David Frum doesn't need much of an introduction - if you've paid any attention to Canadian or US politics over the last twenty-five or so years, you know him. He's written ten books, is featured in The Atlantic magazine, is a sought-after commentator on television and online - in short, he's a leading observer of American society. This conversation isn't about politics. It's primarily about writing - but it's about lots more besides. We discuss how and why he writes fiction and non-fiction, the power of texts, how he counsels overcoming writer's block, and even the differences between jealousy and envy. You can easily find David's work in lots of places - for his latest, check him out on Twitter @davidfrum or at https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-frum/

Jason Ward seemed to have everything a lawyer could ask for: his own successful firm, community recognition, money, a family. But there was a problem: he was drinking himself into oblivion every night. Jason has come through to the other side of mental health and substance use challenges that very nearly derailed his career, his relationships, and even his life. He is now sharing his story with others, aiming to raise awareness, provide guidance to those facing similar challenges, and effect positive change. You can find Jason at https://mentallyspeaking.ca/ and read more about his story at https://macleans.ca/society/lawyer-mental-health/

Lots of different people use lots of different words to describe Caryma Sa'd: citizen journalist, lawyer, provocateur, badass - but one which seemed obvious to me, and seems even more obvious after this conversation, is storyteller. We discuss how she acquired her public profile, how she has experienced a number of different evolutions, including in her politics, the divisions and polarizing effects she observes and encounters, and the kinds of stories she wants to be entrusted to tell. You can find Caryma on Twitter @carymarules on Instagram @carymasad and at https://www.carymarules.com/

Professor Amy Salyzyn (University of Ottawa) teaches and writes about, among other things, legal ethics, and recently she's been turning her attention to the practical and ethical implications for lawyers of the latest wave of generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT. We talk about the promises and pitfalls of generative AI for lawyers and their clients, what risks are at risk being overlooked in the conversation, and what lawyers should keep their eye on when thinking about this latest wave of technological innovation. "But I'm not a lawyer, and this sounds boring!", you say? Well, AI optimists are claiming (hoping?) that AI innovations might dramatically cut down on the number of lawyers - so maybe you want to stick around to hear whether that's actually a possibility?

You can follow Professor Salyzyn on Twitter @AmySalyzyn and read her recent piece at slaw.ca on lawyers and ChatGPT here: https://www.slaw.ca/2023/02/23/the-chatgpt-lawyer-promises-perils-and-practicalities/

Ontario lawyers are soon going to be electing the Benchers who oversee the Law Society - and since lawyers are a self-regulating profession, that's more important than it might at first sound. Rebecca Durcan is running for Bencher, and in this conversation we talk about the risks that professions pose to the public, the ongoing controversies that have resulted in this election being - for the first time in history - contested by two slates of opposing lawyers, and why this might end up being the last Bencher election. Oh, and stick around to learn about how the Boston Marathon figures into it all.

Sound from Zapsplat.com

In 2022, Philip Slayton started publishing The Endgame, a Substack where he contemplates a world in which few moves remain, victory or defeat are close at hand, and options are limited and rapidly diminishing. That all seemed a little melancholic to me, which struck me as odd: Slayton has had a long and varied life and career as a Rhodes scholar, law professor, law school dean, Bay Street lawyer, and, for the last twenty or so years, as a writer of eight books - so I wanted to find out what was up. We talk about his writing, including his most recent book in which he explores antisemitism and how best to respond to it, and his concerns about free expression and identity politics. You can read and subscribe to The Endgame on Substack at https://philipslayton.substack.com/ and you can find out more about Slayton's work at https://philipslayton.com/. His most recent book, Antisemitism: an ancient hatred in an age of identity politics, is available from Sutherland House at https://sutherlandhousebooks.com/product/antisemitism/

I find it compelling when someone is passionate about something – especially when they’re passionate about something that isn’t, you know, obvious. It’s not something they can monetize, it’s not something everyone else is talking about... it’s something that they’re bringing focused insight to in a way you would otherwise never think about. A few years ago I learned that Graham Henderson – previously a lawyer and music industry advocate – was really into Percy Bysshe Shelley, the romantic poet who died two hundred years ago this past July. And he’s passionate about surfacing aspects of Shelley’s art and politics in a way that is accessible and relevant to contemporary readers. We talk about poets as legislators of the world, the difficult conversations sons sometimes have with their fathers through art, what great art asks us to do, but mostly we talk about Shelley - the radical poet of empathy.

