WildTrekker

In this archival interview, sociologist Nechama Tec tells George about her personal journey – the way she survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland, and how the generosity, courage and feistiness of some people, and the cruelty and utter indifference of others, inspired her, to devote her life to investigating the meaning of compassion and altruism.

H. G. Wells is known the world over for his science fiction, which has often been adapted for the radio and the silver screen. Wells had an uncanny ability to extrapolate from trends current in his day, and project them into the future – which involved creating secular prophecies. But he also had an authoritarian strand in his personality, and wished, as a frustrated intellectual, that people like him – technocrats – would one day wield tremendous power in the world.

In this sound poem, George brings together poetry, original music and sound effects to recount a sea voyage by cargo ship from Montreal up the Labrador coast to Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay. In the unique Arctic world of icebergs, illusions and mind-bending storms, he finds inspiration. And he questions what happens when you are taken out of your comfort zone, and thrust into the lands of crystal of the Far North.

Brian Keenan, the author of An Evil Cradling, was not broken by years of captivity at the hands of Shi’ite militias in Lebanon. On the contrary, he carved out a private space of the mind, as a hostage. And he fantasized with fellow hostage John McCarthy about traveling one day to Patagonia in southern Chile. In this archival interview, Brian tells George what it meant to be held hostage, and how it felt for the two cellmates to visit the land of their dreams, once they were released.

In this episode, George creates a time machine, the Hyperspace Voyage, and invites you along to relive his first years as a journalist, reporting on Quebec politics, the fate of aboriginal people in Canada, the cycles of wildlife in the Arctic, the scientific revolution of the Renaissance, and 4000-year-old cave paintings in the Sahara desert of Mauritania.

Poor Richard Grey. While growing up near Montreal, he has to contend with a very eccentric family, the illness of his mother, a succession of unfriendly cats, having to wear a gas mask in his own home, and then attending a dystopian school. But what he fears most of all is breaking out of his bubble and finding out about the real world. Will he ever become a writer? Will he ever find true love?