Ideas

The bombing of civilians has been called one of the "great scandals" of modern warfare. So why, despite nearly a century of drafting laws and signing conventions protecting the sanctity of human life, does bombing civilians remain a widespread military tactic? IDEAS producer Naheed Mustafa looks at a century of bombing civilians to try and answer that very question.

Guests in this episode:

Yuki Tanaka is a historian and emeritus research professor of history at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.
Mark Selden is senior research associate in the East Asia program at Cornell University, and the founder of Asia-Pacific Journal.
Azmat Khan is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and an investigative journalist with the New York Times.

"Our democracy is what’s at stake," says Karen Hao, an engineer who used to work in Silicon Valley. Now she’s an outspoken critic of its AI giants. The investigative journalist argues AI companies run their businesses like empires and it has to stop. In her 2025 bestseller, Empire of AI, Hao digs into the global impact of Big AI and explores how we need to rethink AI to build a better future. This podcast includes a lecture by Karen Hao and a discussion with host Nahlah Ayed.

Fact and fiction may seem poles apart but writers Esi Edugyan and Tiya Miles find the two intertwine perfectly in their award-winning storytelling. Both authors try to imagine past lives in their work, in part so that we may reimagine our own. They may operate in different realms but what they share is the telling of profoundly important stories that would otherwise go untold. It's been a longtime goal for IDEAS to bring these two accomplished authors together for a discussion — and it was worth the wait.

This podcast was recorded in front of an audience in January 2026 at a Toronto Public Library event.

Poetry can find you when you need it most. It can be life-altering to read that poem just at the right moment. It was for six IDEAS producers who join Nahlah Ayed in studio to share poems they return to, year after year.

This special episode is to mark UNESCO's World Poetry Day, March 21st.

A case before the Supreme Court of Canada is challenging Quebec’s law on secularism. Legal scholar Benjamin Berger is a prominent voice in the study of constitutional and criminal law in Canada. He argues secularism "is a concept that hides more than it shows." In this podcast, Berger examines how secularism obscures the impact of religion on our legal and political systems. "We end up speaking abstractly about what secularism is, what it demands, instead of whether our government is treating people equally and fairly."

Benjamin Berger is professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. He delivered Memorial University’s 2026 Henrietta Harvey Distinguished Lecture.