Windward with Joel A. Crichton

A conversation with Lewis Cardinal: communicator, educator, and peace-mongerer. About Indigenous perspectives, Reconciliation, leadership, and coming to consensus.

A conversation with Colin Mochrie, star of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.

How does one maintain an attitude of curiosity toward life's experiences, even when they are difficult? And how does that attitude translate to relating to current events, particularly in a hyper-partisan, and judgmental cultural moment?

Lisa Marchiano is a Jungian Analyst, and co-produces the podcast This Jungian Life.

We speak about the challenge of maintaining a psychological stance in the current cultural environment, touching on the issues of "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" and puberty blockers.

Mathematics is the purest of art forms. What does that mean? And why do most of us understand it as the least imaginative and most soul-destroying of all school subjects?

Pure mathematician Dr. Matt Mazowita and I discuss this, and we explore how people today could possibly reconnect with a source of inspiration that has been known since ancient times: number. We also wrestle with the classic math problem of how to transform a cow into a donut.

Jennifer Pielak specializes in improvising stage musicals live. She combines this art form with her psychology background in the show Inside Voices, which is "all about giving the personas and judges in ourselves space to play (and sing)."

We discuss about the intimate relationship between the disciplines of psychology and acting, as well as the under-discussed overlap between therapy and artistic work. Therapy and art can feed one another, but the relationship can become dangerous.

What tactics are acceptable in a political campaign? Are some things out of bounds? When politics become "total war", what damage is done?

Caylan Ford, by all accounts a star candidate in the 2019 Alberta election, was publicly accused of "echoing white supremacist rhetoric", and chose to resign mid-campaign. We discuss her experience, and try to determine whether the accusations against her have any merit.

Joel speaks with Kory Mathewson about his work in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, improvised comedy, and music. This is a great intro to the field, and addresses a lot of folkloric misconceptions. Kory is a PhD candidate in Reinforcement Learning at the University of Alberta with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. Kory has interned at Twitter Cortex, Google Brain Magenta, and Apple Special Projects Group. He is currently developing an artificial intelligence to perform comedy alongside.