What on Earth is Going on?

In Canada, a sophisticated and prosperous first world country, there are whole communities living in third world conditions. Many First Nations people don't have adequate access to good health care, proper education, clean drinking water, and other government services. Thanks to strident advocacy, laws are in place to stop such unfairness. But the reality is still a slap in the face. What needs to be done?

Ben is in Ottawa to chat with Andrea Auger of the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society.

Read the blog post about this episode.

About the Guest

Andrea Auger is the Reconciliation and Research Manager for the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society. Raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Andrea is Ojibwe and a member of the Pays Plat First Nation. She joined the Caring Society in 2008 to work on the Touchstones of Hope. With her background in education, Andrea is passionate about teaching, mentoring, and learning from others, especially children, youth, and Elders. Her main areas of interest include engagement in reconciliation, reconciliation approaches, child and youth engagement, and human rights. She is the proud mother of a beautiful son.

For more information about Andrea and the Caring Society, visit fncaringsociety.com.

You've heard the statistics. Income inequality in the west is at its highest level in half a century. The three richest people are worth more than the poorest 48 countries in the world, combined. The top 1% of the world's population own 47% of the world's wealth. It goes on, and it is getting worse. But what are the forces underneath these changes? What was done the last time inequality was so bad? What can be done today?

Ben chats with the highly-regarded economist, Miles Corak, about all this and more.

About the Guest

Miles Corak is Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His research focuses on social mobility, inequality, and child rights. His findings documenting that higher inequality is associated with lower economic opportunity have been widely cited, and used by policy-makers worldwide.

Top print and electronic media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and the BBC have all used Professor Corak's research on "The Great Gatsby Curve", as has the White House.

Prior to joining the Graduate Center, Corak was Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada, and for many years a member of the senior management at Statistics Canada, Canada's national statistical agency. He has been a visiting researcher with the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy; the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the University of London; the Office of Population Research at Princeton University; the Russell Sage Foundation; and was a visiting professor with the Department of Economics at Harvard University. During 2017, he served as the Economist in Residence with the Canadian federal government, advising on social policy reform and the country's poverty reduction strategy.

For more information about Miles, including his blog and much of his writing, visit milescorak.com.

Public art can make cities beautiful, inviting, inspiring and thought-provoking. It can bind communities together not just in what the art communicates, but in how it is made. Public art can even be controversial because of its content and the fact that government commonly foots the bill. However, what is art if it isn't subversive, even dangerous?

Ben is in Toronto to chat with Calgary actor, writer and public artist Dawn van de Schoot about the meaning, purpose and future of art in the public realm.

About the Guest

Dawn van de Schoot is an actor, writer and public artist from Calgary, Alberta. Her MFA studies centred around the healing qualities of the creative process which led her to the fields of Community Cultural Development and Social Practice, where she uses interdisciplinary arts practice to strengthen community and bring people together in new ways and with new understanding.

For more information about Dawn, visit dawnvandeschoot.com.

In his acclaimed thriller, Butcher, Canadian playwright Nicolas Billon asks, how do we punish the unpunishable? How can there be true justice when everyone has their own take on what justice is and how it should be served? How can live theatre as an art form successfully pose such questions in our accelerating digital age? And above all, how does empathy fit into all of this?

Ben sits down with Nic to discuss his play, the power of theatre, and the crucial role of empathy in our lives and society.

About the Guest

Nicolas Billon writes for theatre, film, and television. His plays have been performed in multiple languages around the world. His first, The Elephant Song, was made into a feature film starring Xavier Dolan, Bruce Greenwood, and Catherine Keener, for which Nic won a Canadian Screen Award and a Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award. His latest, Butcher, was produced across Canada and is in development as a feature film for Rhombus Media. Nic has won over a dozen awards for his work, including the Governor General's Award for Drama.

For more information about Nic, visit nicolasbillon.com.

Disability can change everything, and many of us have a hard time understanding what it means for a curb to be too high, or an electrical socket too low. For Rossana Pasquino, who has spent most of her life in a wheelchair, disability has presented some steep challenges, but it has also opened up some unexpected opportunities. She is not only a respected chemical engineer from Naples in Italy, but a Paralympic wheelchair fencer -- a sport that requires intense focus, intelligence, physical prowess and mastery of the 'appeal'.

Ben sits down with Dr. Pasquino for a wide-ranging conversation about fencing, chemistry and the exchange between Italy and Canada during her temporary posting to Queen's University in Kingston.

Read the blog post for this episode.

About the Guest

Rossana Pasquino currently works at the Department of Chemical, Materials and Industrial Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II. Rossana does research in Materials Physics, Materials Science and Surface Chemistry. Their most recent publication is 'Effect of polymer concentration and thermal history on the inverse thermogelation of HydroxyPropylCellulose aqueous solutions'.

Learn more about Rossana.

Complete show notes are below the description.

Racism has been a sad part of the human story for a long time. After slavery was finally abolished in the United States in 1865, it took a hundred years for governments to make formal legal equality real -- and still, social segregation, ethnic discrimination and systemic prejudice continue today. It might even be getting worse. What is racism all about in our age of rising white nationalism and the re-emergence of identity politics, and what can we do about it?

Ben is in St. John's, Newfoundland, to get to the bottom of it with Professor Sulaimon Giwa of Memorial University.

What on Earth is Going on: Podcast Episode 26.

Show Notes

Episode 26: What on Earth is Going on with Racism?

Notes on the Conversation

Ben and Sulaimon discuss the meaning and manifestations of racism, especially in the often-overlooked and downplayed Canadian context. In addition, they hit upon the following:

• Racisms (plural), identity politics, cultural appropriation and privilege
• Diversity of thought as well as background in academia
• The built-in prejudices of a society that is increasingly data-driven
• The concept of truth and truths as distinct from fact
• The interesting idea of leveraging white identity
• Racism and identity in the local context of St. John's and Newfoundland

About the Guest

Dr. Sulaimon Giwa is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Critical Thinking and Reflection, Social Justice, and Social Work Practice.

His doctoral research explored the experiences of, and resilience (including coping strategies) of gay men of colour, to racism. It received the runner-up distinction for the Barbara Godard Prize for the best York University dissertation in Canadian Studies.

Dr. Giwa holds a Diploma in Law and Security Administration from Fleming College, with a specialization in Police Education; a Bachelor of High Honours in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Carleton University, with a concentration in Law and minor in Women's Studies; a Master's of Social Work from Carleton University, with a substantive focus on Social Policy and Administration; and a PhD in Social Work from York University, in the specialty areas of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture.

Dr. Giwa's professional experience includes direct practice; research and policy work at the community and federal level, primarily in youth health promotions, community and organizational practice in diverse communities, corrections (including as a Community Parole Officer and Case Manager for Time for Change, a Crime Prevention Ottawa funded gang exit program), and policing.

His applied research program and professional activities centralize critical race transformative pedagogies and theories as frameworks and analytic tools for social justice and equity. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of race and sexuality; critical social work pedagogy; antiracism/oppression; and the criminal justice system. He has taught in the social work programs at Ryerson University and York University, and in the Police Foundations program at Sheridan College.

Further information about Dr. Giwa's academic and professional work can be found at Academia.edu.

Written by the Guest

Non-Academic Publications

LGBTQ immigrants need better settlement services by Sulaimon Giwa, published in the Conversation Canada, 27 May 2018

Newfoundland needs immigrants and anti-racism action now by Sulaimon Giwa, published in the Conversation Canada, 18 April 2018

Academic Publications

"Coping with Racism and Racial Trauma" by Sulaimon Giwa, published in the Psychic Life of Racism in Gay Men's Communities, edited by Damien W. Riggs (Lexington Books, 2018)

"Foundations of Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression in Social Work Practice" by Gordon Pon, Sulaimon Giwa and Narda Razack

"Is There Racial Discrimination in Police Stop-and-Searches of Black Youth? A Toronto Case Study" by Yunliang Meng, Sulaimon Giwa and Uzo Anucha, published in the Canadian Journal of Family and Youth (Vol. 7, No. 1, 2015)

Further Reading

The Government of Canada's Anti-racism Resources: a list of supporting resource materials.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by sociologist Robin DiAngelo, with a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson. Non-Fiction, analysis. New York Times Bestseller. Published in 2018.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, correspondent for The Atlantic. Written as a letter to the author's teenage son, with a focus on race relations in the United States. Winner of the 2015 National (US) Book Award for Nonfiction. Published in 2015.

The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King, American-Canadian writer and broadcaster. Canadian bestseller and winner of various prizes, including the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize. Published in 2013.

The Quote of the Week

"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."

From Our Dead Behind Us: Poems by Audre Lorde (1934-1992), American writer and activist.

