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2026 CBC Massey Lecturer Leilani Farha believes the only way to really understand the housing crisis is to visit people in their homes. This fall, she’s been travelling the country doing exactly that. Ahead of the broadcast of her lectures, Housing Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home, she sits down with Nahlah Ayed to share excerpts from her conversations.

Vimy, Dieppe and Normandy are places that hold profound and enduring meaning for many Canadians. But few have heard of Brunete, Teruel and Fuentes de Ebro — battles that saw Canadian volunteers facing Nazi bullets and bombs during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1965, CBC researcher Mac Reynolds spoke with volunteers to understand why they defied Canadian law to put their lives on the line to fight fascism in a country not their own. This documentary is called "A Duty Beyond Borders," by freelance contributor Stephen Smith.

The current wave of anti-elitism and anti-urbanism we're seeing from authoritarian leaders and their followers may seem to have erupted out of nowhere. But for New Yorker writer and former CBC Massey Lecturer Adam Gopnik, what we see now stems from historic antisemitism. *This episode originally aired Feb. 18, 2025

The 2023 detainment in Russia of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich made international headlines. Two years post-release, he’s taken the story back in a book: This Cursed Beautiful Land. He discusses journalism, freedom and international law at the 2026 Graeme Gibson Talk, along with fellow writers Carol Off and Philippe Sands.

In the wake of the U.S. midterm elections, Kim Lane Scheppele is relieved that the electoral process ran smoothly. Yet she believes there is still reason to fear for the health of American democracy. She argues that not all government coups require long knives, tanks, kidnapped politicians, renegade army officers or even clear illegality. There’s such a thing as “constitutional” coup, says the Princeton politics professor. This type of coup gradually overcomes safeguards through legal and norm-changing measures, using the tools of democracy itself, until all that remains is one-party autocratic rule. Scheppele draws on her years living in Hungary and Russia, plus her study of democratic collapses around the world, to propose a ten-point checklist that helps us spot when such a constitutional coup is underway. And like many American experts on autocracy, she’s now turning her analytic gaze on her own country.

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.” Matilda worked side by side with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to get women the vote in the United States and co-wrote the history of the women’s movement with them. IDEAS producer Dawna Dingwall looks into why the towering figure was erased by her peers, and the work that is being done to write Matilda back into history. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 26, 2026. "The Matilda Effect" was a term coined by a historian Margaret Rossiter to describe women whose work had been overlooked and erased from history, like Matilda Gage. Listen to this podcast to hear about the lost women of science and how Rossiter gave them the credit they deserved. Guests in this episode: Angelica Shirley Carpenter, author of Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist Michael Patrick Hearn, author of the Annotated Wizard of Oz Gita Dorothy Morena, great-great-granddaughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage Ciarrai Eaton, executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation The late Sally Roesch Wagner, former ED of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation appears courtesy of The Book Dreams Podcast, WCNY's Repeating History podcast, the International Wizard of Oz Club and filmmaker Jeremy Kagan.

For thousands of years, genetic inheritance was an observation in search of a theory. While some once thought of genetic code as fate, we now know that our genes are in a complex dance with each other and the world around us. Dr. Jehannine (J9) Austin, head of the department of medical genetics at the University of British Columbia, delivered the 2026 Boehm Lecture in Public Health and Healthcare, called "Our Wellness Codes." They spoke about how genetic counselling can help reduce risk of illness and disease — and live a better life.

"What is good?" is at the heart of philosophy. Asking the question helps us move toward answers about inclusivity, equality, and who gets a voice at the table. Last year, The Munk School at the University of Toronto hosted philosophers and writers and put philosophy to the test. When it comes to the good, they asked, what good is philosophy? *This episode originally aired on Sept. 8, 2023.

In a world swirling with crisis upon crisis, historian Kevin Gannon contends that, even in our darkest days, hope persists. It might be far in the background sometimes, but it's always there. Gannon also argues that hope cannot exist without the oxymoronic twinning of love and rage.

Magician Harry Houdini crusaded against for-profit psychics and séances in the years before his death. He deplored the tools of his own art being used to exploit grief, says author David Jaher. Now those same tools are being used in politics, marketing, and scams, say psychologists Massimo Polidoro and Alice Pailhès.

"We are the monsters" — that's the premise for the genre of film known as body horror — movies that fixate on monstrous and grotesque changes to the body. There have been good body horror films and bad ones, but "The Fly" starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis was perhaps the most consequential. The movie captured anxieties around bodily autonomy and physical decay, just as the AIDS epidemic was becoming catastrophic. Forty years later, body horror is back with films like "The Substance" and "Together." Producer Matthew Lazin-Ryder examines what these films reveal about our bodies, our minds and our sense of who we are. *This episode originally aired on Dec. 18, 2025.

Math may be the language of the universe, and brilliant minds and technology may have unlocked many of the secrets of the universe. But the pursuit of knowledge and insight always starts with the same thing: curiosity. Asimina Arvanitaki, a groundbreaking researcher with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont., reprises a talk she recently gave in her native Greece about the role of curiosity has played in the history of scientific discovery and in her own passion for science. And, in a wide-ranging onstage interview with Nahlah Ayed, she discusses the importance of fundamental research, the responsibilities of scientists to the public, and the appropriate role of AI in scientific research.

Erik Satie’s music is everywhere: in advertisements, coffee shops, and elevators. His iconic compositions like Gymnopédies have been streamed millions of times and become staples of background music worldwide. But Satie’s relationship to "background music" goes far deeper than simply having a knack for writing it. Over a century ago, he began composing what he called "furniture music" – pieces designed to fit into an environment just like a table, or chair. It was the beginning of a background music revolution, paving the way for everything from Brian Eno to Muzak. In "Satie’s Furniture," contributor Craig Desson tells the story of why Satie created furniture music, and how his radical idea transformed the way we listen today.

For most of human history there was one problem with our food: there wasn’t enough of it. But the food system we built to solve that problem — the one capable of feeding eight billion people — is responsible for a third of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also made poor diet the leading cause of early death globally — ahead of smoking. Producer Mitchell Stuart spent a year asking: what should we be eating instead?

From the earliest days of cinema to our era of streaming, zooming, and scrolling, the screen has become a central part of our lives -- so central that it actually impedes our lives, erasing our bodies, and to hiding from one another. Kim Nelson, film professor and director of the Humanities Research Centre at the University of Windsor, argues in a public talk that remaining connected entails protecting and treasuring the enduring wisdom of the humanities -- literature, history, philosophy, art, and drama. This event was held at the University of Windsor and features an onstage interview between Kim Nelson and IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed.