t ours anymore?

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. New episodes drop Monday through Friday at 3 pm ET.

It’s been a few months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, with the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, overseeing government operations. The U.S. has been a platform for him, a source of money, resources and leverage, says historian and author Quinn Slobodian who has studied Musk's global history. Slobodian points out that Musk is “the symptom of a society which empowered him.” When we wanted technical solutions to social problems, Musk responded. He may not be what we wanted, “but as the saying goes, he’s the one we deserve.”

We are all vulnerable to digital surveillance, as there’s little protection to prevent our phones from getting hacked. Mercenary spyware products like Pegasus are powerful and sophisticated, marketed to government clients around the world. Cybersecurity expert Ron Deibert tells IDEAS, "the latest versions can be implanted on anyone's device anywhere in the world and as we speak, there is literally no defence against it.” Deibert is the founder of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a group of tech-savvy researchers who dig into the internet, looking for the bad actors in the marketplace for high-tech surveillance and disinformation. In his new book, Chasing Shadows, he shares notorious cases he and his colleagues have worked on and reveals the dark underworld of digital espionage and subversion.

There's no universal definition for the word freedom, according to American historian Timothy Snyder. He divides the word into two categories for people — the 'freedom from' and the 'freedom to' various things. In the U.S., Snyder calls oligarchs like Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump "heroes of negative freedom,” focused on being against things. But the author of On Freedom says it's a trap, because once you’re against one thing, it builds into an endless loop of the next thing. True freedom, he says, is to thrive for the sake of our common future.

The Gulf of America/Gulf of Mexico controversy reminds us that maps may appear authoritative, but are a version of reality. At the same time, they can be rich, beautiful and informative, as Vancouver’s Kathleen Flaherty explains, in this 2005 documentary made before Google Maps changed mapmaking forever.

At a time when Canadians are rallying around the flag, IDEAS thought we could all use a little Stompin’ Tom Connors to keep us going. Famous for his black cowboy hat, he was an original, writing hundreds of songs about what it means to be Canadian. He may have died 12 years ago, but his songs live on, and resonate today.

A German, a Canadian, and an American meet to discuss national borders — crossing them, defending them, and reimagining what they could become before the century is out. Our three experts dig into what’s happening to the concept of borders, how they work, and how border policies have changed in the past 10 years.

Between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden in offshore accounts. These secret stashes have been uncovered by the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) — a network of almost 300 investigative journalists. Their findings have led to multiple arrests and official inquiries in more than 70 countries, and the resignations of the leaders of Pakistan, Iceland, and Malta.

"The first kind of return before language or story is a return to one another," says novelist Janika Oza. She looks at the ways in which the narrative arcs of ordinary lives are shaped by ruptures like colonialism, war, and the Partition of India — and what it means to continually seek to return through stories, memories and objects. This episode is the fourth in a series collaboration with Crow’s Theatre in Toronto.

Patriotism’s back in style. Along with it comes reasonable questions about when a love of your country is a good thing, and when it can lead you astray. Our series on the art of national pride continues with IDEAS producer Tom Howell gathering insights from Afghans, Israelis, and Americans in hopes of finding the key to doing patriotism right.

Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum physics, and finding evidence of black holes — trace the chain of discoveries that led to these breakthroughs, and you'll end up with the Italian astronomer and inventor, Galileo Galilei. Renowned Italian theoretical physicist and author Carlo Rovelli says there's a lot we can learn from Galileo today. He explains how 400 years ago, this renaissance man of science was discovering new facts about the Universe to understand ourselves better — and that has not changed.

We should move away from this idea that childhood should be filled with innocence, safe from the knowledge of difficult things argues Critical Cultural Theorist of Childhood Julie Garlen. Kids do experience difficulty, even in the best of circumstances, and she suggests they need the tools and language to navigate the lives they are living. Constructing childhood as a time of innocence limits children's opportunities for growth and learning.

Need a babysitter? Phone Cindy. That's just one of the ads in The Inverness Oran, a small town newspaper in Cape Breton with a circulation of 3,000. For almost 50 years, the paper has kept the community updated on local news, many opinions, and letters to the editor. IDEAS offers a snapshot of what people are talking about in Inverness County, what newspapers used to be, and why the family-owned paper is stronger than ever.

In 1997, the Mi’kmaq Nation took over on-reserve education in Nova Scotia. It was the first time in Canadian history that jurisdiction for education was transferred from the federal government to a First Nation. One year later, Eskasoni First Nation high school opened, and since then, the school has become an epicentre for Mi’kmaq language revitalization. This episode is the second in a two-part series on language revitalization.

At a language school in Iqaluit, a generation of Inuit adults who didn’t grow up speaking Inuktut now have the chance to learn it as a second language at the Pirurvik Centre. By learning the words for kinship terminology, they’re also discovering things about their families they never knew.

Hidden in the 1950 academic paper that launched the famous 'Turning Test' of machine intelligence, is a strange mystery. Cryptographer Alan Turning argued that humans might always be able to outsmart machines, because we have supernatural powers like ESP, telepathy, and telekinesis. His belief in the paranormal is just one part of the spooky side of artificial intelligence. Like hauntings or seances, AI is an exercise in self-deception; we imagine intelligence from computation and data, just like we imagine ghosts from strange lights and bumps in the night.