Ideas – Details, episodes & analysis

You can’t pay rent with experimental poetry, so Hilary Peach trained as a welder. Twenty-plus years on, she’s now a boiler inspector, poet, and author of an award-winning memoir, Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood. Peach talks about the joys and contradictions of being an outsider inside the trades. *This episode originally aired on May 1, 2024.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was published more than 75 years ago. It's a different era now. IDEAS explores the rights promised in this document and what rights we need for the future in a five-part series. We start with an examination of what the right to "life, liberty, and security of person" means, and how it could transform our world. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 2, 2024.

Our right to privacy is included in the UN's Declaration of Human Rights, but is it really protected? The document, which is over 75 years old, reads: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with [one's] privacy..." In part two of our five-part series, IDEAS explores the profound implications this right has on our lives, from digital surveillance to sexuality and autonomy. *Episode originally aired on Sept. 3, 2024.

If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were rewritten today, what rights would we add to strive for a more just world? In the final episode of our five-part series, IDEAS looks beyond our fractured present and tries to imagine what new rights we need for the new millennium. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 6, 2025.

In an era of great polarization and cancel culture, our right to freedom of thought and expression is especially resonant. Written over 75 years ago, the UN's Declaration of Human Rights requires an update to reflect the times of today. In this fourth episode in our series on human rights, IDEAS explores the history and future of free expression. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 5, 2024.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to leave any country and to return to it. We also have a right to seek "asylum from persecution" in other countries. Are these rights protected for everyone? At a time when more people are forcibly displaced than at any other point in recorded history, Nahlah Ayed speaks with guests about where the rights to leave, return and seek refuge came from, and what they could mean today. *This is part three in a five-part series examining human rights. It originally aired on Sept. 4, 2024.

Look back about 3,000 years and you will find the playbook on authoritarianism remains pretty much the same as it is today. Back in the 5th century BCE, when Herodotus travelled the ancient world gathering stories, he became an expert in would-be tyrants. His tome, The History, shared vivid descriptions of autocratic and tyrannical rulers.

Herodotus was a rule breaker himself. He ignored Greek literary tradition and captured history as accurately as possible from a wide range of sources. One of his many prescient observations was how, given the right circumstances, a political strongman can emerge and seize control — a forewarning for us today. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 9, 2024.

Prior to riding horses, no one wore pants. There's a lot to thank horses for in our daily lives. From the Hollywood motion picture to life-saving vaccines for diphtheria and tetanus. Historian Timothy Winegard argues horses are intertwined in our own history to the point that we overlook their importance. His research explains how they shaped societies, economies and cultures. Without us, horses would be nowhere, and vice versa. It was a partnership — our brains and their braun — that truly changed the world. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 10, 2024.

Brutalist architecture has been celebrated as monumental and derided as ‘concrete monstrosity.' But the people who depend on these buildings are often caught in between. IDEAS explores the implications of Brutalism’s 21st-century hipster aesthetic in a world of housing challenges, environmental crisis, and economic polarization. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 11, 2024.

"Canada can either now lose complete control — which it almost has, economically, spiritually and a few other things — or it can get itself together," said artist Joyce Wieland in 1971. In the 60s and 70s, the artist painted, sculpted and stitched the Canadian flag and our sense of national identity. Her art called on the need to preserve its distinctness from the United States. Now, a quarter century after her death, the artist's work and words form a clarion call. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 12, 2022.