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Aaron and Naomi talk about the classic teen drama Degrassi Junior High (1987-1989) and its immediate sequel, Degrassi High (1989-1991). We discuss the show's fascinating production history, our vivid memories of watching it as kids, and the labour conditions for the actors. We also dig into the details of one of our favourite episodes, "All Nighter," and even re-enact a scene. You won't want to miss Naomi's uncanny Melanie impression! This is the free 46-minute version of the episode. To access the full 94-minute version, subscribe to the show on Patreon. Subscribers gain access to all full-length episodes of Sweater Weather—that's about twice the content!

How Leonard Cohen's life and art was shaped by the Cold War-- and the political uses of his most famous song, "Hallelujah." This episode is based on an article I wrote for The Breach titled "Leonard Cohen, Cold War Troubadour": https://breachmedia.ca/leonard-cohen-cold-war-troubadour/ Support Sweater Weather: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/t-AC7Gvx7HU Visit our website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com   Follow the podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater   Follow Aaron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SincerityCity  

Support this podcast. Cabins and cottages have come to represent summer in Canada-- even though most Canadians spend the summer in hot cities. What does the fascination with cabins and cottages reveal about class, inequality and colonization in Canada? This episode we welcome Tonya Davidson, a sociologist at Carleton University and co-editor of the essay collection Seasonal Sociology (University of Toronto Press, 2020). We discuss her essay in that collection, "Summer in Cottage Country." Visit Sweater Weather's website | Follow Aaron Giovannone and Sweater Weather on Twitter.  

Support Sweater Weather! I’m joined once again by my friends from the Alberta Advantage podcast: Clinton, Karen and Joel. We conclude our epic discussion of FUBAR, the classic Canadian and Calgarian comedy franchise, by discussing FUBAR II: Balls to the Wall (2010) in which our protagonists, Terry and Dean, head up to Fort McMurray to work in the oil sands, as well as the TV Series, FUBAR: Age of Computer (2017), when the boys try to make a go of it in the online economy. The struggles of Terry and Dean as working class men really come to the fore in these latter two installments of FUBAR. This is part 2 of our discussion of the FUBAR franchise. To see part 1, check out our last episode. Visit the Sweater Weather website for everything you need to know about the show, follow Sweater Weather on Twitter, and follow Aaron Giovannone on Twitter, too. 

Support the show. This week I'm joined by my podcast comrades from the Alberta Advantage: Clinton, Joël and Karen, for a deep dive into the classic Canadian and Calgarian comedy franchise FUBAR. It’s been nearly 20 years since the first FUBAR film brought us the endearing headbangers Terry and Dean. In our discussion we appreciate FUBAR’s depiction of working-class life and its wicked humour. And of course, we ponder what it really means to giv’er. This is the first of two episodes dedicated to the FUBAR franchise. Keep your eyes peeled for our next release when we discuss FUBAR 2: Balls to the Wall (2010) and the TV series FUBAR: Age of Computer (2017).    

I talk to author and journalist Marcello Di Cintio about the lives of people who drive taxis for a living. He tells their stories in his fascinating new book, Driven: The Secret Lives of Drivers.  This is episode 15 of Sweater Weather with Aaron Giovannone. Visit the Sweater Weather website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Donate on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/canadiansweater?locale.x=en_US Subscribe to the newsletter: https://aarongiovannone.substack.com/welcome Follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hDI1JSCAvcs7ZWoFRIASA Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadiansweater Follow on Sweater Weather on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater Follow Aaron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SincerityCity Follow Aaron on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canadian.sweater/ Check out the Harbinger Media Network: https://harbingermedianetwork.com/ Check out Waffle to the Left: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdhyHe_XiwmJIyz5MKb7vSQ

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-1/38ebdd8f-20ad-4d8f-a86c-c1d121cb0d3f Visit the Sweater Weather website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Donate on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/canadiansweater?locale.x=en_US Subscribe to the newsletter: https://aarongiovannone.substack.com/welcome Follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hDI1JSCAvcs7ZWoFRIASA Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadiansweater Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canadian.sweater/ Follow Aaron Giovannone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SincerityCity Check out the Harbinger Media Network: https://harbingermedianetwork.com/ Check out Waffle to the Left: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdhyHe_XiwmJIyz5MKb7vSQ

