 | 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 10, 2024 | |  | In his BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures, professor and award-winning author Ben Ansell considers how to build political systems that work for all, and are robust enough to face the wide-ranging challenges of the 21st century. | | | MONDAY, JUNE 10 | | | BBC Reith Lectures 1: Artificial Democracy | | Liberal democracy, as we know it, has existed for only a minuscule moment in the whole of human history. And judging by recent events, it might appear that many people are already tired of it. In this year's BBC Reith Lectures, Ben Ansell, a professor of comparative democratic institutions at Oxford University and author of the 2023 book Why Politics Fails, examines the threats facing modern democracy, how artificial intelligence can distort the integrity of democracy, and how politicians can invest in a democratic future. | | | TUESDAY, JUNE 11 | | | Walking Among the Ancients: The Wabanaki-Acadian Old Growth Forest | | To walk in an old growth forest is to be stunned by its untouched beauty, its otherworldliness — soaring ancient trees above, rolling thick ground underfoot, and astounding biodiversity all around. (Scientists are even researching its compound-rich air, for a potential role in preventing and treating cancer.) The Wabanaki-Acadian Forest, which stretches from parts of the Maritimes and Southern Quebec down into several New England states, is comprised largely of newer forests, already cut down and logged over and over. Just one per cent of its old growth is left, and the World Wildlife Fund lists it as endangered. On this episode, accompany IDEAS to a secret old growth forest stand in Nova Scotia, to learn of its many wonders. | | | WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12 | | | Riley Yesno: (Land) Back to the Future | From our ongoing series of talks, each inspired by a theme in a play at Toronto's Crow's Theatre, Anishinaabe scholar Riley Yesno reflects on Indigenous Futurism and the role of dreams and dreaming in making a better world. Can First Nations imagine a future — for all of us — and dream it into being? Inspired by Lakota playwright Cliff Cardinal's play Huff, which tells the story of brothers struggling with their mother's death, a reserve school system that's abandoned them, and their solvent-abuse problem. | | | THURSDAY, JUNE 13 | | | The Nature of Nonfiction: Robert MacFarlane | | Robert Macfarlane says his writing is about the relationship between the landscape and the human heart. He is a modern-day re-interpreter of the sublime — the profound feeling of awe, insignificance and terror that the grandeur of the natural world evokes. It's present when writing about following ancient foot trails, traversing perilous mountain glaciers, or descending into the mysterious but wondrous world beneath the Earth's surface. Hear his talk from the Royal Ontario Museum, where he accepted the Weston International Award 2023, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to recognize excellence in non-fiction. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 25, 2023. | | | FRIDAY, JUNE 14 | | | Queer Diplomacy: Negotiating LGBTQ Rights in a Fraught World | Hilary Clinton ushered in a new age of diplomacy in 2011, when she addressed the UN Human Rights Council, declaring that gay rights are human rights. But in the decades since, global progress on the rights of sexual minorities have been profoundly uneven. Nahlah Ayed speaks to Canadian diplomat Douglas Janoff about the delicate world of international queer diplomacy and what's at stake in an era of backlash. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 27, 2024. | | |  | 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 | | | |  | British historian Timothy Garton Ash, right, delivers reconnaissance drones to Maj. Andril Pidlisni, commander of 409 Separate Rifle Battalion, in Kyiv on Wed., May 15. Ash purchased the drones with money he received for winning the Lionel Gelber Prize. (Oleksandr Ihnatenko) | | | IDEAS IN THE AFTERNOON | MONDAY, JUNE 10 at 2 p.m. | | | | | For Timothy Garton Ash, Europe is an idea — and an ideal — worth celebrating and preserving, even against all the forces acting against it right now. The historian, who won the 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize, is using his prize money to buy drones for Ukraine in the war against Russia. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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