Ideas

In musical terms, ‘polyphony’ is a musical texture that combines two or more tones or melodic lines. But what can music do to truly advance peace and understanding? IDEAS explores this question with Nabeel Abboud Ashkar, co-founder of Polyphony — a music education organization, followed by a panel discussion. *This episode originally aired on May 3, 2022.

Esi Edugyan argues we are constrained by a largely white, Eurocentric idea of progress when it comes to the history of the future. African thinkers and artists suggest other realities: the Zambian Space Program, the film Black Panther, and Nnedi Okorafor's novel Lagoon, are all possible parables of the future. *This episode originally aired on January 28, 2022.

Things Are Against Us is a collection of satirical essays by Booker Prize-shortlisted writer, Lucy Ellmann. Satire aims to correct excess and Lucy Ellmann takes aim at a lot: male ego, eco-tourism, crime fiction, all the irritations that chip away at our pandemic-weakened sanity and dead-centre in her crosshairs: Big Industry. *This episode originally aired on March 24, 2022.

As a theoretical physicist, Alan Lightman writes about the wonders of the universe with the soul of a philosopher. As science makes more fantastical discoveries and the cosmos becomes yet more mysterious, Lightman probes the biggest, most difficult questions to answer — is there a purpose to life and the universe? Where did we come from? What is the self? Why is there something rather than nothing? *This episode originally aired on March 15, 2022.

Not the history we learned in school: the Western world has its roots in African trade and resources, and was built on the lost lives and liberty of African people. So argues senior journalist and history author Howard W. French in this Carleton University School of Journalism lecture, based on his latest book, Born in Blackness. *This episode originally aired on March 23, 2022.

"To talk of transracialism instead of racial passing is, I think, to shear off its past of darkness, of illicitness," argues Esi Edugyan. Transracialism implies that we've gone beyond the limiting values of racial passing, allowing us to define for ourselves what our race is. So where do our rights to define ourselves begin and end? *This episode originally aired on January 27, 2022.

All of us are biased. We have individual biases, momentary biases, morning biases and evening biases. Our institutions are biased. Our constitutions are biased. So what to do about it? IDEAS producer Tom Howell continues his investigation into what the field of ‘bias studies’ has to offer us. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 3, 2022.

University of Toronto Professor Dan Breznitz says Canada has an innovation problem, and it’s time we did something about it. In 2021 Breznitz won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s inaugural Balsillie Prize for Public Policy for his book, Innovation in Real Places. In this episode, Nahalah Ayed speaks with Breznitz and the three other finalists for the prize. *This episode originally aired on March 10, 2022.

Dystopian versus utopian. Description versus prescription. Ideology versus art. As geopolitical and climate crises deepen, what role should writers play? A conversation with novelists Margaret Atwood and Omar El Akkad as part of the first annual PEN Graeme Gibson Talk. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 13, 2021.

"We all construct our own identities," Esi Edugyan says in her third Massey Lecture, "but we all understand, sooner or later, the limits of doing so​ — ​that there are ways in which our practical, economic, and physical realities are fixed." She explores how people who “pass” as Black complicate our understanding of identity. *This episode originally aired on January 26, 2022.