Darts and Letters
88 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 12 ratingsThis is about ‘arts and letters,’ but for the kind of people who might hack a dart. We cover public intellectualism and the politics of academia from a left perspective. Each week, we interview thinkers about key debates that are relevant to the left. We discuss politics, culture, and intellectual history.
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Episodes
EP68: Science Against the People (ft. Charles Schwartz & Sigrid Schmalzer)
November 14, 2022 17:02 - 59 minutes - 82.4 MBThe right attacks science, liberals uncritically defend it. But there are other ways to see scientific authority. Scientists have always served capitalism, patriarchy, and empire. So say Science for the People, a radical movement of scientists. So, they are fighting to change it. We tell the story of the groups Vietnam-era origins, and explore why it's having a resurgence today.
EP67: Darts Transit Commission (ft. Paris Marx)
October 31, 2022 15:00 - 42 minutes - 58.9 MBWe speak to Paris Marx of Tech Won't Save Us on the shifting politics of Silicon Valley. We'll traverse the intellectual history of hippies-turned-arch-capitalists, and focus especially on their ideas for transportation policy. Do they have a radical vision for a different transportation future, or is it a vision of maintain the status quo?
EP66: Technocracy Now!, pt. 3 (ft. Sam Adler-Bell & Alessandro Delfanti)
October 18, 2022 17:22 - 1 hour - 84 MBThe first two episodes of this series told stories of technocrats who tied themselves to a muscular state. They believed the state could remake society, if it had the right expertise. However, the state under neoliberalism doesn’t have the technocratic ambitions or capacities it used to. Does that mean technocracy is dead? No, technocracy is just moving into the private sphere.
EP65: Technocracy Now!, pt. 2 (ft. Joy Rohde & Eden Medina)
October 10, 2022 05:00 - 1 hour - 87.4 MBLast episode, we looked at the technocrats of the industrial age: Thorstein Veblen, Howard Scott, and the "industrial tinkerers," as Daniel Bell put it. But Daniel Bell went on to say we were entered a new age -- a "post-industrial age" -- where a new kind of technocrat would vie for power. We look at mid-century cybernetics.
EP64: Technocracy Now!, part 1 (ft. Noam Chomsky)
October 03, 2022 14:37 - 1 hour - 86.6 MBTechnocracy is the idea that experts should govern. For the common good, presumably. It makes a certain amount of sense, given how irrational our politics seem to be right now. So, technocracy is seductive. In fact, it’s an idea as old as politics itself. We begin the first of three-part series telling stories of technocracies past, present, and future.
Coming Soon: Technocracy Now!
September 30, 2022 14:00 - 1 minute - 1.43 MBTechnocracy is the idea that experts should govern. For the common good, presumably. In fact, it's an idea as old as politics itself, and it emerges just about everywhere across the ideological spectrum. next episode, we begin a three-part series telling stories of technocracies past, present, and future.
EP63: Who Researches the Researchers?
August 12, 2022 07:00 - 55 minutes - 76.5 MBResearchers with the best of intentions still get things wrong. So what does it look like when the old paternalistic ways are dispensed of? We talk to Garth Mullins, who is both researcher and subject in Vancouver's downtown east side and also to Michelle Fine, a leading proponent of critical participatory action research.
EP62: Socialize the Series of Tubes (ft. Ben Tarnoff)
July 29, 2022 20:31 - 53 minutes - 49.4 MBRecently a major outage took nearly a third of Canada offline. No phone, no internet… even access to 911 got shut down in some places, all thanks to Rogers Media Inc. But why does one company get so much control over a vital service like the Internet in the first place?
EP61: Enter the Zuckerverse (ft. Sandrine Han and Ian Bogost)
July 15, 2022 20:02 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBThe term "metaverse" comes from a 1993 science fiction novel. Since then, it's grown from a dystopian literary concept to a reality that corporations want to sell you. Strap on some VR goggles and escape your tired analog life! Except that the systemic issues we already have seem to be creeping into the metaverse, too.
