How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's Uganda
After seizing power in a 1971 coup, Ugandan military commander Idi Amin promised a return to democracy — but he delivered a brutal dictators...
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Ideas from CBC Radio (Highlights)
Ideas is all about ideas \x96 programs that explore everything from culture and the arts to science and technology to social issues.
Episodes
20 of 303 episodesUnpacking the contradictions in America's ideals
What has become of the America that has for so long been held up as a shining example of ideals? In conversation at the 2026 Aspen Ideas Fes...
Human emotion behind AI chatbot design
Behind every great chatbot are many human workers making decisions on how those chatbots behave and evolve. Recent PhD graduate Noah Khan ha...
A poet's journey from being exiled to gaining citizenship
When Rohingya poet Mayyu Ali saw his name in print for the first time, he thought: "I exist." "Even though my government doesn't recognize [...
What the far-right are borrowing from history’s fascism aesthetics
Fascism has been called “the aestheti-cization of politics.” Nazis and Italian Fascists both made visual culture, art, even fashion part of...
What Mussolini's rise and fall reveals about modern authoritarianism
In 1922, Benito Mussolini took power in Italy. Sustained by a cult of personality and iron-fisted suppression of dissent, Mussolini transfor...
How our education system is far from its original ideals
Acclaimed author Gabor Maté joins the conversation in part two of our series exploring Wilhelm von Humboldt’s public education system. Maté...
Public education was built on this key concept — now it's gone
Two hundred years ago, Wilhelm von Humboldt created the education system as we know it today. At the heart of his philosophy of education wa...
For 40 years trains brought classrooms to children
They were known as School Cars and Schools on Wheels. Trains that chugged along the railroads and brought schooling to children living in th...
Confronting the escalating attacks on universities
The Trump administration has been targeting higher education for some time now — freezing grants and filing lawsuits against leading univers...
Should homework be banned for students?
A hundred years ago homework was described as a 'sin against childhood.' But the practice is still a staple of our education system. Some pa...
How a German philosopher predicted our digital age
What happens when original artworks become endless copies? German philosopher Walter Benjamin called it the death of "aura," and his concept...
Why Gandhi's vision for an inclusive India never materialized
Gandhi envisioned a free India as a place of communal harmony where each person understood duty and sacrifice. Today, India is rife with an...
The suffragist who was too radical for Susan. B. Anthony
You likely have never heard of Matilda Joslyn Gage. Gloria Steinem calls her “the woman ahead of the women who were ahead of their time.” Ma...
The overlapping truths of history and fiction
Fact and fiction may seem poles apart but writers Esi Edugyan and Tiya Miles find the two intertwine perfectly in their award-winning storyt...
Turn to the power of 'freudenfreude' in times of despair
The world is feeling darker and darker these days. So this podcast might be a much-needed balm. It's about hope — a practice that scholar Sh...
David Bowie took his own death as a creative catalyst
Throughout his career, it wasn't unusual for David Bowie to sing about death. But the musician used his own mortality as a theme for a final...
How to brace for a world of unheard-of conditions
Alain Deneault has a philosophical cure for eco-angst. He proposes turning the angst into actions in the face of unprecedented, unpredictabl...
Bringing a farm — and its philosophy — back to life
Growing up with food insecurity, Julian Napoleon yearned to be a farmer. His great-grandparents once farmed on the Saulteau First Nations re...
How the Anthropocene is changing the elements — and us
Our relationship with earth and water is changing in the Anthropocene, says renowned author Robert Macfarlane. Humanity has become a transfo...