Sweater Weather

On today's episode, I talk to ​Leah Cameron, a television writer in Toronto. She is creator, director and co-writer of The Communist's Daughter, a comedy series loosely based on her left-wing family in Toronto in 1989, now available on CBC Gem. This is episode 14 of Sweater Weather with Aaron Giovannone. Watch The Communist's Daughter: https://gem.cbc.ca/season/the-communists-daughter/season-1/38e...

Why do we need an honest portrayal of work and employment in literature? What is the point of poetry? How has postmodernism affected arts and education? Today we are visited by Tom Wayman, the author of more than 20 books of poetry and prose, as well as a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary. Today we talk about his collection of essays, If You're Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free?:...

This episode we're visited by Radhika Desai, professor of political science at the University of Manitoba. She is the author and editor of several works on political economy, including Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (Pluto Press, 2013) as well as Revolutions: A Twenty-First Century Perspective, which was a special issue of Third World Quarterly in 2020, co-edited...

The early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War produced a new consensus among western elites that it was now a good thing to do business with China and develop cultural relations.  A fascinating film from 1990 illustrates this moment of history, Bethune: The Making of A Hero, starring Donald Sutherland as Norman Bethune, the real-life Canadian communist doctor w...

Donate to the show: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 This is part 2 of my discussion with Dr. Stephanie Ross, associate professor and director of the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University. She is author, co-author and co-editor of several works on Canadian labour and unions, including Building a Better World: An Introduction to the Labour Movement in Canada (Fernwood, 2015) and...

This week I talk to Dr. Stephanie Ross, associate professor and director of the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University. She is author, co-author and co-editor of several works on Canadian labour and unions, including Building a Better World: An Introduction to the Labour Movement in Canada (Fernwood, 2015) and the book we primarily discuss today, Labour Under Attack: Anti-Unionism in Cana...

In episode 8 of Sweater Weather, I talk to Ian McKay, professor of history at McMaster University and director of the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History. He is the author and co-author of numerous books and articles about the Canadian left, including Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920 , as well as Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada's Le...

The boys from The Alberta Advantage—Clinton, Rory, Tyler—visit Sweater Weather to gab about the boys from the trailer park—Ricky, Julian and Bubbles. That's right, we're talking Trailer Park Boys! It's one of the best Canadian television shows ever, and one of the few to find an international audience. And while its heyday was 2001-2007, Trailer Park Boys has an enduring appeal to leftists because...

Will the next federal election spell doom for the NDP, out maneuvered by the Conservatives for working-class voters? I talk to Steven C. High, professor of history at Concordia University and author of the recent article for Canadian Dimension, "Right-wing populism and the realignment of working-class politics in Canada." See the full interview here: https://youtu.be/Pj2N4vMOoYk Steven High's arti...

How has deindustrialization impacted the working class in Canada and around the world? In what ways is deindustrialization, a side effect of global capital constantly seeking cheaper labour, shaping the politics of our time? Will the next federal election spell doom for the NDP, out maneuvered by the Conservatives for working class voters? This week I talk to Steven C. High, professor of history a...

I'm delighted to talk to Sam Gindin, co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism (2012) a modern classic, as well as the more recent but no less essential The Socialist Challenge Today  (2020) both co-written with his long-time friend and colleague Leo Panitch. From 1974-2000, Sam was the director of research at the Canadian Auto Workers union, now Unifor, the largest private sector union in Cana...