New Left Radio

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change-makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week we're joined by journalist Fitsum Areguy and professor of economics and philosophy Vivek Dehejia to explore the possibility of rising interest rates, exploding housing costs, and Canadians being left out in the cold. What can we do? Then, it is being reported that inflation is at an 18 year high with some journalists making the case that it's good for the 99%. Is it true and what impact does it have on the people? Is Modern Monetary Theory a solution? Finally, an old favourite — oil & gas. The two paths discussed in our discourse are "leave it in the ground" or "drill baby drill". Is it that binary? Is there another way?

About Fitsum Areguy

Fitsum Areguy (he/him) is a Black activist and writer who grew up in Kitchener. He draws on years of experience as a community worker and advocate for youth rights and disability justice to inform his artistic practice. He is co-founder of Inside Waterloo and Textile Magazine which he sees as not only an avenue for creative expression but also as a vehicle for liberation and decolonization through the arts.

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About Vivek Dehejia

Vivek Dehejia is Associate Professor of Economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics (1995), awarded with distinction, from Columbia University in New York, where his doctoral dissertation was supervised by Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, the celebrated international trade economist. His other advisers included Professor Robert Mundell, the 1999 Nobel Laureate in Economics. Dehejia’s fields of specialization include international trade, economic development, and international macroeconomics. His research areas include the study of globalization and development and the economic development of India. His recent work has focused on the political economy of reform in India. Dehejia has published in numerous academic journals and also is a frequent commentator in print and on TV in India. He is a columnist for Business Standard, a leading business daily in India. He is co-author of Indianomix: Making Sense of Modern India (Random House India, 2012).

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Alberta announces that it's joined the federal Liberals' scheme to offer $10 a day childcare leaving Ontario as the last holdout. It's a win that's desperately needed by both Jason Kenney and Justin Trudeau, and a surefire election issue for Doug Ford.

Bill 2 in Quebec has been modified but is still a discriminatory law against transgender Quebeckers as the CAQ continues it's push to fight the culture war legislatively.

Then, we're joined by CUPE Ontario Executive Committee member & Pink Triangle Committee representative Susan Gapka in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall to discuss this weekend's Trans Day of Remembrance, CUPE Ontario's role in the fight for Trans workers, and the issues that face Trans Canadians every day.

Links

The 519 Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2021

The 519 Trans Day of Remembrance 2021 Registration

How to be a Trans ally

Trans Day of Remembrance | Canadian Union of Public Employees

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Amazon permeates our lives in so many ways, from lightning-fast consumerism to hoarding metadata - it does it all. It makes sense that a platform originating in bookselling has had an impact on the author and of fiction itself. Literary critic Mark McGurl joins us to discuss his new book Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon, and the deep impact that platform capitalism has had on the artform that is the written word.

About Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon

Since it was first launched in 1994, Amazon has changed the world of literature. The “Everything Store” has not just transformed how we buy books; it has affected what we buy, and even what we read. In Everything and Less, acclaimed critic Mark McGurl explores this new world where writing is no longer categorized as high or lowbrow, literature or popular fiction.

Charting a course spanning from Henry James to E. L. James, McGurl shows that contemporary writing has less to do with writing per se than with the manner of its distribution. This consumerist logic—if you like this, you might also like …—has reorganized the fiction universe so that literary prize-winners sit alongside fantasy, romance, fan fiction, and the infinite list of hybrid genres and self-published works.

This is an innovation to be cautiously celebrated. Amazon’s platform is not just a retail juggernaut but an aesthetic experiment driven by an unseen algorithm rivaling in the depths of its effects any major cultural shift in history. Here all fiction is genre fiction, and the niches range from the categories of crime and science fiction to the more refined interests of Adult Baby Diaper Lover erotica.

Everything and Less is a hilarious and insightful map of both the commanding heights and sordid depths of fiction, past and present, that opens up an arresting conversation about why it is we read and write fiction in the first place.

Buy the book here

About Mark McGurl

Mark McGurl is the Albert Guérard Professor of Literature at Stanford University, where he has been a member of the English Department since 2012. His scholarly work centers on the relation of literature to social, educational and other institutions from the late 19th century to the present. He is former Director of the Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, and has worked with the Stanford Literary Lab. He teaches a range of classes on American literature and related topics. His book, Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon is forthcoming from Verso in 2021.

McGurl is the author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard), which was the recipient of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism for 2011. Links to reviews, interviews and other articles related to this book have been gathered here. McGurl’s previous book was The Novel Art: Elevations of American Fiction after Henry James (Princeton). He has also published articles in journals such as Critical Inquiry, Representations, American Literary History, and New Literary History.

McGurl received his BA from Harvard, then worked at the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. He earned his PhD in comparative literature from Johns Hopkins, and until 2011 taught at UCLA.

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The federal government is set to release their 5G blueprint, with all signs pointing to the exclusion of Huawei from Canada’s plan. Is this simply anti-China sentiment or are there legitimate concerns?

Thousands of Canadians on the financial knifes edge are poised to lose benefits for taking pandemic related emergency payments. What does this say about Canada and the codification of poverty?

Then, Hamiltonians successfully block the removal of an encampment. What does the future hold and when will the hammer of police violence drop?

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Like the show? Like reading books? Support us on Patreon at the 'solidarity' level and you'll be. in the NLR Bookclub, w/ a Verso book delivered to you each month!

A damning and terrible report on the state of youth group homes in Saskatchewan shows the abject failure of the province to care for those in its care. What does it say about us as Canadians?

