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I don't need much of an intro to today's topic. We're talking Star Wars: Episode Eight – The Last Jedi. JJ Abrams and his writer-flunkies are out for this one, but they'll be back for number nine. This time the writer-director is Rian Johnson. Or is it Reean? Or Ree-Anne? Who knows. He's done acclaimed work including Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper, and three episodes of Breaking Bad including its third last episode "Ozymandias." In other words, buddy knows a thing or two about storytelling.
But how well can he do Star Wars? To help answer that question I'm joined today by two old friends: Stephen Notley, video game designer and the creator of Bob the Angry Flower, and Fish Griwkowsky, arts journalist and filmmaker. We're all lifelong fans of Star Wars and we met three days after the opening of the film, December 17, 2017 at Edmonton's Route 99 Diner to hash out The Last Jedi. And yes, today's discussion is 100% SPOILERS. Listen at your own risk.
In today's episode of MF GALAXY, we discuss:
You can hear the full-length discussion, a bonus 40 minutes, for free! Just go to patreon.com/mfgalaxy. You'll get to hear us yammer endlessly about:
THE WOMEN OF THE LAST JEDI – BE PART OF THE DISCUSSION ON MF GALAXY!
Coming up next episode, join science fiction scholar Lisa Yaszek, Lady Geek Nite convener Sylvia Douglass, and science fiction novelists Jennifer Marie Brissett and Natasha Deen! We're looking exclusively at the women of The Last Jedi: Rey, Rose, Vice Admiral Holdo, Maz Kanata, Captain Phasma, Paige Tico, and of course Princess Leia! Want to include your voice in MF GALAXY? Entries must be in by Friday, January 5, 2018!
WHAT TO DO:
Give me your opinion about any of the female characters from The Last Jedi: who they are, what they do, and how well the script and direction treat them. You can comment on any aspect you like, just one character, any combination or comparison, or all of them.
HOW TO DO IT:
If you choose to contribute, please record your answers into your phone or other audio device as a decent mp3 (preferably 192 kbps or higher, but if you don't know what that means, don't worry about it) and send it to me by Dropbox using mfgalaxypodcast at gmail dot com.
PLEASE REMEMBER to introduce yourself by saying, "I'm (your name). I (describe yourself). I want to talk about women characters in The Last Jedi because...." (and then answer whatever questions above you want, or your own ideas).
DON'T READ A SCRIPT, but feel free to use notes. Sounding unrehearsed is key. Rambling is just fine. Go as "inside baseball" as you like. Anything under 4 minutes.
I can't guarantee your entry will make it onto the podcast, but I'll listen to everything and include the most original answers that have broadcast quality sound.
Happy recording!
WHEN TO SEND IT:
Entries must arrive by Friday night, January 5, 2017.
If you watch movies or TV shows such as Rambo or The Punisher and everything in between, you've probably seen how Hollywood explores PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. According to US entertainment, PTSD is the horror that former soldiers experience because of war: flashbacks and rage attacks triggered by cars backfiring and footfalls at night.
But what if I told you that most of what you've been told about PTSD is wrong? That the causes are far more common and complex, and they're in homes and on streets across the world? That "classic" symptoms such as flashbacks are extremely rare? That the US military is spending a gigantic fortune to cure PTSD, but not for humanitarian reasons? And that the only real cure to PTSD is probably prevention?
To discuss these questions today, let's hear from Cultural and American Studies scholar Kali Tal, who spoke with me by Skype from her home in Bern, Switzerland on December 8, 2017. With combined interests including historiography, cultural anthropology, and African American studies, Tal has spent decades researching the complex causes of PTSD and our dire need to stop traumatising people in the first place. She's a qualitative researcher and scientific editor at the University of Bern, and the author of Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma. And if you'd like to read it for free, keep listening.
In today's episode of MF GALAXY, we discuss:
kalital.com
worldsofhurt.com
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Okay, so you're a writer and you write a book and if you're lucky it sells more than ten thousand copies, but you probably sold far less than that and then you're looking through a bookstore and you find books written by Betty White, Robe Lowe, Patton Oswald, Miley Cyrus, Mindy Kaling #$%#@&!! Justin Bieber, who probably can't even read? And you get furious and think how the deck is totally stacked against you, because how can you compete against someone whose book publicity machine is the entire music industry or Hollywood?
And then you get smart and say, "How can I get a cut of that action?"
And the good news is, you don't have to be famous to do it.
Enter author and now agent Nick Chiles. He's been in the writing game for more than three decades—not only as the editor-in-chief of Atlanta Blackstar, but as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and multiple award-winning education reporter, and now as a best-selling author and celebrity co-writer. Chiles has co-created books with singer Bobby Brown, with political organiser Al Sharpton, with former Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick, and with NBA star Etan Thomas, among others.