EP60: Not Alright Alright Alright (Big Shiny Takes ft. Gordon Katic)
June 30, 2022 18:03 - 1 hour - 79.9 MBCanadian media is full of galaxy brain columnists. Luckily there is a show who reads their crap so that you don't have to: Big Shiny Takes, aka Jeremy Appel, Eric Wickham and Marino Greco. We're featuring this episode because your esteemed host and editor Gordon Katic made an appearance to discuss the latest unfathomably smart take: Matthew McConaughey has a moral obligation to run for president of the United States. It's stunning intellectual work like this that has led Big Shiny Takes t...
EP59: January 6th and the Myth of the Mob (ft. James Jasper and Joy Rohde)
June 19, 2022 15:12 - 1 hour - 62.8 MBScholars used discredited crowd theory to explain the events of January 6ths. These are straight from the physician Gustave Le Bon, a bigot who hated the masses. Is it OK to apply reactionary ideas to reactionary movements, out of political expediency? We think no.
EP58: The Twisted “Science” of Great Replacement Theory
June 03, 2022 20:30 - 42 minutes - 38.8 MBThe suspect in the Buffalo shooting had a manifesto, as mass shooters often do. However, this one was different. It was littered with references to peer-reviewed scientific research that, he purports, supports his white supremacist beliefs. It’s part of a broader far right subculture, with ‘journal clubs’ and the like, in which research is read closely and appropriated, says population geneticist Jed Carlson (check out this thread in particular). What are scientists to make of it? Plus, the...
EP57: Truck Nuts (ft. Matt Christman, Shane Hamilton, Chase Barber, Justin Martin, & Gabrielle Esperdy)
May 21, 2022 17:26 - 1 hour - 69.2 MBThe pickup truck is the symbol of rural conservative masculinity. So, it often takes centre stage in the tired culture wars between reactionary neo-populists and liberal moralists. Like today, with Canada’s right crudely embracing the truck–and tweeting furiously about those ‘Laurentian elites,‘ and ‘Toronto columnists‘ who thumb their nose at it. But, if you really want to piss off the libs: don’t just post about it. Why not hang some big veiny nuts from your truck? Today on the show, we t...
EP56: Don’t Look Left (ft. David Sirota)
May 06, 2022 20:08 - 42 minutes - 58.4 MBWhy does the democratic establishment always avoid turning left, even when it might mean a political win? Gordon asks David Sirota. Sirota is behind the smash-hit Netflix movie Don’t Look Up! He is also host and co-writer of an excellent podcast series called Meltdown, which documented how Obama’s lacklustre response to the financial crisis set the stage for Trump. We cover a range of topics: from the limits of technocracy, the political co-option of science and expertise, the critical reac...
EP55: Mutually-Assured Dysfunction (ft. Jessica Hurley & Mark Winfield)
April 23, 2022 18:39 - 59 minutes - 82 MBThe war in Ukraine has brought nuclear technology to the forefront. There’s the threat of nuclear weapons, and the danger of nuclear power plants melting down under military fire. Yet, the nuclear industry also promises to deliver us from our dependency on fossil fuels. It’s an interesting duality with nuclear: is it the end of the world, or is it salvation?
EP54: Dugin: Russia’s Imperial Philosopher
April 08, 2022 19:54 - 39 minutes - 36.4 MBWe look at the mind behind Russia’s imperial vision, Aleksandr Dugin. Political theorist Matt McManus walks us through this far-right thinker’s strange and often contradictory ideas, from: his geopolitical clash-of-civilizations narrative, his flirtation with left-wing postmodernism, his Nietzschean great man-visions, his rejection of all things liberal, and his more ancient and mystical imagination.
EP53: Survival of the Leftest: Should We Embrace Behavioural Genetics?
March 25, 2022 19:07 - 46 minutes - 64.1 MBCan genetics play a role in crafting left social policy? Or should we not touch those ideas ever again–even with a 10 foot pole? Paige Harden’s new book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality” makes a forceful case for an egalitarian politics informed by DNA. However, geneticist Joseph Graves critiqued the book in the pages of the Lancet, arguing that we do not need sophisticated genetic knowledge to make a more socially just world. Managing producer Marc Apollonio gues...
EP52: The DNA of a Wrongful Imprisonment (ft. Kimani Boden, Stephen Cordner & Amade M’charek)
March 11, 2022 21:00 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBIn this episode, we look at how forensic DNA technologies relate to our ideas about race and criminality. We see how DNA led to the imprisonment of an innocent man, Farah Jama. Then, we look at the frontier of forensic DNA and artificial intelligence. A new technique promises to draw an image of a suspect based solely on what we see in the DNA, but critics say these pictures are entrenching stereotypes about race and crime.
EP51: This is Your Brain on Trial (ft. Andrew Scull, Tess Neal & Roland Nadler)
February 25, 2022 21:00 - 1 hour - 58.4 MBImagine reading or watching The Minority Report and thinking of that as a model for the criminal justice system. Well, plenty of forensic types are doing just that. Can you figure out if you are a criminal by scanning your brain? On this episode of Darts and Letters, guest-host Jay Cockburn and our guests explore the study of the criminal mind, from the history of madness, to spotty personality tests, to the emerging neuroscientific frontier.
EP31: Moral Kombat (ft. Liana Kerzner, Cyril Lachel, & Henry Jenkins) [Rebroadcast]
February 18, 2022 21:00 - 1 hour - 60.7 MBOn this episode: guest host and lead producer Jay Cockburn travels back to the 90s, and looks at the story of Mortal Kombat. The game was violent, gory, glorious. It was a youth rebellion in miniature. Parents rebelled against the rebellion, staging their own petulant counter-revolution, and politicians embraced it. It triggering a moral panic and even congressional hearings into violence in games. But why did it happen, who did it serve, and what does it tell us about our own culture?
EP50: Don’t hate the player (ft. Alexander Lee)
February 11, 2022 21:00 - 32 minutes - 30.1 MBGuest host (and regular lead producer) Jay Cockburn gets ready to enter the world of e-sports, with a lesson in Super Smash Bros from a top player and professional coach. Find out why he won’t make it (spoiler alert: he doesn’t have that reaction time he used to); but also, find out why he might not want to make it. Unfortunately, e-sports have many of the problems that ‘real’ sports do, and some are even worse.
EP49: Unionversity: College Athletics and the Fight for Fair Pay (ft. Edwin Garret, Helena Worthen & Joe Berry)
February 04, 2022 21:00 - 56 minutes - 52.1 MBCollege athletes are workers, and they deserve to get paid. They put their bodies and futures on the line for the profit of their schools, without seeing real compensation for their labour. However, things are changing. On this episode of Darts and Letters, we go downfield to look at university labour and the battle for union rights.
EP48: Plague Robbers: Nothing Spreads Like Greed (ft. John Nichols)
January 28, 2022 21:00 - 43 minutes - 5 MBHas the pandemic taught us anything? As we look forward and imagine what the future might look like, we like to think ‘next time will be different.’ But, if we don’t take a serious look back, it won’t. Not as long as the people who made this pandemic so bad face zero consequences. In this episode of Darts and Letters, John Nichols says it’s time for a COVID reckoning.
EP47: Lost Utopias: A History of World’s Fairs (ft. Rob Rydell, Jade Doskow & Jennifer Slack)
January 22, 2022 21:00 - 1 hour - 63.5 MBWelcome to 21st century techno-utopianism. Driven by a new tech-bro/crypto culture, supported by online hordes of true believers, and couched in philosophies of meritocracy and technocracy, techno-utopianism is born anew. But this thinking, while different, is not really new. As Darts and Letters sets out on a series of episodes to explore the persistent belief that technology will save us, we start by looking back to past utopias: rising, shimmering images of a future of wonder and plenty...
EP46: School Scams (ft. Derek Robertson & Gavin Moodie)
January 14, 2022 21:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBLast year was a rough one for academia – inauspicious, to say the least. The Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on students, universities lurching between open and closed, leaving students strained and uncertain about their futures, and stuck in Zoom classrooms. All of that is bad. But wait – there’s more! In this episode of Darts and Letters, we take two of the most frustrating aspects of the higher education world: endless culture wars around free speech and identity, and the continued corp...
