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Weekdays at 9:05 p.m. (9:30 NT) on CBC Radio One

Ideas is a program about contemporary thought. It explores social issues, culture and the arts, geopolitics, history, biography, science and technology, and the humanities.

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This Week

Monday, January 7
UTOPIAN DREAMS CD
The world is strewn with the wreckage of utopian projects. Millions of people have been killed by social engineers who wanted to reshape humanity. The British historian of ideas, John Gray, believes politics is saturated with disguised religious longings. He calls for a new, humane realism.

Tuesday, January 8
NEW WARS AND NEW MEDIA CD
Acclaimed British-Pakistani writer, film-maker and political activist Tariq Ali discusses the inter-relationship between media and global politics today in a talk given at McGill University in the fall of 2007.

Wednesday, January 9
HOW TO THINK ABOUT SCIENCE, Part 7 CD
Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. Everything was subject to science, but science itself largely escaped scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Historians, sociologists, philosophers, and, sometimes, scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley talks to some of the leading lights of this new field of study.
Tonight's guest: Arthur Zajonc.
Series continues Wednesday, January 16.

Thursday, January 10
SWINE BEFORE PEARLS CD
Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs, it is said, regard us as equals. In the Chinese Year of the Pig, Saskatchewan poet Barbara Klar celebrates our parity and long kinship with swine.

Friday, January 11
PHALLUS IN WONDERLAND, Part 2 of 3 CD
For thousands of years, “phallocentric” myths have celebrated the omnipotence of the penis. The Egyptian god Min was so powerful, he fathered himself. In ancient Rome a boy’s first ejaculation was part of a state holiday. Throughout history, the pursuit of the perfect penis has fuelled the search for cures for impotence. In the eleventh century a recipe involved sparrows and Billy-goats. Today men pop Viagra. IDEAS producer Mary O’Connell takes us inside this male wonderland. Part 3 airs Friday, January 18.

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