Ideas

Authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor want to stop apocalyptic end-of-the-world thinking and its fantasies about colonizing other planets. “We love it here… we want to stay,” they say. They diagnose today's fascism as having an “Armageddon Industrial Complex,” whose main agents are apocalyptic fundamentalists, ethnonationalists, and tech billionaires fixated on creating a super-intelligence at any cost. In their book “End Times Fascism and the Fight for a Living World,” Klein and Taylor explore the convergent forces which not only welcome the end of the world, but seek to accelerate it.

Guests in this podcast:

Naomi Klein Naomi Klein is the author of several books including "No Logo" and "The Shock Doctrine," and "Doppelganger" which have sold in the millions around the world. Her work as a social activist, journalist, and documentary filmmaker critiques both the systems and the agents that have produced the climate crisis, consumer capitalism, and unaccountable corporatism. She is also a professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia.

Astra Taylor delivered the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures, called "The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart." Among her other books are "The People's Platform" and "Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone." She's also a journalist, a documentary filmmaker, and co-founder of The Deck Collective. She once declared publicly that she doesn't see herself primarily as a public intellectual, but rather as a “feral intellectual."

If you ask security expert and author Patrick Lennox the answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ He argues Alberta separatism is less about Western alienation and more about a global effort to destroy liberal democracy. In his book, On Treason, Lennox says what’s unfolding in Alberta is part of a nefarious — and treasonous playbook that’s been used worldwide. To survive the threat, he suggests Canada must call out the traitors and arm ourselves against disinformation and deceit. *This is the final episode in our three-part series asking: what makes a nation?

Listen to other episodes in this series:
Map of Cascadia
Quebec Separatism for Newcomers

Guest in this podcast:

Patrick Lennox is an international relations scholar and worked as a security expert for the Canadian government. He has written extensively about Canadian foreign policy and our relationship with the U.S. His latest book is called On Treason: Alberta Separatism, Foreign Interference and Canada’s Survival in a Revolutionary Age.

With a newly elected government in Quebec promising to turn the province into its own country, and another separatist party warning against ethno-nationalism, immigrants in the province are asked to consider their loyalties. IDEAS producer Tom Howell finds out why newcomers might want to join the movement to leave Canada and help forge Quebec's new national path. *Part two in a three-part series asking: what makes a nation?

Listen to another episode from this series:

A Map of Cascadia

Guests in this podcast:

Aisha Issa is a Parti Québécois candidate for the provincial riding of Maurice-Richard in Montreal, Quebec. She has been a supporter of Quebec sovereignty since the 1995 referendum.

Marie-Anne Alepin is the president of the Societé St-Jean Baptiste of Montreal.

Gary Owen is a playwright and screenwriter from Cardiff, in Wales. His play, Owain & Henry is a historical epic about a Welsh military commander who rebelled against the English king, Henry IV, in the year 1400.

Michael Sheen is an actor who plays Owain Glyndŵr in the play Owain & Henry, which he also co-directed.

There’s a place where people make hoppy beer, fresh sushi, and damn fine coffee. It's called Cascadia. The lifestyle is laid-back, the scenery is majestic, and they even have a flag. Where is it exactly? Think of it as an ecological region stretching from Alaska to B.C. through the Pacific Northwest to Northern California. Its national identity transcends borders, and is bound through culture, history, attitude and language. Welcome to Cascadia: the West Coast utopian dream. *Part one in a three-part series asking: what makes a nation?

Listen to another episode in this series:

What draws a new immigrant to Quebec separatism?

Guests in this podcast:

Fritz Götz is an associate professor in psychology at the University of British Columbia. He is also the director of the PANGEA lab, which stands for Personality and Geographical Ambiance Lab, studying geographical psychology.

Julia Swan has a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Chicago, and she is an associate professor at San Jose State University.

Alexander Baretich designed the Cascadian Bioregional Flag. Some people have nicknamed it “The Doug,” because of the Douglas Fir tree on the flag.

Bureaucracies were created to get the work done and get it done efficiently, according to 19th-century thinker Max Weber. So why are there more and more meaningless executive jobs that contribute nothing but soak up the pay? IDEAS examines the corporate tendency to "bureaumania.” *This episode originally aired on Sept. 18, 2024.