EP45: New Years Resolutions from, and for, the left
January 07, 2022 21:00 - 17 minutes - 15.9 MBHappy new year! We’re a few days behind, but as we catch up after the holidays and prepare to enter the third year of the plague, we wanted to bring you a few resolutions from, and for, the left by way of the Darts and Letters team and a handful of our past guests.
EP8.1: Bantering with Bannon [Rebroadcast]
December 30, 2021 21:00 - 1 hour - 72.1 MBIn this bonus episode, host Gordon Katic speaks with Ben Teitelbaum, author of a fascinating new-ish book called War for Eternity. He spent over 20 hours with Steve Bannon, as well as a wider network of far-right thinkers and strategists. Why do their bizarre ideas appeal, and what can we do to combat them?
EP44: Gamify Everything (ft. Sebastian Deterding, Paris Martineau & Mostafa Henaway)
December 17, 2021 21:00 - 49 minutes - 45 MBSetting goals for the new year? Learning a language? Going for a run? Delivering food? Picking packages off a warehouse shelf for delivery? There’s a game for that. Or, at least, a gamified system designed to nudge you in a series of pre-programmed directions in the service of the state, techno-capitalist overlords, or any number of other groups and entities that chart the course of our hyper-connected, cutting-edge, dystopian 21st century lives. This week on Darts and Letters, guest host J...
EP43: The Dumbest Books of 2021 (ft. Luke Savage, Matt McManus, Lyta Gold, Daniel Bessner & David Moscrop)
December 10, 2021 21:00 - 53 minutes - 49.2 MBAs we prepare for a series of 2021 retrospectives looking at the highs and lows of the year, the bests and the worsts, Darts and Letters is embracing the chaos, looking to the printed word, and scouring the stacks to find the dumbest books that found their way to print. We did not have to look far. In fact, the hard part was choosing from a bursting cornucopia of awful. In the spirit of the new year, this week we feature a roundtable with three guests and two call-in friends, each of whom m...
EP42: The Road From Roe (ft. Becca Andrews, Chelsea Ebin & Laurie Bertram Roberts)
December 03, 2021 21:00 - 1 hour - 71.3 MBFor years, abortion rights advocates have worried about the United States drifting towards abolishing Roe vs. Wade. Could this be the moment? On this episode of Darts and Letters, we look at the road from Roe: years of court cases and anti-choice activism that have led to the current showdown that threatens the right to choose.
EP41: The Road From Roe (ft. Becca Andrews, Chelsea Ebin & Laurie Bertram Roberts)
December 03, 2021 21:00 - 1 hour - 71.3 MBFor years, abortion rights advocates have worried about the United States drifting towards abolishing Roe vs. Wade. Could this be the moment? The Trump-heavy, right-wing, partisan Supreme Court is hearing a challenge to Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The court may overturn two decades’-old decisions–Roe v. … Read More Read More
EP41: Canada’s Dumbest Public Intellectuals (ft. Kate Jacobson, Hilary Agro, Big Shiny Takes & Andre Goulet)
November 27, 2021 18:00 - 1 hour - 67.1 MBCanada’s intellectual culture is now like a barren soil that struggles to give life to even the simplest flora. They’re just not that smart. We make too many right wing cranks, self-help charlatans, blood-thirsty reactionaries, insipid centrists, and third-rate Hayekians. But which are our worst? We invite our new friends from the Harbinger Media Network to help scour the national intellectual wasteland to find Canada’s dumbest public intellectual.
EP24: Darts and Lasers (ft. Cory Doctorow, Nalo Hopkinson, & Batya Weinbaum) [Rebroadcast]
November 19, 2021 21:00 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBIt’s stardate 99040.01 and lead producer Jay Cockburn is temporarily taking over command of Darts and Letters for an episode. This week we enter the world of science fiction, revealing how it’s long been a vehicle for radical thought We dig into post-scarcity, Afrofuturism, and feminist speculative fiction as we set our phasers to fun and go where no podcast has gone before.