So the lesson to all struggling writers is clear: you're not famous, but you could write with someone who is, get paid, and get to attach the title "best-selling author" to your name for the rest of your career.
Nick Chiles spoke with me on November 6, 2017 by Skype from his office in Atlanta. We discussed:
nickchiles.com
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I don't know if there's anything like Jordan Peele's blockbuster horror film Get Out. Oh, there have been low-budget Africentric horror movies before, and this one was definitely low-budget: it cost only $4.5 million when the average Hollywood film is around $80 million.
But Get Out has earned a quarter of a billion dollars around the world, which further puts the lie to the Hollywood claim that audiences in Europe won't watch films starring African casts or featuring Africentric stories. Plus, Get Out is an extremely political film.
I don't mean it's partisan, though: the villains in the film would seem at home at any US Democratic Party fundraiser or power-play. I mean it's political, in that it's an unforgettable and horrific satire on US Whitesupremacy. The film and its ideas are so powerful that its central metaphor "The Sunken Place" has entered our culture and vocabulary.
And for all those reasons and more, horror writer and UCLA film studies instructor Tananarive Due knew she had to teach a course built around Peele's film. She called it "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic."
Due worked as a journalist for many years, and is also the author of many celebrated novels, including The Living Blood, Devil's Wake, and Joplin's Ghost, and the short story collection Ghost Summer. She also co-wrote Freedom in the Family, a memoir of the 1960s US human rights struggle from the perspective of her mother, Patricia Stephens Due, who'd been an activist in it.
With her novelist husband Steven Barnes, Due writes the Tennyson Hardwick mystery series in partnership with actor Blair Underwood. She holds a journalism degree and an M.A. in English literature from Leeds, where she specialized in Nigerian literature as a Rotary Foundation Scholar.
Due has won the American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and the Kindred Award. In 2004, along with Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, Due received the "New Voice in Literature Award" at the Yari Yari Pamberi conference co-sponsored by New York University's Institute of African-American Affairs and African Studies Program and the Organization of Women Writers of Africa.
Tananarive Due spoke with me by Skype on November 20, 2017 from her home in California. We discussed:
Of course today's discussion is 100% spoilerific, so if you haven't watched Get Out yet, pause the podcast, watch the film, and come back to listen.
tananarivedue.com
Watch Jordan Peele confirm and debunk some of the most popular theories about hidden themes in 'Get Out'
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By the end of Malcolm X's second trip to Africa and the Middle East in 1964, he said at a press conference, "In every country you go to, usually the degree of progress can never be separated from the woman. If you're in a country that's progressive, the woman is progressive. If you're in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it's because the woman is aware of the importance of education.
"But in every backward country you'll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed it's because the women don't have education.
"So one of the things I became thoroughly convinced of in my recent travels is the importance of giving freedom to the women, giving her education, and giving her the incentive to get out there and put the same spirit and understanding in her children. And I am frankly proud of the contributions that our women have made in the struggle for freedom and I'm one person who's for giving them all the leeway possible because they've made a greater contribution than many of us men."
Malcolm X made that statement in 1964 following diplomatic missions to African and Arab countries, including to Tanzania. How is Tanzania doing today?
On June 22, 2017 Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli declared that all public schools must expel any girls who are pregnant. He offered this hopeful advice for post-delivery education, though: "they can learn sewing but they cannot go back to school."
This is the same country in which men can legally marry girls as young as 14 and yet there is no sex education in schools. To have your own government steal your educational future, of course, is not just a tragic loss for any individual and her own children to build a life of their own making. But multiply that theft times thousands of people, and you fundamentally degrade your country's path towards technological, economic, political, and social innovation and growth.
So who's fighting this man-made disaster in Tanzania?
Enter Petrider Paul, who describes herself as "a Proud Feminist advocating to end of gender-based violence." She's a co-founder of Youth for Change Tanzania, a global partnership to end early forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
She's worked with numerous organisations including Youth for Change, UNICEF, the United Nations Population Fund, and the Centre for Foreign Relations Tanzania. She's launched an international petition campaign calling on the Tanzanian government to stop blocking sex education and stop expelling pregnant girls.
On November 22, 2017, Petrider Paul spoke with me by Skype from her home in Tanzania. We discussed:
Unless you're absolutely clueless, you know that self-declared Nazis, fascists, Whitesupremacists, and other extremists using a huge range of names, are on the march. Their goal is a race war. They have weapons. They have training. They're in police forces and militaries. They have media services in Canada, the US, Russia, and elsewhere. They've elected their confederates across the world. And their number one ally occupies the White House. Underestimate them at the peril of the planet.
