Author: Sophia Thomas

U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have a rare and historic opportunity to make generational progress in the fight against climate change.

Listen to a conversation between John Podesta, Founder, Center for American Progress and Former Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, and Gerald Butts, Vice Chairman and Senior Advisor, Eurasia Group and Former Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as they discuss the ways policy makers, business leaders and citizens on both sides of the border can work together to seize this moment.

The secondary effects of public health interventions against COVID-19 continue to impact the health and wellbeing of Canadians, and must not be ignored.

Listen to a conversation between Dr. Vera Etches, Medical Officer of Health, Ottawa Public Health, Dr. Vivek Goel, Professor, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Dr. Gail Beck, Clinical Director, Youth Psychiatry Program, The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, moderated by Nadine Yousif, Mental Health Reporter, Toronto Star.

Dissatisfied with the amount of progress being made towards freedom and equity for all?

On this episode of @Risk, host Jodi Butts is joined by University of Toronto professor and author of On Property, Rinaldo Walcott, to discuss his radically optimistic prescription for a different kind of freedom that goes daringly beyond greater representation of Black and Indigenous people in positions of authority.

To read the full transcript of this episode, click here.

In late January, the House of Commons unanimously voted on a resolution, proposed by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, to call on the government to “use all available tools to address the proliferation of white supremacists and hate groups.” The motion included a specific focus on designating the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization. .

The rise of white supremacist and hate organisations poses a threat to Canadaians. These groups and their members must face consequences for their actions. They ought to be resisted and, ultimately, dismantled. But how should that be done? What risks attend to the expansion or further entrenchment of the national security state? Should white supremacist groups be designated as terrorist organizations?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Harsha Walia, director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and author of the forthcoming book Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism.

Since cyber security risk scales as quickly as fortunes are made by network effects, is it time to adopt new approaches to how we protect and sustain cyber security?

On this episode of @Risk, Jodi Butts speaks with F5 Networks’ Global Head of AI, Stanford lecturer and former Googler, Shuman Ghosemajumder to find out if cyber security can keep pace with the evolving threats.

To read the full transcript of this episode, click here.

Lady A has been in the music industry for decades. In recent months, she has been in the national spotlight in the United States for reasons other than her music. After the band Lady Antebellum shortened their name to “Lady A” in the wake of the death of George Floyd to dissociate themselves from the “Antebellum South” and the racism bound up with that phrase, the band and Lady A entered into lawsuits over the use of the name. In December, she released the track “My Name is All I got.”

This episode is not about names, but about histories, experiences, power, and the question: How does institutionalized racism shape the music industry?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Lady A, a blues, soul, funk, and gospel singer who has released five solo albums, the latest of which is Lady A: Live in New Orleans. We also hear from John Oliver III, Lady A’s Seattle based producer.

Thanks to effective COVID-19 vaccines, we are able to see light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.

On this episode of @Risk, host Jodi Butts speaks with Helen Branswell, a great Canadian and STAT News’ infectious diseases and global health reporter. They discuss the causes for celebration and the lingering uncertainties surrounding the last mile of our COVID-19 journey.

To read the full transcript of this episode, click here.

It’s always important to understand the why before you get to the what and the how, even in the case of risk.

On this episode of @Risk, host Jodi Butts speaks with national best-selling writer and professor of philosophy, Mark Kingwell, about his new book, “On Risk or If You Play, You Pay: The Politics of Chance in a Plague Year.” Beyond our daily COVID risk calculations, lies a white space of opportunity for greater fairness and meaning.

To read the full transcript of this episode, click here.

For as long as anyone can remember, talk about deficits and the debt have been central to political life. How much can we spend? On what? What are the trade-offs? What will it cost? I mean, what will it really cost. If politics is about choosing, if it is about, as the classic phrase goes, “Who gets what, when, and how?” then spending constraints are central to what makes it so.

But what if deficits and the debt did not induce the constraints we thought? Modern monetary theory invites us to think about money and government spending in a new way, opening up possibilities that were seemingly out of reach before. But is the promise too good to be true? On this episode we take a look and ask: Who’s afraid of modern monetary theory?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Stephanie Kelton, Senior Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Stony Brook University, and author of The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy.