Ideas

The Dirty Thirties might seem like the distant past but according to IDEAS contributor and professor Evan Fraser now is the time to heed the lessons about what worked to save farmers and agriculture. He argues the Dust Bowl should serve as a warning of compounding crises that lie ahead. But Fraser adds it also serves as a guide to solutions that could help us muddle through as the world lurches into another chapter of environmental, political and economic upheaval.Guests in this episode:Evan Fraser is a geography professor and director of Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.Pamela Riney-Kehrberg is a distinguished professor of history at Iowa State University.Robert McLeman is a professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

What does an IDEAS producer do when he notices that shipwreck stories keep appearing in his life? He embarks on a journey to try and figure out what’s going on, why shipwrecks resonate today. Matthew Lazin-Ryder explores the history of shipwreck tales and how shipwrecks have not only been a mainstay trope in literature but also a constant metaphor in our lives. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 24, 2025.

In fact, author and journalist Marcello Di Cintio argues Canadians are complicit. After four years investigating the lives of migrant workers, he found that many temporary foreign workers are trapped working in precarious, exploitative conditions. These jobs are essential to our economy and society, yet invisible. Each migrant worker has a story to tell, says Di Cintio. He joined IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed on a visit through the tomato capital of Canada to hear their stories and talk about what his investigation reveals about Canada. *This episode originally aired on Dec. 11, 2025.Marcello Di Cintio's book is called Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers.

Marsha Lederman is a child of Holocaust survivors. She lives with the fear that one day someone will take her and her son like the Nazis did with her parents and their parents. "This is ludicrous," she told herself many times. But then she saw how people celebrated the October 7th attacks and watched how antisemitism showed up in the circles she felt most at home.This spring to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Lederman and child Holocaust survivor Jeanette Goldman shared their stories on Zoom at the University of Toronto's Regis College — an online event due to security reasons. They spoke about what true solidarity means today as antisemitism continues to rise in Canada. Lederman says: "We cannot allow antisemitism to stop us from speaking about antisemitism of all things."Guests in this episode:Jeanette Goldman is a retired federal judge and a child Holocaust survivor.Marsha Lederman is a journalist, daughter of Holocaust survivors, and author of Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust Once Removed, and October 7th: Finding the Humanitarian Middle.Mary Jo Leddy is a Catholic theologian, author, activist, and founder of Romero House in Toronto.Bertha Yetman is a Regis College Alumnus, and organizer of “Remembering the Holocaust.”

In the 19th-century Pandita Ramabai travelled America delivering lectures on how the caste system and patriarchy shaped the trajectory of women’s lives. When she came back to her home India, the feminist explained America's customs around gender and race relations, and their experiment with democracy. IDEAS explores her rich life and legacy. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 10, 2025.Guests in this episode:Radha Vatsal is the author of No. 10 Doyers Street (March 2025), as well as the author of the Kitty Weeks mystery novels. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, she earned her Ph.D. in Film History from Duke University and has worked as a film curator, political speechwriter, and freelance journalist.Tarini Bhamburkar is a research affiliate at the University of Bristol. Her research explores cross-racial networks and international connections built by British and Indian women's feminist periodical press between 1880 and 1910, which sowed the seeds of the transnational Suffrage movement of the early 20th century.Sandeep Banerjee is an associate professor of English at McGill University and a scholar of Global Anglophone and World literature, with a focus on the literary and cultural worlds of colonial and postcolonial South Asia.Readings by Aparita Bhandari and Pete Morey.

If you inherited $120 million dollars, could you give away 75 per cent of your wealth? Abigail Disney did. She's an heiress to the Disney fortune. The philanthropist, filmmaker and activist offers an insider perspective into the twisted perils of extreme wealth — on society and the human psyche.Part two in a four-part series called The Billionaire Age. Listen to Part One: How did we get here?*Please note: Part three will be available as a podcast on May 26, and part four on June 30.Guest in this episode:Abigail E. Disney is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, philanthropist, and activist. Her films include The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales, the Emmy Award-winning The Armor of Light — both co-directed with Kathleen Hughes — and Pray the Devil Back to Hell. As a philanthropist and activist, she has championed peacebuilding, gender justice, and systemic cultural change.She is Chair and Co-Founder of Level Forward, an ecosystem of storytellers, entrepreneurs, and social change-makers dedicated to balancing artistic vision, social impact, and stakeholder return. She also founded Peace is Loud, a nonprofit that uses storytelling to advance social movements, and the Daphne Foundation, which supports organizations working for a more equitable, fair, and peaceful New York City.She is currently working on a book about wealth, power, and privilege.

