Ideaswith Paul Kennedy

In his final appearance at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal – after twenty years of hosting on-stage interviews and panel discussions that were later broadcast on IDEAS – Paul Kennedy talks with American novelist Annie Proulx (The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain, Barkskins) and Indigenous Australian writer Bruce Pascoe (Fox a Dog, Mrs. Whitlam, Dark Emu) about the fate of our planet. Their conversation begins with the environmental devastation that threatens life itself, and moves towards what we should do, both now and in the future.

Hubert Reeves is one of the world's foremost experts on the Big Bang and the origins of time. He lives in France, where the acclaimed astrophysicist has the status of a rock star. In Quebec, where he was born, he is called their Einstein. And yet he's largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Not only is he a brilliant cosmologist; he's also a riveting storyteller and popularizer of science. Not to explain the complex, he says, is undemocratic. This is part 2 of a 2-part series.

The term "coup d'état" usually applies to the violent takeover of a nation. But the phenomenon has occurred within American cities as well. In the decades after the Civil War, four American cities over four decades saw white civilians -- and officials -- attack and destroy thousands of African-American properties, businesses and lives. Contributor Melissa Gismondi examines each incident to exhume the socio-cultural dynamics at work -- and how they persist today.

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that we see correctly; what is most important is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince was first published in 1943. And since then, it's sold 200 million copies, in 300 languages. And we're still trying to figure out what it is: a children's fable, a philosophical tale, or even an autobiography of its author, Antoine de Saint Exupéry? Danny Braun of Radio-Canada presents his documentary about the enduring magic of this deceptively simple classic.

Fake news. Foreign meddling. Fraud. Deliberate deception. We consume all of it, sometimes not knowing the source or what is true. A recent panel discussion presented at Simon Fraser University's Public Square Community Summit examines what we can do to confront the epidemic of disinformation.

Is atheism getting too big for its britches? And why is that a problem? Christian Smith is Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. In his new book "Atheist Overreach: What Atheism Can’t Deliver", he argues that contemporary atheists are making claims that are "neither rationally defensible nor realistic".

Hubert Reeves is one of the world's foremost experts on the Big Bang and the origins of time. He lives in France, where the acclaimed astrophysicist has the status of a rock star. In Quebec, where he was born, he is called their Einstein. And yet he's largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Not only is he a brilliant cosmologist; he's also a riveting storyteller and popularizer of science. Not to explain the complex, he says, is undemocratic. Hubert Reeves is now 86, and speaks with producer Mary Lynk at his country home in Burgundy, outdoors and under the stars.

Trees and forests could hold the key to the survival of life on our planet. Meg Lowman started climbing trees when she was still a painfully shy primary school student, in a small town in upstate New York. They became her closest companions whenever her human classmates started bullying her. She eventually became a pioneer of canopy science, and created a system of forest walkways that now extends around the world. She's been hailed as "Einstein of the Treetops", but is better known by the nickname, Canopy Meg. Paul Kennedy visited the self-described "arbonaut" in person to ask her whether trees can save the world.

"Denial is about hiding from the truth. Denialism builds a 'new and better' truth." Keith Kahn-Harris, a researcher and lecturer at the University of London, says the challenge of confronting denialism is that denialists don't see themselves as rejecters of truth. They see themselves as having the actual truth, one that the rest of us can't see or accept. Keith Kahn-Harris in conversation with IDEAS producer Naheed Mustafa.

PhD student Mei Lan Fang's parents survived the Cultural Revolution and immigrated to Canada with dreams of settling in a country where human rights are protected and social mobility is possible. After years of financial struggle in Vancouver, the family verged on homelessness. Mei uses her family's own experience of migration from China to help her understand the life struggles of Vancouver's marginalized seniors in a virtually impossible housing market.

It was the biggest labour action in Canadian history: on May 15, 1919, over 35,000 workers took to the streets of Winnipeg for six weeks. It began peacefully and passionately; it ended in lethal violence, and disagreement over what it meant. Contributor Tom Jokinen talks to experts on how the strike happened, why it occurred in Winnipeg — and through the use of archival tape, brings us the voices of people who were right there, on the streets, and on strike.

Historian Adam Tooze wrote Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World as the decade was unfolding. The giant waves from the crash of 2008 are still hitting shore, both politically and economically. The 2019 Gelber Prize-winner talks with Peter Armstrong, CBC's Senior Business Correspondent, about how what happened on Wall Street was just the start, and how flaws in the globalized banking system came to affect regions, nations, and individual lives.

The songs and stories of prehistoric humans are gone. All that remains of their culture is their art. It's the one thing that can bridge the vast, silent chasm of time between then and now. IDEAS contributor Neil Sandell introduces us to the French archaeologist Jean Clottes, a man who’s devoted his lifetime trying to decipher the rich, enigmatic world of cave art.

Harvard historian James Kloppenberg traces the long and tortuous tradition of American liberal democracy. He argues that the United States has arrived at such a precarious place in its political evolution that the very conditions that make democracy possible are under threat.

We live in a glut of data. Individually we produce vast amounts of information about ourselves simply by living our lives: where we go, what we like, where we shop, our political views, which programs we watch. Each day we produce 2.5 quintillion bytes of data and the rate is growing. In the last two years alone we’ve generated about 90 per cent of the data that’s out there. IDEAS contributor Anik See looks at this tremendous amount of data and how some people are harnessing it, not for surveillance or selling, but rather for the public good.

"Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world." Jean Vanier, who founded the L'Arche movement in 1963 for people with profound disabilities, quickly learned that "normal" people have much to learn about being human by watching those we perceive as weak. Jean Vanier died on May 7 in France. He was 91. IDEAS pays tribute to a Canadian humanitarian and visionary with this encore presentation of documentary series by producer Philip Coulter.

"Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world." Jean Vanier, who founded the l'Arche movement in 1963 for people with profound disabilities, quickly learned that "normal" people have much to learn about being human by watching those we perceive as weak. Jean Vanier died today in France at the age of 91. IDEAS pays tribute to a Canadian humanitarian and visionary with this encore presentation of documentary series by producer Philip Coulter.

Some of the crises facing contemporary Christianity are obvious, such as the ever-widening revelations of sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy and the role of bishops in covering it up. Some are less obvious, such as the embrace of anti-immigrant, xenophobic political movements in countries with large Christian majorities. On this month's edition of The Enright Files, conversations about the moral challenges modern Christianity is confronting.

Seen from today, the novelist Joseph Conrad's early 20th century views on the world, particularly on race, can be offensive. But at the same time, his observations were deeply prescient of modern times. V.S. Naipaul, who was also a harsh critic, once wrote about how Conrad managed, a hundred years ago, to "meditate on my world, a world I recognize today"? A feature interview with Harvard historian Maya Jasanoff, who tackles that question in her acclaimed biography of Conrad.

In 2015, the poet-musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski made a strange discovery at the site of the former Stutthof concentration camp in Poland — something he calls “a carpet of abandoned shoes.” But these were more than shoes: they're both artifacts and symbols of the Holocaust — as well as a flashpoint of nationalist denialism and historical amnesia — especially in the current climate of authoritarianism, and the rising ghosts of neo-fascism.

Seen from today, the novelist Joseph Conrad's early 20th century views on the world, particularly on race, can be offensive. But at the same time, his observations were deeply prescient of modern times. V.S. Naipaul, who was also a harsh critic, once wrote about how Conrad managed, a hundred years ago, to "meditate on my world, a world I recognize today"? A feature interview with Harvard historian Maya Jasanoff, who tackles that question in her acclaimed biography of Conrad.