So how do you fight them? And who's had success doing it?
Today's guest is a fascinating figure. He's a former US Air Force man who's spent a lifetime fighting American neo-nazis and was a pioneer of the early internet with innovative online tactics to fight Whitesupremacists. Today, in service of his cause he speaks across the United States. Liberal and conservative journalists try to smear him; Nazis try to fight him in the courts and lose.
Why do they fear him? Because he doxxes them. That is, he exposes the Nazis who are hiding in plain sight by investigating them and revealing their nazi identity to the world. But he also helps those people who want to leave the nazi movement. He fearlessly steps up to fascists such as Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach and simply mocks them, and even got Spencer thrown out of CPAC, the Conservative Political Affairs Conference which was teeming with Spencer's own fanatics.
That is, he exposes the Nazis who are hiding in plain sight by investigating them and revealing their nazi identity to the world. But he also helps those people who want to leave the nazi movement. He fearlessly steps up to fascists such as Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach and simply mocks them, and even got Spencer thrown out of CPAC, the Conservative Political Affairs Conference which was teeming with Spencer's own fanatics.
And all this is a 6'4" brother who loves punk music. He's Daryle Lamont Jenkins, one of the founders of the antifascist organisation One People's Project. And man, does he have great stories to tell.
We spoke by Skype on November 1 and November 8, 2017 while he was on a speaking tour. We discussed:
Daryle Lamont Jenkins on Richard Collins III & Rising Alt-Right Terror
Antifa Heroes or Villains? Exclusive With Daryle Lamont Jenkins
Daryle Lamont Jenkins on Richard Collins III & Rising Alt-Right Terror
BTR News: How Should The Black Community View The Antifa Movement w/ Daryle Lamont Jenkins (BTR News)
Racism and the Right in the U.S.: a conversation with Daryle Lamont Jenkins
Final Straw: Daryle Lamont Jenkins (Final Straw)
Episode 12: Doxxing, Propaganda, and Liberals with Daryle Lamont Jenkins (Friendly Anarchism)
This Man Is Kicking White Supremacists' Ass and Literally Taking Names
Meet Daryle Lamont Jenkins, Insatiable Doxxer of Fascists and Nazis
Norman Lear, producer of Good Times, say Jimmy Walker and Ann Coulter are actually dating
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Stranger Things, Season One, is the Netflix hit series that revels in 80s nostalgia and pays homage to everything from ET and The Goonies to Firestarter and Dungeons & Dragons.
It's the story of four small-town American boys, Will, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas, who encounter a mysterious girl named Eleven who possesses enormous power that threatens to destroy anyone who crosses her—even agents of the United States government. And all of them and the people they love are threatened by Lovecraftian annihilation from a force emanating from a place beyond reckoning: the Upside Down.
I love Stranger Things, and not just because I'm a child of 80s. I love it because it does what I tried to do with my debut novel The Coyote Kings: celebrate friendship and young love and science fiction and fantasy fandom and the heroism of young people. The series is enamoured with its non-glamourous setting and the innocence of its characters, chief of which are teenagers played by actual teenagers, harkening to the glory days of DeGrassi Junior High, rather than having gangly 13-year-olds played by 25 year-old athletes and underwear models.
The series loves the American science fiction and fantasy movies, TV shows, and games of my youth, and does them one better—tying them into a coherent package that rises above 99% of its inspiration. The show makes me feel like a kid again in the best possible ways.
And now season 2 is out, and tonight's SPOILER-INTENSE CONVERSATION features my guest and friend, the acclaimed science fiction novelist who's also a scientist, Ekaterina Sedia. She's the author of five novels including the celebrated Heart of Iron. She's been on MF GALAXY before to talk food, fiction, and feminism, and she's also maybe just as much a fan of Stranger Things as I am, if that's actually possible.
Today, we discuss:
ekaterinasedia.com
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Back in the late 80s and early 90s, even though there were artists across the country, the Canadian hip hop recording and video industry was centered on Toronto, and the three giants were Maestro Fresh Wes, Michie Mee, and this episode's guests, The Dream Warriors.
The Dream Warriors included Toronto's King Lou and Capital Q, and for the second album Subliminal Simulations added DJ Luv and also the rapper Spek from Montreal. Their top hits included "Wash Your Face in My Sink" and "Ludi," and along the way members collaborated with Michie Mee, MC Lyte, Maestro, Lillian Allen, Messanjah, Butterfly from Digable Planets, and Gang Starr. They also recorded "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" for the soundtrack to the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Even though Buffy the movie was far from the pop culture icon that the TV series became, the crossed paths of Buffy and the Dream Warriors makes sense today. The Dream Warriors weren't interested in rapping about many of the fixations of the early 1990s—no degradation of African women; no celebration of the murder of African men.
