 | IDEAS airs weekdays on CBC Radio One
at 8 p.m. (8:30 p.m. NT) and 4 a.m. (4:30 a.m. NT) | |  | Monday, July 14, 2025 | |  | | Canadian human rights lawyer Alex Neve will deliver the 2025 CBC Massey Lectures, Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World. You can hear his Massey Lectures on IDEAS this fall. (Paul Thompson/House of Anansi Press) | | | How to get tickets to attend Alex Neve's 2025 CBC Massey Lectures | The CBC Massey Lectures are back. This year, human rights lawyer Alex Neve will explore what it takes to make human rights truly universal. He will visit five Canadian cities starting in September for live recordings: Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, and Ottawa. Find out if the Massey Lectures will be in your city and come join us. | | | | | *Please note this schedule is subject to change. | | | The theme of the week is... | All this week we’re featuring philosophers whose insights still have resonance for us today. First up, Friedrick Nietzsche. | | | MONDAY, JULY 14 | | | Nietzsche and the Art of 'Passing By' | | Philosopher Friedrick Nietzsche is most popularly known for his declaration that 'God is dead' and for his wrestling with nihilism. But political theorist Shalini Satkunanandan argues that Nietzsche offers us a method that can help us navigate the highly polarizing discourse that's afflicting democracies today. "Where one can no longer love, one should pass by," wrote Nietzsche. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 20, 2025. | | | TUESDAY, JULY 15 | | | Is Human Intelligence Overrated? | | Our brains tell us human intelligence is unique in understanding this complicated world — that our intellects make us superior to all other animals. It allows us to imagine and build remarkable technologies. Write poetry and ponder the stars. But all that brain power has also allowed us to carry out unspeakable atrocities and could lead to our extinction. That realization has led one Canadian scientist to conclude human intelligence is the worst thing to have ever happened to the Earth. *This episode originally aired on June 22, 2023. | | | WEDNESDAY, JULY 16 | | | Nasty, Brutish... and Anxious — What Thomas Hobbes Would Tell Democracies Now | English philosopher Thomas Hobbes might be best known for his belief that in the state of nature, without a powerful sovereign force to rein people in, life is 'nasty, brutish and short.' Amid high anxiety regarding the health of democracy in Europe and North America, McGill University PhD student Vertika (who goes by the one name only) calls for a better understanding of what Hobbes believed about that very emotion: anxiety. She argues that his writing on the topic provides lessons for worried politicos today. Ideas visits a political theory conference in Virginia, in the wake of the American election, to learn more. *This episode is part of our ongoing series, Ideas from the Trenches. It originally aired on Jan. 13, 2025. | | | THURSDAY, JULY 17 | | | Beware of Bitter Oranges: Ibn Khaldun | | The modern history of economic theory often traces back to the Scottish economist and philosopher, Adam Smith, who is also known as "The Father of Economics." But 400 years before Adam Smith, an Andalusian philosopher, economist, and historian was putting forward economic theories that, today, are taken for granted. If Adam Smith is the father then, perhaps, Ibn Khaldun is his great-grandfather many times over. He is described as the founder of historiography, economics, and sociology. Ibn Khaldun broke with Islamic methodological tradition and formulated a new way to think about the study of sociology that kept the study of human society independent from an understanding of divine intervention and focussed instead on uncovering the mechanisms that lead to social transformation. His most famous book is the Muqaddimah which offers an early example of universal history and is often referred to as an early understanding of social Darwinism. *This episode originally aired on June 24, 2021. | | | FRIDAY, JULY 18 | | | Would the Real Martin Luther Please Stand Up? | Five hundred years ago, when Martin Luther translated the New Testament so that ordinary Germans could understand it, he sparked a theological, social and political revolution that we're still living in. But who exactly was he? A life-risking fighter for freedom of conscience? Many still see him that way. But when peasants revolted against the princes they were suffering under, he sided with the princes. And his infamous antisemitism was embraced by the Nazis. So who exactly was Martin Luther? *This episode originally aired on April 14, 2022. | | |  | Listen whenever you want.
Get the latest or catch up on past episodes of Ideas, CBC Radio's program of contemporary thought. Subscribe to the podcast | | | |  | The great divide in politics is showing up all around us, an example above shows a Trump supporter (L) arguing with an anti-Trump supporter outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, April 4, 2023. Experts suggest to cope with the tension, take a lesson from Friedrick Nietzsche's philosophy on 'passing by.’ (Kena Betancur/Getty Images) | | | IDEAS IN THE AFTERNOON | MONDAY, JULY 14 at 2 p.m. | | | | | Philosopher Friedrick Nietzsche is most popularly known for his declaration that 'God is dead' and for his wrestling with nihilism. But political theorist Shalini Satkunanandan argues that Nietzsche offers us a method that can help us navigate the highly polarizing discourse that's afflicting democracies today. "Where one can no longer love, one should pass by," wrote Nietzsche. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | |
