Pretty Heady Stuff

Dominic Boyer is an anthropologist, content producer and environmental researcher who teaches at Rice University, where he served as founding director of Rice’s Center for Environmental Studies. Some of his recent books are Energopolitics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene and Hyposubjects: On Becoming Human.The book we’re talking about here, though, No More Fossils, is a short, stunning analysis of the function of fossils during this era of human-propelled environmental destruction and development. And No More Fossils is easily one of the best books I’ve read on the history of energy. Dominic says his goal was to make a book that was teachable, and I would say that, given its length, it’s also super portable and modal in its usefulness. In this conversation, Boyer says a few times that the goal is to bring about a decisive move away from the indulgent, excessive use of energy that is currently so normalized. And I totally agree, the overwhelming accelerationist use of energy is catapulting us into an incredibly turbulent future on this planet. But how do we bring that about? Dominic’s book offers some extremely moving promises of a point after the petrostate and words of encouragement for people that are organizing to end fossil capitalism. One of the things that most resonated with me  is the idea that, one day, everyone will grasp the obviousness of the need to phase out fossil fuels. It will be self-evident that it was necessary. Even if, right now, the fossil gerontocracy, as Boyer calls it, is doing everything it can to preserve a failed way of life based on bottomless plastics and gasoline.Can we fight the future and preserve joy? Can we propel the energy transition while forging a future that addresses the colonial crimes of the past? If we are now living in epic times, can we collectively rise to the planetary challenges that we face?

Dr. Rupa Marya is a physician and activist. She's been a major part of revolutionary health initiatives like the Justice Study, which looks at the links between police violence and health in Black, brown and Indigenous communities, and Seeding Sovereignty, a group that promotes Indigenous autonomy in climate action. She's also the co-author, with Raj Patel, of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. Inflamed is a book that can help us locate the roots of disease in a system of overproduction that pumps so much toxicity into our communities.In September 2024, Marya was put on leave by the University of California San Francisco in response to her criticism of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, and just weeks ago was fired for her comments. She has now filed multiple free speech complaints against UCSF. Exposing the obvious danger that fascism poses to providing care should not come at the cost of someone's career. Trying to convey the sheer magnitude of this horrific bombardment on the healthcare system in Palestine shouldn't mean this level of risk.The message from many Western institutions is that basically any expression of pro-Palestinian dissent is now going to be either crushed or completely ignored. These institutions, including many universities, are complicit in the political cowardice and settler colonial racism that lets the genocide to continue. The crackdown on dissent is ramping up everywhere. And because the Israeli propaganda machine has struggled to obscure the reality of this genocide with its lies, accusations and brinksmanship, the only strategy left is just to go after people like Rupa, either by attacking their ability to do their job or by detaining and disappearing them. Our conversation is really about the emergence of a world order that doesn't care about health. Gaza has endured 638 days of hell. Unimaginably, Israel has delighted in raining down hell on Gaza for over 15,000 straight hours. Two years of witnessing the humiliation and annihilation of the people of Gaza. What has it done to us? This event? Has it changed time the way the pandemic did? Does it make us relate differently to the things and people around us? The water? The air? The peace we get to experience? Has seeing these things and thinking about the poisonous roots of what we're seeing done anything to our sense of how we should be governed? I wonder because, in this discussion, Marya lays out exactly the kinds of sacrifices that need to be made so that health can serve as a rallying cry for ending the obscene domination of Palestine.

