Heated Rivalry, Love is Blind or Boyfriend on Demand all underline the global appetite for passionate swooning. But let’s not forget the source for all of it: the romance novel. It may have a reputation problem but sales in 2023 reached 39 million copies or romance fiction globally — ringing in at $1.5 billion dollars. The books and readership continue to evolve as popularity increases. What is it about romance novels that women are drawn to? Is it unhealthy escapism, harmless fun or a kind of opiate? IDEAS looks back to a 1992 episode called Paperback Love to understand the enduring acclaim of romance novels.

In the days before her medically-assisted death, journalist Elaine Dewar made it her mission to finish writing her book revealing ignored history. For more than three years, the author investigated how Canada's health care system cruelly mistreated Indigenous people — including forcing them to use segregated hospitals. Dewar's extensive research uncovers not only a shameful past, but that our collective obliviousness to it all was deliberately manufactured.

For thousands of years, estuaries were central to Indigenous agriculture on the West Coast. Then, when colonists arrived, they diked many of these ecosystems to create western farmland. Now, Cowichan Tribes is working with a group of scientists and conservationists to restore an estuary as an ecosystem and a food system — and the project has sparked an unexpected controversy. At the heart of the debate are two questions. What does agriculture really mean? And when the waters start to rise, do we work with them, or against them?

This is the second and final part of this series, What the River Wants to Be. Listen to Part One.

Guests in this podcast:

Tom Reid is the West Coast Conservation Manager for the Nature Trust of BC.

Jared Qwustenuxun Williams is a passionate traditional foods chef who works with elders and knowledge holders to keep traditional food practices alive. 

Dr. Jennifer Grenz is a Nlaka’pamux scholar and a member of the Siil'na'mut Ken Elliott is a Cowichan elder and plant knowledge keeper who has worked in habitat restoration for decades. With his wife, he runs Ken Elliott's Native Plant Nursery.

Nava Sachs is a graduate student at UBC conducting research with the Indigenous Ecology Lab.

Kim Lagimodiere is the acting Marine Projects Manager at the Lulumexun Lands and Natural Resources department of Cowichan Tribes. She is also the coordinator of the S-hwuhwa'us Thi'lut Kw'atl'kwa (Thunderbird Protecting the Ocean) program.

Dr. Bethany Coulthard is the acting director at the Lulumexun Lands and Natural Resources department of Cowichan Tribes.

Dr. Lenore Newman is the Director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley. 

Erica Gies is the author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge and an independent journalist who covers water, climate change, critters, and more from Victoria, British Columbia, and San Francisco, California. 

Simone Weil had a radical solution to end fascism that surged through Europe in the aftermath of the First World War: abolish political parties. She argued political parties were not democratic, they were dangerous. IDEAS producer Nicola Luksic explores the French philosopher's enduring insights to help us better understand the current political climate. *This episode originally aired on Oct. 20, 2025.

Guests in this episode:

Kathryn Lawson is a faculty fellow at Kings Universy College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Scott Ritner is a political theorist and Simone Weil scholar. He teaches political science and first-year writing at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Michael Ignatieff is a professor of historical studies at the Central European University in Vienna. He was the head of the CEU when it was based in Budapest. Ignatieff is also the former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and he led the official opposition in the House of Commons from 2008 to 2011.

It's safe to say right now the majority of us are feeling the pinch. Grocery and fuel prices are on the rise and the income gap between the wealthy, and everyone else, continues to grow. And yet, aside from the U.S., Canada is the strongest economy of the G7. A prosperous country doesn't necessarily translate to a fuller wallet for its citizens. Host Nahlah Ayed and panelists discuss how 'prosperity' should be defined and how that can be achieved.

Guests in this episode:

Hon. Lisa Raitt is a former Conservative cabinet minister, who now co-chairs the Canadian Coalition for a Better Future.

Zita Cobb is a Fogo Island entrepreneur, founder of Shorefast which supports local economies and community development.

Kaylie Tiessen is the chief economist at the Shield Institute.

