Ideas

Prize-winning journalist Tanya Talaga (author of Seven Fallen Feathers) explores the legacy of cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples in her 2018 CBC Massey Lectures series, titled All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward.

Under the eyes of the law, animals that live in our homes or on a farm are 'property.' But there's a growing movement to grant some animals like chimpanzees, elephants and dolphins 'non-human persons' status. Harvard Law School doctoral candidate Jessica Eisen thinks the law could do even better than that. This episode is part of our ongoing series, Ideas from the Trenches.

Gay priests are often rolled into the blame game in the Catholic Church's sex abuse crisis. There's a Vatican prohibition on gay men entering seminaries, even as the stories swirl about how many high-level clerics are sexually active. Producer Sean Foley explores the psychological, historical, and pastoral paradoxes of clerical sexual identity at a pivotal time for the Church and the world.

One sound invented two centuries ago was said to drive all those who heard it insane, even to to the point of suicide. Contributor Chris Brookes in St. John's takes us into the astonishing history of the glass harp, from the parlour to the paranormal - and even to death metal - and shows how the sounds we create shape our understanding of the world.

Lawyers and doctors have a code of ethics. Teachers have them. Even journalists have them. So why not the tech sector, the people who create and design our very modes of communication? Coders and designers make products that allow to us communicate with each other, across cities and nations and borders. As these giants grow at breakneck speed, and the chaos of their unfettered impact becomes more obvious, the call is coming for a reckoning. Contributor Tina Pittaway explores whether the time has come for tech to reckon with its moral void.

Neil Stonechild was an Indigenous adolescent who was picked up by police in downtown Saskatoon in mid-winter, driven to the industrial suburbs late at night, and intentionally abandoned. He ultimately froze to death. Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore produced a piece called "Freeze: Stonechild Memorial" in commemoration of of the event. It's a sculpture, made of ice, installed outside the Remai Modern Gallery in Saskatoon since February 1st, when a major retrospective of her work opened there. Paul Kennedy in conversation with Rebecca Belmore.

How much should humans try to "fix" nature? That question gets at the heart of our relationship with the entire natural world. Contributor Brad Badelt travels to isolated Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, where a controversial decision has been made to relocate wolves from the mainland to help sustain the island's dwindling pack. The world's leading wolf researchers and environmental thinkers debate that decision - and what our idea of wilderness means.

The world, the universe, is a mess of molecules and muck. Within the chaos, though, a cosmic harmony plays the secret song of nature, and the music of matter. You just have to be able to read the music. Contributor Ian Wilkinson unravels the universal chords as the world honours the 150th anniversary of Dmitri Mendeleev's creation of the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements.

After finally ousting the Shah, and just mere weeks after Ayatollah Khomeini took power, Iranian women marched to show their fury at the revolution, which now seemed to be turning against them. On the 40th anniversary of their protests, CBC Radio producer Donya Ziaee spoke to three Iranian women who were there - on the streets of Tehran, fighting to to turn the tide of history.

Polarization in Poland. The success of Sweden's far right. In Turkey, "the supremacy of the people" reigns. And Brexit threatens Britain's economic and social order. Everywhere, populism is winning big. The question is why? Part 2 of a 2-part series.