Lean Out with Tara Henley

This week, the friends and family of a school principal in Toronto gathered to celebrate his life. Richard Bilkszto, sadly, took his life last month, at the age of 60, and much of the reporting on his death has focused on a DEI training and the lawsuit that he launched about it. A reminder to listeners that the claims you will hear have not been proven in court. Our guest today is a reporter whose story on Richard Bilkszto has gained international attention — and our conversation grapples with a number of difficult issues, including suicide and how it’s covered in the media. Rupa Subramanya is a staff writer at The Free Press. Lean Out reached out to Kike Ojo-Thompson to request comment, and to invite her on the program. We have not yet heard back. But Kike Ojo-Thompson did release a statement to the media, which reads, in part: “The death of Richard Bilkszto is a tragedy and all of us at KOJO Institute offer our condolences to his loved ones.” It adds: “The allegations made against me and KOJO Institute within Mr. Bilkszto’s lawsuit against the Toronto District School Board are false, and we are not a party to the lawsuit.” You can read KOJO’s full statement here. We also reached out to Education Minister Stephen Lecce and his office for comment, but did not hear back. In addition, we contacted the Toronto District School Board for comment. It referred us to its two previous press statements, the first of which reads, in part: “The Board would like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family, friends, and colleagues of Richard Bilkszto. Richard was a strong advocate for students, particularly for those in adult and alternative education. Throughout his over 24 years in education, he worked hard to create an environment that fostered student success for students of all ages.” The second statement reads, in part: “Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tragic passing of Richard Bilkszto, retaining King International Advisory Group, an experienced and well-respected investigative firm with multi-disciplinary expertise in conducting thorough investigations. Our intention is for this investigation to be conducted in a professional, sensitive and respectful manner.” You can read those statements in full here and here. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

This summer at Lean Out, we’ve been doing a deep dive into the collapse of the Canadian media — and the role that new legislation, Bill C-18, has played in exacerbating the crisis. Tara's guest on the program today is someone who has thought a lot about the media and digital policy and public broadcasting, and she has a lot to say about where our media is at, and where we go from here.  Sue Gardner is a digital policy analyst, and the former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. She’s also the former head of cbc.ca. (Tara and Sue's paths did not cross there.)You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In the past few decades, something has gone wrong in American life, leaving its citizens subject to increasing levels of coercion. That’s the thesis of a new book, and its author, Tara's guest on the program today, argues that what’s gone wrong is a form of private tyranny, with corporations exercising more and more control over ordinary people’s lives — eroding our freedoms and generating uncertainty, stress, and economic precarity.  Sohrab Ahmari is a founder and editor at Compact Magazine. His new book is Tyranny, Inc. — How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What to Do About It.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

What does it mean to be a heretic? Why is dissent from the dominant orthodoxies of our age so important? It’s a topic Tara's guest today has thought a lot about, as a progressive who frequently questions the thinking on his side of the aisle. And he says that, in fact, we owe much of human progress to the heretics throughout history who have dared to dissent.Brendan O’Neill is the chief political writer for Spiked, and the host of The Brendan O’Neill Show. His new book is A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

This week, in the wake of controversial new legislation, Bill C-18, Meta has announced that it will be ending news sharing on its platforms in Canada. So, for a special bonus episode of the podcast, we reached out to a Canadian academic who’s been following this story closely, to get his reaction to the development — and to hear his analysis on what it might mean for our news sector going forward. (This conversation is part of Lean Out’s summer media series. Please also check out our interviews with Jen Gerson, Peter Menzies, Marc Edge, and Holly Doan.)Michael Geist a professor and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He’s also the host of the Law Bytes podcast. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

“Once you question the food, you question everything.” That’s a quote from Rory Feek, a farmer and filmmaker in the growing homesteading movement, which is seeing numbers of Americans turn away from processed foods and rediscover how to grow what’s on their plates, sustaining their communities in the process. Feek made this comment at the inaugural Modern Homesteading Conference in Idaho — and my guest today was there to take it all in.Olivia Reingold is an American journalist, and a staff writer at The Free Press. Her latest story is “Home Is Where the Revolution Is.”You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In 2019, a white woman in Austin, Texas signed up for a diversity training seminar, in the hopes of better understanding growing polarization in America. But that workshop, in her view, was itself divisive. She went on to publish an essay about it, ending with a call for others to reach out to her with their own experiences — and soon got a letter from a Black man across the country that resulted in a years-long conversation on race. Jennifer Richmond is a China scholar and international relations specialist. Winkfield Twyman Jr. is a writer and former law professor. Their new book is Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Last week on Lean Out, we heard from Canadian journalist Jen Gerson. The response from listeners was overwhelming. You asked for more coverage of the collapse of our media, including, of course, controversial new legislation. Bill C-18 aims to save journalism in this country — but Tara's guest this week argues that it has instead “accidentally pushed the news industry into the abyss.” Peter Menzies is a former newspaper executive and a former vice chair of the CRTC, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. He’s now a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a frequent commentator on the Canadian media.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

If you listen to this podcast, you know that the Canadian media is in serious trouble. But in recent weeks, that crisis has intensified, with wave after wave of bad news for the industry. Bell Canada laid off 1300 staff. And, when this was episode was recorded, merger talks between the two biggest newspaper publishers were ongoing — negotiations have since broken down. Add to that, in the wake of controversial new legislation, Bill C-18, Google and Facebook announced they would remove links to Canadian journalism from the platforms. (Though, just as this episode closed, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez announced that the government was drafting regulations that would set a cap on what Google and Facebook would be required to pay to our news industry). So today, given all that’s going on, we have a special, hour-long episode of Lean Out. And my guest is here to help me unpack these developments — and to think through the state of our press, from lost public trust and pandemic mistakes, to the rise of independent outlets and and the future of the CBC.Jen Gerson is a Calgary journalist, a contributing columnist at The Globe and Mail, and co-founder of the Canadian outlet The Line. She’s currently writing a book about moral panics. Jen Gerson is my guest, today on Lean Out. Transcript to come for paid subscribers. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Earlier this spring, student protesters at the University of Cambridge successfully cancelled an event on campus, a screening of a documentary on fertility. Students accused the film of being misogynistic, despite the fact that, as student event organizer Charlie Bentley-Astor put it in The Critic magazine, this was a film “made primarily by women, with women, for women.” And, as you’ll hear on today’s episode, the film — which screened at the Chelsea Film Festival — features a remarkable degree of empathy from the sole male on the project.  A Cambridge administrator has stressed that “the decision about the room booking was based solely on our commitment to prioritising an environment conducive to studying during the University examination period,” and that the event could be rescheduled (which it ultimately was). You can read that statement from the university here. You can also read some of the students’ concerns here. One unnamed protest organizer told the student newspaper, Varsity: “I think a lot of students are understandably quite hurt that an institution as respected as Cambridge seems to promote bigotry to its students … an academic institution should have better standards than to promote events about ‘the pitfalls of Feminism’.”Stephen J. Shaw is a data scientist and filmmaker based in Tokyo. He is the writer, director and producer of Birthgap — Childless World, the first part of which is available on YouTube now.  You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com