About The Show
Ideas is CBC Radio's premier program of contemporary
thought, with an audience of approximately 400,000 listeners.
Ideas is broadcast Monday through Friday from 9 to 10 pm and
is heard throughout Canada and the northern United States
on the 402
radio stations and transmitters of the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, Canada's public broadcaster.
Ideas is eclectic in form and content. We cover social issues,
culture and the arts, geopolitics, history, biography, science
and technology, and the humanities. Most of our programs are
documentaries in which thoughts are gathered, contexts explored,
and connections made.
The 1965 premiere broadcast of Ideas (at first called The
Best Ideas You'll Hear Tonight) was on the CBC-FM network,
amalgamating two former series titled University of the
Air and The Learning Stage. The first three programs
featured a discussion of Darwin's theory of evolution and
an interview with members of the CBC Galapagos Expedition,
a series called Peace on Earth, the music of Villa-Lobos,
and a talk by Earle Birney about poetry and creativity. Back
in 1965 The CBC Times announced that "full-attention
programming is what CBC-FM radio offers its listeners. IDEAS
is a series prepared for people who just enjoy thinking."
Ideas also plays host to The
Massey Lectures, sponsored by CBC Radio in cooperation
with Massey College at the University of Toronto, and created
to honour Vincent Massey, former Governor-General of Canada
and an energetic advocate for the humanities in Canada. Inaugurated
in 1961, and heard on IDEAS since the program's creation in
1965, the Massey Lectures "enable distinguished authorities
to communicate the results of original study on important
subjects of contemporary interest".
The 2005 Massey Lectures are entitled Race Against
Time. Stephen Lewis—the UN
Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa—offers
compelling insight into the problems that continue to threaten
humankind—poverty, hunger, gender and class inequality—and
a hopeful glimpse of a solution on the horizon. This is a
heartfelt plea, an examination of the depth of these challenges
and a recipe for banishing them.
Over the years, dozens of books have evolved
from Ideas broadcasts, and since 1986 we have published transcripts
of most Ideas programs. Audio cassettes and CDs of many shows
are also available.
We welcome your ideas. To find out how to submit a proposal,
go to our submissions page.
Host: Paul Kennedy
Executive Producer: Bernie Lucht
Producers: David Cayley, Richard Handler, Susan Mahoney, Mary O'Connell, Sara Wolch.
Associate Producer and Web Master: Liz Nagy
Resident Technician: David Field
Our Regional Producers are:
CBC Vancouver - Kathleen Flaherty
Senior Producer, Prairies , CBC Alberta - Dave Redel
CBC Halifax - Stewart Young
CBC Ottawa - Lisa Hebert
CBC Montreal - Jane Lewis
CBC St. John's - Marie Wadden
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