Kilian Jörg is an artist and philosopher who is interested in understanding how art can intervene to disrupt the ecological catastrophe we’re currently witnessing. His current research focuses on the car as a metaphor for the toxic behaviors of modernity, the psychological effects of living in a time of ecocide and what sorts of activist strategies for reclaiming land might be effective at shaking off the psychology of resignation. My conversation with Kilian Jorg was one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever done on writing and thinking. There’s something very refreshing about the way that Kilian thinks about the act of writing in the university. I’m not sure where it came from, but the more tactile and situated sort of theorizing he is able to do makes me want to spend more time with the texts that he looks at and really engage with the threads there. Because he’s using them to weave together different concepts of liberation, with the ultimate goal, I think, of showing how to fight the imposition of one worldview on the planet. Kilian is fighting to defend other possible methods of reasoning. It might not be a magical solution for our ecological crisis, but I found that talking to Kilian about the ideas in Ecological Reasonings opened up approaches to problems like what to do about Donald Trump or artificial intelligence or our attachment to the car as a convenience we can’t live without, regardless of what it does to us. One of the wonderful things about his book is that it is using this idea of the “resilience of Reason” to deconstruct and decompose the current technocratic world order — he’s saying that there is a continuum between Trump, the narrowing of political possibilities, and Monorationalism. What he wants is a world where we are actively “nourishing ground for many other voices to be heard.” Where we are consciously worrying about and destabilizing the relationship between the things we consider active, aggressive and ambitious, and the things we consider passive, wasteful and directionless.

Alexander Gallant is a folk singer-songwriter from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. His songs are simple and direct but also singular and sardonic. He takes a lot of inspiration from the folk revival of the 1960’s, but uses a specific blend of open tuning style fingerpicking and percussive strumming, paired with funny, personal poetry. He released his debut record, Waiting Tables Blues with Tibet Street Records in November 2023. His second record, Rubber Monster Suit, is a collection of songs about living with sobriety and in the crumbling uncertainty of the modern political landscape. He also writes about love, about living without love, about getting older. It's a beautiful record that encompasses a bunch of different styles of music, from lush jazz-influenced cinematic soundscapes, to psych country, to acoustic singer songwriter warmth. Sarah Swire, who pops into the conversation a little later, is a multi-disciplinary artist with work spanning across stage, screen and television. They're perhaps best known for playing roles on the smash hit superhero series The Boys, in Anna and the Apocalypse, and on the popular Murdoch Mysteries. They'll be appearing this year in the upcoming Apple TV+ thriller ‘The Last Frontier’ and Hallmark’s new drama 'Ripple.' Swire is an awesome art-rock songwriter and storyteller who, when you see her live, will use wildly compelling monologues and spoken word, or what she calls word art, to create a dizzying spectacle that, honestly, has to be seen to be fully understood. Their debut album, Sister Swire, was produced by Joel Plaskett in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Beyond writing that album, which is so fun by the way, Sarah has toured and performed internationally and composed music for the BBC, Avalon Arts and The National Theatre of Scotland. In this conversation, we use the occasion of Gallant's new album coming out to explore what weird alchemy gives birth to a song, how writing music can "take the temperature of your brain," as Alexander puts it, and what sorts of expectations tend to be placed on artists in the context of 21st century digital capitalism. We're in a moment where so much music is consumed digitally and repurposed into a soundtrack for our own individual experiences through share culture. What does it looks like to try and leverage that digital space as a way of getting people out of their homes and into the public sphere?Gallant will be playing a show on May 25th at the beautiful Sanctuary Arts Centre in Dartmouth, alongside Sal. Both will be releasing albums that night; Sal's is called My Friend the Waitress and Gallant has called his Rubber Monster Suit. Gallant and Swire explain why they think people tend to be more inspired by direct experiences of art. I loved Sarah's point that, when we encounter someone who has committed to creativity out in the world, we're not intimidated or made to feel "feeble" in the way that we sometimes are when we encounter it in a digital space. Making time to summon the courage to have an out of body experience out in the world can be transformative. That's why I'm looking forward to the show on Sunday, and why I think you should go.#livemusic #acoustic #vocalist #songwriter #singer #music #musician #artist #newmusic #singersongwriter

Caleb Wellum is a professor in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga. He’s also the editor of Energy Humanities and a member of both the Petrocultures Research Group and the After Oil Collective.As an historian who studies the intersection of energy, culture and political economy in the twentieth century, he’s invested in understanding how natural resource development and especially oil extraction became a force that shapes social reality today. The book we talk about in this conversation is called Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Making of Modern America, and it’s an incredible analysis of the role that stories about energy crisis played in creating American neoliberalism, this deregulated, highly individualistic version of capitalism that makes consumerism synonymous with personal fulfilment and the centre of so many political considerations. What Wellum is basically saying is that we arrive at where we are today, in terms of our energy habits, the political expediency of warfare, and the expectations we have about lifestyle, comfort and the value of national identity, largely through the high stakes ideological games that were played during the 1970s, and also through some of the cinematic narratives that played out in popular culture at that time. Returning to Cold War capitalism through his book was really instructive for me as a way of trying to understand why Trumpism is this triumphalist cultural force in the US right now. We talk about that in relation to his case studies in Energizing Neoliberalism, from the energy conservation debates that happened in the 70s, to the popular car films that were dismissed by critics as appealing only to the duped masses, to the creation of oil futures trading. The conversation is an attempt to see how the power of neoliberalism as we know it didn’t have to develop the way it did. By constructing the oil crisis in certain ways, the United States secured a future of endless growth, limitless consumption and fleeting pleasures derived from fossil fuels. More specifically, neoliberal capitalists used the crisis to steer society in a more financialized, deregulated, and ecologically untenable direction. In Wellum’s words, this was a domestic energy crisis imagined in response to global instability. As we fight for a clean energy future in the present, against colonial powers launching wars for resources all over the globe, we can gain a lot of lessons from Energizing Neoliberalism’s rigorous effort to recognize petro-populism as a reactionary, violent force. #fossilfuels #fossilcapital #neoliberalism #1970s #petroleum #historyofcapitalism #financialization #finance #americanism #coldwar #ideology #petropopulism #petromasculinity #petroculture

James Rowe is a professor of Political Ecology and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria and the author of a great book called Radical Mindfulness: Why Transforming Fear of Death is Politically Vital. Radical Mindfulness examines the root causes of injustice and how the fear of death works as a major cause of injustice globally. One of my main takeaways, so to speak, after reading and thinking about the book a lot is that there is a specific responsibility that white settlers have to rectifying the structural wrongs we are fundamentally complicit with — and that’s whether we like it or not… and there are a lot of people who believe those wrongs exist in the past, and thus don’t need to be dealt with by folks in the present, and—conveniently—feel that it’s too far back to care. Well, the past is not passed, and Rowe asks us, on a philosophical and physical level, why we carry a resistance to healing “the historical and existential trauma” we carry. One of the things that seems to interrupt the use of mindfulness to access and heal those scars is appropriation. Radical Mindfulness talks about the corporate co-optation of mindfulness in really wonderful ways, stating that while there isn’t any need for people to be Buddhist to “benefit from meditation… naming and honoring the tradition is important to avoid appropriation.” If we don’t, we risk the side-stepping of a crucial component of that tradition: which is about transforming “fear of death into a deep acceptance of earthly life, thereby reducing destructive behaviors.”I’m not going to say that I was sceptical of the idea that fear of death is the central cause of most structures of domination, most violence, most oppression, but I just couldn’t fully wrap my head around what that meant. Radical Mindfulness helped me get the ways that fear of “finitude” drives a pathological commitment to a kind of immortalism, a commitment to preserving the nation, the corporation, the self at the expense of others, or of the Earth itself. So I think accepting death as part of the “fullness of reality” is “politically vital,” as James puts it, because if we do recognize the “flow of impermanence,” or what Dominic Boyer has called the “total excessive marvelous abundance” of lifedeath (one word) on this planet, then we can possibly get to a place politically where we aren’t as overcome by the horrible resentments, vindictiveness, protectionism and oppressive impulses that make life miserable for so many people. Rowe’s book doesn’t stay at the super high level of so much new age philosophy — so, think Rainn Wilson’s podcasts “Soul Boom" and "Hey There, Human" — it is materially about the embodied experience of whiteness, of masculinity, of settler being in the world. This is why he advocates for embodied social change within social justice movements that can, themselves, occasionally be quite exclusionary. I’m more open to the idea, after thinking about Rowe’s writing, that there is a lot of potential in mindfulness not just for the dreamy promise of epiphany, but for a kind of comfort that comes from reckoning with why we fear the things we fear.

Imre Szeman is the inaugural Director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation and Sustainability and Professor of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. His recent book, Futures of the Sun: The Struggle Over Renewable Life, examines corporate and state control of the transition to renewables.We talk here about how Futures of the Sun explores the competing eco-stories being offered by people intent on shaping the transition to fit their vision and version of a renewable society. Imre discusses how key players are working hard to make sure a greener, cleaner future will look much like the world we live in today and examines the rhetoric, ideology, and politics of liberal nationalists intent on fighting a war against climate change, billionaire solar entrepreneurs who believe only in themselves, and the populist far right who want no change at all.Offering possible new critical and political avenues, Szeman reveals how those on the environmental left can ensure their vision of egalitarianism beyond the status quo can become the reality of our renewable future.Celebrate Earth Day by thinking with us about what's going on in the ersatz push for renewables and join the struggle for a future that is more radically democratic than the present.#earthday #climatepolitics #energytransition #fossilfuels #endingfossilfuels #oilandgas #anticapitalism #internationalism

Max Haiven is the author of many books on finance capitalism, social movement organizing, anti-fascist revolt and the politics of revenge. His latest project focuses on games as a major feature of everyday life under advanced capitalism. His writing on games has really grown my understanding of what’s going on when people take on the sort of abstract agency they can experience in an imagined environment when they play.Beyond writing about games, Max has designed a wicked new board game called Billionaires and Guillotines, published by Pluto Press in their first foray into game production. The Kickstarter campaign to support the game is running until the end of April. Get behind it! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/plutopress/billionaires-and-guillotinesIn Billionaires & Guillotines, players take on the role of 2-5 rival plutocrats vying to grab the wealth of the world before their actions trigger a revolution where they all lose… a lot more than their assets. Help us make a wicked, easy-to-learn board game for the coming class war.Will you play the aristocrat or the war profiteer? The tech overlord or the property speculator? In any case, you’ll try and build a private space program, marry (and divorce) a celebrity spouse and start your own scam charity in this raucous game for aspiring billionaires and their enemies. As the revolution approaches, the billionaires have one chance to cooperate to delay their downfall… but otherwise, may the best (or worst) tycoon win. Billionaires & Guillotines is so easy that 2-5 envious losers can learn and play in under an hour. It is heartily approved by many satisfied players who hate games and the uber-rich. Start by selecting your billionaire: the media baron, the aristocrat, the war profiteer, the property speculator or the tech overlord. Each has to collect five prizes to win, which might include a private golf club, a mercenary army, a cryogenic tank, a luxury bunker or a celebrity spouse. Each turn, players draw cards they can use to bid on prizes or make it more difficult for their opponents. And, yes, like all self-made billionaires, you should definitely bribe the government to favor your investments and sabotage your rivals.As the game proceeds the billionaire’s frantic competition unleashes social, ecological and economic crises. Every financial meltdown, political scandal and climate agony presents more opportunities for profit, but also makes the game more and more unstable… and it also unleashes rebels who threaten to end the game for everyone.On the brink of revolution, the billionaires are given one opportunity to sacrifice a small bit of their wealth and continue the game… otherwise, out comes the guillotine with a free (if inaccurate) haircut for everyone!In the advanced version game, each billionaire also has a special “job” with secret powers: a crooked politician, an insider trader, an unscrupulous gangster, even a celebrity influencer (who survives the revolution), making the game delightfully replay-able and deliciously irreverent.In Billionaires & Guillotines’ first expansion pack, Reform or Revolution one player takes on the role of a rebel sympathizer! But are they a well-intentioned reformist, working with the billionaires to resolve crises? Or are they secretly a nefarious revolutionary, working to bring the system down from the inside? Reform or Revolution allows for six people to play Billionaires & Guillotines.Billionaires & Guillotines has already been playtested by thousands of jealous losers who have nothing better to do than hate on the hard working ultra rich. Nonetheless our small team of nihilistic gremlins remains at their posts, ironing out the last kinks in the design and making adjustments that will make the game irresistible to the vengeful masses.