You can read Graham's work on Shelley at http://www.grahamhenderson.ca/

No one writes about Canadian music with more insight or elan than Michael Barclay - and he's just released the magisterial Hearts On Fire: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music 2000–2005. It's the authoritative story about how, in the early years of the new millennium, the world noticed that the musical artists coming out of Canada - from Arcade Fire to Tegan and Sara, from Broken Social Scene to Cadence Weapon and beyond - were, amazingly, incontrovertibly, and finally, cool. We talk about the the amazing diversity of musical talent on offer, the material conditions that made the phenomenon possible (including the role played by cheap real estate), the importance of killer live performances (and drummers!), and the role that late Tragically Hip lead singer Gord Downie played in bringing the book to fruition. 

Hearts on Fire is available for sale now wherever fine books are sold, and you can find more from Michael on Twitter @mmmbarclay.

Some serendipitous conversations early in the pandemic inspired employment and human rights lawyer Rob Tarantino (no relation! really!) to do something a little unusual, a little creative, and definitely a whole lot tasty: he started making and selling small-batch, hand-rolled bagels. We talk about growing up Tarantino, what motivated him to start making bagels, the differences and similarities between becoming a bagelmonger and starting his own legal practice, and how sharing food that he loves has helped him tap into a supportive community of bagel enthusiasts across the city. You can find Rob and his bagels on Instagram @stclarensbagels and his legal practice at https://www.tarantinolaw.ca/

If you follow Angela Han on LinkedIn (and you should!) you probably know why she's appearing in this episode: she's a life coach, podcaster, and lawyer, sure, but more importantly she's someone who speaks candidly and compellingly about the importance of curiosity, being compassionate towards yourself, asking better questions, feeling your feelings, and setting your life up so that you're doing the things that only you can do. Check out Angela's podcast, Fit to Practice, and find her at angela-han.com

Andrew Kirsch spent a decade as a spy with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) - he joins me to talk about his new book, I Was Never Here: My True Canadian Spy Story of Coffees, Code Names and Covert Operations in the Age of Terrorism. We discuss what motivated him to Google "How do I become a Canadian spy?" and then submit the application, how being a spy impacted his efforts on the dating scene, and how he looks back on his time working to keep Canada safe from threats to its security.

You can find I Was Never Here wherever books are sold, and at iwasneverhere.ca

How does a four-day work week sound? With no reduction in pay? Quinn Ross thought it sounded so good he implemented it at the law firm he runs. Oh, and he also increased the size of the team to 70 people. During a pandemic. We talk about how his commitment to the four-day work week is both driven by and enables taking care of people, and how you could say it all started with a tornado. Really.

Find out more about Quinn M. Ross and his work by checking out https://rossfirm.com/ 

Connect with Quinn on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/quinn-m-ross-81b81319/

A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast hosted by my friend Jonathan Kay - he's a writer and journalist who has authored such insightful books as Your Move: What Board Games Can Teach Us About Life (co-written with Joan Moriarty) - and he offhandedly mentioned that he liked watches. "Hey", I thought, "I like watches too - maybe me and Jon could talk about the psychology of why middle-aged guys often suddenly find themselves deeply invested in new hobbies like watch collecting". Well, this episode is the record of that conversation. As you'll hear, we cover a lot of topics that, at best, only obliquely shed light on why we like watches... until suddenly everything becomes perfectly clear.

