Pop Life

This week on the Pop Life Podcast: Later the Pop Life panel, CTV science and technology specialist Dan Riskin, engineering program manager at Google Komal Singh and science commentator & author Of ‘An Earthling’s Guide To Outer Space’ Bob Macdonald, discuss how science became cool again…

And of course one of the people who has changed our views of science is astronaut Chris Hadfield. He’s the first Canadian to walk in space, Chris Hadfield. In addition to being the most famous astronaut our country has ever produced, he’s an author, engineer and former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot. Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner is a fan and the late, great David Bowie called Hadfield’s acoustic version of 'Space Oddity,' performed on board the International Space Station, in 2013, ‘possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created.’ 

At the Pop Life bar he talked about how being in space makes you aware of how connected people are on earth, how he feels lucky that he has a job that can inspire people, thinking like an astronaut and much more.

On this episode of the Pop Life Podcast we have an in-depth interview with hip hop musician, former elementary school teacher and author Humble the Poet. He stops by the “Pop Life” bar to discuss his new book “Things No One Else Can Teach Us,” what he learned from his failures, including a bad record deal, how even after he crawled out of crippling debt, the satisfaction was short lived and much more. Then the “Pop Life” panel, Humble the Poet and “The Awesome Music Project Canada: Songs of Hope and Happiness” authors Terry Stuart and Robert Carli, discuss teachable moments in life.

“They saw that I was working on music after school,” Humble says of his parents. “I was working two jobs, working as a full-time teacher and I was tutoring high school kids at math. So I spent about four hours after work doing that, and I’d come home I’d write record and release something on YouTube. So they saw the work ethic and the main thing I was sacrificing at that point was sleep. And so, they knew when I said I’m going to leave the job full time, that I had a potential record deal on the table and was going to work on music full time, they knew that I wasn’t, you know, just looking for an excuse to quit my job and do nothing.”

This week on the Pop Life Podcast: You’re probably already listening to their new album, “Hey, I'm Just Like You” and have definitely had their ear-wormy song "Everything Is Awesome!!!" from The Lego Movie soundtrack reverberating around your brain from time to time. They are Tegan and Sara, the Grammy Award nominated indie rock sensations who stop by the “Pop Life” bar to discuss their new memoir “High School.” They talk about how music became the perfect fit for them. They tell stories about writing their first song, ‘Tegan Didn’t Go to School Today,” the important people in their lives and how music became a replacement for drugs and alcohol.

Then, the “Pop Life” panel, music industry insiders Farley Flex, Nathan Stein and Laurie Lee Boutet, talk about finding the perfect fit between business and art.

On this week's Pop Life Podcast: What a career our guest has had. He began his career in 1969 as a music journalist. From 1974-1976 he was Vice-President of Led Zeppelin's Swan Song Records, and in the early nineteen eighties he co-owned Modern Records, which released Stevie Nicks' solo albums. He’s worked with everyone from Bonnie Raitt and The Allman Brothers to Hole and Sonic Youth.

He was the Executive Producer of the soundtrack from the TV series Miami Vice and was Music Supervisor on numerous feature films including Dirty Dancing.

He began managing Nirvana just before Nevermind made them international superstars. In the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kurt Cobains death visited the Pop Life bar to talk about his close relationship to Cobain — both professionally and personally -- and his new book Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain.

Then the Pop Life panel, musicians Shelley Hamilton, Damhnait Doyle and Tyler Shaw, discuss life on the road and in the spotlight.

Our first guest is socialite, actress, model and YouTube sensation with over 2.8 million subscribers, Gigi Gorgeous. She has vlogged the trials and triumphs of her gender transition, and, is someone Caitlyn Jenner calls an inspiration and the best storyteller on the internet.

In this interview we talk about her beginnings on social media, gender transition, being a role model and why she published a memoir called He Said, She Said at such a young age. You Tuber Shane Dawson, says, “A conversation with Gigi is filled with laughter, tears, and continuous gasps of shock. This book is no different.” And this interview promises some surprises as well.