EP40: War Games (ft. Tanner Mirrlees)
November 12, 2021 21:00 - 50 minutes - 46 MBWhy are there so many war games? They exploded in popularity post 9/11. Maybe you’ve played some of them. Or all of them. This week on Darts and Letters, Tanner Mirrlees, associate professor in the Communication and Digital Media Studies Program at Ontario Tech University and author of Hearts and Mines: The US Empire’s Culture Industry, joins us as we plunge headlong into the history of the militainment industrial complex, to understand the militarization of gaming and the gamification of war.
EP39: Three Corporations in a Trenchcoat (ft. Matt Stoller & Dwayne Winseck)
November 05, 2021 12:00 - 57 minutes - 52.4 MBIf you eat, use a cell phone, connect to the internet, open a bank account, down a pint, or pick up a prescription in Canada, you’re probably experiencing the country’s familiar brand of oligopoly and monopoly. It’s arguably worse than the US. We’re basically three corporations in a trenchcoat. This arrangement means we unfortunately have to follow the moves of our corporate overlords–because really, these folks run the joint. Recently, the Succession-style drama surrounding the Rogers fami...
EP38: Democracy Dies in Snarkness (ft. Michael Tracey & Robert McChesney)
October 29, 2021 20:00 - 51 minutes - 47.4 MBYou can’t have a functioning democracy without a trusted media. That fact explains the state of U.S. democracy, at least in part. The United States has the lowest rate of media trust in the industrialized world, with just under a third of respondents in a 2020 Reuters poll saying they trust the media they consume. But whose fault is it? And, is the media even trustworthy? A string of failures suggest otherwise: weapons of mass destruction, the global financial crisis, Brexit, Russiagate, an...
EP37: Save the Whales (ft. Torulf Jernstrom, Mary Flanagan & Maru Nihoniho)
October 22, 2021 20:00 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBWe’ll save the Moby Dick puns for the episode itself, but suffice it to say that sinister game developers are on a whale hunt. This episode is about the sophisticated psychological tactics they use to hunt and capture their prey. On this episode of Darts and Letters, we take a journey to save the whales.
EP36: Koch Block My Campus (ft. James L. Turk & Jasmine Banks)
October 15, 2021 20:00 - 58 minutes - 53.1 MBRight wing money in academia is pervasive and influential. Libertarian-minded billionaires like the Kochs and their partners have funded scholars and think tanks across the US, and similar things go on in Canada too. On this episode of Darts and Letters, we explore big money and its corrosive influence on academic freedom and academic integrity.
EP19: Seizing the Means of Run Production (ft. Dave Zirin of the Nation) [Rebroadcast]
October 08, 2021 20:00 - 1 hour - 75.7 MBAmerica’s national pastime is being taken over by a woke mob and a global communist cabal. So say the Republicans. If only…! Racism, conservative nostalgia, and economic exploitation is baked into the MLB. We discuss what’s wrong with baseball, why baseball matters, and what needs to be done to fix it.
EP35: The Bland Corporation (ft. Daniel Bessner)
October 01, 2021 20:00 - 42 minutes - 38.9 MBThere’s a foreign policy intellectual blob that serves as the architects for empire. They’re at academic departments, quasi-academic think tanks, and places like the RAND Corporation–famously lampooned in Dr. Strangelove as the BLAND Corporation. On this episode, host Gordon Katic speaks with Daniel Bessner about how the ideas and ideology of the technocratic national security state came to be, who carries them, and how the defense-intellectual complex keeps it standing from the media to qu...
EP34: Gord and Nora’s Infinite Liberal Minority (ft. Nora Loreto)
September 24, 2021 20:00 - 54 minutes - 49.8 MBOn this episode, host Gordon Katic sits down with independent journalist, author, and podcaster Nora Loreto for a wide-ranging conversation about Canada’s status quo. Nora has been tirelessly documenting the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic under-reporting of deaths in long term care. Some academics have taken notice, but few journalists. We ask Nora about the early days of the pandemic and our blinds spots, what we have (and haven’t) learned, and prevailing COVID-19 myths.
