IDEAS schedule for February 2025
* Please note this schedule is subject to change.
Monday, February 3
THE AMAZING LIVES OF HENRY BOX BROWN
Enslaved in 1840s Virginia, an enslaved young man named Henry watches in horror as his wife and children are sold and taken. He decides then that he must escape, or die. So Henry has himself shipped in a small wooden crate to a free state, via U.S. Post. This is the true story of Henry Box Brown, and yet only one of his lives. He reinvents himself as "The Great African Magician," a performer who spends decades touring England, and then Canada, where he spent his final decade. Author Martha Cutter (The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown) and writer-scholar Daphne Brooks unbox the subversive political meaning in his act, and make a case for him as an early Black performance artist — one who continues to inspire reflection and action in our own time.
Tuesday, February 4
MARIA CHAPDELAINE
The novel Maria Chapdelaine by Louis Hémon was a global sensation when it was published in the early 20th century. It's since become a cornerstone of Quebec culture. In fact, the Musée Louis Hémon is the only literary museum in Quebec, and was reopened in the summer of 2024 at a cost of six million dollars. Yet Louis Hémon himself was actually from France, and was killed in a train accident before the novel was ever published. It's since been translated into over 20 languages, has inspired four film versions, several plays, an opera — even a pop song. And Maria the character has been painted, sculpted, and featured on a stamp. There's even a rue Maria Chapdelaine in Montreal — not bad for a fictional character. Yet today, the book remains far less known in English Canada and the English-speaking world. This documentary by contributor Catherine Annau examines the many lives that Maria Chapdelaine has lived, and continues to live.
Wednesday, February 5
THE TREE OF LIFE REVISITED
The Polish city of Lodz declared 2023 "the year of Chava Rosenfarb." Born there a century before, Rosenfarb was a Jewish-Canadian writer. She survived the Holocaust, and moved to Canada with her husband, abortion provider and activist Henry Morgentaler. Settling in Lethbridge, Alberta, Chana Rosenfarb became a major contributor to Yiddish literature, detailing her experiences in the Lodz ghetto through poetry, and in a book trilogy, The Tree of Life. This episode profiles the life of Rosenfarb, her legacy, and the politics of Holocaust remembrance in Poland today. It originally aired on Jan. 29, 2024.
Thursday, February 6
INDIGENOUS TRUTH IN THE FACE OF POWER: A JOURNALISTS CALL TO ACTION
Award-winning journalist and author Brandi Morin says Reconciliation in Canada is on life support. She is calling for a revolution against the apathy and ignorance that she says keeps Indigenous people from healing and succeeding. Her presentation at the tenth annual Indigenous Speaker series lecture at Vancouver Island University is titled Indigenous Truth in the Face of Power: A Journalists Call to Action. After her lecture, Brandi Morin joined IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed for a conversation.
Friday, February 7
FROM GRIT TO GLORY: MARY ANN SHADD CARY
Mary Ann Shadd Cary was born in 1823 in Delaware to parents who were free African Americans. She moved to Canada in 1850 after America's passing of the Fugitive Slave Law. She founded a racially integrated school in Windsor, Ontario. Three years later she became the first Black woman publisher in Canada with her newspaper, The Provincial Freeman. The story of this Black woman who was a lawyer, publisher, and educator and whose work and legacy laid the groundwork for Black liberation in Canada has long been hidden from most Canadians. But a growing body of scholarship along with greater cultural attention is bringing Mary Ann Shadd Cary and her remarkable story to the masses. *This episode originally aired on Dec. 7, 2023.
Monday, February 10
WRITING THE NORTH
Inhabit Media is the only independent publishing company in the Canadian Arctic. Since 2006, it's been working to ensure Arctic voices are heard across Canada. They're at the forefront of a new era of Inuit literature, film and TV. From Iqaluit, IDEAS producer Pauline Holdsworth speaks with Lousie Flaherty, Ashley Qilavaq-Savard and Jamesie Fournier about telling the stories of their home, finding creativity and inspiration from the land, and the relationship between writing and education.
Tuesday, February 11
TBD
Wednesday, February 12
THE DESERVINGNESS LADDER
With increasingly diverse societies, the sorting of people into "us" and "them" is inevitable. This sorting brings with it a social and cultural assessment of who does, and does not, deserve social benefits and political rights. In liberal democracies, the "deservingness ladder" is constantly shifting and is sometimes at odds with liberal democratic values. As liberal democracies turn toward the extreme right, how is the deservingness ladder shifting and what happens when it's weaponized by right-wing populist leaders?
Thursday, February 13
CBC PODCAST | ON DRUGS: ALCOHOL
This time, it's personal. For years as host of the CBC podcast On Drugs, Geoff Turner has examined the history, culture, science and religion of drugs, from ancient berzerkers and their mushroom rituals, to the German army's use of amphetamines, to the caffeine in millions of people's morning coffee. In this episode, Turner reveals his own struggles with alcohol, and explores the complicated legal and social status of the world's most popular recreational drug: ethanol.
