Mar 23 Demonic Metals: Cobalt & The Birth Of A Mining Superpower / Charlie Angus

Charlie Angus, MP for the riding of Timmins-James Bay in Ontario, Canada, joins me to discuss his new book Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower, published through House of Anansi Press. He shines a light on how the fascinating, and disturbing, history of a small mining town in Ontario, aptly named Cobalt, is tied up in the genocidal, and ecocidal, history of the nation-state of Canada, and its outsized role in the global mining industry today.

What does a small town in northern Ontario have to with Canada's rise to becoming the world's reigning mining superpower? How is cobalt, this "demonic" metal, tied to some of the most horrific crimes of settler-colonialism and financial, extractive capitalism in the modern era?

Oct 13

Oct 13 The Work: Domestication, Education, Occupation / Danielle Billing

Patrick Farnsworth

Danielle Billing, 64

This episode features a conversation with Danielle Billing, teacher at the Idaho School of the Deaf and Blind. At first, we begin discussing our love for pets, and our revulsion regarding the breeding practices of dogs, the anthropomorphizing of animals, and then the conversation moves into our education system and teaching in our contemporary society. Eventually, we get to the crux of the conversation: What is work? How does it serve us to work in our modern economy? What is branding, and how does that fit into our contemporary work in the age of social media?