Fears of technological overreach, environmental decline, and the violent rise of the irrational: our 21st-century anxieties were anticipated in an unlikely 20th-century horror metaphor. “The Birds” – a haunting 1953 short story by Daphne duMaurier, and the truly bizarre 1963 Alfred Hitchcock movie that it inspired. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 6, 2023.

What’s Up with The Birds?

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Civility is under threat, authoritarianism and autocrats are on the rise and there's an erosion of institutional trust. Three pre-eminent speakers join IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed to discuss how Canada and other countries can promote respect and protect liberal democracy. 

Starting a global conversation to restore civility and liberal democracy

You can’t pay rent with experimental poetry, so Hilary Peach trained as a welder. Twenty-plus years on, she’s now a boiler inspector, poet, and author of an award-winning memoir, Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood. Peach talks about the joys and contradictions of being an outsider inside the trades.

An Outsider Inside the Trades: Hilary Peach

Salman Rushdie sees reality through the lens of time. There are the months after the nearly-fatal attack of August 2022 that he details in his memoir Knife. And the decade following the Iranian state’s February 1989 fatwa against him. In this conversation with Nahlah Ayed, he describes hinge moments in his uncannily storied life.

The Life and Times of Salman Rushdie

Canadian PhD graduate Kritika Vashishtha invented a new colour of light and combined it with artificial intelligence to fool the body into shifting time zones faster — creating a possible cure for jet lag. She tells IDEAS how this method could also help astronauts on Mars. *This episode is part of our series Ideas from the Trenches, which showcases fascinating new work by Canadian PhD students.

Could resetting the body's clock help cure jet lag?

In 2020, CBC Massey lecturer and tech expert Ron Deibert asked us to consider how to mitigate the harms of social media and construct a viable communications ecosystem that supports civil society. We revisit his final Massey lecture that explores the kinds of restraints we need to place on government and corporations — and on our own endless appetite for data.

What’s Up with The Birds?

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