Ideas CBC Radio

They’re weird. They break the rules. They’re kinda bad. They are cult movies. Dive into the stories of films from ‘Troll 2’ to ‘The Last Dragon’ to the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ to learn what drives people to watch these oddball films again and again. Producer Matthew Lazin-Ryder looks at the history, future, and function of cult movies. *Originally aired on May 19, 2020.

Celebrity culture existed long before the stage, screen, and social media. Famous people, who elicited Kardashian-level feelings of love and hate in the public, were present centuries ago... though they share qualities with stars today, say scholars Irina Dumitrescu and Sharon Marcus.

Central to Dante's Divine Comedy is the idea of contrapasso: the appropriate afterlife punishment that matches the transgressions committed during one's earthly existence. Novelist Randy Boyagoda applies this notion to create Dante's Indiana, a tragi-comic epic that descends deep into the recesses of modern American life.

The demographics of Canada’s prison population are far out of line with the rest of Canada. As part of the Provocation Ideas Festival and the Toronto International Festival of Authors, Nahlah Ayed hosts a panel discussion on challenges facing the legal system, and how to build a better court.

In her final Massey Lecture, Esi Edugyan speaks to how China and Japan created their ideas of Blackness from imported stories of pre-twentieth-century Africa, "shaping cultural expectations and in turn shaping the Black history and experience in Asia." For Esi Edugyan going to Asia served as a lesson in the power of storytelling and also the dangers of Othering. *This episode originally aired on January 31, 2022.

Esi Edugyan argues we are constrained by a largely white, Eurocentric idea of progress when it comes to the history of the future. African thinkers and artists suggest other realities: the Zambian Space Program, the film Black Panther, and Nnedi Okorafor's novel Lagoon, are all possible parables of the future. *This episode originally aired on January 28, 2022.