Then, Cargill workers in High River, Alberta are going on strike. Their workplace has been ground zero for COVID outbreaks in the past year and workers are demanding safer conditions. What responsibility does Cargill have to the workers, the community, and Albertans?

Big news — just one month after symbolically voting to end equalization, the number show that Alberta took in more money from Ottawa than it sent — yet another egg in the face for Jason Kenney and his UCP friends.

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week we’re joined by activist and former NDP candidate for Oshawa Shailene Panylo and journalist, writer, and actor Rob Salerno to dive deep on the non-coalition coalition talks between the ruling Liberals and NDP. Who is the most to gain? Then, the PMO has been running government for five months, does the office hold too much power? What reforms should be made? We round out the episode in the Kevin Vuong saga. What should be done?

About Shailene Panylo

Shailene Panylo is a community organizer, activist, and advocate based in the Durham Region. She represented the NDP for Oshawa in 2019 and 2021.

Shailene is a University of Toronto Alumni with an HBSc. in Molecular Biology, Immunology & Disease, and Women & Gender Studies and a TEFL instructor certified by the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE).

Shailene currently works as the Research & Government Relations Coordinator for the Canadian Federation of Students National office and proudly serve as a Director and Coordinator for the Durham Black Students' Network.

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About Rob Salerno

Rob Salerno is a writer, actor, and journalist based in Los Angeles, California, and Toronto, Canada. His preoccupations as a writer include social justice and probing issues that polite people wouldn’t touch.

Rob’s work has been published in VICE, Advocate, National Post, Metro Toronto, NOW Magazine, #CdnCult Times, FAB, Homorazzi.com, Eye Weekly, and Outlooks and he’s appeared as a commentator on CTV News and Sun News Network. He is best known for his work as a reporter and columnist with Xtra, Canada’s Gay & Lesbian newspaper, now DailyXtra.com, where he covers such topics as: national, provincial, and municipal politics; community organizations and activism; human rights law; crime; media analysis; HIV/AIDS; and immigration and refugee issues. He is well-known in the LGBT community for fearlessly sharing his unconventional opinions on topics of the day.

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Like the show? Like reading books? Support us on Patreon at the 'solidarity' level and you'll be. in the NLR Bookclub, w/ a Verso book delivered to you each month!

Vaccine politics plays a part in who’s in and who’s out in the ‘shadow cabinet’, opening the door for the PPC and Maxime Bernier to pick off a MP. When will this all be behind us?

Then, we’re joined in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall by Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario to discuss the political theatre by Doug Ford on minimum wage and the economic statement for the province’s future.

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The status quo may seem permanent and unchangeable but as David Potter tells us, there are significant disruptions throughout modern history that have fundamentally changed the world — sometimes seemingly overnight. What can we learn from our past in making the world anew? How can movements breakthrough? Most importantly, are disruptive movements doomed to becoming centrist?

About Disruption: Why Things Change

How do things change? The question is critical to the historical study of any era but it is also a profoundly important issue today as western democracies find the fundamental tenets of their implicit social contract facing extreme challenges from forces espousing ideas that once flourished only on the outskirts of society. This books argues that radical change always begins with ideas that took shape on the fringes. Throughout time the "mainstream" has been inherently conservative, allowing for incremental change but essentially dedicated to preserving its own power structures as the dominant ideology justifies existing relationships. In this tour of radical change across Western history, David Potter will show how ideologies that develop in opposition or reaction to those supporting the status quo are employed to effect profound changes in political structures that will in turn alter the way that social relations are constructed.

Not all radical groups are the same, and all the groups that the book will explore take advantage of challenges that have already shaken the social order. They take advantage of mistakes that have challenged belief in the competence of existing institutions to be effective. It is the particular combination of an alternative ideological system and a period of community distress that are necessary conditions for radical changes in direction. The historical disruptions chronicled in this book-the rise of Christianity, rise of Islam, Protestant reformations, Age of Revolution (American and French), and Bolshevism and Nazism--will help readers understand when the preconditions exist for radical changes in the social and political order. As Disruption demonstrates, not all radical change follows paths that its original proponents might have predicted. An epilogue helps situate contemporary disruptions, from the rise of Trump and Brexit to the social and political consequences of technological change, in the wider historical forces surveyed by the book.

Buy the book here

About David Potter

David Potter is Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. His previous books include The Origin of Empire: Rome from the Republic to Hadrian, Constantine the Emperor, The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, and Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint.

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London, Ontario has a plan to address homelessness but advocates are concerned. In order to solve the challenges the city faces, political will must take on property developers that horde the downtown core, not ship the vulnerable to the hinterlands.

Mainers have voted to block a planned power line with Hydro Quebec. If the utility wants to do business in the good old USA, it must learn to play politics the American way.

Alberta posts the highest increases in university tuition in Canada. What else should we expect from a province that is stripping away its revenue in order to bolster corporate profit?

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Like the show? Like reading books? Support us on Patreon at the 'solidarity' level and you'll be. in the NLR Bookclub, w/ a Verso book delivered to you each month!

Each week on Counterpoint, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week we're joined by Washington Post columnist David Moscrop and National Post columnist Adam Zivo for a discussion on Justin Trudeau's commitment to cap carbon emissions, the move by BC to decriminalize drugs, and Doug Ford's announcement of a $15 minimum wage.

About David Moscrop

David Moscrop is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, the host of the podcast Open to Debate, and the author of "Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones."

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About Adam Zivo

Adam Zivo is a regular columnist at the National Post, an activist having previously consulted with the Canadian Armed Forces on LGBTQ+ issues, and former Junior Research Fellow at the NATO Association of Canada focusing in the areas of cyber and information warfare and social media manipulation.

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