The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was an instant bestseller in 1900. It's still popular today, with a sequel to the movie Wicked coming out this fall. For 125 years, there have been an abundance of derivative works of Oz, from Broadway musicals, films, comic books, sitcom parodies and more. IDEAS follows the proverbial yellow brick road to uncover how this seemingly simple story of friendship, self reliance and longing for home continues to speak to us. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 9, 2025.

Ancient history just got an upgrade. Forget the ruins, empires and great thinkers of the Classical period and make way for escaped slaves, subversive pirates, and freethinking religious sects. These nonconformist communities rejected hierarchy and political order in favour of creating a more equitable society.

Author, religious scholar and historian Christopher Zeichmann offers an alternative lens on the Greco-Roman era in his book called Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings.

The yellow traffic light is a perfect example of imperfection — with intention. While driving you have to think fast. Do you speed up or stop, whether that means easily or slamming on the brakes? Every driver has their answer and what lies in the middle is a vast perceptual field. A great deal of thought has gone into the engineering of the ambiguous yellow light, as IDEAS producer Seán Foley found out. He had his own encounter with what he was sure was the shortest yellow light in the world. It resulted in a traffic fine, and gave voice to so many questions.

Guests featured in this podcast episode:

Travis Stocking is a senior traffic analyst for Durham Region, Ontario

Alfred Mele is a philosophy professor at Florida State University

Ron Usher is a retired lawyer and IDEAS listener in Parksville, B.C.