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?: Literature and Social Change (Guernica, 2018). Tom also treats us to a reading of a couple of his beautiful poems. Read Tom Wayman's book, If You're Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free?: https://www.guernicaeditions.com/title/9781771832878 Visit the Sweater Weather website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Subscribe to the newsletter: https://aarongiovannone.substack.com/welcome Donate on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/canadiansweater?locale.x=en_US Follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hDI1JSCAvcs7ZWoFRIASA Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadiansweater Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canadian.sweater/ Follow Aaron Giovannone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SincerityCity

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 with her colleague Henry Heller. How have neoliberal economies fared during the Coronavirus crisis, compared to planned economies? How does capitalism structure the geopolitics between states? What is the role of the US dollar? And we discuss the relationship of intellectuals to left politics in reference to an early work of Prof. Desai's, Intellectuals and Socialism (1994). I've got an exciting announcement: we've started a Substack newsletter for the show, the jauntily if obviously titled Sweater Weather: The Newsletter. Please do sign up. You’ll get my original takes on Canadian culture occasionally delivered to your email inbox. It’s free, and it won’t be so frequent that it gets annoying. This is episode 12 of Sweater Weather. Subscribe to the newsletter: https://aarongiovannone.substack.com/welcome Prof. Desai inCanadian Dimension: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/author/radhika-desai Visit the Sweater Weather website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Donate on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/canadiansweater?locale.x=en_US Follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hDI1JSCAvcs7ZWoFRIASA Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadiansweater Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canadian.sweater/ Follow Aaron Giovannone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SincerityCity

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 who died in China in 1939 providing medical aid to Mao’s 8th Army as it battled the invading Japanese. Bethune was a swash-buckling humanitarian who became a revered figure of the Chinese Revolution, and later a sanctified Canadian national hero, too. This 18-million dollar movie was a co-production of Canadian and Chinese state partners, and was at the time the most expensive Canadian film ever produced. An ambitious but flawed film, the production was marred by a power struggle between the Canadians involved in the project, the film’s star, actor Donald Sutherland and its screenwriter, Ted Allan. I’ve recently written about Bethune: The Making of a Hero in a piece for Passage magazine titled “After The Cold War, China and Canada United to Honour Norman Bethune." https://readpassage.com/after-the-cold-war-china-and-canada-united-to-honour-norman-bethune/ Joining Sweater Weather to talk about Bethune: Making of a Hero is Paul Jay. Paul Jay is a journalist and filmmaker, the founder and host of TheAnalysis.News, a video and audio current affairs show. He is past chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada, as well as a founding chair of the Hot Docs! Canadian International Documentary Festival.  Happily for us, Paul is also the nephew of Ted Allan, the screenwriter of Bethune, and he offers a unique perspective on the film as well as its political, economic and historical background. Read Aaron's article about Bethune: The Making of a Hero in Passage: https://readpassage.com/after-the-cold-war-china-and-canada-united-to-honour-norman-bethune/ Watch Bethune: The Making of a Hero: https://youtu.be/5zUrbrTb5J0 Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/canadiansweater?locale.x=en_US Visit the Website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hDI1JSCAvcs7ZWoFRIASA Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadiansweater Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canadian.sweater/ Follow Aaron Giovannone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SincerityCity

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 Labour Under Attack Anti-Unionism in Canada (Fernwood, 2018). In this second part of the interview, we talk about life within unions in more detail, especially about the inequalities that unions sometimes reproduce while trying to protect workers’ interests. Seniority is an example of this, a principle that guides layoffs, pay, promotion, etc. Seniority is key to disrupting the bosses’ power to arbitrarily dismiss employees, but it also disproportionately impacts younger workers who are the least able to shoulder the costs of layoffs. And as a couple of professors, we can’t help but talk about the crazily unequal workplace that is the contemporary university, where faculty unions have tolerated or accepted differential tiers of employment—the famous distinction between tenured faculty and sessional/adjunct faculty. It’s a corrosive situation that undermines worker solidarity. This is episode 10 of Sweater Weather with Aaron Giovannone. Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Visit the Website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hDI1JSCAvcs7ZWoFRIASA Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadiansweater Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canadian.sweater/ Follow Aaron Giovannone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SincerityCity

