The Orchardcast

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is fond of calling Canada “broken,” and he’s not wrong. Health care, housing, affordability — they’re all in crisis.

But while Poilievre blames these problems on “woke” policies and “Big Government,” Nora Loreto has published the first book in a series that explains the causes and consequences of Canada’s decline.

That first bo…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.readtheorchard.org

“There’s no business like Shoah business,” former Israeli deputy prime minister Abba Eban is reported to have once said.

Anyone who follows developments in Israel and Palestine, even casually, knows how frequently Israeli political and military leaders invoke the Holocaust to justify their actions.

Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide s…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.readtheorchard.org

That’s right, we’re talking about sports this episode.

Andrew Stoeten of THE BATFLIP and Blue Jays Happy Hour joins me to discuss the Toronto Blue Jays’ unwatchable 2024 season, in which they sit dead last in the American League East division, and what brought the team to this point.

What moves should they have made in the offseason last year? Why can’t …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.readtheorchard.org

Rumneek Johal, associate editor and B.C. reporter at PressProgress, joins the Orchardcast to discuss recent reporting in the Globe and Mail suggesting former defence minister Harjeet Sajjan put Canadian Forces and diplomats at risk during the fall of Kabul to rescue Afghan Sikh asylum seekers.

We talked about Rumneek’s work debunking this sloppy hit pie…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.readtheorchard.org

Friend of the Orchard David Moscrop makes his Orchardcast debut to discuss whether a Conservative majority government is an inevitability in the next Canadian election, just as a Labour majority was inevitable in the U.K. election.

We talk about how the Liberal Party’s bland centrism has failed to rise to the challenges of the moment and the NDP being g…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.readtheorchard.org

Independent Iranian-Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin (@SMohyeddin) joins the Orchardcast to talk about the nuances of Iranian diaspora politics, the presence of Iranian war criminals in Canada and differing views on an Iranian future without the Islamic Republic.

We then change track to discuss Samira’s coverage of the pro-Palestine encampment at th…

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Shannon Phillips announced a couple weeks ago that she’s resigning her Lethbridge-West seat effective July 1, citing the growing toxicity of political discourse, not just in Alberta but internationally.

We spoke about how media amplifies and bolsters far-right narratives but also sometimes combats them, Lethbridge police officers’ harassment campaign aga…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.readtheorchard.org

Podcaster Eiynah (@nicemangos) used to be a New Atheist fellow traveller, admiring the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. But as the movement’s right-wing, Western chauvinist worldview became more explicit, she’s since emerged as one of its sharpest critics.

She joins the Orchardcast to talk about why she still reluctantly id…

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Jake Landau is a progressive Liberal politico and author of the Jake Landau Is Getting Tired newsletter. We actually agreed on a lot more than I expected in this discussion.

My position is that NATO plays a belligerent, needlessly provocative role in international affairs, largely at the behest of the U.S., and serves as an extortion racket for arms manufacturers.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.readtheorchard.org

Lev has the distinction of being the first journalist to report that Yaroslav Hunka, the man who received a standing ovation in Canadian Parliament during Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit in September, was a veteran of a Nazi unit.

We spoke about the crimes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and SS Galicia Division, why some Ukrainian diaspo…