A young generation of thinkers is trading in the bread and butter of social media branding — lifestyle, beauty, and consumption — for intellectual content. They focus on the big questions to help followers think about a world where they can't find jobs, are overloaded with debt, and see violence everywhere. It's the kind of education money can't buy.

Guests in this episode:

Isabella Segalovich (@interstellar_isabellar)

Ahmad Sanhouri (@conflictechoes)

Louisa Munch (@louisamunchtheory)

The Dirty Thirties might seem like the distant past but according to IDEAS contributor and professor Evan Fraser now is the time to heed the lessons about what worked to save farmers and agriculture. He argues the Dust Bowl should serve as a warning of compounding crises that lie ahead. But Fraser adds it also serves as a guide to solutions that could help us muddle through as the world lurches into another chapter of environmental, political and economic upheaval.

Guests in this episode:

Evan Fraser is a geography professor and director of Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg is a distinguished professor of history at Iowa State University.

Robert McLeman is a professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

What does an IDEAS producer do when he notices that shipwreck stories keep appearing in his life? He embarks on a journey to try and figure out what’s going on, why shipwrecks might be on people's minds. Matthew Lazin-Ryder dives into the history of shipwrecks — and how they are a constant metaphor in our lives. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 24, 2025.

If you like this podcast, you might be interested in Matthew Lazin-Ryder's documentary The Never-ending Fall of Rome — a hole in time where he finds out politicians, activists, and intellectuals can dump any modern anxiety they wish.

In fact, author and journalist Marcello Di Cintio argues Canadians are complicit. After four years investigating the lives of migrant workers, he found that many temporary foreign workers are trapped working in precarious, exploitative conditions. These jobs are essential to our economy and society, yet invisible. Each migrant worker has a story to tell, says Di Cintio. He joined IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed on a visit through the tomato capital of Canada to hear their stories and talk about what his investigation reveals about Canada. *This episode originally aired on Dec. 11, 2025.

Marcello Di Cintio's book is called Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers.

Marsha Lederman is a child of Holocaust survivors. She lives with the fear that one day someone will take her and her son like the Nazis did with her parents and their parents. "This is ludicrous," she told herself many times. But then she saw how people celebrated the October 7th attacks and watched how antisemitism showed up in the circles she felt most at home.

This spring to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Lederman and child Holocaust survivor Jeanette Goldman shared their stories on Zoom at the University of Toronto's Regis College — an online event due to security reasons. They spoke about what true solidarity means today as antisemitism continues to rise in Canada. Lederman says: "We cannot allow antisemitism to stop us from speaking about antisemitism of all things."

Guests in this episode:

Jeanette Goldman is a retired federal judge and a child Holocaust survivor.

Marsha Lederman is a journalist, daughter of Holocaust survivors, and author of Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust Once Removed, and October 7th: Finding the Humanitarian Middle.

Mary Jo Leddy is a Catholic theologian, author, activist, and founder of Romero House in Toronto.

Bertha Yetman is a Regis College Alumnus, and organizer of “Remembering the Holocaust.”

In the 19th-century Pandita Ramabai travelled America delivering lectures on how the caste system and patriarchy shaped the trajectory of women’s lives. When she came back to her home India, the feminist explained America's customs around gender and race relations, and their experiment with democracy. IDEAS explores her rich life and legacy. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 10, 2025.

Guests in this episode:

Radha Vatsal is the author of No. 10 Doyers Street (March 2025), as well as the author of the Kitty Weeks mystery novels. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, she earned her Ph.D. in Film History from Duke University and has worked as a film curator, political speechwriter, and freelance journalist.

Tarini Bhamburkar is a research affiliate at the University of Bristol. Her research explores cross-racial networks and international connections built by British and Indian women's feminist periodical press between 1880 and 1910, which sowed the seeds of the transnational Suffrage movement of the early 20th century.

Sandeep Banerjee is an associate professor of English at McGill University and a scholar of Global Anglophone and World literature, with a focus on the literary and cultural worlds of colonial and postcolonial South Asia.

Readings by Aparita Bhandari and Pete Morey.