Ideas

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On Ideas, there's something for everyone.

We talk to deep thinkers and produce compelling stories that help us better understand the world in which we live.

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[gentle music] Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

Canadians and Americans have always had their differences.

But many Canadians now feel affronted and outraged and puzzled, wondering what exactly has become of the United States since the rise of Donald Trump and MAGA.

Many Americans are wondering the very same thing, especially given the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document synonymous with the highest ideals of democracy.

The American experiment was a central theme of the 2026 edition of the Aspen Ideas Festival, held by the Aspen Institute in Colorado.

This episode of Ideas features two conversations from the festival.

[upbeat jingle] This is a CBC podcast.

Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

And I'm a chatbot, speaking with a soothing but artificially generated voice.

I look at different places where emotions are located and try to put some story together about them, that is, this kind of supply chain.

A supply chain that's embedded in a complex environment of desires, collective imagination, and some would say, industry propaganda.

Noah Khan's research is the focus of our latest episode of Ideas From the Trenches, our series highlighting exceptional PhD research across the country.

It's produced by Nicola Luksic and Tom Howell.

[upbeat music] This is a CBC podcast.

Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

[somber music] As a young Rohingya man growing up in Myanmar, Mayu Ali used to hide his writing from everyone he knew, not because he didn't believe in what he was writing, but because he didn't yet know what it meant to be a writer or what it might cost him.

I fled the genocide in 2017, and I was living in the refugee camp in Cox's Bazar for four years, uh, until I was resettled to Canada in 2021.

So recently I finished my master degree in University of Waterloo, and currently I live in Ottawa.

On Ideas, my conversation with Mayu Ali about identity, exile, and the power of the written word.

Writing is a revolution because it involves telling the truth, and it involves telling about my identity and who we are.

This is a CBC Podcast.

Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nala Ayyad.

This is Godfrey Talbot.

But what new tools might we gain to combat them by examining the stages of their collapse? That is the question at the heart of our series, How to Defeat Authoritarianism.

Fascism can be defeated if you see the signs.

We recorded the series in July 2026 at the Stratford Festival in Ontario during a week of events hosted by Ideas.

It is my pleasure to

This is a CBC podcast.

Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

It began with two chugging steam locomotives, School Car Number One and School Car Number Two.

There was never a question about whether it was left out.

Homework was finished, and then some.

[music] You're listening to Ideas on CBC Radio One in Canada, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca/ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

[upbeat music] Knowledge is indeed under siege.

Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

Academic freedom has declined more quickly in the US than in any other country in the past year.

... and law because I think the, the spillover effect is quite concerning.

[outro music] That spillover effect that political scientist Malinda S. Smith talks about was part of an on-stage discussion I moderated at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto called Knowledge Under Siege.

This is Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

[upbeat music] This is a CBC podcast.

Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

[upbeat music]

You've had extreme positions on both sides.

There's definitely a power dynamic there, and I think it's because of this power that's embedded in that institution, in that expectation that you will toe a line, that you will do what you are told.

Ideas producer Nikola Luksic explores the minefield that homework has become.

Oh, would you like to feel the, the heaviness of the backpack?

[upbeat jingle] This is a CBC podcast.

[waves crashing] Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

[somber music] "Lord, you are great and worthy of our praise.

Oh, I love it.

It's so good, and well annotated.

Ideas producer Sean Foley met with four scholars to talk about their encounters with Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo.

So that's, uh, that's gonna be in your papers.

This is a CBC podcast.

Welcome to Ideas.

I'm Nahlah Ayed.

Mahatma Gandhi may have been called the father of the Indian nation, the world's biggest democracy, but his vision for a free India was just one among many.

He is probably one of the most discussed anti-colonial thinker of our times.

He has literally surpassed every other thinker you have.

Ideas contributor Piali Roy brings us this documentary about the life and ideas of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

This is the second of a two-part series called The Idea of India.