All of us are biased. We have individual biases, momentary biases, morning biases and evening biases. Our institutions are biased. Our constitutions are biased. So what to do about it? IDEAS producer Tom Howell explores the art of naming your most important biases — and deciding which to keep, as he continues his investigation into what the field of ‘bias studies’ has to offer us. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 3, 2022.

Guests in this episode:

Olivier Sibony is the author of Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment and You're About to Make a Terrible Mistake.

Jessica Nordell is the author of The End of Bias: A Beginning.

Jimmy Calanchini is assistant professor of psychology at University of California, Riverside.

Jack Nagler was the ombudsman at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Driftpile Cree poet Billy-Ray Belcourt's favourite place in the world is his mother's house. It's marked with a horrible, dark past — built for nuns who ran the local residential school in Northern Alberta. Belcourt grew up in the shadow of that school. But his mom drenched this home with love so powerful it surpassed the haunted context. Belcourt's mother's house provokes questions reconciliation couldn't quite answer: what does it mean to live inside history and how do you imagine your way out? In this lecture for Vancouver Island University’s Indigenous Speaker’s Series, he makes the case for literature as a more honest reckoning.

Estuaries are a meeting of two worlds: the river and the sea. They’re incredibly fertile ecosystems that sustain 80 per cent of coastal fish and wildlife in British Columbia. For thousands of years, estuaries were central to Indigenous agriculture on parts of the West Coast. Then a new kind of agriculture arrived, profoundly altering the landscape. IDEAS visits the Cowichan Valley, where an ambitious project aims to restore an estuary — and to revitalize language, culture and traditional agriculture.

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 Lytton First Nation. She is the principal investigator at the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC.

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.

Alyssa Zandvliet is a graduate student at Simon Fraser University conducting research with the Historical Ecological Research Lab at SFU and the Indigenous Ecology Lab at UBC.

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.