In the past decade, there has been one stable voting bloc: white evangelical Christians. Their support has been at a constant 80 per cent for Donald Trump, according to historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez. In her book, Jesus and John Wayne, she describes the Trump era as the latest chapter in a long story of exclusion, patriarchy, and Christian nationalism in the evangelical church. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 18, 2024. 

The grave consequences artificial intelligence poses aren't 'potential' — they are happening now, warns MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini. She argues that encoded discrimination embedded in AI systems — racial bias, sex and gender bias, and ableism — pose unprecedented threats to humankind. Buolamwini has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence research and encourages everyone to join in the fight for "algorithmic justice." Her book, Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines, uncovers the existential danger produced by Big Tech. "AI should be for the people and by the people, not just the privileged few.”

International law is clear: warring parties cannot kill civilians. It's a war crime. But there is one exception. An attacker can justify killing them if they’re being used as a shield for military objectives. This means a belligerent could kill a civilian and claim, after the fact, they were being used as shields by the enemy. Increasingly, that justification has been applied to neighbourhoods, districts, and even entire populations. IDEAS explores the long history of humans as shields and how this legal loophole has become a norm. 

Guests include Nicola Perugini, who teaches international relations at the University of Edinburgh. He is also co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire. And Dr. Mimi Syed, an American emergency medicine physician who served two medical missions in Gaza in 2024.

More than 2,000 years ago, someone sat down and wrote a travel bucket list for the ancient world — suggesting must-see places that we now call The Seven Wonders of the World. It was kind of a Lonely Planet guide of its time, and included the Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Temple of Artemis, among others. Historian Bettany Hughes brings monuments and archaeological discoveries back to life in her book, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 

On May 5, 1945, Canadian soldiers played a key role in the liberation of the Netherlands from the German forces. Almost 80 years later, a large group of Canadians travelled to the Netherlands to pay tribute to their relatives who'd helped liberate the country in the Second World War. They walked on a nine-day pilgrimage through villages and towns, visiting old battlefields and the cemeteries where Canada's soldiers are buried. The group followed in the footsteps of the Canadian troops to honour their sacrifices. *This episode originally aired on May 1, 2023.

In the hour’s following her mother’s death, Martha Baillie undertook two rituals — preparing a death mask of her mother’s face, and washing her mother’s body. That intimacy shaped her grief. She had learned earlier to witness death and be present, living with regret after she left the room to get a nurse when her father died. For Baillie her mother's body was not a corpse that has no life. To her, it would "always be something alive." The novelist and writer explains what signified the difference in her book, There Is No Blue, the 2024 winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

"Never let anyone tell you that you're old," says Dag Aabaye, an 83-year-old super athlete who defies age. He runs two to six hours daily in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley, where he lives alone on a mountain. For him, running is “life itself." Blizzards, heat waves, even running 24 hours straight

Until he met Aabaye, Brett Popplewell used to dread growing old. But now the sports journalist says he has reframed his thoughts about life, death, and the limits placed on us as we age. Popplewell chronicles Aabaye's life from childhood to being a stuntman and extreme athlete in his book, Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past — winner of the 2024 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. Last month, Popplewell accepted his literary prize and delivered a public talk at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

The cowboy — a symbol of the true American man who is anti-government, works independently and protects his family. Historian Heather Cox Richardson calls this rhetoric “cowboy individualism”, and says this myth is the basis for 40-year-old Republican ideology. In this public lecture, Cox Richardson argues that the current Trump administration has taken cowboy individualism to an extreme by gutting the government and centring power.

We have a lot to thank horses for in our everyday lives, from the Hollywood motion picture, to life-saving vaccines for diphtheria and tetanus, to a staple in our closets: pants. "Prior to riding horses, no one wore pants," says historian Timothy Winegard. He argues that horses are intertwined in our own history to the point that we overlook their importance. His research explains how they shaped societies, economies and cultures. Without us, horses would be nowhere, and vice versa. It was a partnership — our brains and their braun — that truly changed the world. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 10, 2024.

IDEAS listeners think deeply about the state of the world and how to improve it. To do that, you need to know what's going on. That's why we're recommending World Report.

It's a daily news podcast that brings you the biggest stories happening in Canada and around the world, in just 10 minutes. Today you can get the latest Canadian election results and reaction from political leaders. It's the perfect update for IDEAS listeners who have been reimagining a better Canada.

Make World Report your daily quick hit of news here: https://link.mgln.ai/fEUb9e