Ideas

For more than a thousand years the Oracle of Delphi sat on a stool at the ‘navel of the universe.’ Under a mystical trance, she would offer cryptic predictions of the future. People would wait months, even years, for their chance to ask the Oracle for guidance on matters ranging from reproductive challenges, to family tiffs to when and how to wage war.

While the ritual around her remains shrouded in mystery, her predictions were – strangely – always right. Today our urge to predict the future mirrors the same psychological need that drove leaders to the Oracle at Delphi -- discomfort with uncertainty and deep seeded desire to control the unpredictable.

More than 2,000 years ago, someone sat down and wrote a travel bucket list for the ancient world — suggesting must-see places that we now call The Seven Wonders of the World. It was kind of a Lonely Planet guide of its time, and included the Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Temple of Artemis, among others. Historian Bettany Hughes brings monuments and archaeological discoveries back to life in her book,"The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World." *This episode originally aired on Nov. 6, 2024.

For the first two billion years, the Earth didn't have oxygen. That's just one of the many fascinating details Peter Frankopan reveals in his book, "Earth Transformed: An Untold History." The Oxford professor of global history takes us on a multi-million year tour, illustrating the breathtaking ways climate has shaped the Earth and human civilization. How the collapse of a sediment shelf 8,000 years ago isolated what's now Britain from Europe, and its potential influence on the Brexit vote in 2016. Or how climate fluctuations correlate to periods of antisemitic violence. There's a lot to learn in this podcast. Have a listen. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 9, 2026.

Without the Moon, the Earth would be unrecognizable. Across the eons, it has shaped our seasons, our calendars — and even the evolution of life itself. Producer Annie Bender traces our nearest neighbour's powerful influence over humanity — and the planet we call home.

Guests in this podcast:
Charlie Duke is a retired NASA astronaut who walked on the Moon as part of the Apollo 16 mission.
Rebecca Boyle is a journalist, historian and author of "Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are."
Christopher Cokinos is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Arizona, and author of "Still as Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon from Antiquity to Tomorrow."

Authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor want to stop apocalyptic end-of-the-world thinking and its fantasies about colonizing other planets. “We love it here… we want to stay,” they say. They diagnose today's fascism as having an “Armageddon Industrial Complex,” whose main agents are apocalyptic fundamentalists, ethnonationalists, and tech billionaires fixated on creating a super-intelligence at any cost. In their book “End Times Fascism and the Fight for a Living World,” Klein and Taylor explore the convergent forces which not only welcome the end of the world, but seek to accelerate it.

Guests in this podcast:

Naomi Klein Naomi Klein is the author of several books including "No Logo" and "The Shock Doctrine," and "Doppelganger" which have sold in the millions around the world. Her work as a social activist, journalist, and documentary filmmaker critiques both the systems and the agents that have produced the climate crisis, consumer capitalism, and unaccountable corporatism. She is also a professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia.

Astra Taylor delivered the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures, called "The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart." Among her other books are "The People's Platform" and "Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone." She's also a journalist, a documentary filmmaker, and co-founder of The Deck Collective. She once declared publicly that she doesn't see herself primarily as a public intellectual, but rather as a “feral intellectual."