Ideas

We tend to think that reading is a sign of intelligence, that we’re improved by it. But are our assumptions well-founded? Not really, according to an array of literary front runners. Writer Barbara Nichol explores assumptions we have about reading, readers and books in a three-part IDEAS series. *Originally broadcast on May 13, 2020.

Liberal democracy is in trouble. But the liberal arts — the humanities — can help save it. That’s what novelist and essayist Charlie Foran argues: the humanities strengthen the defining dynamics of a vibrant democracy.

On the night of April 26, 1986, a routine test at the RBMK #4 reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, went badly wrong: in a fatal convergence of bad design and operator error, the reactor core overheated and exploded, scattering radioactive debris into the sky, from where it eventually spread over most of Europe. *This episode originally aired on April 26, 2006.

Renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright decried New York as a carcass, parasite and "incongruous mantrap of monstrous dimensions." Yet the city offered him refuge as his personal life was in shambles. Architect Anthony Alofsin and others guide us through Wright's New York years and the important role the city played in his legacy.

Throughout history, single women have been vilified, ostracized and shamed. And while there are more single-person households in Canada than ever before, that lingering stigma still follows the single woman. CBC producer Alison Cook explores the social history of these ‘deviant’ women in her documentary, The Rise of the Glorified Spinster. *Originally aired on May 21, 2020.

Environmental problems are well-known and have been for decades, so why are we still edging towards a global catastrophe? Environmentalist Graham Saul believes it comes down to a message problem — mainly because environmentalism doesn’t have a single, coherent, unified message that people can grasp. *This episode originally aired on November 23, 2018.

The stories that make up the history of a nation and the account of its birth are increasingly contested, and newer narratives are being pitted against the old. What is the role and responsibility of the historian in managing the chaos and keeping scholarship above the fray of political wrangling?

Rinaldo Walcott argues that the fight to abolish slavery is still unfinished — and that the ultimate project of abolition will require abolishing the idea of private property itself. He speaks with Nahlah Ayed about how a history of being bought and sold shapes Black people's relationship to the notion of property today.

PhD student Rachel Fayter was incarcerated for more than three years. She draws from her experience and the relationships she formed in jail to inform her ‘groundbreaking’ research into the resilience of criminalized women. *This episode originally aired on September 24, 2020.

In her new book Work Mate Marry Love, Harvard professor Debora Spar argues that nearly all the decisions we make in our most intimate lives — whom we marry, how we have children, and how we build families — are driven by technology. She explains how these changes in technology have also affected the role of women in society throughout history.