 | IDEAS airs Monday to Friday on CBC Radio One
at 8 p.m. (8:30 p.m. NT) and 4 a.m. (4:30 a.m. NT) | |  | Monday, June 16, 2025 | | | |  | After the Second World War, Theodor Adorno (pictured) and a group of scholars wanted to understand why so many people were drawn to dictatorships. Their study, The Authoritarian Personality published in 1950, is widely referenced today to understand the shifting politics of our own time. (Goethe University Frankfurt/Harper & Brothers) | | | * Please note this schedule is subject to change. | | | MONDAY, JUNE 16 | | | The Authoritarian Personality | | The Authoritarian Personality was a groundbreaking study conducted in the wake of the Second World War by a group of scholars — two of whom escaped antisemitic persecution of the Third Reich — who wanted to understand why so many people had been drawn to fascist leaders. When the study was published in 1950, it rocked the academic world, but before long it fell out of favour during an era of strong economic growth and liberal optimism in the late 20th century. Now, a new generation of scholars is reviving the lessons of The Authoritarian Personality to understand the politics of our time. *This episode originally aired on April 4, 2022. | | | TUESDAY, JUNE 17 | | | The Power of Dreams: Perdita Felicien | | Champion hurdler Perdita Felicien has climbed to the summits of international glory throughout her track career, and endured the excruciating lows of defeat. Those peak experiences inform the talk she gave at Crows Theatre in Toronto, in which she parses the comparison of sport to life, and life to sport. In her words: "It isn't that sport is life exactly. It's that it reveals life. It's the part of life where we play with purpose. Where effort is visible. Where character is tested. Where failure is not final, just part of the arc. It's where we try. Fully. Openly. Without guarantee." For her, the clarity of sport allows us a precious insight that everyday life rarely does: in competition, we catch a glimpse of who we might still become. *This episode is part of our series inspired by plays at Crow's Theatre. | | | WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18 | | | All the Lonely People | | 'Make your world smaller' is one of the messages from a University of British Columbia panel discussion on the epidemic of loneliness in our society and how to fix it. Social isolation is a public health risk with consequences for individuals, communities and for our social systems. All the Lonely People: The Search for Belonging in an Uncertain World examines the issue from perspectives of men's and women's health, interpersonal relations, the climate change emergency and public policy. | | | THURSDAY, JUNE 19 | | | The Translation Movement | | Between the 8th and 10th centuries, Baghdad was the centre of a well-funded and systematic effort to translate large amounts of secular Greek texts into Arabic. The translators were multi-ethnic, multi-faith, and multilingual. The scholars and translators of the Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement often added their own thoughts and ideas to the texts they were translating, seeing them as resources to be engaged with rather than merely texts to be literally translated. The Arabic was eventually translated into Latin bringing to Europe the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen. | | | FRIDAY, JUNE 20 | | | Element Series: Air | Time Magazine named Connie Walker one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She’s also one of Canada’s most decorated journalists, having won a Pulitzer Prize, a Peabody and a Columbia-Dupont Prize for her podcast series, Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s. Yet as she tells host Nahlah Ayed onstage at a public event organized by the Samara Centre for Democracy, she’d always been reluctant to feature stories about her family in her journalism. Until she realized that the stories of her family surviving residential schools embodies the defining reality for virtually all Indigenous peoples in Canada. *This episode originally aired on Dec. 2, 2024. | | |  | | Can books help us heal? That’s the premise of bibliotherapy, where readings from virtually any genre are used as a tool to promote individual wellbeing or self-insight. (arisara / Shutterstock) | | | IDEAS IN THE AFTERNOON | MONDAY, JUNE 16 at 2 p.m. | | | | | Bibliotherapy is a form of therapy that uses books and literature. It's approved in Canada as a treatment for several mental health issues. Virtually any book genre are used as tools to promote individual wellbeing or self-insight. A Victoria-based psychiatrist has included the form of therapy as an evidence-based option for some of her patients. | | |  | Listen whenever you want.
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