EP33: Check Out My Gravel Pit (ft. Christo Aivalis, James Naylor, & Steven High)
September 17, 2021 15:00 - 1 hour - 73.3 MBCanada’s 44th general election was a mess from the start. From wondering why it was called in the first place, to culture war wedge politics, the rise of the extreme-right People’s Party, and along to literal stone throwing–or gravel throwing, anyway. You might want to call that a new low. It’s definitely low. But it’s not the first time Canadian elections have been nasty affairs, and it’s not even the first time rocks have been thrown. On this episode of Darts and Letters, we dive much dee...
EP32: Academic Disaster Capitalism (w/Gary Rhoades)
September 11, 2021 20:00 - 47 minutes - 64.7 MBSchool’s back. Alongside the usual challenges of managing college and university life comes sorting out how to keep people on campus safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. On this episode of Darts and Letters, we speak with Gary Rhoades, professor at the College of Education at the University of Arizona and former general secretary of the American Association of University Professors about academic capitalism, rising resistance to it, and how the pandemic has changed the story. Or not.
EP32: Academic Capitalism and the Pandemic (w/Gary Rhoades)
September 11, 2021 20:00 - 47 minutes - 64.7 MBSchool’s back. Alongside the usual challenges of managing college and university life comes sorting out how to keep people on campus safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Colleges and universities are trying to find their way forward after a rough 18 months, with more difficult times to come. But while the pandemic has affected higher education, … Read More Read More
Summer Bonus EP: Decolonizing Marxism (w/Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
September 03, 2021 20:00 - 43 minutes - 60.2 MBOn this summer bonus episode of Darts and Letters, we speak with Boaventura de Sousa Santos, a global Marxist thinker, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He argues for a contemporary, decolonial Marxism that operates on a deeper conception of power and oppression that includes analyses of colonialism, gender, and race across borders.
EP31: Moral Kombat (ft. Liana Kerzner, Cyril Lachel, & Henry Jenkins)
August 27, 2021 20:00 - 1 hour - 90 MBOn this episode: guest host and lead producer Jay Cockburn travels back to the 90s, and looks at the story of Mortal Kombat. The game was violent, gory, glorious. It was a youth rebellion in miniature. Parents rebelled against the rebellion, staging their own petulant counter-revolution, and politicians embraced it. It triggering a moral panic and even congressional hearings into violence in games. But why did it happen, who did it serve, and what does it tell us about our own culture?
Summer Bonus EP: Dan Denvir and The Dig
August 20, 2021 20:00 - 2 hours - 171 MBThis week, Darts and Letters brings you a summer bonus episode with the host of one of our favourite podcasts, The Dig. Dan Denvir joins us to talk about his podcast, the place of academia and intellectuals on the left, radical media, ideas and political change, and more. Then, we air an extraordinary interview from Dan and The Dig with Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò on “Identity, Power, and Speech.”
Summer Bonus EP: Ivy League elitism versus Black Power (w/ Stefan Bradley)
August 13, 2021 19:39 - 46 minutes - 64 MBUniversities and colleges are often caricatured as hotbeds of radicalism. In reality, they’re institutionally conservative and elitist — especially Ivy League schools. What happens when folks push back against that? What happens when Black scholars, activists, and others demand better? On this summer bonus episode of Darts and Letters, we speak with Stefan Bradley, Professor of African American Studies and Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts Coordinator for Diversity and Inclusion Initiative...
EP4: The Conquest of Bread [Rebroadcast]
August 05, 2021 16:00 - 1 hour - 71.6 MBYou know McKinsey and Co. They worked for a company that was fixing the price of bread in Canada. We could go on and on. They have a long and sordid record as ‘capitalism’s willing executioners,’ to quote a Current Affairs article by an insider. Now, they’re coming onto our turf: higher education. So, we take a closer look. What is even is management consulting, and is there anything to the methods?
EP9: The Founding Grift [Rebroadcast]
July 29, 2021 18:00 - 1 hour - 69.9 MBOur society is dominated by grifters. Cheats, cons, frauds: people who don’t really believe what they tell you. They’re just what they need to do to get ahead or to sell you something. Isn’t that that really what capitalism is about? The grift! Today on Darts and Letters, we have a little fun with grifts. Plus, Gordon asks: Is there a radical potential in the grift?