Ideas

What makes a great conversation? The subject? Not so much. It’s more that it’s filled with layers and that you never really know where it’ll end up — how it will change you by the time it ends. Ian Williams delivers the final 2024 CBC Massey Lecture on the art of good conversation.

We’re in an era where many people feel an ownership over certain words, and how a community expresses itself; the term ‘appropriation’ has come to create guardrails around what can be said, and by whom. In his fourth Massey Lecture, Ian Williams considers the role of speech and silence in reallocating power, and what it means to truly listen. 

Difficult conversations are almost always about something under the surface, and hidden. In his third Massey Lecture, Ian Williams illustrates what we’re listening for isn’t always obvious. He explains how personal conversations aren't about finding answers — it's for communion.  

In his second Massey Lecture, Ian Williams explores the power of conversation with strangers. He says humanity comes out when interacting with them. But how do we open ourselves up to connect with strangers while safeguarding our personal sovereignty? Williams believes we can learn a lot from our conversations with strangers and loved ones alike. 

Ever felt that no one is really listening? In the first of his 2024 CBC Massey Lectures, novelist and poet Ian Williams explores why we need to have a conversation about conversations. His five-part lecture series confronts the deterioration of civic and civil discourse and asks us to reconsider the act of conversing as the sincere, open exchange of thoughts and feelings.

2024 CBC Massey lecturer Ian Williams speaks with IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed about the forces that have shaped him as a thinker and writer, from the encyclopedias he read as a child in Trinidad to his years as a dancer to the poetry of Margaret Atwood. 'I believe in multiplicity,' he says. The 2024 Massey Lectures, What I Mean to Say: Remaking Conversation in Our Time, begin this coming Monday.

Digital assistants, in your home or on your phone, are usually presented as women. In this documentary, IDEAS traces the history of the feminized, non-threatening machine, from Siri and Alexa to the "women computers" of the 19th century. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 26, 2022.

In an era of rampant commodification of life-saving medicines, healthcare must be secured as a global public good, argues health justice advocate Fatima Hassan. In her Boehm Lecture on Public Health she explores ideas of solidarity and leadership in pandemic, epidemic and war responses.  

The world is full of problems — our broken healthcare, out-of-reach housing, a democracy in shambles and a dying planet. Is it actually possible to fix this mess? IDEAS hears from people working to fix our most intractable problems at a time when it can feel easier to just give up. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 21, 2023.

Canada’s veterans have a conflicted relationship with Remembrance Day, an idea that may be shifting as older war vets leave us. In a two-part series, IDEAS continues exploring postwar experiences from The Canadian War Museum’s oral history project called In Their Own Voices. *This is part two of a two-part series.