 | 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, February 24, 2025 | | | |  | Stephen Nachmanovitch is a pioneer in free improvisation. His book, Free Play, explores how improvisation in life and art can awaken creativity and inspiration. (Penguin Random House/Gregory Nachmanovitch) | | | MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24 | | | Say Yes: Improvisation in Art and Life | | For many people, the thought of speaking in public is horrifying. Imagine trying to make people laugh. Without a script. And just making it up as you go along. This documentary by Peter Brown shows how improv can be both exhilarating and liberating — and maybe a force for good. | | | TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25 | | | A Common Culture: Will the U.S. Swallow Canada? | | Four decades ago, trade negotiations in North America prompted a flurry of fear and patriotism in Canada. Many worried that dissolving trade barriers between the U.S. and Canada would lead to the creation of one homogeneous culture. Others thought the two countries had already merged, culturally speaking. In 1986, the CBC’s Carol Off sought to separate the paranoia from the prudence. This episode brings together extracts from her original two-part documentary, which speaks with uncanny directness to the renewed wave of patriotism — and fears — reported in Canada now. | | | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26 | | | Bob Rae on the U.N. at 80 | | In 1945, as the Second World War ended, the United Nations brought together 50 nations of the world. Their historic charter aimed to uphold international peace, security, and human rights. But the UN is now criticized on many different fronts — from accusations of ineffectiveness, to outright corruption. Bob Rae — Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York — tells an audience in Winnipeg why he still believes in the institution. His public talk is called The UN at 80: Successes, Hopes, Failures, and Challenges. It is the Paul Buteaux Memorial Lecture, delivered in January 2025 at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. | | | THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27 | | | Our Bodies, Our Cells | | Our bodies are a great paradox. We are made up of trillions of cells that are both independent and interconnected units of life. Each one is full of millions of moving parts, but the atoms from which they are built are almost entirely empty space. In other words, our bodies contain mind-boggling amounts of stuff, and yet we're mostly nothing. This documentary takes a literal deep dive into the microscopic world of the body — a journey through sound, music, narrative and description — into cells, and the exquisitely designed nanomachines they contain, zooming all the way into the subatomic realm until we can zoom in no further. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 31, 2024. | | | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28 | | | Puro Cubano: The Meaning of Tobacco in Cuba | Cuban cigar makers say that over 200 pairs of hands touch each cigar, from seed to ornate box. Pedro Mendes travels though Cuba, tracing that journey, to understand what tobacco means to the country. He visits a tobacco farm to learn about the impacts that climate change and an economic crisis are having on the livelihood of farmers. He meets with cigar rollers and tobacco historians to discover the cultural and religious role of the leaf. He tours one of Havana's biggest cigar factories to witness the final stages in creating this iconic product. Cigars are a symbol of Cuba, and a Cuban way of life and resistance, is under severe threat. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 5, 2024. | | |  | Living with bipolar disorder can turn life upside down in many unexpected ways, says Luke Galati. His documentary shares his personal story of spending three months in a psychiatric hospital following a bipolar episode. (Submitted by Luke Galati) | | | IDEAS IN THE AFTERNOON | MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24 at 2 p.m. | | | | | Writer and filmmaker Luke Galati says "living with bipolar disorder is tough." He shares the realities of his mental health struggles, what it's like living in a psychiatric hospital and finding a path to wellness. His documentary is both a personal essay and a series of conversations with health-care professionals and others who have bipolar disorder. | | |  | Listen whenever you want.
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