So I think this week I'm going to focus on things I looked at online.
I've started listening to three new Canadian podcasts recently. Forgotten Corner, which does long form interviews with people involved in Albertan politics and media, interviewed NDP MLA Janis Irwin this week and outgoing Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi last week. Both were notable for getting their subjects to open up beyond the usual talking points and pabulum that are the norm for politicians. Big Shiny Takes shares a co-host with Forgotten Corner but is less serious in tone, even going so far as to bill itself as the 'world's first and only anti-free speech podcast,' but that's probably called for given that their mission is to read Canada's worst columnists. Hard to do with a straight face. Recent guests include Nora Loreto––who I've long been a fan of––and Dan Boeckner, co-host of The Bottlemen, third of this week's Canadian pods and maybe the closest in tone to Chapo. True Anon and Felix Biederman have featured as recent guests, but my favourite episodes are when they dig into Canadian history, as they did in their Victims of Victims of Communism and MCanultra ft. Mike Judge episodes. For a long time we've been told that Canadian history is either fairly rosy (especially in comparison to the States) or non-existent. But these last few years people have been waking up to the fact that that's just not true, and I'm glad to see leftists Canadian podcasts are starting to dig into our country's past, not as a curio of a time gone by, but as something that's still living with us, even if we're often unable to see it.
Other pods I've listened to this week:
Blowback Season 2 episode 1: the boys are back in town with a series on America's unrelenting war on Cuba.
Streetfight Radio: lifestyle content for the working class should be such an obvious concept that you'd think it would be everywhere, but the Streetfight guys are the only people I know of who are even trying.
Chapo Trap House: the only podcast where I'll listen to a new episode either the night it comes out or the next day. I used to be the same with Cum Town but now I find myself only sporadically checking in. The episode I listed to most recently had an amazing bit where they were riffing on nursery rhymes, talking about the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, hypothesizing that the reason she had so many children she didn't know what to do was because she was constantly getting raw dogged and then sent back to the shoe. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea but I have to admit I found it funny. I tried to transcribe the relevant section but I was laughing too hard and now I forget which episode it was in.
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| I must've listened to this Lee Scratch Perry remix of Forest Sword's Thor's Stone like fifteen times this week. |
In terms of online reading, I've subscribed to Jeet Heer's new substack newsletter The Time of Monsters. I know people like to laugh at Jeet online, but I actually do appreciate his writing. He had a great post on the debacle over the new Philip Roth biography and another on Tucker Carlson's homophobia. Maybe next week I'll do a post just on all the substacks/newsletters I've subscribed to in recent weeks and try to rank them from most readable to inbox white noise. It really does seem like newsletters are the new podcasts. They let people reach an audience without being public facing in the way of social media, so there's less risk of blowback from the general public, which I think in some ways might be a good thing and the start of a return to a healthier internet. I've thought about starting one myself but I don't think I could write anything consistently enough and I don't want to plead with my handful of twitter followers for their attention and I wouldn't feel comfortable monetizing it.
Otherwise, I read an interesting LRB article on container ships, which happened to mention a great book on the subject that I happened to thoroughly enjoy. And, despite swearing off economists as part of a New Year's resolution, there's an interesting Adam Tooze piece that actually made me feel sympathetic for its subject, Paul Krugman. If you're familiar with Krugman (I wasn't), you want might want to skip to the last third of the piece, which covers the Biden admin, Krugman's growing awareness of class inequality and his interest in Michal Kalecki, an economist whose work 'bridged Keynesianism and Marxism.' Killer line: "For critics on the left it can be infuriating to watch high-powered centrists inching their way towards seemingly obvious political conclusions. But when they do, it is consequential."
Well, that's it for this week. Stay safe and wear your mask.
