Ideaswith Nahlah Ayed

British sociologist Jennie Bristow debates U.S. author Bruce Cannon Gibney over the baby boom generation and its legacy for the world. Should boomers be held responsible for high house prices, the climate crisis, national debts and the woes of millennials?

There have never been as many cities across the world as there are right now, nor with such high populations. Yet urban loneliness is a virtual pandemic, and one with huge social, medical and financial consequences. Why are cities the new capitals of isolation?

In a compelling conversation, acclaimed journalist and author Kamal Al-Solayee discusses all things brown, from the psychology of the colour, to why he says, it’s always 'a bridesmaid, never the bride,' in the constructed hierarchy of human skin tone. 

Sigmund Freud had many radical ideas about our inner life and how mental illness and trauma might be treated. Perhaps his most radical idea was that the patient should be listened to. This episode features a panel discussion at the Stratford Festival about the current state of Freud's legacy on self-knowledge.

Opera may have a reputation as being highbrow and snooty but it was intended as popular entertainment — music for everyone. On this episode of The Enright Files, conversations with opera singers about their art and their place in a grand tradition.

In 2011, American psychologist Daryl Bem proved the impossible. He showed that precognition — the ability to sense the future — is real. His study was explosive, and shook the very foundations of psychology. Contributor Alexander B. Kim in Vancouver explores the ‘replication crisis’ and what it means for the field and beyond.

Highlights include: award-winning author Kamal Al-Solaylee on what it means to be brown in the world today (Nov 6); Boomer-bashing: Is it fair to blame a generation? (Nov 8); Sally Armstrong's CBC Massey Lectures: Power Shift: The Longest Revolution (Nov 11-15): and how climate change is threatening the complex ecosystems of deserts (Nov 22).

Leonardo da Vinci would have loved Halloween. The renaissance artist and engineer was also a monster buff. Writer and historian Ross King unveils da Vinci’s sketches and stories of monsters, beasts, giants and dragons, and explains how the artist’s views on fantasy were in contrast to an increasingly rational age.

Professor Bartha Knoppers is the 2019 recipient of the Henry G. Friesen International Prize for excellence in health research. Once a scholar of surrealist poetry, she has now become a world-renowned voice and a prolific researcher in the field of medical ethics.

PhD graduate Laura Hare taught herself Biblical Hebrew so she could analyze male and female speech patterns in the original text of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament). She found the women characters consistently using language that shows deference to men. The only female biblical character who fully speaks ‘like a man’ also became an archetype of evil — Queen Jezebel.

How can it be that psychiatry still doesn’t know what causes major mental problems such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia? Historian Anne Harrington and writer Marya Hornbacher explore psychiatry’s messy medical past and surprisingly uncertain present.

Astrophysicist Hubert Reeves is one of the world's leading experts on the Big Bang theory. But as IDEAS producer Mary Lynk found out, not only is the French-Canadian a brilliant cosmologist; he's also a riveting storyteller and popularizer of science. Not to explain the complex, he says, is undemocratic. This is part 2 of a 2-part series.

Hubert Reeves is one of the world's foremost experts on the Big Bang and the origins of time. He lives in France, where the acclaimed astrophysicist has the status of a rock star. And yet he's largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Reeves is now 87, and speaks with producer Mary Lynk at his country home in Burgundy, outdoors and under the stars.

Edward Said's seminal book, Orientalism (1978), proposed one of the most influential and enduring analyses of the relationship between the West and the Middle East. In many ways, his ideas seem uncontroversial, perhaps even obvious today. But four decades ago, what Said proposed was radical. It still is.

The Parisian-American philosopher Justin E. H. Smith speaks about the history of irrationality, and why it’s always been reason’s “twin.” He argues that attempts to impose the victory of reason always lead to explosions of irrationality, whether in our individual lives or at the level of society.

It's never been easier to banish the feeling of boredom — at least for a moment. But some fear our weapons of mass distraction could lead to an epidemic of ennui and ADD. Contributor Peter Mitton examines boredom and discovers a little-understood universal state of mind.