IDEAS schedule for April 2023

* Please note this schedule is subject to change.
 

Monday, April 3

THE WIFE OF BATH
A group of pilgrims meet on the road to Canterbury. There's a knight, a miller, a clerk, a cook, a parson — 30 in all. To pass the time, they tell stories, and the reward for the teller of the best tale will be a free meal at the Tabard Inn. One of the most arresting characters in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is the Wife of Bath, who, before she even gets to her story, tells her listeners at great length exactly what she thinks about marriage in general, and men in particular. She's been called the first fully-formed woman in English literature: she's smart, bawdy, funny, successful, and confident. Seven hundred years later, the Wife of Bath remains an inspiration to writers today.

Tuesday, April 4

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI: WHAT A WOMAN CAN DO 
In 17th century Italy, Artemisia Gentileschi carved out a name for herself as the brash and passionate painter of biblical heroines. Her bold history paintings upended traditional depictions of women and delivered instead complex female figures: gutsy, intelligent and strong. With her paintbrush as in her life, she fought gender inequality and helped to reimagine womanhood and what it could mean to be a female artist. *This episode originally aired on May 25, 2022.

Wednesday, April 5

ON SAVAGE SHORES
The spring of 1493 saw the first recorded visit to Europe by Indigenous people from the Western hemisphere. Over the next century, tens of thousands made the journey. In many cases, they came as captives facing years of enslavement on the European continent. Others were diplomats. Some lived in European monasteries. All faced the danger of European diseases. British historian Caroline Dodds Pennock spent a decade collecting evidence of the widespread Indigenous presence in Portugal, Spain, France, and England in the hundred years before Britain first attempted to establish its first North American colony. 

Thursday, April 6

REITH LECTURES # 3: DARREN MCGARVEY
The BBC Reith Lectures continue with Darren McGarvey, Scottish writer and musician, also known as the rapper, Loki. This year's lectures focus on The Four Freedoms — a concept described by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941. While arguing for greater U.S. involvement in the Second World War, Roosevelt invoked four fundamental rights that he believed all people are owed: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Analyzing the state of freedom from want, McGarvey says it's unreasonable to expect governments to be compassionate toward people living in poverty; governments are hard-wired to avoid compassion. Using his own experiences with addiction and deprivation, he argues that political debates over poverty obscure the role of the individual in improving their own circumstances.

Friday, April 7

MESSIAH REVEALED
Handel's Messiah is possibly the most famous and popular piece of classical music of all time. Yet it's full of secrets and surprises — it wasn't actually meant for Christmas and its words are largely drawn from the Old Testament, not the New. And the Crucifixion isn't central. Ivars Taurins is the founding director of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, and has conducted Messiah over 200 times. Robert Harris is a veteran CBC Radio broadcaster. In nine movements, they reveal the hidden treasures of Handel's celebrated work. *This episode originally aired December 8, 2015.
 

Monday, April 10 

WALKING THE BORDER: WALLS THAT DIVIDE US
PT 1: THE PEACE WALLS OF BELFAST
Since the dawn of time we've been building walls. Sometimes to keep things in, but just as often, to defend ourselves against strangers, the enemy — the Other. It's why the Great Wall of China went up 3,000 years ago. But these kinds of walls don't work very well, and sometimes they create more problems than they solve. The great 30-year sectarian clashes of The Troubles in Northern Ireland set Protestant and Catholic against each other. Families and communities were fractured. Thousands died. Walls were built down the middle of city streets to separate the warring factions, and great steel gates were closed at night to seal them off from each other. After 25 years of peace, most of the walls remain — along with the old divisions. Are the peace walls helping or hindering community reconciliation? Nahlah Ayed went to Belfast to find out. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 2, 2019.

Tuesday, April 11

WALKING THE BORDER: WALLS THAT DIVIDE US
PT 2: THE IRISH BORDER
Since the early 1600's, the large Protestant majority in the north-eastern corner of Ireland has had an often-fractious relationship with the Catholic minority. With the coming of Irish independence in the 1920's, the creation of a border, and the carving-off of Protestant Ulster from the new republic to the south, that conflict burst into flames. Now, after 25 years of peace and an invisible border, that peace is threatened and the fear of old conflicts looms once again. Nahlah Ayed went to Ireland to hear what people are saying. *This epsiode originally aired Sept. 9, 2019.

Wednesday, April 12

SUSAN NEIMAN: LEFT IS NOT WOKE
"Woke," a term that began on the political left, has largely become a pejorative term, often used by the political right, to smear left-wing extremism, real or imagined: an intransigent moralism that causes some people to lose entire careers over a single verbal transgression. How did this happen? That's exactly the question, or one of them, that philosopher Susan Neiman seeks to answer in her book, Left Is Not Woke. Professor Neiman is the director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, and situates herself firmly on the left, politically and philosophically. She argues that "wokeism" is foundationally wrong, and short-circuits what it means to be on the left. She was interviewed onstage at the Toronto Public Library as part of the Provocations Ideas Festival.

Thursday, April 13

REITH LECTURES # 4: FIONA HILL
The fourth and final BBC Reith Lecture features Fiona Hill, a British-American foreign affairs specialist and intelligence official under three U.S. presidential administrations. Analyzing the concept of "freedom from fear," she compares living under the threat of nuclear war in the 1980's to the geopolitical situation today, and says Russian President Vladimir Putin is a master at manipulating fear. She argues fear is born of ignorance and misinformation, and the best way to be free of it is education. 

