Gordon moderates a live panel about precariousness, millennials, and the future of work in North America. Special guests: Henry Siu, Ashley Proctor, Rod Mickleburgh, Ambrosia Vertesi, and Byron Cruz.

Henry Siu: RBC Research Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at UBC, and Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research includes work on automation and the decline of middle-class jobs, recessions and jobless recoveries, and youth unemployment.

Ashley Proctor: Founder, COHIP (Coworking Health Insurance Plan). As one of the original voices of the coworking movement, Ashley has been building collaborative communities since 2003. As an artist and serial entrepreneur, Ashley is in her element while destroying the term ‘impossible’ and creating opportunities for unexpected and meaningful human connections. Ashley now resides in Vancouver to focus her energy as the executive director of the 312 Main project, yet she also manages coworking communities, artist studios and event spaces in Toronto, ON and Seattle, WA.

Rod Mickleburgh: Journalist and author. Rod has been a journalist for more than 40 years, 23 of them at the Globe and Mail. Before joining the Globe, he was a labour reporter in Vancouver for 16 years at the Sun, Province and CBC. Currently, Rod is working on a history of the B.C. labour movement, the first to be written in half a century.

Ambrosia Vertesi: VP of People at Duo Security. She was most recently VP of Talent at Hootsuite, where she spearheaded the company’s hyper growth from twenty to over a thousand employees while receiving several top employer recognitions. Named one of “2016’s Top100 HR Executives in Technology”, she was also recently recognized by the YWCA Woman of Distinction and Board Of Trade Woman of Promise Awards. Co-founder of nonprofit HR Open Source (#HROS ) and member of the Forbes HR Council , she is a frequent industry speaker on fostering emerging people practices in the workplace.

Byron Cruz: Health Outreach Worker, Sanctuary Health. Originally from Guatemala, Byron arrived in Canada twenty four years ago, fleeing persecution for being a strong voice against injustices and inequalities that Guatemalan people suffered, and still suffer today at the hands of the government. Upon arrival in Canada he immediately got involved in volunteering in the Downtown Eastside with a group that aimed to eliminate harmful and innapropriate garbage, such as used needles, from school playgrounds, parks, street and alleyways. Byron expanded and applied his beliefs by becoming involved with several organizations including a latest project, Sanctuary Health, a grassroots community group that provides access to healthcare regardless of immigration status.

This episode would not have been possible without SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, The Tyee, The United Steelworkers, Vancity, Community Savings, SFU Public Square, The Urban Worker Project, The BC Federation of Labour, and Changemakers Vancouver.

Cited is a podcast and radio show funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and produced out of the produced out of the world class Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

This week, Alex and Indre Viskontas (from Inquiring Minds) survey the state of women in engineering with Andrea Beaty, Amy Bix, Monique Ross, and Patricia Galloway.

There are too few women in STEM fields. We’ve known that for a long time, but we don’t really know why that is. This week, Alex and special guest host Indre Viskontas from the podcast Inquiring Minds talk to social demographer Sharon Sassler and serial entrepreneur Elissa Shevinsky about STEM’s “leaky pipeline.”

Gordon talks to Andrew Longhurst, research associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, about austerity and seniors care in British Columbia. Then, Megan Davies on the history of old folks homes — from Dickensian nightmares, to swanky middle class retirement villas.

The New York Times has called British Columbia “The Wild West of Political Cash.” On the verge of a provincial election, any corporation, union or individual in the world can give however much money they want to British Columbia’s provincial political parties. Sam talks to Dermod Travis of Integrity BC about what this has meant for BC’s democracy, then he convenes a panel of leading political scholars to discuss the role of corporate money in North American politics.

Panelists:

Chuka Ejeckam – Political science student at UBC. Researcher with the Centre for The Study of Democratic Institutions. Just starting a project to map and analyze campaign donations to political parties in BC.

Leslie Seidle – Research Director for the Canada’s Changing Federal Community at the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

Robert Boatright is a Professor of Political Science at Clark University. He’s the author of Interest Groups and Campaign Finance Reform in the United States and Canada.

Harold Jansen  is a political scientist at the University of Lethbridge and the author of Money, Politics and Democracy: Canada’s Party Finance Reforms.

Sam visits Yusuf Altintas’s manufacturing automation lab at the University of British Columbia and then talks to Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) about automation, inequality and the future of work.

Gordon is an environmentalist, but he doesn’t get out of the city very much. He’s plugged into politics, but removed from nature. So he boarded a ferry and went to a farming co-op on an island off the coast of BC. He found people that say civilization is doomed, so they decided to escape. But what did they escape to? 

Note: This is an edited version of a program we initially aired December 2014, on an earlier iteration of our podcast.

Plus, check out our bonus blogs posts with a detailed bibliography, including the one that defines ecovillages, and looks at past utopian experiments.

The seas are rising, but we can’t seem to care. Gordon talks to John Clague “AKA Dr. Doom” about the latest projections, and he talks to Stephen Sheppard about how showing evocative images might help.

Correction: At one point John Clague mentions how Laos will be impacted by sea level rise, but he only misspoke–Laos will not be impacted by sea level rise. Thanks to listener Erich Miller for catching that.

Alex talks with Dan Kahan, professor of law and psychology, at Yale Law School.