Ideas

Love, fear -- even office politics -- are what drive the world of espionage in Len Deighton's great novels. To celebrate his 90th birthday, Philip Coulter profiles one of the masters of the modern spy thriller.

Why is it common knowledge that we saved runaway slaves from the United States, but few know that Africans and Indigenous peoples were bought, sold and exploited, right here? In the first of a two part series, contributor Kyle G. Brown asks how slavery was allowed to continue for some 200 years, and be one of the least talked-about aspects of our history. Part 1 of a 2-part series.

You might think that the heart symbol ? and romantic love have always been bedfellows. But you'd be wrong. At times, the symbol was just a decoration. At others, it meant spiritual, chaste love. At still others, romantic and carnal. Marilyn Yalom the author of "The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love". In it, she traces the astonishing, centuries-long journey of how the symbol took on all the meanings it has today.

Michael Tremblay holds a black belt Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and competes at world championships. He is also a PhD student in philosophy at Queen's University, who's studying Stoicism. In fact, he hopes to become a Stoic 'sage' himself, and focuses his work on the 1st-century Greek philosopher, Epictetus, whom he sees as a kind of life coach.

It's easy to identify a painting by Kent Monkman. His work is almost always monumental. Some of his canvasses as so big that buildings need to be built around them. Beyond that, Monkman often works with historical subjects -- either quoting famous images from the history of art, or playing with real historical events by situating them in paintings that reflect obvious artistic references. Kent Monkman talks with Paul Kennedy about his life and work, and how to have fun while making serious statements about the world we live in.

Sewers are a relatively modern phenomenon. For centuries, people in cities lived intimately with their waste. The price paid for that lack of awareness about hygiene was of course disease and plague - as well as unbearable stench. Understanding how germs and diseases are spread led to sanitation and sewers - and to the modern city. The rebuilding of Paris in the mid-19th century was a great civic achievement and a new idea of society only made possible because it was built on sewers. Philip Coulter goes underground in the City of Light to visit the City of Smells.

While the idea that we're living in a post-truth era is still highly contested, there is greater agreement that facts themselves have also become contestable. Belief and feeling have sideswiped facts, especially when it comes to news stories about politics. IDEAS producer Naheed Mustafa examines the increasingly elastic and unsettle relationship between facts and truth.

Producer Mary Lynk in conversation with Sobey Art Award finalists Jeneen Frei Njootli (West Coast & Yukon), Joi T. Arcand (Prairies and the North) and winner Kapwani Kiwanga (Ontario).

It doesn't seem strange that the best-loved and best-selling English language poets should be women, but that wasn't always the case. In fact, arguably the greatest American poet of the 19th Century - Emily Dickinson - wrote in total obscurity during her life. But by the middle of the 20th Century, Dickinson, and the generations of female poets she inspired, were beginning to get their due. On this month's edition of The Enright Files, conversations about Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich - women who inspired poets of the last few decades.

A powerful, simple and essential message is delivered by Doug White, presenter of the fourth annual Vancouver Island University Indigenous Speakers Series. He challenges us all to begin and end our relationships with each other with one thing: love.