IDEAS schedule for May 2025

* Please note this schedule is subject to change.

Thursday, May 1

CAN YOU OUTRUN TIME?
Brett Popplewell chronicled the life of an octogenarian athlete for his 2024 Edna Staebler Award-winning book, Outsider. Dag Abaye rejects mainstream views of the aging body, and chooses to live alone in an old school bus in the mountains of B.C., challenging himself to run long distances each day. In this public talk, Brett Popplewell considers what he learned from his subject, and about pushing society's limits around aging. 

Friday, May 2

THERE IS NO BLUE: MARTHA BAILLIE ON GRIEF
The death of a family member can stir up a complicated stew of conflicting feelings — grief, loss, resentment, guilt, bewilderment, solace. In her memoir, There Is No Blue, acclaimed Canadian writer Martha Baillie probes the meanings and mysteries of death and family relationships through contemplations of three losses — her 99-year-old mother; her father; and her sister, who suffered from schizophrenia and died by suicide shortly after her mother's death. There Is No Blue was the 2024 winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Award for Nonfiction.

Monday, May 5

DUTCH LIBERATION: A WALK OF REMEMBRANCE 
More than 1.1 million Canadians served in the Second World War, among them Gilbert Hunter and Harry Bockner. In 1941, the two were in the same regiment. One died. One survived. Nearly 80 years later, their descendants were part of a group of Canadian pilgrims to the Netherlands who participated in a walk of remembrance. Following in the footsteps of the Canadian troops together, they walked, they sang, they prayed, and they remembered. *This episode originally aired on May 1, 2023. 

Tuesday, May 6

THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
To wonder is to marvel. More than 2,000 years ago, someone sat down and drafted a list of what was deemed to be the seven wonders of antiquity. At the time, it was a kind of bucket list for ancient travellers — the most awe-inspiring structures that epitomized human imagination and ambition. From the Pyramid of Giza to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, historian Bettany Hughes shares her enthusiasm for the monumental achievements brought into existence by ancient cultures. This onstage conversation was recorded at the Toronto Reference Library. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 6, 2024.

Wednesday, May 7

A HISTORY OF HUMAN SHIELDS  
The use of human shields is likely as old as war itself. In contemporary times we often see the use of involuntary human shields in war and conflict by both regular armies and militias — a practice forbidden under international humanitarian law. But there is also a long history of people voluntarily putting their lives at risk as a way to protect and show solidarity with a person or ideal or to lay bare a difficult political or social reality. Depending on the circumstances, choosing to use one's own body as a form of protection might be celebrated or reviled. In this episode, we take a look at the history of human shields and how they've been used both as a weapon of war and a weapon of peace.

Thursday, May 8

FACIAL RECOGNITION: JOY BUOLAMWINI
Dr Joy Buolamwini is an MIT researcher and bestselling author whose work has exposed biases in AI facial recognition systems — biases that can spread around the world as quickly as a viral video clip. Racial bias, sex and gender bias, and ableism, all in the AI universe — these can have a damaging concrete impact on our future as individuals and as groups. Our most basic freedoms are at stake — freedom of speech, movement, freedom to flourish, even the freedom not to be arrested and detained for crimes we didn't commit. She is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, which raises awareness of the many forms of discrimination built into AI. She also calls herself a Poet of Code, and values art as an integral part of the mission. Dr Joy Buolamwini, on the grave consequences of algorithmic bias, and the importance of creativity in an era of increasing AI presence. 

Friday, May 9

JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE
Donald Trump's political rise and victory in the 2016 US Presidential election might have been a surprise to some. But to historian Kristin Kobes du Mez, it was the latest chapter in a long relationship between white American masculinity and evangelical Christianity. Her 2020 book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, became a New York Times bestseller, and she became an invaluable resource for countless people — inside and outside of the United States — who have been trying to understand where the idea of a 'warrior Jesus' came from, and what lies at the heart of its power. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 18, 2024.
 

Monday, May 12

HEART AND HEAD: THE ARCHEOLOGY OF KISHA SUPERNANT
When she began her line of work, Métis archeologist Kisha Supernant was sometimes called a grave robber. The reason: she was trying to help Indigenous communities locate the graves of children who died at residential schools. Professor Supernant teaches archeology at the University of Alberta, and in a talk she gave in Calgary, she outlines how she uses both traditional knowledge systems, as well as cutting-edge ground radar techniques, to find children's graves so their families and communities can begin to heal. As she maintains, it's an archeology of heart and head.