Erin Zipes wears a few different hats: she's VP Legal at Shopify, one of the country's biggest and most successful companies, and she's part of the Backbone Angels investing collective - but just naming those roles doesn't shed enough light on how thoughtful and insightful she is about how lawyers can be their best professional selves. We cover a lot of ground in this engaging discussion, from how she built the legal team at a company experiencing hypergrowth, to how she learned to be a lawyer who adds value rather than simply mitigating risk, to grappling with the sacred trust imparted in being responsible for managing people, to the message she would deliver to her younger self. 

Learn more about Backbone Angels here: https://www.backboneangels.com/

Dilemmas of Free Expression, a collection of papers edited and contributed to by Professor Emmett Macfarlane, presents a variety of perspectives examining ways to confront the challenging moral issues and policy problems inherent in controversies such as hate speech, far-right populism, campus speech debates, and censorship. In this wide-ranging discussion, we touch on matters including how the book came about, the extent to which those on university campuses face a chilling effect, and how we can productively think about, and potentially overcome, the challenges posed by expansive conceptions of free expression and competing values such as inclusion and harm reduction.

You can find the book Dilemmas of Free Expression here: https://utorontopress.com/9781487529307/dilemmas-of-free-expression/

If you've been to Toronto's Kensington Market, you're probably familiar with Good Egg: an eclectic and personable shop offering a curated collection of cookbooks and kitchenware. Mika Bereket is Good Egg's owner and we chat about how she discovers and chooses what to carry, how being located in Kensington has informed her approach to cooking and the store's identity, how cookbooks have evolved, the different national cultures of cookbooks, and the meditative pleasure she has discovered in expanding her efforts to include publishing cookbooks (including the books Blood and Limes). You can find out more about Good Egg at http://www.goodegg.ca/ and https://goodeggbooks.ca/

Chris Claremont was the writer of Uncanny X-Men from 1975 to 1991 - the longest tenure in history on a mainstream superhero comic - during which he turned it into the best-selling comic in the world, featuring iconic characters like Wolverine and Storm and lauded stories such as The Dark Phoenix Saga and Inferno. Claremont's work featured strong female characters, gripping interpersonal dramatics, and lengthy, complex and engrossing storylines that have influenced contemporary storytelling in a way that can be seen on TV and movie screens around the world. Professor Andrew Deman is studying Claremont's work in The Claremont Run - an academic project, funded by Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), exploring the impact of Claremont's UXM run on the representation of gender and sexuality in comics and on "long continuity" in modern entertainment. Andrew and I discuss how to think about Claremont's legacy, his collaboration with artists and editors, and how readers can best approach the Claremont Run. You can learn more about The Claremont Run at http://www.claremontrun.com and follow it on Twitter @ClaremontRun

It does what it says on the tin: to mark the 30th anniversary of the release of Guns N' Roses' "Use Your Illusion" albums, me and my friend Chris Ross argue about which tracks deserve attention, which album is better, whether they're any good at all, and where they rank among the historically rich profusion of rock and rap records released in 1991.

Actor, painter, photographer - Kate Kelton's an artist with a creative lineage stretching back generations, and a cv that ranges from movies like Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and a decade as the "Tic Tac Girl" to exhibitions in galleries from Los Angeles to New York to the UK. Her "Sentry" series of portraits of women who took public stands against Hollywood's endemic sexual harassment and assault garnered acclaim, and she continues to create with an emphatic aesthetic that is unmistakably her own. We talk about being an outsider and how that informs her creativity, the benefits of art school, being in dialogue with her mother's abstract expressionism, and how technology has empowered her to connect with her audience in a way that gives her total control.

For more about Kate and her art:

https://katekelton.com/

https://www.instagram.com/k8kelton/

https://twitter.com/katekelton

Details on the opening reception for the new "Perceive Me" exhibition featuring her work can be found here: Kristine Schomaker | Perceive Me at MOAH, Opening Reception