Instead, the albums contained enigmatic wordplay, references to fan culture including role playing games, Warlock comics, and Star Wars, and Canadian pop references such as their unforgettable hit, using a sample from the theme song to the long-running Canadian game show Definition, a song written by the great composer Quincy Jones. It's called "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style."
While the band released a third album called The Master Plan, that 1996 recording wasn't published in the US. Spek and DJ Luv both left the group in 1997; the 2002 album The Legacy Continues saw distribution in Canada only. But for fans of the Canadian hip hop scene, the band will live forever.
In the fall of 1994 the group was touring Canada to promote their second album, Subliminal Simulations. The group spoke with me by telephone from Toronto and I recorded our conversation at CJSR FM-88 Edmonton for The Terrordome and The United Nation of Hip Hop, my radio shows of the time. We discussed:
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What is the Zimbabwean musical instrument called the mbira? It's a wooden resonator box with metal keys, called kalimba in Cameroon and thumb piano in the West, although "chime-box" offers a better description of the instrument's sound. Its pristine voice is perfectly suited to cathedrals, ancient caves, and modern concert halls. But the origins of the mbira are lost in the mists of time.
Westerners who know mbira most likely do so from the work of Zimbabwe's Thomas Mapfumo, a fusion musician who helped resurrect the mbira which the British colonial dictatorship had banned because of its religious and cultural gravity. Mapfumo's chimurenga (struggle) style was a cultural-nationalist concoction that changed modern Zimbabwean music, seizing it back from its own Euro-American aesthetic occupation.
But today's guest has a different path to and with the mbira. It's not often a musician tells you an origin story that sounds like a quest straight out of the pages of an Africentric epic fantasy novel. But that's the scenario that Edmonton's Chaka Zinyemba unfurled about how he discovered and later learned to play the mbira, the leading instrument of Zimbabwe's classical music. I'll let him tell you that story, and about his royal lineage, in just a moment.
In 2012, Chaka Zinyemba released his debut album Tariro with his cousin Freemantle Nhembo playing bass mbira and hosho (or maracas). Both provided vocals. Zinyemba played traditional songs using mbirahuru (great mbira), also called mbirahurudzavadzimu (the great mbira of the ancestors). That instrument was once used particularly during Shona religious ceremonies (or mapira) which often lasted through the night, the mbira music lifting people into a hypnotic, ecstatic state.
Zinyemba's album Tariro is a beautiful, sensitive, soulful album. Hearing it, one feels the caress of the clouds and tastes the shimmer of moonlight. You can find the album on BandCamp and iTunes and probably elsewhere.
When I spoke with Zinyemba in February 2012, he told me had no plans to become a full-time musician; back then he was studying Human Geography at the University of Alberta in Edmonton with a minor in Music and a focus on disaster management, health planning, and urban planning. He also volunteered with the Kenyan Red Cross. But he did hope to collaborate with other musicians and develop spoken word albums featuring his musicianship.
Let's hear all about his music, his plans, and his history of the mbira and its music in my conversation with Chaka Zinyemba on MF GALAXY.
Chaka Zinyemba on BandCamp, where you can also inquire about mbira lessons
Chaka Zinyemba and the Mbira Renaissance Band
Chaka Zinyemba mini-concert for CKUA
Chaka Zinyemba: Totemism in the 21st Century
Documentary: Mbira - Spirit of the People (Thomas Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi)
Thomas Mapfumo unplugged: Kuenda
Chiwoniso Maraire
Chiwoniso Maraire: "In This Life"
How to Play the Kalimba & Mbira
Electric Kalimba – EH Bass micro synth by Psychiceyeclix
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Natasha Deen is pretty awesome. She's a YA and children's writer who's written more than a dozen books, including The Not So Secret Case Files of Billy Vale, P.I., the Guardian series, and the Retribution series. She criss-crosses Canada teaching new writers and visiting classrooms, and she's won a string of accolades including nominations for the Sunburst and the Alberta Readers' Choice Award and wins for the Moonbeam, CCBC Best Pick for Kids and Teens.
Readers keep coming back for her mix of mystery, action, horror, and humour, some of which arise from her own real-life experiences, and teachers keep booking her because her workshops and teaching guides offer genuine value.
Deen met with me at the food court of Westmount Mall in Edmonton on September 26, 2017. She discussed:
natashadeen.com
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