Water is foundational to human life. Many of us live in places where it is clean, cheap and flows freely from the tap, and where it can be taken for granted. But a billion people go without adequate access to clean drinking water, and due to the enormous increase in the demand for water from agriculture and industry, by 2040 most countries will not be able to meet their basic water needs. And water is a finite resource that exists in an ever-moving ecosystem. What we pour down the sink or flush down the toilet must come back. Are we paying enough attention?

Ben chats with Pascale Champagne, Professor of Engineering at Queen's University and Director of the Beaty Water Research Centre.

About the Guest

Enhancing the value and sustainability of our natural and renewable resources has important societal, economic and environmental impacts. The key to ensuring a sustainable future requires the integration of a resource management approach for the valorization of residual streams and environmentally sound processes in the production of energy, fuels and bioproducts from natural and renewable materials. Scientific and technical progress in this field is increasingly dependent on the development and application of more environmentally sustainable processes; recovery, reuse and valorization of waste streams; and the discovery of innovative routes in the extraction and synthesis of bio-based products. The integration of lower environmental impact technologies and green chemistry is paramount to establishing a future supply of green and sustainable bio-based energy, fuel materials and chemical products, as well as a better management of liquid and solid waste streams. The challenge is clear – develop technologies that will be both efficient and effective over a long lifetime that will be compatible with the natural environment.

Dr. Pascale Champagne's research focuses on the development of alternate water and waste management strategies and environmentally sustainable approaches with a focus on integrated bioresource management. Her research activities are interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary and have commonality with the fields of environmental and chemical engineering, biology and green chemistry; hence, she collaborates and has evolved synergistic relationships with a number of researchers in these fields to develop new integrated bioresource management practices, to introduce alternate aqueous and solid waste management approaches, and to create unique opportunities for the bioenergy and bioproducts sectors.

Learn more about Pascale.

"How is it possible that people can simultaneously bowl us over with their ingenuity and disappoint us with their ignorance? How have we mastered so much despite how limited our understanding often is? These are the questions we will try to answer in this book."

The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone was written in 2017 by cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach. Ben chats with Sean Fenlon to find out what on earth is going on according to their provocative and insightful perspective.

About the Book

We all think we know more than we actually do. Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don't even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We're constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with which we interact—and usually we don't even realize we're doing it. The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail. But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. The Knowledge Illusion contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.

Learn more about The Knowledge Illusion.

We all know hard power: tanks, planes, guns, even cyberwarfare units. But since the end of the Second World War, the normal method for a country to achieve its goals has been through openness, dialogue and mutual agreement. War, and the threat of war, has taken a backseat to what Joseph Nye defined as "soft power": the ability to get the other side to want to do what you want. Is this starting to shift? Are we being forced to embrace Donald Trump's harder, zero-sum approach to global affairs?

Ben chats with Sara Greco, PhD Candidate in Political Science at Queen's University.

About the Guest

Sara Greco is a doctoral candidate of political studies at Queen's University, an R.S. McLaughlin Graduate Fellow, and a Student Fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy. Her most recent article, co-authored with Stéfanie von Hlatky, is entitled "Soft Contributions are Hard Commitments: NATO and Canada's Global Security Agenda" and has been published in Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.

Learn more about Sara.

Cities are the principal engines of growth and innovation, not just in the west but all over the world. Crowded and sprawling, manic and beautiful, these gravity wells for the human experience constitute our future. But what is the future of the city? Whether it's rising inequality, affordable housing, or the intensifying mashup of language and culture, how do cities adapt and renew?

Ben is in Toronto, a city that faces intense pressures and where such conversations are at the forefront, to chat with urban designer Blair Scorgie of SvN.

About the Guest

Blair is a Senior Planner / Urban Designer and SvN's Business Development Director. He holds a Master of Architecture, specializing in Urban Design, from McGill University as well as a Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning from Ryerson University. Blair is a Registered Professional Planner, and a member of both the Canadian Institute of Planners and the Ontario Professional Planners Institute. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Ryerson University's School of Urban and Regional Planning and was formerly the Acting Chair of the City of London Urban Design Review Panel.

Blair's diverse project experience includes streetscape and public realm design strategies; architectural control and private realm design strategies; revitalization and intensification strategies; waterfront, campus and district master plans; policy reviews and amendments; development approvals and appeals; and urban design peer reviews.

Learn more about Blair.