What's in a word? Especially when that word carries with it the pain of hundreds of years of racism? This week we talk about how the controversy over the public use of the N-word plays out differently in French and English in this country.
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Sarah Lawrynuik
Senior Producer
Jonathan Goldsbie
News Editor
Tristan Capacchione
Audio Editor & Technical Producer
Kieran Oudshoorn
Managing Editor, Podcasts
Hosted by Jesse Brown
When a CBC host used the N-word in pre-production meetings, she was taken off the air. When the French arm of the public broadcaster, Radio-Canada, had a program just months later where the N-word was used four times in both languages, the broadcaster dismissed charges that there was anything wrong with the program. That is, until the CRTC stepped in and said an apology was in order.
Why two different responses at the same company in two languages? And why does the 1968 book by Pierre Vallières always seem to be at the heart of the controversy?
“In an effort to put everything into question, we run the danger of losing any kind of firm footing on which to build a more just and equitable society. So the logical end game of a certain project of questioning is total bafflement or the destruction of everything.” - Professor Mark Kingwell
“Artificial intelligence was considered the realm of lunatics and wackos and eccentrics. So they couldn't get hired at really elite universities in the United States. [The] University of Toronto hired them, and then it turned out they were really right and all the elite people were really wrong.” - Stephen Marche, author of “Was Linguistic A.I. Created by Accident?”
Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, sits down with Jesse for a candid and intense discussion about how Israel’s actions during the war are impacting Canadians.
It was the largest art fraud in history. The sheer volume of rip-offs numbering in the thousands. And the scheme that shocked the art world sprang from, of all places, Thunder Bay. How did the fraudsters hatch such a plan from such an unlikely place? And what part did a cold case murder play in finally exposing their cultural crime?
Cue the sad trombone sounds for Rebel Media, who just lost an appeal to qualify for federal journalism tax credits. Where will they get funding from now?
Canada’s former ambassador to Israel, Norman Spector, joins to unpack the narratives and larger geopolitical context of the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