This podcast is about testing the limits of fairness. It's about taking to heart the meaning behind "Beyond the Pale" — a phrase referring to ideas that are so outrageous it's impossible to deal with them in reasonable terms. Follow IDEAS producer Tom Howell as he covers uncomfortable terrain. When the time for ‘open-mindedness’ stops and prejudices become — possibly — a good thing. *This is the final episode in a series tackling the implications of bias. It originally aired on on June 8, 2022.Guests in this episode:Eduardo Mendieta is a philosophy professor at Pennsylvania State University. He edited the final book by Richard Rorty, Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism.Barbara Kay is a columnist at The National Post and The Epoch Times.Misha Glouberman is co-author (with Sheila Heti) of The Chairs Are Where the People Go. He runs a negotiation course called How to Talk to People About Things.Rahim Mohamed is a freelance writer and college instructor at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. His opinion columns are published in the online newsletter, The Line.Anne-Marie Pham is an executive director of the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion.Michael Bacon is a political theorist at Royal Holloway, University of London. His books include Pragmatism: An Introduction.Martin Zibauer is from the Cosburn Park Lawn Bowling Club in Toronto, Ontario.

All of us are biased. We have individual biases, momentary biases, morning biases and evening biases. Our institutions are biased. Our constitutions are biased. So what to do about it? IDEAS producer Tom Howell explores the art of naming your most important biases — and deciding which to keep, as he continues his investigation into what the field of ‘bias studies’ has to offer us. *This episode is part two of a three-part series exploring the meaning of 'bias.' It originally aired on Feb. 3, 2022.Guests in this episode:Olivier Sibony is the author of Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment and You're About to Make a Terrible Mistake.Jessica Nordell is the author of The End of Bias: A Beginning.Jimmy Calanchini is assistant professor of psychology at University of California, Riverside.Jack Nagler was the ombudsman at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Driftpile Cree poet Billy-Ray Belcourt's favourite place in the world is his mother's house. It's marked with a horrible, dark past — built for nuns who ran the local residential school in Northern Alberta. Belcourt grew up in the shadow of that school. But his mom drenched this home with love so powerful it surpassed the haunted context. Belcourt's mother's house provokes questions reconciliation couldn't quite answer: what does it mean to live inside history and how do you imagine your way out? In this lecture for Vancouver Island University’s Indigenous Speaker’s Series, he makes the case for literature as a more honest reckoning.

Estuaries are a meeting of two worlds: the river and the sea. They’re incredibly fertile ecosystems that sustain 80 per cent of coastal fish and wildlife in British Columbia. For thousands of years, estuaries were central to Indigenous agriculture on parts of the West Coast. Then a new kind of agriculture arrived, profoundly altering the landscape. IDEAS visits the Cowichan Valley, where an ambitious project aims to restore an estuary — and to revitalize language, culture and traditional agriculture.Guests in this podcast:Tom Reid is the West Coast Conservation Manager for the Nature Trust of BC.Jared Qwustenuxun Williams is a passionate traditional foods chef who works with elders and knowledge holders to keep traditional food practices alive.Dr. Jennifer Grenz is a Nlaka’pamux scholar and a member of the Lytton First Nation. She is the principal investigator at the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC.Siil'na'mut Ken Elliott is a Cowichan elder and plant knowledge keeper who has worked in habitat restoration for decades. With his wife, he runs Ken Elliott's Native Plant Nursery.Alyssa Zandvliet is a graduate student at Simon Fraser University conducting research with the Historical Ecological Research Lab at SFU and the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC.Kim Lagimodiere is the acting marine projects manager at the Lulumexun Lands and Natural Resources department of Cowichan Tribes. She is also the coordinator of the S-hwuhwa'us Thi'lut Kw'atl'kwa (Thunderbird Protecting the Ocean) program.