Bob Got a Microphone

Professor Benjamin Perrin has recently published a book - Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial - that proposes some revolutionary changes to the criminal justice system. You might think that's not particularly noteworthy - some law professors routinely advocate for radical changes to how our legal regime functions. What's interesting about where Benjamin finds himself, however, is how...

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'...

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 ot...

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 e...

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...

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 firs...

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,...

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 – previo...

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...

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 be...

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 th...

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 th...

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. Fin...

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 guy...

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...

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 bo...

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, th...

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,...

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 an...

Darlene Tonelli started Inter Alia Law, a unique legal advisory firm, and co-hosts the Lawyer Life Podcast where she and co-host Mike Anderson help lawyers navigate their days with a little less stress and, ideally, a lot more fulfillment. Darlene and I talk about getting her foot in the door at a record company, what she finds attractive about philosophical Stoicism and... well, we end up spendin...

What can lawyers learn from stand-up and improv comedy? Are comedians just engaging in "therapy, but with an audience" when they're on stage? What the hell was the "skin baby" joke? Learn the answers to these questions - and more! - in this conversation with Peter Henein, litigator and procurer of laughs.

To me, it's no surprise that Anne Driscoll is where she is: the CEO of Launch Pad - a company on a mission to catalyze the growth of entrepreneurship ecosystems in cities across the United States - and a veteran of Silicon Valley who has embraced a life of accomplishment, risk-taking, and engagement with opportunity in whatever form it presents itself. Anne and I have known each other since we wer...

Brian L. Frye is a law professor and filmmaker - and somewhere along the way, he decided to draw on the most interesting bits of both those endeavours and come up with an entirely different approach to his engagement with the law. He describes his work as "conceptual art in the medium of legal scholarship", wherein he challenges some of the most dearly-held commitments of the academy, including ar...

Author and academic Andrew Potter's most recent book is On Decline - Stagnation, Nostalgia, and Why Every Year is the Worst One Ever . We discuss why everything seems to be going to sh*t, the casinofication of life, the seeming inversion of political left and right on issues of decline, and whether there's any way out of a lapse into unreason. You can find On Decline at http://biblioasis.com/shop/...