Friday, February 14
MARRIAGE AND THE MODERN WOMAN
There's been an ocean of spilled ink over why heterosexual marriage no longer works — and especially why it no longer works for women. Fewer Canadians than ever before are bothering to get married. But when they do, women are the ons more likely to initiate divorce, and tend to wait longer before re-entering a marriage or common law union. Once the romance wears off, and the work of running a household takes over, do women think it's worth it? Do the realities have to fundamentally change for women to continue saying "I do"? *This episode was originally aired on Feb. 21, 2024.
Monday, February 17
WHAT'S IN A NAME? THE RACE TO CLASSIFY UNIDENTIFIED SPECIES
In a time of unprecedented biodiversity loss — what's in a name? In 2023, scientists announced a startling discovery in the Pacific ocean — in a site proposed for deep sea mining, the seafloor was not a barren wasteland, but a rich underwater garden, bustling with life — in fact, thousands of undiscovered life forms. The discovery of so many species unknown to science raised concerns about unintended impacts of ocean mining, but it also highlighted an unsettling fact about our relationship to the natural world: 86 per cent of land species and 91 per cent of marine species remain undiscovered. With an unprecedented change to the natural world underway, are we running out of time to classify the life around us — and what is lost if we don't?
Tuesday, February 18
SILENCE AND MEMORY: LILIA TOPOUZOVA
During the Communist era in Bulgaria there was little room for political dissent. Protesters, anyone who opposed the government, could be arrested, sent to the Gulag, silenced. For 20 years, Lilia Topouzova has been collecting the stories of those who survived: some had many stories, some had little to say, some had nothing to say — or just no way of saying it. From these eloquent stories she has recreated a Bulgarian room from the Communist era, where her meetings and conversations with survivors can be heard, a space about the absence of memory and what that does to a people, a space to bear witness to those who were sent to the camps, but who were everyone's friends, relatives…neighbours. The installation 'The Neighbours' is the official Bulgarian entry to the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Wednesday, February 19
THE LINK BETWEEN ANTI-ELITISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM: ADAM GOPNIK
New Yorker writer and former CBC Massey Lecturer, Adam Gopnik, spoke at Massey College in Toronto during the fall of 2024. In the second annual Irving Abella Lecture, he examines the historic dynamics of anti-semitism from both the political right and left, and traces how they inform and shape contemporary anti-elitism and anti-urbanism. Hitler's original targets, for example, weren't the impoverished Jews of eastern Europe, who suffered immeasurably during the Holocaust. It was the class of literate, educated, accomplished Jews in major urban centres — the elites of their place and time.
Thursday, February 20
WHY AQUINAS MATTER NOW: OLIVER KEENAN
St. Thomas Aquinas lived and worked more than 750 years ago, a time that seems to have little in common with our own. Over the intervening centuries, Aquinas' influence on faith and philosophy has been immense, but what could this medieval fixture possibly have to teach us today? Oxford scholar and Dominican priest Oliver Keenan argues in his new book, Why Aquinas Matters Now, that St. Thomas' own experience, his lessons on how to look at the world, his commitment to non-violence, and his faith in the power of communication all have important implications for how we might find flourishing amidst the challenges of our own age.
Friday, February 21
THE PASSION OF ÉMILE NELLIGAN, CANADA'S SADDEST POET
Broken violins, distraught pianos, the way birdsong reminds him of how all his joy is no more, cruel love, cruel angels, ships that once carried gold but now lie wrecked and empty and chewed-up by seawater, absent fathers, mothers who aren't as pretty as when they were younger, abandoned churches, ruined chapels, Montreal when there's too much snow, the thought — striking a young man while drunk on red wine — that a fleeting glimpse of happiness is mere worthless illusion in a world that stubbornly misunderstands and fails to appreciate him. During three years at the end of the 19th century, Émile Nelligan wrote hundreds of tragic, passionate, and formally perfect sonnets and rondels on these subjects and more. This brief blooming would render him Quebec's most famous poet. His story lent itself to an opera, a ballet, a movie, and many books. There are prizes, libraries, schools, hotels, and online magazines now bearing Nelligan's name. And yet, most English-speaking Canadians seem never to have heard of him. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 9, 2024.
Monday, February 24
IMPROV
For many people, the thought of speaking in public is horrifying. Imagine trying to make people laugh. Without a script. And just making it up as you go along. This documentary by Peter Brown shows how improv can be both exhilarating and liberating — and maybe, just maybe, a force for good.
Tuesday, February 25
THE LONG GAME: LOVING YOUR COUNTRY IN THE 21st CENTURY (STEP THREE)
After the 21st-century person has chosen which country they belong to, and worked out how to perform the duty of respecting its history at the same time as helping it avoid repeating (or continuing) any bad parts of that history, they arrive at "Step Three" in the journey towards a healthy form of patriotism. This is the hardest step yet, alleges IDEAS producer Tom Howell, since it requires coming to terms with an unfairness built into the relationship: human lifespans tend to be much shorter than those of nations. Drawing on insights from Welsh, Israeli, Afghan, and Quebecois voices, Howell finds out how people frame their expectations of what their countries can become within an imaginable length of time.
Wednesday, February 26
TBD
Thursday, February 27
TBD
Friday, February 28
TBD