Mark Bourrie is an Ottawa-based author, lawyer, and journalist. He holds a master’s in journalism from Carleton University and a PhD in history from the University of Ottawa. In 2017, he was awarded a Juris Doctor degree and was called to the bar in 2018. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, including a National Magazine Award, and received the RBC Charles Taylor Prize in 2020 for his book Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. His most recent books include Big Men Fear Me: The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul, and the national bestseller Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia.His newest book, Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, talks about how the far right Conservative leader has enjoyed most of the advantages of the mainstream Canadian middle class. Yet he’s long been the angriest man on the political stage. Ripper charts Poilievre’s rise through the political system, from teenage volunteer to outspoken Opposition leader known for cutting soundbites and theatrics. Six weeks into the Covid pandemic, New York Times columnist David Brooks identified two types of Western politicians: rippers and weavers. Rippers, whether on the right or the left, see politics as war. They don’t care about the destruction that’s caused as they fight for power. Weavers are their opposite: people who try to fix things, who want to bring people together and try to build consensus. At the beginning of the pandemic, weavers seemed to be winning. Five years later, as Canada heads towards a pivotal election, that’s no longer the case. Across the border, a ripper is remaking the American government. And for the first time in its history, Canada has its own ripper poised to assume power.Bourrie shows how we arrived at this divisive moment in our history, one in which rippers are poised to capitalize on conflict. He shows how Poilievre and this new style of politics have gained so much ground—and warns of what it will cost us if they succeed.Bourrie shows how we arrived at this divisive moment in our history, one in which rippers are poised to capitalize on conflict. He shows how Poilievre and this new style of politics have gained so much ground—and warns of what it will cost us if they succeed.They don’t care about the destruction that’s caused as they fight for power. Weavers are their opposite: people who try to fix things, who want to bring people together and try to build consensus. At the beginning of the pandemic, weavers seemed to be winning. Five years later, as Canada heads towards a pivotal election, that’s no longer the case. Across the border, a ripper is remaking the American government. And for the first time in its history, Canada has its own ripper poised to assume power.

Judy Haiven is the co-founder of Equity Watch and part of the national steering committee for Independent Jewish Voices Canada. She worked for nearly 20 years as a professor of industrial relations at Saint Mary's University in Halifax. Now, her main focus is left wing activism and political writing. As a Jewish person who supports Palestinian human rights, her voice is a powerful source of moral courage at a time when the ongoing genocide in Gaza is still cloaked in claims that opposing Zionism is tantamount to anti-semitism. We talk about that conflation in this interview, and why it's become a means of explaining and excusing the inexcusable: a reign of terror and a commitment to killing children, erasing families and committing genocide in Gaza. Haiven bluntly explains that the way anti-semitism has evolved is that it is now profoundly attached to criticism of Israel. What do we do in that situation? How do we find clarity? What will it take to gain enough political traction for the liberation of Palestine from Western imperialism and Israeli settler colonialism to become possible?I recommend reading her blog, which is called Another Ruined Dinner Party. It's autobiographical, searingly critical and wonderfully funny. I want to say, before we get to the interview, that I'm at a point where I can't help but feel that continuing to talk and write about Palestine is falling short. Harsha Walia mentioned on social media recently that she is humbled by the many calls for her to weigh in, to publicly speak to this unrelenting nightmare. What she said was that she is "ambivalent about writing" because it is so "jarring to have spent years connecting & organizing against violences in multiple places, registers, and geographies, and for it to be exploding all around us." I continue to give a platform to anticolonial communicators because the common sense assumption still seems to be that Palestinians are not our equals, their lives do not matter to the same extent that the lives of other human beings matter. But the overwhelming destruction, the Zionist wrath, that has been inflicted upon Palestine is impossible to ignore now. We are living in the aftermath of a foreseeable slaughter, which no one seems capable of stopping. How do we reckon with this reality? #freepalestine #anticolonialism #indepedentjewishvoices #leftpolitics #anticapitalism #settlercolonialism #canadanews #canadianpolitics