One of the strongest ties between the diaspora and home is music. In Iran, music can be politically contentious.

In Canada, it connects a community to its past and to its future. Days after the bombings began in Iran, Nahlah Ayed spoke to three Iranian-Canadian musicians and composers about the role of music in a time of uncertainty.

"Music can be an escape, can be a consolation... Like if we are the stars and galaxies on the planets of the universe, music is like the dark matter of that universe. It's that gravitational force that we know is there but we can't quite put our finger on it." — composer and pianist Iman Habibi

Guests in this episode:

Tahare Falahati is a Persian traditional singer

Kaveh Mirhosseini is an Iranian composer and conductor

Iman Habibi is a composer and pianist

English philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that life would be "nasty, brutish and short" without a strong government. IDEAS explores how a new take on Hobbes that includes his writing on the topic of anxiety offers a surprising perspective on the recent American election and democracy. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 13, 2025.

Mathematics is everywhere: said high school math teachers in every classroom. But did you ever think math could be linked to literature? And not just in works from the literary greats of the past but for example Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. The relationship between math and literature are fundamentally creative, says Sarah Hart who speaks to Nahlah Ayed about how these two things that seem so polar opposite are deeply intertwined.

Sarah Hart's book is called Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature.