The series that explores the ideas that are changing our world.
We inhabit a world that often seems complex and fast-paced, making it challenging to comprehend. How can we slow down, step back, and explore new perspectives?
With Les idées larges, we believe growth comes from encountering ideas that challenge us—ideas that push against our preconceptions, expand our comfort zones, and open new intellectual horizons. Our ambition is to make these ideas accessible, engaging, and thought-provoking for all who struggle to navigate today’s complexities. Led by journalist Laura Raim and supported by researchers from diverse disciplines, Les idées larges delves into pivotal societal issues and debates at the forefront of intellectual discourse.
Laura Raim, who began her career at L’Express, L’Expansion, and Le Figaro, now contributes regularly to Le Monde diplomatique, exploring economics, ideas, and conducting interviews for Hors série, Arrêt sur image, and ARTE Radio. Through her exploration of topics like feminism, ecology, immigration, and social inequality, Laura uses current events and her own inquiries to challenge established paradigms and ignite discussions in the realm of ideas.
Take a different look at the present, by interviewing researchers and making their thoughts available to everyone.
How are theories born? How do they circulate in society? Historians, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers help Laura to trace the genealogy of these ideas.
Are we working fro free? What if we don’t grieve? Climate : who put the world on fire? Can we really change our social status? Are there « real » and « fake » refugees ?
These are just some of the questions examined in this new documentary series, which sets out to meet the challenge of making intellectual thought accessible without sacrificing its nuance, complexity and depth.
Laura takes her own questions as the starting point for a political, societal and existential exploration of our world with thinkers from different backgrounds. Starting with concrete subjects, the discussion sometimes leads her to the big philosophical questions, but always with sincerity and humour.
Three episodes are online this week, and one will be broadcast on Arte.tv and Arte’s Youtube channel every fortnight.
Les Idées larges has now accumulated over eight million video views and featured interviews with around fifty prominent researchers across 36 episodes, including three live recordings! Broadcast on YouTube and arte.tv, the program hosted by Laura Raim persistently delves into critical social issues and current debates. We encourage you to explore the series anew through various entry points:
- Public’s favorites
- Latests releases
- Episodes recorded live
- Team’s favorites
Public’s favorites
Can we really change our social status?
Guests: Chantal Jaquet (philosopher), Olivier Galland (sociologist)
In this episode, Laura seeks to understand the trajectories of those who move from one social class to another. How do we interpret these paths? Is it above all a question of will, merit or ambition?
Is social mobility necessarily progress? Laura has asked philosopher Chantal Jaquet to take a closer look. A professor at the Sorbonne and a specialist in Spinoza, Chantal Jaquet created the concept of “transclasses” to describe individuals who move from one social class to another.
What are the new rules of the sexual game?
Guest: Irène Théry (sociologist)
Since the Me Too movement, the question is: what has really changed? Five years after the explosion of 2017, beyond awareness, have we seen a real revolution? Are men and women really behaving differently? Or have the rules of the game remained fundamentally the same?
How about we stop taking people for fools?
Guest: Jacques Rancière (philosopher)
When the British voted for Brexit, or when the Americans voted for Trump, we heard a lot that they had voted wrong, that they had been “duped by fake news”, and that they were “ignorant”. But can we really say that everyone has the same intellectual capacity? What are the political implications of such a statement?
How about we stop taking people for fools?
Is incest really prohibited?
Guests: Maurice Godelier (anthropologist) et Dorothée Dussy (anthropologist), Anne-Emmanuelle Demartini (historian)
One French person out of ten claims to have been a victim of incest during childhood. Yet since Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropology has defined incest as an absolute prohibition. Has the analysis of incest as a prohibition thrown a veil over incest as a practice? Laura asks two generations of anthropologists: Maurice Godelier and Dorothée Dussy.
Am I my brain?
Guests: Albert Moukheiber (psychologist) and Hervé Mazurel (historian)
The brain has been all the rage for the last thirty years or so. Brain mechanisms could explain everything. Not just how we see and how we speak, but also how we think and how we make mistakes, and even why people eat fatty foods, are lazy, fail at school or vote left-wing. Knowledge of the brain could lead to advances not just in medicine, but in education, public policy, management and self-improvement.
Can we grow up without betraying ourselves?
Guest: Susan Neiman (philosopher) and Cécile Van De Velde (sociologist)
The young years are the most beautiful, the strongest. When you meet someone in their twenties, you want to say “enjoy yourself”. But aren’t we then implying that things go downhill after that, that adult life is synonymous with seriousness, disillusionment and boredom? The tricky thing is knowing what growing up means.
Latest releases
What’s intelligence?
Guest: James Bridle (artist and researcher)
Artificial Intelligence is in the news every day. We hear how it is misleading us with deep fake images, how it is going to replace us at work, or how it is going to wipe out the human race.
For British artist and researcher James Bridle, while the progress and threats posed by computer technology are often overstated, this hype could be a gateway to finally looking at the countless other forms of non-human intelligence. Do human beings really have a monopoly on intelligence? Do you need a brain to be intelligent? What is intelligence?
Was it better before?
Guest: Oliver Nachtwey (sociologist and economist)
Oliver Nachtwey is a sociologist and economist who has examined the notions of progress and modernity in his own country, Germany. In “La société du déclassement” (Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2020), he shows that we have moved from a society of upward mobility to a society of downward mobility. He proposes the concept of “regressive modernity” to describe the period in which we live. Are we wrongly idealising the past? What are the political effects of this social decline?
What if we were paid to do nothing?
Guest: Bernard Friot (economist and sociologist)
I sometimes wonder what I would do if I had a private income. If I had money coming in every month, no matter what. Would I still work, if only out of a need for social recognition? Or would I take the opportunity to do other things? Travelling, reading, drinking coffee on the terrace. It’s hard to know… It’s quite disturbing to imagine a world where we would be free from the fear of unemployment.
The economist and sociologist Bernard Friot has been working for years on a theory of a living wage. He defends the idea of an unconditional wage that would free us from the blackmail of unemployment. I remember what a slap in the face it was the very first time I came across his work. It was in his book “Émanciper le travail” (La Dispute, 2014)… His life wage is very different in philosophy from the universal income, which is similar in principle. What’s the difference between a universal income and a lifetime wage? Would people continue to work if they didn’t have to? What if we were paid to do nothing?
Episodes recorded live
What are the new rules of the sexual game?
Guest: Irène Théry (sociologist)
Since the Me Too movement, the question is: what has really changed? Five years after the explosion of 2017, beyond awareness, have we seen a real revolution? Are men and women really behaving differently? Or have the rules of the game remained fundamentally the same?
Does the Social Security system need to be saved?
Guest: Nicolas Da Silva (economist)
For health economist Nicolas Da Silva, Social Security is in excellent financial health, and the biggest threat it faces is not just liquidation or privatisation, but also state control. A process that is already underway. When and why did this process begin? What is the difference between “public” and “state”?
Where does violence come from?
Guest: Marylène Patou-Mathis (prehistorian)
If our ancestors have always been warriors, this means that man is naturally violent and that it would be illusory to hope to change him. Marylène Patou-Mathis is a prehistorian specialising in the Neanderthals. For her, on the contrary, violence is not inevitable. What can archaeology and prehistory teach us about human nature? How long have we been at war?
Team’s favorites
Is being poor a lack of money?
Guests: Daniel Zamora (sociologist at the Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Daniel Hirschman (sociologist at Brown University)
In France, a person is considered poor if their income is less than €1,063 a month. But is this really a satisfactory definition? It’s an important question, because the way in which we define a problem will determine the kind of policies we put in place to solve it.
Is it better to have public services or cash? Social rights or purchasing power? Is being poor really a lack of money?
And if we stopped progress?
Guests: François Jarrige (historian) and Emmanuel Umpala (Director of the African Natural Resources Observatory
Why are new technologies, such as 5G, often contested? Is progress always desirable, whatever its social or environmental implications? François Jarrige, a science historian at the University of Burgundy, explains that technical innovations have often been opposed, and that none are inevitable. In particular, he criticises the “technosolutionist” ideology, according to which technological innovation could solve all ecological, social, cultural and political problems.
What if we don’t grieve?
Guests: Vinciane Despret (philosopher) and Laurie Laufer (psychoanalyst)
To what extent has the pandemic disrupted the grieving process, and what does this mean? In this episode, Laura looks at the relationship we have with our dead. She talks to Vinciane Despret, whose book Au Bonheur des morts, récit de ceux qui restent looks at the relationship that the living continue to have with those who are no longer with us. Together, they examine the injunction to mourn and draw up a brief history of mourning.
How about we all work for free?
Guest: Maud Simonet (sociologist)
In this episode, Laura explores the notion of “free labour” with Maud Simonet, a specialist in voluntary work and director of research at the CNRS. Who benefits from free labour? Drawing on feminist studies of domestic work, Maud Simonet sketches out the contours of a concept that is difficult to define because it touches on our deepest values and convictions. Her work can be disturbing: it’s hard to accept that what we experience as an expression of civic commitment or a surge of solidarity can be equated with free labour, or even exploitation…
Is identity a threat to the collective?
Guests: Nadia Yala Kisukidi (philosopher) et Sophie Wahnich (historian)
In this episode, Laura looks at the relationship between universalism and identity. Are the two irreconcilable? How can we think of the common beyond differences of race and gender? How can the unity of the Republic be preserved when singular identities come to the fore? Is the universalist ideal that emerged in 1789 in danger? To answer these questions, which are driving public debate, Laura Raim calls on the philosopher Yala Kisukidi, lecturer at the University of Paris-VIII.
Why do we hate hunting?
Guest: Charles Stépanoff (anthropologist)
Now that we no longer need to hunt for food, why does this practice persist? Why does killing a deer in the forest cause more outrage than the thousands of cows slaughtered every day? Why do some killings move people more than others?
Should pets be set free?
Guests: Valérie Chansigaud (historian) et Fahim Amir (philosopher)
When we see videos of a dog being reunited with its owner after years of separation, we cannot doubt the power of the love that can unite a human being and a domestic animal. But if this love exists, it represents only a small facet of the history of animal domestication, a history that is proving to be extremely violent.
Why do we need to throw things out?
Guests: Jeanne Guien (philosopher) et Baptiste Monsaingeon (sociologist)
The thousands of tonnes of rubbish littering the pavements since the dustmen’s strike have highlighted the spectacular amount of rubbish we throw away every day. The heaps of rubbish that continue to grow day by day before our very eyes force us to face up to the usually invisible counterpart of our consumption patterns.
Who invented nature?
Guests: Philippe Descola (philosopher), Charlotte Brives (anthropologist)
For quite some time, in the articles and books about ecology, we don’t talk about “nature” but about “the living”. We owe this change in vocabulary to the work of the anthropologist Philippe Descola. A CNRS gold medallist and professor at the Collège de France, he specialises in the relationship between humans and non-humans. In his book Beyond Nature and Culture, he showed that “nature” as a world separate from human beings does not exist, at least not for everyone.
Can we translate everything?
Guest: Souleymane Bachir Diagne (philosopher)
In the biblical story of Babel, the first human beings spoke a single language, the Adamic language – that of Adam and Eve. But they showed their vanity by building a giant tower that reached into the sky. As punishment, God destroyed the tower and, above all, introduced a multiplicity of languages to sow confusion among them, a confusion known as « Babel » in Hebrew. Since then, in order to understand each other, we have had to translate. How does translation reflect the unequal relationship between languages? Can it be an act of betrayal or appropriation? Can we translate everything?