Lean Out with Tara Henley

This year has not been an easy one for a lot of people. Not only are many coping with economic instability, but our culture is polarized and often extremely hostile. But our guest on today’s program — the last episode of the year — wants to leave us with a vision of unity. And of hope for a better, and more harmonious, 2024.Monica Harris is the author of The Illusion of Division. She’s also the executive director of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

With the pandemic finally in the rearview mirror, a lot of people are eager to put it behind us — and move on. But our guest on today’s program says it’s important that we take a look at the mistakes that were made, and understand what went wrong.Joe Nocera is a veteran business journalist and a columnist at The Free Press. His latest book, co-authored with Vanity Fair’s Bethany McLean, is The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

On Thanksgiving weekend, an essay started circulating — and it was an essay that I felt like I’d been waiting a long time to read. The essay explores a troubling trend: a renewed skepticism of interracial relationships, and, indeed, of interracial families. Its author is a white man, married to a Black woman. And while progressives had applauded their wedding back in 2007, he writes that it now felt as if he no longer had the right to parent his own children.Paul Kix is an American journalist, and the author of You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live. His latest essay, for The Free Press, is “Liberals Once Embraced Interracial Marriages Like Mine. What Changed?”You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In times of crisis, artists often feel the need to take a stand, to engage in activism. But our guest on today’s program says we should recognize that art and politics have very different agendas. “These are different realms,” he writes, “and the values of one can be inhospitable — even deadly — to the values of the other.”George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of ten books. His latest essay is “Why Activism Leads To So Much Bad Writing.”You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

This week on Lean Out, we turn our attention to freedom of expression in the arts. Our guest on today’s program is an acclaimed and controversial choreographer who says the UK’s creative industries are in crisis — experiencing a culture of widespread fear and intimidation. And she’s launched a new organization to address this.Rosie Kay is the CEO and artistic director of the Kay2CO dance company, and a founder of Freedom in the Arts.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

This week in New York City, a longtime defender of free speech was honoured by her peers. My guest on today’s program accepted the Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Coalition Against Censorship benefit. She returns to the podcast to mark that occasion — and to talk through the big issues of our current moment, including rising antisemitism. Nadine Strossen is the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a senior fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Her new book is Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know. She also hosts a new documentary film series, Free To Speak. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

“Be it resolved, liberalism gets the big questions right.” That was the motion posed at Friday’s Munk Debate in Toronto, to a group of public intellectuals from across the globe.The starting point for the debate was that liberalism is in crisis. That tensions have reached a boiling point. That its critics believe “liberalism has become an impediment to the goal of progress” — and that “humanity urgently needs a new animating ideology.” My guest on today’s program was at that debate, and he’s here to give us some analysis.Harrison Lowman is a current affairs journalist in Toronto, and the producer of this podcast.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

For some time now, there have been calls for Canada to launch an independent public inquiry into its handling of the Covid pandemic — including from the British Medical Journal. But this past week, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, Liberal MPs rejected an inquiry, opting for a closed-door review by advisors to the Minister of Health. My guest on today’s program says that it is essential that Canadians examine the mistakes that were made during the pandemic, and learn from them.Joanna Baron is the executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the co-author, with Christine Van Geyn, of the new book, Pandemic Panic: How Canadian Government Responses to Covid-19 Changed Civil Liberties Forever.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

There are still people who believe that cancel culture does not exist. But it’s about to get a whole lot harder to make that argument publicly. Our guest on today’s program has a new book out that provides irrefutable evidence that cancel culture is a serious phenomenon — that it is now a common tactic on the right and the left, that it is a threat to individuals and institutions, and that it is ultimately undermining trust. But, our guest today says, there is a solution.  Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He’s also the co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Crime in Canada is on the rise. According to recent Statistics Canada data, violent crime is at its most severe since 2007, and the murder rate is the highest it’s been since 1992. My guest on today’s program says our criminal justice system is not working - that it is expensive and ineffective and inhumane, and that the time has come to transform it. Benjamin Perrin is a professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia, and the former lead policy advisor on criminal justice and public safety for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. His new book is Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com