Ideas

There are no two letters more disruptive in our time than AI. We’re told it will create employment yet take jobs away; invent life-saving medicines yet enable superviruses; solve the climate crisis yet deepen it. So will it save us or damn us? Is AI the ultimate disruptor?

This conversation, moderated by Nahlah Ayed, was part of the 2026 Charles Bronfman’s “Conversations” series.

Guests in this episode:

Yoshua Bengio is a professor at Université de Montreal. He also has the distinction of being the most-cited living scientist in the world, in any discipline. He’s co-president and scientific director of LawZero, a nonprofit startup dedicated to creating safe AI systems. In 2018, he was a recipient of the Turing Award, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of Computer Science.

Cory Doctorow is a novelist, journalist, technology activist and the author of an astonishing number of books, both nonfiction and fiction. Among them: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It. And the upcoming: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.

Astra Taylor is a documentary filmmaker, cofounder of the Debt Collective, and a writer. Among her books: Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, and The People’s Platform, which won the American Book Award. Taylor also delivered the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures called The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart.

Günther Anders predicted the exact technological crises we’re facing today... but 70 years ago. In his research he pointed to humans as suffering from something he called "Promethean Shame," the shame we feel when compared to our technological creations. IDEAS explores the uncanny relevance of Anders’ thoughts about technology — from the atomic bomb to artificial intelligence. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 4, 2025.

On White Coat, Black Art, trusted ER doctor Brian Goldman brings you honest and surprising stories that can change your health and your life. Expect deep conversations with patients, families and colleagues that show you what is and isn't working in Canadian healthcare.

“Pistol” Pete Pearson, a 76-year-old living with a terminal lung disease, says psilocybin-assisted therapy transformed his end-of-life distress after he accessed it outside the medical system. While psilocybin remains illegal in Canada, researchers including UHN psychiatrist Dr. Joshua Rosenblat are running government-funded trials exploring its potential for mood disorders. More episodes of White Coat, Black Art are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/WCBAxIDEAS

It’s easy to admit to having biases, but much harder to pin down what they are, let alone figure out what to do about them. Nevertheless, IDEAS producer Tom Howell gives it his best shot. He looks into what the rewards might be, if we could name and identify our own most important biases.

This episode is part one of a three-part series exploring the meaning of 'bias.' It originally aired on Sept. 7, 2021.

As a former negotiator of the Oslo Accords for Israel, British-Israeli author and analyst, Daniel Levy, has both a diagnosis and a prescription for the land he refers to as Palestine-Israel. He says the two-state solution is “spent” and argues we need new ideas about how Israelis and Palestinians can co-exist peacefully.