Tuesday, May 13

TO RUN THE WORLD: GELBER PRIZE
Nahlah Ayed hears from Sergei Radchenko, a historian born on Sakhalin Island, off Russia's south-east coast. He attended school in the U.S., Hong Kongd, and the U.K., and now teaches and writes in Italy and Wales. Radchenko's globe-spanning life trajectory has informed his thinking, naturally, and may help to explain how this scholar succeeds so well at re-telling the world's story from the Cold War to today, focusing especially on what the idea of global power meant to the Soviet Kremlin. His call for a rethink of Moscow's motivations has made Radchenko one of the most-read scholars on Soviet history today. His latest book, To Run the World, earned him Canada's Lionel Gelber Prize for 2025, recognizing the year's best English-language book on international affairs.

Wednesday, May 14

TBD

Thursday, May 15

THE PIG WAR AND THE MEANING OF HISTORY
In 1859, on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, an American shot a pig. But that pig belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company. British warships were dispatched, American troops landed, and suddenly the United States and British Empire were on the brink of war once again. The incident became known as The Pig War, and it claimed one casualty: the pig. Over the years, tales about the conflict have been embellished and exaggerated, conspiracy theories invented, and lessons derived. But underneath all the folklore and tall tales is a story of peace, diplomacy, and how we make meaning out of history. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 15, 2024.

Friday, May 16

CHATHAM ALL-STARS
Ninety years ago, the Chatham Coloured All-Stars became the first all-Black team to win the Ontario baseball championship. In another time and place, players like Wilfred "Boomer" Harding and Earl "Flat" Chase might have been larger-than-life figures, hailed for their superior skill and athleticism. But they remained both legends and part of the neighbourhood in Chatham's East End. Now the story of their historic 1934 season, including the racist treatment they endured and their exploits on the field has resurfaced, and they're getting their due as trailblazing Black Canadian athletes. *This episode originally aired Nov. 25, 2024.

Monday, May 19

MUSIC, JOY, AND THE GOOD LIFE: DANIEL CHUA
Is music joy? It's not a simple question. From Confucius to Saint Augustine, and from Beethoven to the blues, renowned musicologist Daniel Chua explores the ancient correlation between music and joy — a relationship with deep cosmic and theological dimensions. Chua takes listeners on an insightful and delightful quest to discover if music can still be considered joy in our complex modern world. 

Tuesday, May 20

TBD

Wednesday, May 21

TBD

Thursday, May 22 

THE THEATRE OF NEWS: LESSONS FROM ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND 
Theatrical plays in Elizabethan England fed the growth of modern news culture, argues Stephen Wittek in his post-doctoral work. He argues that the cross pollination between theatre and news developed the norms for our contemporary public conversations. *This updated episode of Ideas from the Trenches originally broadcast in 2014. 

Friday, May 23 

HOW BEST TO PROTECT KIDS
Child sex abuse — it's a topic few people want to talk about. But experts in the field of prevention argue that we need to bring pedophilia out of the shadows if we ever want to end abuse. Because, they insist, it is not inevitable. CBC producer John Chipman explores an innovative new program in Kitchener, Ontario that has sex offenders and abuse survivors working together to prevent future harm and promote healing. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 23, 2024.

Monday, May 26

TBD

Tuesday, May 27

THE FOODBANK ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE
At the start of the Road to Nowhere, the mosque of the Islamic Society of Nunavut opens its doors to the hungry. On paper, there's lots of food in Nunavut- herds of caribou in the west, lots of sea creatures in the east, and only 40,000 people to feed. Time was, that that wasn't much of a problem- numbers were smaller, the herds were migratory, and the people were also. These days, most people live in communities, none of them connected by roads. Local food — country food, caribou, whale, seal meat — can be hard to find, and much of it has to travel long distances; other food comes in by ship or by air. A box of cereal  costs $12. A two-pack of baby formula is $106. More than half the people of Nunavut suffer from food insecurity, and there are more than a few food banks. The Iqaluit Masjid operates one of them.

Wednesday, May 28

THE TRANSLATION MOVEMENT
Between the 8th and 10th centuries, Baghdad was the centre of a well-funded and systematic effort to translate large amounts of secular Greek texts into Arabic. The translators were multi-ethnic, multi-faith, and multilingual. The scholars and translators of the Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement often added their own thoughts and ideas to the texts they were translating, seeing them as resources to be engaged with rather than merely texts to be literally translated. The Arabic was eventually translated into Latin bringing to Europe the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen.

Thursday, May 29

THE ELEMENTS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE: AIR
The four classical elements — air, water, earth and fire — are vital to human life and civilization. The history of air on Earth is a dynamic one that's undergone dramatic, even cataclysmic shifts over billions of years on the planet, leading both to explosions of life and mass extinctions. But never has our air changed so much so rapidly as in the past few hundred years of human activity, leading to chokingly bad air quality, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer and climate change. And as the way we live has changed the air, those changes will in turn affect the way we live.

Friday, May 30

TBD