EP 17: Love Lockdown

In times of crisis, artists often feel the need to take a stand, to engage in activism. But our guest on today’s program says we should recognize that art and politics have very different agendas. “These are different realms,” he writes, “and the values of one can be inhospitable — even deadly — to the values of the other.” George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of ten books. His latest essay is “Why Activism Leads To So Much Bad Writing.” You can find Tara Henley o...

29 Nov 202340min

This week on Lean Out, we turn our attention to freedom of expression in the arts. Our guest on today’s program is an acclaimed and controversial choreographer who says the UK’s creative industries are in crisis — experiencing a culture of widespread fear and intimidation. And she’s launched a new organization to address this. Rosie Kay is the CEO and artistic director of the Kay2CO dance company, and a founder of Freedom in the Arts. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and...

22 Nov 202331min

This week in New York City, a longtime defender of free speech was honoured by her peers. My guest on today’s program accepted the Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Coalition Against Censorship benefit. She returns to the podcast to mark that occasion — and to talk through the big issues of our current moment, including rising antisemitism. Nadine Strossen is the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a senior fellow with the Foundation for Indiv...

15 Nov 202351min

“Be it resolved, liberalism gets the big questions right.” That was the motion posed at Friday’s Munk Debate in Toronto, to a group of public intellectuals from across the globe.The starting point for the debate was that liberalism is in crisis. That tensions have reached a boiling point. That its critics believe “liberalism has become an impediment to the goal of progress” — and that “humanity urgently needs a new animating ideology.” My guest on today’s program was at that debate, and he’s ...

8 Nov 202316min

For some time now, there have been calls for Canada to launch an independent public inquiry into its handling of the Covid pandemic — including from the British Medical Journal. But this past week, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, Liberal MPs rejected an inquiry, opting for a closed-door review by advisors to the Minister of Health. My guest on today’s program says that it is essential that Canadians examine the mistakes that were made during the pandemic, and learn from them. Joanna Baro...

1 Nov 202340min

There are still people who believe that cancel culture does not exist. But it’s about to get a whole lot harder to make that argument publicly. Our guest on today’s program has a new book out that provides irrefutable evidence that cancel culture is a serious phenomenon — that it is now a common tactic on the right and the left, that it is a threat to individuals and institutions, and that it is ultimately undermining trust. But, our guest today says, there is a solution. Greg Lukianof...

24 Okt 202331min

Crime in Canada is on the rise. According to recent Statistics Canada data, violent crime is at its most severe since 2007, and the murder rate is the highest it’s been since 1992. My guest on today’s program says our criminal justice system is not working - that it is expensive and ineffective and inhumane, and that the time has come to transform it. Benjamin Perrin is a professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia, and the former lead policy adv...

18 Okt 202339min

Earlier this month, a prominent Canadian academic made headlines when he announced his departure from the University of London. “Progressive conformity and cancel culture are distorting the teaching and research mission of universities,” he wrote on Twitter. “Between the extremely controversial and the progressive-controlled monoculture of academia is a vast and growing zone of unspoken truth.”Eric Kaufmann is an author and a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, where he is ...

11 Okt 202339min