May 27, 2024
SHARE
CANADALAND
#992 Culture Collapse
Hot Docs, Vancouver Folk Music Festival, Just for Laughs, just the latest cultural institutions to join a long list of Canadian arts groups facing existential threats. Why is this all happening now?
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Bruce Thorson
Senior Producer
Tristan Capacchione
Audio Editor & Technical Producer
Caleb Thompson
Audio Editor
Karyn Pugliese
Editor-in-Chief

Based on recent headlines, you might think that we are in the midst of a total cultural collapse in this country. Film festivals, comedy festivals, symphonies, cinemas, theater companies, arts magazines all closing down or telling us that they’re about to. Corporate sponsors are pulling out. Leadership teams are crumbling. People are quitting en masse or getting laid off. There’s been a lot of dirty laundry aired in public from within these organizations, open letters and accusations about mismanagement and workplace inequity within these arts organizations. It all sounds miserably dire. So just what is going on and why is it all happening now?

Host: Jesse Brown

Credits: Caleb Thompson (Audio Editor), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), Karyn Pugliese (Editor-in-Chief)

Featured guests:

Jesse Wente, Amy Blackmore & Dan Seligman

For more information:

Sponsors: CAMH, Squarespace, Betterhelp, Douglas

For a limited time, get 6 months of exclusive supporter benefits for just $2/month. Go to canadaland.com/join to become a supporter today.

You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music—included with Prime.

More from this series
The army of hidden workers who fool you into thinking AI is magic.
January 13, 2025
This is one shitty story. Is Canada’s sewage infrastructure ready to be flushed?
January 6, 2025
Since the blockbuster success of his musical “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda has been busy: acting, directing, and composing for Disney projects, including the upcoming movie “Mufasa: The Lion King.” 
December 30, 2024
“…you have this attempt to actually change the Aurora Borealis. to affect it physically. This was called Project Waterhole. So they sent up a rocket with 100 kilograms of explosives, and exploded it in the Aurora Borealis band. Within two seconds, they had created a 40 kilometer wide hole in the Aurora Borealis.” - from The Forgotten Need to Probe the Sky
December 23, 2024
“Here's something that not many people know about the baby business.  There are ‘leg-men.’ We call them ‘leg-men’ though some of them are women, who make it their business to find pregnant women who are not married. The leg-men look for them in a million and one places. They meet them in bars and parks and cafes and all over. They hear things.”  - Eugene Moyneur (ex-wrester, ex-bodybuilder, baby-smuggler)
December 16, 2024
“The people who want to play morality police and decide who does or doesn't get to speak, they're not qualified arbiters of anything.” - Caryma Sa’d
December 9, 2024
Are dentists defrauding the Canadian government?
December 2, 2024
The Millenium Bug was supposed to bring the world to a halt, but governments claimed they squashed the problem. Was it all a panic over nothing?
November 28, 2024
all podcasts arrow All Podcasts
CANADALAND