Ideas

In his book "How to Change Your Mind", Michael Pollan explores how psychedelic drugs have been used to enhance spiritual experiences and treat many conditions from depression to anxiety. He speaks to IDEAS producer, Mary O'Connell.

Mary Lynk in conversation with the 2018 Sobey Art Award finalists Jordan Bennett and Jon Rafman.

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 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.

To Highlanders, it was "uisage beatha," the water of life. Scottish poet Robert Burns proclaimed: "Freedom and whisky gang thegither!" Single malt whisky has captured the imagination, as well as thirst: it remains one of Scotland's most popular and poetic exports, appreciated by successive generations in turn. In this encore presentation of a 1996 documentary, Paul Kennedy celebrates single malt Scotch Whisky, as conveyed in the loving words of the men and women who make it.

Polarization in Poland. The success of Sweden's far right. Brexit threatens Britain's economic and social order. But populism got an early start In Turkey, where "the supremacy of the people" reigns. Everywhere, populism is winning big. The question is why. Part 1 of a 2-part series.

Each day in Canada, the government effectively puts a dollar value on people's lives by deciding which medications to cover. The issues of coverage and cost are magnified exponentially when it comes to expensive drugs for rare diseases. On one side, we have the rights of sick people to access medicine; and on the other, companies saying they have a right to make profit. Can we resolve this challenge fairly without accepting the prospect that some Canadians are just too expensive to help?

Ross King is one of the most popular historians Canada has ever produced. Yet originally, he wanted to be a novelist. And after researching his doctoral thesis on T. S. Eliot, he published his first book, which fictionalized the story of a castrato singer in 18th century London, as seen through the eyes of an aspiring painter. Then he became fascinated by Italian architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, who designed and built the famous cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence. King says he discovered that it was more fun to write when you didn't need to "make up the facts." IDEAS host Paul Kennedy talks to the man who's also written non-fiction books about Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Edouard Manet and Claude Monet, and about Canada's Group of Seven.

War reporter Janine di Giovanni approaches her work like an anthropologist by embedding herself in conflict zones. Her goal is to understand how war, disease, and poverty have impacted human lives in war torn communities. In the 2018 Peter Stursberg Foreign Correspondents lecture, she details her experiences covering disease outbreaks, genocides and sieges in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East.

World-famous environmental photographer Edward Burtynsky and IDEAS host Paul Kennedy both grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario. In fact, their childhood homes were less than 300 metres apart, and paper-boy Paul delivered a daily dose of newspaper comic strips to eventual visual artist Ed. They return to their old home town and revisit their roots, including the site of the now-dismantled GM Plant # 1, where both of their fathers worked; and the new subdivision that's recently replaced Meadowvale School, where they both started kindergarten, so many decades ago

For people of Shakespeare's time, the idea of "empire" was something new. As Britain's power spread, the eternal questions remained: what makes a great empire successful, and what pitfalls need to be watched out for? No ancient empire offered more lessons than the Roman Empire - which had, of course, conquered Britain. In his plays set in the Roman Empire, Shakespeare explored themes of leadership, human frailty, political downfall, while at the same time mythologizing the birth of a new Rome in Britain. A discussion from the Stratford Festival, featuring artistic director Antoni Cimolino, theatre critic Robert Cushman, and Royal Ontario Museum researcher Kate Cooper.