Then, Dave Hill stops by. He's a comedian, writer, musician, actor, radio host, and man-about-town originally from Cleveland, Ohio but now living in New York City. He is also one quarter Canadian, thanks to his grandfather… and has always had a fascination with Canada, a fascination he explores in his new book Parking the Moose.

This week on the Pop Life Podcast: Robbie Robertson says his “personal big bang” came with the discovery of rock and roll. An even bigger bang came when the teenaged Robertson saw Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins, a flamboyant, ex-pat Southern American rock-a-billy musician playing in Toronto. The music, a frenetic blend of rock and roll and hopped-up country music, expertly played by a band that included drummer Levon Helm, spoke to Robertson, revealing an aural passageway to a world he had only ever read about. Eventually, at age sixteen, he joined the band, a move that set on the path to helping to shake things up musically by taking Bob Dylan electric, and form a band that melded Hank Williams, Muddy Waters with roots music into something that had never been heard before. When The Band played together, fan Bruce Springsteen says, “something happened that couldn’t happen on their own. Something miraculous.”

Then the “Pop Life” panel, Kelsey Miller, author of “I’ll Be There For You: The One About Friends,” Steve Jordan, founder and Executive Director of the Polaris Music Prize and Wesley Williams (aka Maestro Fresh Wes), the “godfather of Canadian hip hop,” got together to discuss how to define a disruptor in the arts and what it is like to be a game changer.

This week on the Pop Life Podcast:

We’ll meet Anne Hui who travelled from Victoria to Fogo Island to uncover the immigrant history – and vibrant present – of small-town Chinese-Canadian food for her book Chop Suey Nation.

First though, we chat with the "Queen of Country Pop," Sania Twain. She has sold over 100 million records, making the Canadian born singer the best-selling female artist in country music history and one of the best-selling music artists of all time. In her Pop Life conversation we talked about going back to Las Vegas and her battle with stage fright.

On the Pop Life Podcast this week! Roger Christian the legendary creator of the iconic Star Wars props and the author of Cinema Alchemist: Designing Star Wars and Alien. He won an Academy Award for his work on the original Star Wars and was Oscar-nominated for his work on Alien. 

And! Tempest Storm was born Annie Banks in rural Georgia and always wanted to be famous. As a child she would go to the movies and imagine the actors were just behind the screen. Her career was launched after a move to Los Angeles around 1950. Waitressing paid the bills, barely, so when a customer suggested she might make more money as an exotic dancer she jumped at the chance, changed her name—rejecting her agent’s suggestion, the cheerier Sunny Day, with the curt explanation, “I don’t feel like a sunny day.”—and began a career that lasted on-stage until 2012.

With gun violence dominating the headlines these days I wanted to dig back into the vault for a vintage interview we did with Spike Lee on the release of his movie Chi-Raq.

“The human spirit is a great thing,” he said on what he learned while doing research for the film. The director spent six months in Southside Chicago, ‘talking to people, meeting people, getting the lay of the land,” before shooting a single frame of this anti-gang violence movie.

The film draws its story about a neighbourhood woman who convinces the wives and girlfriends of gang members to withhold sex from their men until the guys agree to put down their weapons from a Greek play first performed in 411 BC. but details the very modern problem of gun violence.

This week we meet Timothy Simons, the actor who played Jonah Ryan: the White House liaison to Vice President Meyer’s office on HBO’s Veep. He swung by the Pop Life bar to talk about working in a video store, auditioning for a part he didn’t think he was right for and the creative insults directed at Jonah on the show.

Then, Phillip Norman on Mick Jagger. He is a biographer who specializes in writing big, thick books on rock and roll artists like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly and Elton John. As the Rolling Stones continue their No Filter US Tour, I’ve gone into the vault to find an interview I did with Norman just after he wrote the definitive book on Mick Jagger