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 Canada (Fernwood, 2018). Do Canadians and workers support unions? What are the sources of influential anti-union ideas? What do labour organizations themselves do that sometimes fosters anti-union sentiment? We address these thorny but important topics today. This is part 1 of a 2-part interview with Dr. Ross. The second part will be released soon as a premium episode, available to patrons of the show at the 5 dollar a month level or higher. Sign up at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597

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 Left History. This is an absolute gem of an episode, a must watch for every Canadian leftist craving a comprehensive historical perspective on socialism and social movements in this country. We begin our discussion, however, talking about liberalism and Prof. McKay’s now classic essay, “The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History” which frames Canadian history as the progress of a ‘passive revolution’ towards liberalism as it became the dominant ideology in Canada. With this groundwork in place, we proceed to dig into the details of his fascinating analyses of Canadian socialism, at times a competitor to liberalism, as laid out in another of his influential papers, “For a New Kind of History: A Reconnaissance of 100 Years of Canadian Socialism.” Support Sweater Weather on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Sweater Weather’s website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/​

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 of its depictions of class, community, and for just being so damn funny. Rory is our resident East Coaster and he shares his deep knowledge of Nova Scotia political economy and anecdotes about that region's love of pepperoni. That's well worth the price of admission alone, but then Clinton drops snappy TPB trivia while Tyler plumbs the humanistic heart of life in Sunnyvale. Support Sweater Weather on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=7353597 Sweater Weather’s new website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Listen to The Alberta Advantage podcast: https://albertaadvantagepod.com/ Listen to Tyler's new podcast, Tinker, Tailer, Podcast, Spy: https://soundcloud.com/tinker-tailor-podcast-spy Follow Clinton: https://twitter.com/StoicRomance Follow Rory: https://twitter.com/iosegun Follow Tyler: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater Follow Aaron: https://twitter.com/SincerityCity Watch Sweater Weather on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hDI1JSCAvcs7ZWoFRIASA Watch Sweater Weather on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadiansweater Follow Sweater Weather on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweaterFollow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canadian.sweater/

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 article: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/right-wing-populism-and-the-realignment-of-working-class-politics-in-canada Support Sweater Weather on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=73... Sweater Weather’s website: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater Watch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadiansweater Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canadian.sweater/

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 at Concordia University, who has published extensively on deindustrialization and the post-industrial transformation of North American cities. His books include Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt (U of T Press, 2003), The Deindustrialized World: Confronting Ruination in Post-Industrial Places (UBC Press, 2017), and One Job Town: Work, Belonging and Betrayal in Northern Ontario (U o T Press, 2019). We also discuss a piece he recently published in Canadian Dimension, “Right-wing populism and the realignment of working-class politics in Canada,” as well as a new international research project he is leading titled Deindustrialization and the Politics of our Time.   Steven High’s piece in Canadian Dimension: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/right-wing-populism-and-the-realignment-of-working-class-politics-in-canada Sweater Weather’s new website, where you’ll find everything you need: https://www.sweaterweatherpod.com/ Support Sweater Weather on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=73... Support Sweater Weather on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/canadiansweater?locale.x=en_US Follow Sweater Weather on Twitter: https://twitter.com/canadiansweater

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 Canada. Sam is an internationally recognized authority on political economy and social movements, and he frequently writes and speaks about socialism in a global context—but he’s Canadian, so I was keen to hear what he had to say about the battle on the home front. We talk about Canada’s place in the global capitalist system, about Canada’s possibilities for economic nationalism, about Canadian unions and the working class, the Green New Deal versus Green Capitalism, and his promising efforts with a worker-led project called Green Jobs Oshawa. We also talk about the Canadian manifestations of the left populist up-welling in recent years, which he thinks was (unfortunately) captured by the Trudeau Liberals. And we’ll address that age-old question for Canadian socialists: to NDP, or not to NDP. Support Sweater Weather: www.patreon.com/canadiansweater