Friday, April 14

CHRIS BROOKES TRIBUTE: LISTENING IN ON ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
Chris Brookes was a masterful storyteller who died in a tragic accident this week at his home in The Battery, a neighbourhood in St. John's, Newfoundland, just down the hill from where Marconi's first transatlantic radio signal emanated from in 1901. Chris pioneered radio documentary techniques and influenced countless radio makers around the globe, winning virtually every honour and distinction imaginable in the process. We revisit a documentary he did for IDEAS in 2009, called Hark!, an audio exploration of what Elizabethan England may have sounded like, and how those sounds would have been understood back then.
 

Monday, April 17

KEEPING KAYFABE: THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRO WRESTLING
Is there beauty in a Reverse Frankensteiner? Truth in a Crossface Chickenwing? Meaning in a Turnbuckle Thrust? These are questions for professional wrestlers, and professional philosophers. This episode brings both groups together, for a rough 'n tumble cage match of philosophical  inquiry. Featuring Douglas Edwards, author of Philosophy Smackdown and Adam "The Haida Heartthrob" Ryder, philosophers and wrestlers will grapple over truth, ethics, and politics, both inside the ring and out in the stands. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 5, 2022. 

Tuesday, April 18 

QUEST FOR A BETTER WORLD: HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER HINA JILANI
Hina Jilani is one of the world's leading human rights lawyers. She co-founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, along with establishing Pakistan's first all-women law firm and first legal aid centre. She has played several prominent roles for the UN, including eight years as the Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders. She is also a member of The Elders, founded by Nelson Mandela, featuring global thinkers like Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu. And despite attempts on her life, Hina Jilani refuses to back down from her quest for a better world.

Wednesday, April 19

INJUSTICE FOR ALL, PART ONE 
Our justice system was developed under the assumption that both parties in a dispute would each have a lawyer. But most Canadians can't afford a lawyer — which means that our justice system is tilted in favour of those who can. In this two-part series, IDEAS contributor Mitchell Stuart asks: is a system like that still capable of administering justice? 

Thursday, April 20

TAKEN IN: EXPLORING CREDULITY
Few would call themselves gullible. People are certain that they can see through lies and manipulations. Yet from financial fraud, to online scams, many individuals clearly are getting bamboozled — and intelligence has little to do with it. At a societal level, too: thousands are swimming into chaotic spirals of misinformation and conspiracy-minded thinking, searching for something they can't find in the mainstream. This episode looks to understand, rather than judge, our capacity to be credulous. IDEAS producer Lisa Godfrey talks to thinkers who both study the phenomenon, and have personal experience of it: historian Carolyn Biltoft, psychologist Stephen Greenspan, essayist Philip Christman, and technology critic Cory Doctorow.

Friday, April 21

PERIMETER INSTITUTE CONVERSATIONS
The underlying nature of everything may be found in the mysteries of the earliest days of the universe and the bizarre, counterintuitive properties of the subatomic world. The science can seem hopelessly esoteric and remote from our day-to-day lives — but who we are and where we come from also matters a great deal to the practice of science. Two interviews from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics explore the connections between physics and identity. Shohini Ghose, a quantum physicist at Wilfrid Laurier University, discusses how her identity as a woman of colour relates to the study of the quantum world. And Hilding Neilson, a Mi'kmaw astrophysicist at the University of Toronto, talks about the colonial legacies of science, and how Indigenous traditions of astronomy can enrich and broaden our views of the cosmos.

Monday, April 24

GREAT ACCELERATION
The term "Anthropocene" has been in the popular lexicon for a while now, denoting the epoch where human activity defines the state of the entire planet and all the ecosystems that comprise it, of which the climate crisis is one part. The Great Acceleration may not be as well-known as a term: it's the period starting in the 1950s when those same human activities really took off, and continue to accelerate. This documentary by contributor David Kattenburg unpeels the crucial, and sometimes contested, meanings of this age of Great Acceleration.

Tuesday, April 25

THE DICTIONARY OF WAR
Ukrainian poet Ostap Slyvynsky has been spending time at the Lviv railway station, helping refugees on their way west, escaping the horrors of war at home. They tell him stories of what they have left, what they have seen and experienced, snapshots from ground level of the war at home. Stories that are beyond the reach of art to interpret. He has been collecting them anyway, and creating a sort of A to Z, a compendium of all the things that people say about war —a Dictionary of War.

Wednesday, April 26

INJUSTICE FOR ALL, PART TWO 
Our justice system was developed under the assumption that both parties in a dispute would each have a lawyer. But most Canadians can't afford a lawyer — which means that our justice system is tilted in favour of those who can. In this two-part series, IDEAS contributor Mitchell Stuart asks: is a system like that still capable of administering justice?

Thursday, April 27

THE CONSPIRACY PRACTICE
Growing up, PhD student Sarah believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Born into a devout evangelical Christian community, she fully espoused creationism and the historical existence of Noah's ark, and she predicted that non-believers faced a doom in hell upon Judgment Day. She's now estranged from her family, but draws on her evangelical past to understand the visceral belief people acquire in conspiracy theories — from PizzaGate to the 'stolen' 2020 .U.S. election. *This episode originally aired on Sept 21, 2022.  

Friday, April 28

RESSURECTION? JORDAN BITOVE'S TORONTO STAR
If there's anything clear about the future of the newspaper business, it's that there'll no longer be room for an actual "newspaper." Beyond that, says Jordan Bitove, publisher and owner of the Toronto Star, the "resurrection" of the Star requires government help in creating an "ethical media supply chain" that keeps Canadian advertising dollars in the hands of Canadian media outlets. In the annual Carleton University Wilfrid Kesterton Lecture, Bitove outlines his plan for the newspaper, and why he won't let it fail.