Ideas

Icelandic writer and documentary filmmaker Andri Snaer Magnason speaks to Nahlah Ayed about his response to the climate crisis, in his book entitled On Time and Water. Magnason embarked on the project at the insistence of a climate scientist who was dismayed at failures of public communication surrounding the latest research.

A few decades ago, comic books were considered an unlikely way to tell stories about conflict and war — until Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Maus. The book explores his parents' survival of Auschwitz. Since then, comics have become an established medium through which creators can articulate the traumas of their lives. In this age of digital access to traumatic imagery, what resistance can this unique medium offer?

Life Jolt - prison slang for a life sentence - examines the lives of women navigating Canada’s correctional system. The team gained unprecedented access to the Grand Valley Institution prison, the federal pen for women in Ontario, for a full year. They followed women going into prison for the first time, spoke with lifers who have been there for years, and parolees as they left. Hosted by Rosemary Green, a former inmate herself, Life Jolt focuses on individual women’s stories and the realities of prison life, and explores a wide range of issues including parenting behind bars, segregation, the over-representation of Indigenous women, addiction, trauma and the many obstacles of reintegration. More episodes are available at: smarturl.it/lifejolt

Even if you don't recognize her name, you might recognize one of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander's green designs: the green roof on the Canadian Embassy in Berlin or the grounds surrounding the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. In 2012, IDEAS producer Yvonne Gall profiled the pioneering landscape architect who died in May 2021.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s death this year at age 101 marks the end of a colourful, artistic life, aligned with the Beat generation. But the poet and publisher’s bookstore, City Lights, survives as a hub of rebellious ideas for all. We revisit Ferlinghetti and friends in San Francisco in this 2003 episode.

It was 150 years ago when citizens of Paris rose up against the government and declared independence. The Paris Commune of 1871 was a model for the revolutions of the 20th century — but the violence it unleashed, the use of propaganda, and the demonizing of the "other" all foreshadowed the abuses of state power to come. *This episode originally aired May 28, 2015.

Writer Barbara Nichol continues exploring shared assumptions about reading with original thinkers — writers, critics, scholars and journalists. This is the final part in a three-part series called Reading with a Grain of Salt. *This episode originally aired on June 26, 2020.

Writer Barbara Nichol continues exploring shared assumptions about reading, readers and books with original thinkers — writers, critics, scholars and journalists. This is part two in a three-part series called Reading with a Grain of Salt. *This episode originally aired on June 19, 2020.

How could these times ever be forgotten? Historian Esyllt Jones explains why we don’t know more stories from an even more devastating global health catastrophe — the Great Influenza of 1918 — but how its complex toll is captured in a moving short story by Alice Munro. This is the annual Avie Bennett Historica Canada Lecture, recorded at York University in March 2021.

"He is a nemesis to many, and is claimed as a friend by only very few," wrote Eduardo Mendieta about Richard Rorty, the most quoted, most criticized, and most widely read of recent U.S. philosophers. Rorty died in 2007, but a passionate crew of 'Rortyans' now devote themselves to keeping his name alive, challenging what they see as the many misinterpretations of his work. *This episode originally aired on December 6, 2019.